Thursday, December 01, 2016

  • Thursday, December 01, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon


One week after my city was set on fire, I’m having a hard time writing about what happened. It’s different when something traumatic happens to you.
I don’t even have a full picture of the day in my head. It’s like scenes in a play, disjointed blips and in between, blank.
Last week, before the fire:
“I have to water the garden. Everything is dry as bone. The plants will die.”
My house is surrounded by greenery that makes the area seem tranquil, although we are actually just a few steps away from one of the main centers of Haifa.
In the beginning of last week, looking at the garden I saw thirsty plants, pitifully shriveled from the too dry weather.
On Thursday I saw a death trap.
Suspicion (Wednesday):
Fires in Zichron Ya’acov, a small town, 30 minutes down the road.
Suspicions of terrorist acts of arson were in the forefront of my mind. Yes, the weather was dry. Yes, it was very windy. These conditions make it very easy for fire to spread but fire burning people’s homes?! That’s not common in Israel. Every winter there are a few electric fires in homes due to heater malfunctions. Every summer there are a few bush fires when dry conditions combined with human negligence, turns a spark from a cigarette or an improperly extinguished bonfire into a serious fire. None of these are like the raging, uncontrollable flames that were consuming people’s homes. The pattern was different.
In addition, the firefighters and authorities were beginning to hint about their suspicions, saying, but not saying, what they thought was causing the fires. Fire experts would investigate and tell us conclusively what caused the fires but first it was necessary to get control of the flames and see that everyone was safe.
Thursday morning:
I went outside and looked at the garden. One spark. That’s all it would take. Once the plants began to burn, the wind would do the rest and the house would quickly be on fire too.
I watered the garden, pouring loads of water. I soaked the trees, their dry leaves and even the side of the house.
I knew it wouldn’t be enough. The plants would be grateful but the wind would make the water evaporate quickly. No matter how much I poured it wouldn’t be enough to stop potential flames. I went inside. Alone at home, it seemed a good time to clean the house for the weekend and do some cooking.
Suddenly there was no water in the taps.
Smoke
I smelled smoke. Looking outside, I saw big billowing clouds of grey smoke overhead. On the radio there was a report of a fire in Haifa. It was one neighborhood away from mine. Close but not too close.
I caught the cat and made sure he stayed in the house with the dog.
Evacuation
Mor (Lenny’s 17-year-old son) called me and asked if I was listening to the radio. He said the pre-military academy (which shares the campus with his high school) was on fire and he would be coming home.
A fire to my left and a fire to my right. Two separate, non-connected places with my neighborhood in between. The pre-military academy. Coincidence?
Fire spreads with the winds. Sparks do fly. They don’t jump over entire neighborhoods.
I called Lenny. He was in a meeting on the other side of Haifa, said he would be home soon.
Mor called again saying he thought we should pack suitcases and evacuate the area.
Not sure what to do I turned off what I was cooking, stopped cleaning and went back outside. The smoke wasn’t worse. Knowing it wouldn’t help, I started watering the garden again. The sounds of sirens on the road, very close. Fire extinguishing planes were flying overhead.
What do you do when someone sets your city on fire?
Our neighbor leapt over the fence and flew into the yard shouting for his mom to pack up his son so they could get out of the area. His wife came running from a different direction and within minutes was carrying their three-year-old to the car.
Mor arrived, explaining that everyone had been evacuated from the school. Lenny arrived. He could barely get to the house. He had seen the smoke in the distance and, as he came closer, people streaming away from the area on foot. The roads were beginning to be blocked, fire-trucks and people driving in all directions.
Fires all around us, the authorities requested everyone in our neighborhood (as well as the neighborhoods that were already on fire) to evacuate the area.
Asnalyzing the danger
In a swiftly changing situation it isn’t easy to know what is the right thing to do. Where is it safe? How do you get there? What do you leave behind?
Lenny had a few heartbeats to analyze the situation. First our safety, then the house, the car and the chaos on the road. He put the car in the underground parking lot of the hospital that is a few minutes’ walk from our house. There it wouldn’t get ruined by fire-trucks trying to get by, fire, trees falling... Driving in to the chaos on the roads wasn’t a good idea. If we had to evacuate the house, the underground parking lot of the hospital (which can also serve as a bomb shelter) would be a safe place to go. If we had to go there, we would have to run.
While putting on his police uniform (Lenny is a volunteer policeman), Lenny explained to Mor that he was unwilling to evacuate the house, although we had been given the order to do so.
Lenny went back outside to help people and so did Mor. Like father, like son.
Scattered
Tal (Lenny’s eldest son) was somewhere en-route, on the way home from his army base. He heard the news and was unsure what to do when he arrived in Haifa. We couldn’t pick him up. He couldn’t come to us. Possibly he could go to his mother’s house or to his grandparents who live in different neighborhoods of Haifa. I told him to check when he got closer. Who knew what the situation would be then?
Unnerved by the apocalyptic images he was receiving on social media, Tal was distressed to hear that his father and brother were outside in the neighborhood when we were supposed to be evacuating the area.
“Where are they?! What are they doing outside?!”
“I don’t know! Why?! Because they are two of a kind. That’s why!” I was upset that I didn’t know where they were or what was going on. I knew Lenny was helping people. I was sure Mor was with him and OK but I would have felt better to have them home, with me.
