By David Lev
Volunteers from the grassroots Binyamin Residents' Council on Wednesday caught a group of Arabs and anarchists uprooting olive trees near the town of Ateret in Binyamin. Apparently, the group was planning to cause damage to an olive grove belonging to an Arab farmer, and blame it on Jews from the area.
The volunteers filmed footage of the group as it was destroying the trees, filming its members for several minutes, until one of the group noticed they were being recorded. At that point, the group began shouting and threatened to attack the volunteers. The group quickly loaded the trees onto a pickup truck and ran away.
Itzik Shadmi, chairman of the Council, called on the IDF and the government to put more effort into preventing these kinds of provocations, and to keep the anarchist and student groups who ostensibly come to “help” the Arabs in the olive harvest out of the area. “Thanks to these patrols, which are manned by volunteers from the Binyamin region, we have shown the true faces of these Arabs, who each year complain that Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria destroy their trees.”
Last week, volunteers also caught a group destroying trees, and filmed them as well (see video below). That incident occurred near Elon Moreh. That group apparently did not have a pickup truck to move the evidence when they were caught, and instead left the damaged trees in the field. Volunteers called police, but no arrests were made.
______________________________
Source: Arutz Sheva
By Elad Benari
Israel carried out an unmanned drone raid on a convoy south of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, last month, foreign intelligence sources told the Reuters news agency on Thursday.
The sources claimed the strike destroyed 200 tons of munitions, including rockets, that were intended for Gaza.
The report comes one day after a huge fire broke out at an arms factory in Khartoum. Sudan said the fire was a result of an attack by four military planes. The country’s Culture and Information Minister blamed Israel for the attack, adding that evidence pointing to Israel was found among remnants of the explosives.
The country’s envoy to the UN later demanded that the UN Security Council condemn Israel over the attack on the weapons factory.
The envoy, Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman, also accused Israel of involvement in the Darfur conflict.
One retired Israeli defense official told Reuters on Thursday that Israel has been monitoring arms trafficking through Sudan, adding that the monitoring dates back to the previous government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
The ex-official said Israel's strategy is aimed to "stem the flow of arms (to Sinai and Gaza) without triggering major confrontations.”
"This is all the more relevant today," the ex-official said, referring to the instability in Egypt and in the Sinai Peninsula.
Israel did not officially comment on Wednesday’s incident, but Amos Gilad, director of policy and political-military affairs at the Defense Ministry, said Thursday that Sudan was a terrorist state. Hitting back at Sudan over its blaming Israel, he said that its accusations that Israel engaged in terrorism against that country could not be taken seriously.
“Sudan is a dangerous terrorist state. To know exactly what happened (there), it will take some time to understand," said Gilad. "There are different versions of the Sudanese side, so there is no reason to go into details.”
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu would not comment on the incident, saying at a news conference on Thursday that Israel had nothing to say about the explosion.
In May, Sudan suggested that Israel was involved in an explosion that killed a suspected arms smuggler in the eastern Sudanese city of Port Sudan.
Last December, news outlets in Sudan claimed that Israeli fighter jets, helicopters and possibly a submarine were involved in multiple attacks on targets in the country.
