Saudi Arabia Vows Retaliation To Iran After 'Act Of War': Debris From Missile Proof It Was Made In Iran

Saudi Arabia calls missile launch 'act of war' by Iran, vows retaliation

Saudi Arabia on Monday called the attempted missile attack on Riyadh’s main airport this weekend an "act of war" by Iran and vowed to retaliate.

Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have been fighting Saudi-backed forces there for several years, claimed responsibility for firing the ballistic missile on Saturday. The missile traveled more than 500 miles before Saudi Arabia intercepted it.

The official Saudi Press Agency charged that debris from the missile proved that it was made in Iran and smuggled into Yemen. American officials have previously charged that Iran has armed the Houthi rebels.

The attempted missile strike was "a blatant act of military aggression by the Iranian regime and could rise to be considered as an act of war," the Saudi Press Agency said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia “reserves its right to respond to Iran in the appropriate time and manner, in accordance with international law and based on the right of self-defense," the statement continued.

Speaking to CNN, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed al-Jubeir unambiguously charged that Iran had effectively declared war.

"We see this as an act of war," he said. "Iran cannot lob missiles at Saudi cities and towns and expect us not to take steps."

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi called Saudi Arabia's claims "false, irresponsible, destructive and provocative," according to the Iranian news agency Tasnim.

The dramatic escalation in tension between the two rival nations came just a day after dozens of princes, senior military officers, businessmen and top officials were arrested in a sweeping anti-corruption probe in Saudi Arabia.

The unprecedented arrests were seen as a sign that 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who came to power in June, was seeking to aggressively consolidate power.

Another Terrorist Attack, Another Whitewash of Islamic Jihad

After a Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan murdered eight people on a bike path in New York, the usual “expert” pundits and commentators began recycling the same clichés they always use to avoid a hard, uncomfortable fact: these killings are perpetrated by Muslims who are faithfully following fourteen centuries of Islamic precept and practice.

Sixteen years after 9/11 we still don’t get the reality of Islamic jihad.

Indeed, we can’t even get simple facts straight. The NYC terrorist’s cry of Allahu Akbar, the traditional Muslim battle-cry, is consistently mistranslated. As Robert Spencer has repeatedly pointed out, the phrase does not mean “God is great,” an equivalent, as Senator John McCain has claimed, of “Thank God.” Rather, it means “Allah is greater.” Using the mistranslation obscures the triumphalist intolerance at the heart of Islam. Since the 7th century, Muslims have gone to war for the same reason Mohammed did: “I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.’”  Allah is “greater” because all other gods are “idols” or, as with Christians and Jews, distortions of Allah and his revelation to Mohammed. Hence jihad, the effort to “slay the infidels wherever you find them” until Islam and sharia law––practiced by the “best of nations,” as the Koran says, “raised for [the benefit of] men” –– comprise the sole legitimate political-social order for all of humanity.

Having misinterpreted the jihadist war-cry, these same commentators then try to separate the jihadist from the vanguards of modern jihadism such as ISIS. Despite his frank boasts of allegiance to ISIS, or the thousands of videos and photos on his cell phone including beheadings, or his request for an ISIS flag in his hospital room, we continue to hear that he is a “lone wolf,” a “self-radicalized” anomaly much like the Las Vegas mass murderer. Hence the progressive apologists retreat into the psychological analyses that have replaced philosophy and religion in the secular West. Rather than sacred scripture and doctrine, rather than glorious Muslim history and Koranic injunctions, now social conditions and mental derangement must account for this act.

Marking Balfour, Netanyahu says Palestinians must recognize Jewish state

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday called on the Palestinians to recognize a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, saying their refusal to accept the Balfour Declaration lay at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Speaking at a Knesset ceremony marking the centennial of the Balfour Declaration, Netanyahu attacked the Palestinians for criticizing the document, which expressed the United Kingdom’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

“When the leaders of the Palestinian leadership call the Balfour Declaration a war crime [and] call on the British government to apologize for it, they are not going forwards, they are going backwards,” said Netanyahu.

“This is the root of the conflict, the 100-year long refusal to recognize Zionism and the State of Israel in any borders,” he added.

Ahead of the anniversary, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last week wrote an op-ed lamenting the document, saying it set in motion a process that led to a century of Palestinian suffering and should not be a cause of celebration. Other senior PA officials have called on Britain to apologize for the Balfour Declaration.

In his speech, Netanyahu praised the Balfour Declaration’s role in building international support for a Jewish state, but said Britain’s “withdrawal” of support for it and the amount of time it took to found Israel following the document’s publication were a “great tragedy.”

“Our lack of sovereignty until 1948 prevented the rescue of millions of Jews who perished in the Holocaust,” he said. “The tragedy of the Balfour Declaration is that it took 30 years to implement.”

PMW Warns Fatah Glorifying Second Intifada, Vowing More Terror

Fatah’s Bethlehem branch has glorified the Palestinian Authority’s terror campaign (2000-2005), the second intifada, posting the below photo on Facebook this photo with the text:

Over 1,000 Israelis, of which the vast majority were civilians, were murdered during the PA terror campaign, mostly in suicide bombings by Hamas and Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades is considered a terror organization by the US and the EU. 

Palestinian Media Watch has documented numerous times that Fatah continues to promote violence and refuses to lay down its weapons. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor Sultan Abu Al-Einein wrote: “The only way to freedom and liberation is resistance to the occupier… There is no honor for the weak
.” [Facebook page of Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor to NGOs Sultan Abu Al-Einein, Nov. 2, 2017]

“Resistance” is in Palestinian Authority terminology often a euphemism for violence and terror.

Fatah Central Committee member Tawfiq Tirawi concurred in a post on Facebook where he called for continued “resistance”:

In another show of the adherence to violence and the use of weapons against Israel, Abbas’ Fatah’s Bethlehem branch posted an image of an AK-47 assault rifle, a handgun, and bullets against a background of the Fatah logo that includes a grenade, crossed rifles, and the PA map of “Palestine” that presents all of Israel as “Palestine” together with the PA areas.

Posted text: “Fatah member, raise your forehead ”
Text under the logo: “Fatah Movement, Bethlehem branch”
[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement – Bethlehem Branch, Oct. 27, 2017]