Mount Carmel forest fire and Arab-Muslims

"Mount Carmel forest fire," forest fires in Mt. Carmel - northern Israel, claimed 41 lives and a huge loss of property (consumming 4 million trees over an area of 3,400 hectares). Believed to be the work of 'Arab arson.' While enjoying aid from many countries, many Israeli Arabs expressed "satisfaction" online, much of the Arab Muslim world cheered to the disaster, Hezbollah rejoiced. Later on a Jihadi group calling itself "Mujahadeen of Palestine" claimed respnsiblity for the fire, whether they really perptertated it or was it an accident by Arab youths (as some officials claim), one thing remains abundantly clear, the sheer hatred the Arab-Muslim world expressed as Israeli innocent civilians burn/suffer. Indeed, 'As Israel's Carmel Fire Rages: Arab-Muslim Racism Rears Its Ugly Head Even in Tragedy.'

Fire or a Massacre? Israeli Media Downplays Arson Suspicion ... Dec 2, 2010 ... Arab citizens of Israel use arson as a simple means of inflicting terror and destruction upon the Jewish state. Large scale fires recently ...
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/news.aspx/140974

Press Low-Key on Wave of Arson by Israel's Arabs

by Gil Ronen
Published: 12/05/10, 2:15 PM / Last Update: 12/05/10, 3:29 PM

Police and volunteers are manning checkpoints, lookouts and ambushes throughout Israel in an effort to combat a wave of terrorist arson by Arab citizens of Israel. While occasionally reporting some of the arson incidents, most news sources are playing them down considerably, while others cover them up completely.

The IDF has released video footage shot from an IAF aircraft, which shows a vehicle escaping from the scene of an arson attack on the Carmel Mountain. The conversation on the radio, in Hebrew, is between pilots and police. The pilots report that they have received word from a firefighting aircraft that spotted the vehicle leaving the scene of an act of arson, near a spot called the Muhraka. The aircraft follows the vehicle – a Renault Kangoo – until it is stopped by police cars.

Despite this video, news of the wave of arson is seeping into the public consciousness mostly through smaller news sources and by word of mouth.

Police said the main conflagration in the Carmel Mountains was unintentionally caused by a group of youth from Ossafiya. According to a report on Channel 2 news, the youths lit a fire as part of a nocturnal picnic and did not put it out properly before leaving the site. Later reports said that while most of the residents of Ossafiya are Druze, the youths who were arrested are Arabs.

News1 said that insurance companies were heartened by this news, because if they can prove in court that the fire was an act of terrorism, the state will pay the victims' compensation instead of them.

Channel 2's website also carries a report that Border Police arrested two Arabs, one an Israeli citizen and the other from the Palestinian Authority, who tried to start a fire near Jerusalem on Saturday night. The two were caught in a ravine near the “tunnels checkpoint” at the entrance to the neighborhood of Gilo.

Citizens who passed through the checkpoint noticed the suspects and reported their activity to security forces. A Border Police team identified the two trying to set a fire, called on them to stop and fired four shots in the air. The suspects tried to escape in a vehicle but were arrested after a short chase.

A short time later, a 34-year-old Arab man was arrested near Dodge Junction close to Nazareth. He was taken to interrogation.

The volunteer “New HaShomer” land security group also placed ambushes in key locations. On Friday it reported several arrests, via text messages that it sent to its volunteer guards.

The News1 website reported that Radio Haifa interviewed several people who witnessed car horn-honking and other acts of public celebration in the Arab village of Furadis, south of Haifa, after news of the tragedy became known Thursday.

According to the report, Arab citizens uploaded to a Facebook account gruesome photographs of charred bodies of victims. Other Arabs expressed their feelings by clicking “like.” The police are said to be investigating the matter and the Facebook page is said to have been closed.