Impossible to breathe
Lenny called me and asked that I bring him cloth to cover his mouth so he wouldn’t inhale too much smoke while he continued to help people. I didn’t know what to bring so I grabbed a few options and ran out of the house. Almost immediately my eyes started to burn and I began to find it difficult to breathe. The sky was grey with smoke and the air thick with ash. Smoke clogged my throat, soaking in to my pores. I went towards the main road looking for Lenny.
I saw Mor on the other side of the street. He had covered is mouth with a shirt and was busy helping people.
An elderly neighbor saw me and asked me what she was supposed to do. As if I knew… An elegant woman, she was perfectly put together, like she always is. She was carrying a small bag in her hand and had a wild look in her eyes. I told her to come with me to where Lenny was. He would know what to do. Then she explained that her son in law told her to leave the house, that he was on the way to pick her up. Phew. If he was coming to get her she’d be OK, the only issue was being able to breathe. I gave her one of the cloths I brought for Lenny to choose from and told her to cover her mouth so she could breathe better. After I saw that she did as I instructed I ran off to find Lenny.
On the other side of the street I saw three women, carrying small bags and a cat carrier frantically trying to flag down a car leaving the area.
I found Lenny on the main road where he was helping direct traffic so people could evacuate the area or get to the hospital, if necessary. The police didn’t know which way to send the traffic. More and more fires were appearing. Smoke was everywhere and roads were jammed with cars. Which direction would be safest? Almost impossible to tell.
I went back towards the house and a fireman saw me. “You can’t go that way! It’s too dangerous, there are fires down the street!”
I kept on walk-running telling him “I have to, I have animals in the house.”
Following me he said, “Get them and get out fast. You have to go NOW.”
OK, OK, I’m going” I said, expecting him to leave me alone.
“I’m coming with you and will leave when you leave.”
He stood by the door while I grabbed my computer, purse (keys and money), shoved the cat in the cat carrier and tied up the dog. While I was grabbing the most crucial things I was calling Lenny, telling him what was going on.
I thought the fireman was going to pick me up and carry me away from the house. He was really upset, worried about me. When he saw Lenny (in his police uniform) running up to the house, he realized he could turn over responsibility to him and left.
The poor man must have thought I was insane. He was doing his job thoroughly, going door to door, checking to see who needed to be evacuated, who needed help. All he wanted was to protect people, to save lives. It is thanks to people like him that no one died in the fires that swept the country.
Suddenly there was no electricity in the house.
Inside
Mor came home, telling us of the fires he had seen in the neighborhood. Lenny asked me to close the shutters. We have metal shutters that would provide a little bit of protection from flames. That’s one of the benefits of having an older house. Most people have plastic shutters. Those just melt in the heat.
I let the cat out of the carrier and locked him in one of the rooms to make it easier to catch him in case we would have to run out of the house.
Mor wanted to pack a suitcase and evacuate. He had seen the fires and was nervous. Lenny had seen our neighbors battling fires in their yards and saving their homes. Mor had helped a neighbor extinguish a fire in his yard so he understood the benefit of staying. The fire-fighters couldn’t handle so many fires on their own. People battling the small fires could stop them from becoming the infernos that consumed homes and trees.
What do you take?
Leaving would mean grabbing what we could carry and running to safety. My hands had to be free for the dog and the cat. No room for anything replaceable. Photos? Lenny is a photographer. We have bookcases full of albums, many of them from before the digital age – in other words, there are no digital images that could be reprinted to replace lost albums. There is no way we could take all of them. Not even a few. I suggested to Mor he pack up what he’d like to take. I packed a few precious photos, a thin handmade quilt my mother made for me, bellbottoms she embroidered when she was 18, my computer, the book I was reading, cash, jewelry, a hairbrush, toothbrushes and toothpaste for everyone. That’s it.
Lenny went to the far side of the house and looked out. He came back in a rush.
“Ok. We have to leave. Pack up things and be ready. NOW.”
“What did you see?”
“There are flames as high as the house, very close by.”
Lenny put some important documents in a suitcase. I ran to get the cat, my heart pounding. I could smell smoke inside the house.
Hysteria
The cat had already been stuffed in the cat carrier once that day and knew something was very wrong. With the window closed, the shutter down and no electricity, the room was completely dark. I couldn’t see him and he didn’t want to be found. I dove under the bed, flailing my arms around until I caught him.
Phew. In to the box, again.
I put the cat carrier alongside everything packed to take, by the door. Lenny wasn’t ready to leave quite yet.
The cat was in hysterics, trying to get out of the cat carrier. I sat next to him, trying to quiet him but in his panic, he didn’t seem to notice me. I tried covering the box with a blanket but he just began pulling the blanket in to the box, scratching the sides, frantically trying to find a way to get out.
I didn’t blame him. I felt trapped too.
I took the blanket away and the dog came to look in to the box, shaking.
Lenny went to check on the flames. They had been put out! We didn’t have to go. Yet.
It was only later on, when Lenny went back outside that we found out exactly what had happened.
Behind our garden there are steps leading from our street up to the main road. On each side of the steps there are fences covered in bushes, higher than my head. On one side is our yard. On the other side of the steps is an old age home. Someone threw something burning in to the bushes on the side of the old age home. The fire ate a specific section of the bushes and spread in to the garden of the old age home. Those were the flames Lenny saw, so close to our building.