However, the pictures have already begun making the rounds worldwide. A group called “Mujahedeen of Palestine,” identified with Al-Qaeda, put the pictures of the bodies on a YouTube video. The video includes text that says “Muhammad's lions” came out at night to set alight the land of the “occupiers.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/news.aspx/140993

Wave of Arson Fails to Convince Knesset to Up Punishment - Inside ... Dec 15, 2010 ... The vote followed a recent wave of Arab arson that stretched fire ... 20 arson attacks carried out while it raged in northern Israel, was not Israel's first. More than 1760 such fires, albeit on a much smaller scale, ...
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141170

Burning the land we live on

By JPOST EDITORIAL 12/06/2010 01:31

There is a disturbing phenomenon of homegrown terrorism that has contaminated a small but violent minority.

One of the few positive developments to emerge in the wake of Israel’s worst-ever inferno has been the tremendous outpouring of international aid, including from the Muslim world.

Both Egypt and Jordan have reached out, sending firefighters and equipment. Turkey’s willingness to send two firefighter airplanes has fueled speculation that relations between Jerusalem and Ankara might improve. Another development was a Palestinian initiative to provide Israel with three units of civil defense forces to assist in extinguishing the fires on the Carmel.

However, other reactions across the Muslim world were far from encouraging, as The Jerusalem Post’s Palestinian Affairs Correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh noted, based on talkbacks and comments on the blaze from readers in several leading Arab media outlets and websites. A majority seemed to believe that the alleged negligence of two youths from the Druse village Usfiya was not the real cause of the fire, rather that God is “punishing” Israel for occupying Arab lands and killing Palestinians, especially during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.

One reader noted that “this is the right time for Iran. If one fire has caused panic in the Zionist entity, where are Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Nasrallah? And where is Syria? One rocket could set thousands of fires.”

There was also caustic criticism from such quarters of Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority for agreeing to send aid to Israel.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, meanwhile, said the fires were a divine expression of anger. “These are plagues from God,” Haniyeh said in a Reuters video interview recorded during Sunday prayers in Gaza. “Allah is punishing them [the Israelis] from a place they did not expect it.”

BUT PERHAPS the most disturbing development has been a mind-boggling rash of locally concocted arson attempts.

Perpetrated by Arab Israelis, these attacks are a cynical exploitation of Israel’s sorrowfully inadequate firefighting capabilities. These local terrorists are willing to cause further ecological damage and endanger the lives of both Jews and Arabs in the name of hateful and narrow political goals.

On Friday, Israel Police Insp.-Gen. David Cohen directed district commanders to be on the lookout for such arsonists and has reportedly consulted with the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) on thwarting them. Yoel Zilberman, head of a grassroots network of about 1,000 unarmed volunteer guards that operates in the Galilee and who call themselves “Hashomer,” a throwback to the pre-state organization, estimates that in the last three days there have been between 30 and 40 arson attempts in northern Israel. The organization was created two years ago to fight acts of arson and vandalism perpetrated by Arabs against Jewish farmers in the Galilee.

One of the largest arson attacks that took place since the fire erupted on Mount Carmel was at Tzur Shalom, where police found a bike and a wig, apparently abandoned by an arsonist who had disguised himself and planned to ignite the local gas pump and start a fire that could have spread to the factories of heavily-industrialized Haifa Bay.

Other suspected arson attacks occurred in Tarshiha, Kiryat Tivon, Shfaram, Naveh Yosef, a neighborhood outside Haifa, Mashad, an Arab village in the North, and in the Nazareth Forest. Police Cmdr. Shimon Koren, commander of the Northern District, said that there were cases in which Molotov cocktails were thrown along Route 70.

These arson attempts – which occur all year long and at a staggering average of two per day in the past 12 months, but which have increased in recent days – are part of a concerted effort by lawless Arab Israelis to take control of Jewish farmland in the Galilee. Crops or orchards that are repeatedly burned down are eventually left fallow, in some cases allowing Arab farmers to move in. Additional tactics include the killing of livestock and violence against Jewish farmers, according to those affected.

Most Arab Israelis are law abiding citizens. And the vast majority are united with their Jewish fellow citizens in working and praying for a quick end to the inferno that has engulfed the North and threatened the lives, property and natural resources of all citizens equally.

However, there is a disturbing phenomenon of homegrown terrorism that has contaminated a small but violent minority – a minority that receives psychological backing from a larger Muslim world with decidedly antagonistic attitudes toward Israel.

One of the lessons to be learned from the fire raging on Mount Carmel, along with the the dire imperative to revamp our firefighting infrastructure and manpower, is the importance of restoring law and order to the Galilee.

Zilberman’s “Hashomer” initiative is no substitute for a more robust police effort to thwart those who set light the very land we live upon.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=198165

Hezbollah overjoyed by fire - Israel News, Ynetnews Dec 3, 2010 ... News: Arab media disparages Israel over disaster; Officials in Jerusalem: PR damage huge...Israel burns, Hezbollah rejoices...
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3993898,00.html

Israel Behind the News: Israel Resource Review - Background ... Dec 6, 2010 ... 25% The funerals and follow up on people killed in the fires. The Arab arson terror is a problematic topic because it is a completely ...
http://www.israelbehindthenews.com/bin/content.cgi?ID=4228&q=1

Israel: Al Qaeda claims fire of Mount Caramel
12/04/2010 12:37

A group, calling itself "Lions of the mujahideen in Palestine" in an Internet message, claims to have started the fire between Thursday and Friday to avenge the death of some fighters in Gaza. The Israeli authorities deny the fire was caused deliberately. International assistance arrives.

Haifa (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The terrorist organization Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the fire that has devastated the forests of Mount Caramel, the most serious environmental disaster in the history of Israel. Although the local police authorities attribute the blaze to negligence and the prolonged drought that is affecting the region.

Today, a new terrorist group, which claims links to Al Qaeda, posted a video message on jihadist forums, the same used by Osama Bin Laden, declaring to be behind the fire. The group, which calls itself “Lions of the mujahideen in Palestine" claims to have set fire to the trees of Mount Carmel, triggering the inferno which is still raging. "The lions of the mujahideen in Palestine" say they carried out the arson attack on the night between Thursday and Friday - "performing a holy and heroic expedition within the territory of the usurpers on occupied Mount Caramel setting fire to its trees, causing the deaths of more than 40 people and wounding dozens, as recognized by the enemy itself".

The terrorist group, whose credibility has not yet been independently confirmed, also thanked "the wind, which was one of the soldiers of Allah, for his help, by expanding the flames to where we never thought, so that the enemy was not able to subdue it and was forced to seek help from foreign forces. " The message then points out that " this blessed expedition is part of the series of expeditions undertaken against the Jewish occupier to avenge the blood of Muslims killed, first of all Muhamman al- Namnam and the brothers Islam and Muhammad Yasin and other Palestinian Salafi jihadist. The enemy knows that the children of monotheism are not asleep and are capable of teaching them a lesson. " The reference is to the three members of the Palestinian jihadist group "Army of Islam", an acronym related to al-Qaeda in theGaza Strip, killed in recent weeks, in two different Israeli air raids.

But according to the Israeli authorities the fire on Mount Caramel, the most serious environmental disaster in the history of Israel, was not caused by arson but by negligence: according to Israeli police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, without giving further details. The fire caused at least 42 deaths, the evacuation of 17 thousand people and destroyed acres of forest in addition to many homes: despite the intervention of fire fighting aircraft sent from abroad, the flames are not yet under control and the strong wind has further fueled the fire, which now threatens some suburbs of Haifa. More international aid has arrived in Israel to help in the battle against the vast fire. Two huge Russian aircraft with a capacity of 42 tons of water, are already working on site, together with the 6 planes sent from France, Turkey, Greece and Cyprus. Fire brigade spokesman, Yoram Levy said that with international help it may be possible to "extinguish the fire by tonight", a blaze that has consumed 4 million trees over an area of 3,400 hectares.
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Al-Qaeda-claims-fire-of-Mount-Caramel-20176.html
http://www.speroforum.com/a/44470/Israel---Al-Qaeda-claims-fire-of-Mount-Caramel

Ma’asada’t al-Mujahideen in Palestine Claim Responsibility for Israeli Forest Fires