The wind could have easily blown sparks across the path, spreading the fire into our garden as well. The garden is bone dry; had the trees caught fire our home would have quickly gone up in flames as well. The old age home has fire hoses suitable for battling this type of fire but the workers there didn’t know how to connect the hoses! To our great luck a (volunteer) policemen that lives on the other side of the old age home was there, saw what was happening, helped connect the hoses and made sure the fire was extinguished. This is footage he sent Lenny of the fire being put out.
They had seen the arsonist ignite the fire but they were too busy putting it out to catch him.
Not knowing is scary
Friends started calling me to see if I was safe. What was I supposed to answer? My house wasn’t burning. Some of my neighbors’ homes were. Could my house begin burning? Yes, at any moment.
It gets dark very early these days and there was no electricity in the house so it was pitch black. No TV. We had to be careful to conserve the power in our mobile phones as well. Who knew when the electricity would come back? A battery powered radio helped us stay informed about what was happening in our city. The report was that the fire-fighters were beginning to gain control of the fires in the different locations. Hopefully there would be no new ones but the high winds could reignite sparks into full blown, very dangerous fires.
How do you go to sleep when your house could go up in flames? We could all die from smoke asphyxiation.  
Everything smelled like smoke, even inside the house. We were all too tired to care.
The news report said the investigation of the fires in Zichron showed that they were caused by arson terrorists. The authorities suspected that the fires in Haifa were also caused by terrorists but they would only know for certain after the investigation was over.
When it was safe to drive on the roads. Tal came to our house and Mor went to his mother’s house. The boys wanted to see both their parents.
The electricity came back. It had been turned off to prevent fire from reaching live wires and igniting even bigger flames.
We went to sleep with our bags still packed, in case it became necessary to evacuate the house. It was only then I noticed that I had kept my shoes on all day, although I had been inside. I almost never wear shoes in the house.
Aftermath
The next morning our stairs were covered in ash and the air reeked of smoke.
Lenny and Tal went outside to survey the damage while I listened to the news. Over 1,800 homes were damaged and of those 527 were deemed uninhabitable.
The head of the parents’ committee at Mor’s school had her home burnt to the ground. She described how the fire-fighters at work on her home were called to an even worse fire, leaving her and her neighbors the fire hoses so they could battle the flames on their own. The interviewer, safe in some studio in Tel Aviv, couldn’t imagine the situation. Stunned, he asked, “How were you supposed to know what to do?! You aren’t fire-fighters!” Calmly she explained: “We stood should to shoulder with our neighbors and poured water on the flames. My home is gone but our neighbors’ homes are OK. Thank God my family is fine.”
Another woman who lives one neighborhood away from me described driving through a wall of flames to escape the fires on Thursday. On Friday, she came back to her house and found that the bottom floor is burnt. Her reaction? In a shaky voice, she said: "It's OK. We're OK. Others have it worse."
Over and over I heard Israelis express gratitude - for life, for the people that helped them save their lives, for the people taking care of them now. Not rage at those who stole away their homes, their memories - gratitude. Life matters more than stuff. 
This past week has been full of volunteers. Teenagers helping families clear out their ruined homes, covering holes so the coming rains won’t ruin what is left in people’s homes. Enormous amounts of clothes, food and toys have been donated. The government is looking for ways to cut bureaucratic procedures to ensure that compensation is given swiftly – to those who had home insurance and also to those who did not. Between the government assistance and volunteers opening their homes to shelter those whose homes have been damaged, no one is left without a roof over their head.
It will take a long time for the people who lost their homes to put their lives back together. It is heart wrenching to think of the memories lost, the historic artifacts that survived other traumas only to be destroyed now. I don’t know if people will ever be able to regain the same sense of safety in their homes…
We are all grateful that lives were saved. Some people were unable to save their pets. Many walked through fire to rescue animals. I shudder to think of the wildlife that has been incinerated.
The experts say it will take 30 years to bring the trees back to the same level of growth we had before the fires.
These are the things I want people who live elsewhere to know:
The fires that swept Israel were arson-terror. It wasn’t negligence. It wasn’t forest fires. It was fires directed at homes.
You need to pay attention to this because what begins with us, ends with you.
This event showed, yet again, the true face of Israel – in times of trouble we don’t loot our cities, we help each other. We don’t wait for the authorities to save us or fix things for us. We do it together, with gratitude to be alive. Most of all, although unthinkable hate is directed at us, we don’t respond with hate.
And finally – we will rebuild. We will rebuild homes and plant new trees. We will make this land even more beautiful than it was before. This is our home and we aren’t going anywhere.
*********************************
This is what Haifa looks like after the fires, from a drone’s view. It gives you an idea of the damage although it doesn’t show the terrible destruction of homes and nothing conveys the impact of the smell.
Now it is raining, finally. That will help wash our city clean, make the air fresh and pure again.




We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column


On Monday morning at about 1:30 AM, I experienced the thrill of becoming a grandfather for the 9th time. A baseball team at last! Naturally I wonder what his life will be like. Will he be as tall and athletic as his father, or as competent as his mother? Will he like to work with his hands or his head? But most of all, I am wondering what kind of world this as-yet-unnamed boy will live in.

Technology has accelerated social and political change so much that what took decades 100 years ago takes only years today, and what took years then takes months now. The Soviet Union was here and then it was gone. Russia was a failing state, and suddenly it is reasserting itself on the world stage. Europe is undergoing mass immigration that will change it – is already changing it – beyond recognition.

Or maybe not. There are two possible outcomes for Europe: either its Muslim population will grow past the tipping point, and it will become much more like the Middle East than the Europe we’ve known, or it will be gripped by bloody conflict. The one thing I don’t expect is that it will peacefully absorb its third-world migrants, integrate them, and create a happy, vital synthesis of cultures.

And what about the United States of America? This is really the most interesting story, for me, anyway. It has already, under Obama, withdrawn from its role of world leadership, and retreated into itself where it twists and stews in a pot of controversies about race and gender that the rest of the world views with wonderment and incomprehension. It has just elected a president who will either “make America great again” or be the trigger for the implosion that will shatter it into pieces and end the 240-year experiment of the greatest democratic republic in history.

The Jewish state also faces internal and external threats. The hosts of Iran/Hezbollah are massing, and their intent to destroy our tiny country is crystal clear. It’s hard to imagine those 130,000 (or whatever the number is) missiles in southern Lebanon not being launched some day. There is no precedent for how ferocious Israel’s response will be. It would be nice if the principals could sit down and find a way that this doesn’t need to happen, but the ratchet works only one way, increasing the pressure and the likelihood of war.

My grandson will have a front-row seat to all this. He’ll be able to watch the struggles in Europe and the USA on TV as he grows up, and when he reaches the age of 19, he will be drafted into the IDF, where, if he is lucky or unlucky (depending on one’s point of view), he might be a combat soldier like his uncle. Will the contest with Iran be over by then? Will there still be a standoff – by then it will be a nuclear standoff?