Sunday, 05 December 2010 12:57

In a message posted on jihadist forums on December 3, 2010, a Salafist Jihadist group known as Ma’asada’t al-Mujahideen in Palestine (Lions of the Mujahideen) claimed responsibility for igniting the fires in Mt. Caramel, which were the worst in Israeli history and have killed more than 40. The group waged this operation, as it claims, "during a series of battles that shall, Allah-willing, destroy the monuments of the hateful Jewish occupation, and to avenge the blood of the victims of [Jihad] unity, starting with the martyr Muhammad al-Nemnem, and the brothers Islam and Muhammad Yasin, and other martyrs from the Salafist Jihadism in Palestine. And in order for the enemies to know that the children of unification do not sleep humiliated and they are capable—despite the shortage of capabilities—to attack their enemy and teach him hard lessons he won’t ever forget…"
http://www.globalterroralert.com/index.php?view=article&id=727:maasadat-al-mujahideen-in-palestine-claim-responsibility-for-israeli-forest-fires-

The Mt. Carmel Inferno

[Posted by Steven Plaut on Dec 8th, 2010]

Now send and gather all of Israel to Me on Mount Carmel….Then the fire of the Lord fell and devoured the sacrifice and the wood and the stones and the dust and the water. — Kings I 18: 19, 38

“Carmel” means the orchard of God in Hebrew. These were not the Hannuka flames Israel was expecting. On the first day of the festival, the top of Mount Carmel looked like one of those volcanoes you see on the National Geographic Channel. The pillar of smoke could be seen from 50 miles away. Gusts of wind bring ash and smoke into Haifa. Residents of some streets closest to the flames are evacuated. Friends and relatives from around the country call and offer us sanctuary if we need it. It feels a lot like the summer of 2006, when Haifa was the target of hundreds of rockets fired by Hezb’Allah terrorists during the Lebanese War. The man at the meat counter in the supermarket jokes with me; if the wind changes direction he will be holding a special sale on barbecued chickens that never even had to be put into the oven. We are all sold out of marshmallows, he adds.

But it was hard to keep a sense of humor in the midst of Israel’s worst-ever natural disaster, one in which over 40 Israelis died in the flames. Besides the bus full of prison service cadets, the victims included a 16-year old Haifa boy who had long served as a volunteer fireman with one of the brigades. He was overcome after he rushed into the conflagration with his colleagues. Another victim was the Haifa Chief of Police, a courageous 52-year old woman, Ahuva Tomer, who died from burns. She was born in the USSR and came to Israel alone as an infant. But do not expect her courage and ordeal to arouse any sympathy from radical feminists. They are too busy cheering on the Hamas terrorists.
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/12/08/the-mt-carmel-inferno/

Nazareth Teens Arrested for Attempt to Spread Carmel Fire - Inside ... Dec 8, 2010 ... Two Israeli-Arab teenagers from Nazareth have been arrested for ... battled the Carmel fire, and police suspect a coordinated arson effort. ...
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/news.aspx/141053

I cant say when enough is enough but I would think that if that fire was linked to a group, that that group should cease to exist along with any nation state behind it.

I cant say when enough is enough but I would think that if that fire was linked to a group, that that group should cease to exist along with any nation state behind it.

The "power" of Islamic terrorists is that they can play it both ways, on one hand they can proclaim to the west that they are merely a "group," when behind the scenese those Nations-that-sponsor-terror are 'alive & well' unfortunately and never admit any connection.

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5 posted on 12/21/2010 12:36:35 PM PST by SJackson (In wine there is wisdom, In beer there is freedom, In water there is bacteria.)

I cant say when enough is enough but I would think that if that fire was linked to a group, that that group should cease to exist along with any nation state behind it.

Could not agree more; save to add that I believe; whatever the case 'enough IS enough, already'.

These people of the cockroaches of our universe in that they appear to have little purpose other than to spread dis-ease and death. They reject ideological and spiritual enlightenment - while embracing the degradations that only shame can name. They steal lives, history; and the future of civilzation.

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