There are lots of scenarios, and most of them end up with a world worse than the one his parents grew up in. But not all. There are possibilities that events will take a positive turn. The pragmatic, tentative and partial alliance of Israel with the conservative Sunni Arab states against Iran is a positive indicator in the Middle East. The weakness of the US and Europe might finally end the pressure on Israel to retreat to indefensible borders (on the other hand, their replacement by Russia, whose ultimate goals are still mysterious, could be worse).

I am not sure what could help the US. American society seems a lot like the San Andreas Fault, tightly locked and way past its deadline. Can the pressure be released gradually, or will it happen suddenly, in a massive shock that will shake the nation to its foundations?

Today is my 74th birthday and I get to give advice – which anyone is free to take or ignore, of course. So here it is:

To Israel: Reduce your dependence on the US. Build up the IDF. Plan for the worst. If you have to fight, don’t pull any punches. Hit them so hard that they won’t get up again.

To Iran: You are a lot weaker than you think, and Israel is stronger than she looks. Don’t be stupid.

To Europe: Accept that you are in a struggle between civilizations, and if you still care about yours, defend it.

To the US: Calm the ideological battles. Your most important goal today is to preserve the union.

Finally, to my grandson: You are fortunate to have been born a Jew in the land of Israel. Please love your country, the land and your people. They love you.




We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
From Ian:

PMW: Will Mahmoud Abbas pay salaries to the arsonists?
While Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas was accepting praise for sending Palestinian firefighters to help put out fires in Israel, the PA Finance Ministry was busy doing the paper work to start paying salaries to the Palestinian arsonists who were arrested for setting many of those same fires. So far Israel has arrested 23 suspected arsonists connected to the hundreds of fires that raged across Israel last week burning more than 500 homes and 32,000 acres of forests and national parks. According to Palestinian law documented by PMW, anyone imprisoned for "resisting the occupation" receives a high monthly salary. Therefore, all of those convicted and imprisoned for arson will receive PA salaries "from the day of arrest until the day of release."
Of course, it is not only arson-terrorists who receive a PA salary. All Palestinian, Israeli Arab and Arab terrorists from any country who are imprisoned are rewarded with high salaries from the PA. (See PMW Special Report) According to PA law and practice, "resisting the occupation" includes any Arab imprisoned for attacking Israelis by any means, including throwing a stone at a car, driving a car into people at bus stops, building bombs for suicide bombers to blow up at cafes, or shooting and stabbing civilians to death in their sleep. Since the PA automatically includes anyone who attacked Israelis or their possessions as "fighters" who are "resisting the occupation," there is no justification under Palestinian law and practice not to include last week's arsonists among the Palestinian "heroes" who receive monthly salaries.
Significantly, these salaries for terrorists rise the longer terrorists are in jail. Terrorists convicted of murder and serving life sentences will reach a high salary of NIS 12,000 a month - more than four times the average Palestinian salary.
The PA has already paid the five Hamas terrorists who murdered Eitam and Naama Henkin in front of their four children last October in total NIS 91,000 as reward for their murders. And terrorist Abdallah Barghouti has already received NIS 645,000 for building the bombs that murdered 67 Israelis at the Sbarro pizza shop, Sheffield Club, Moment Café, the triple bombing at the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, Hebrew University and No. 4 bus in Tel Aviv.
Today there are approximately 7,000 Palestinian prisoners on the PA payroll. The PA rewards them every month for terrorism, and this generous arrangement will cost the PA NIS 488 million in 2016 alone, according to the PA's publicized budget.
Alan M. Dershowitz: Keith Ellison - The Wrong Man at the Wrong Time
Ellison has struggled to explain his association with Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. He has acknowledged working with the Nation of Islam for about 18 months to organize the Minnesota delegation to Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March in Washington. However, Ellison insists that he never joined the Nation of Islam and more recently, he has held himself out as a friend of the Jewish people and of Israel. This late conversion coincided with Ellison's decision to pursue elected office in Minnesota, and an apparent realization that his association with the Nation of Islam might hurt his political fortunes. In 2006, he wrote a letter to the Jewish Community Relations Council in Minneapolis, in which he apologized for failing to "adequately scrutinize the positions" of Farrakhan and other Nation of Islam leaders. "They were and are anti-Semitic, and I should have come to that conclusion earlier than I did." In his recently released memoir "My Country, 'Tis of Thee: My Faith, My Family, Our Future," Ellison writes of Farrakhan:
"He could only wax eloquent while scapegoating other groups" and of the Nation of Islam "if you're not angry in opposition to some group of people (whites, Jews, so-called 'sellout' blacks), you don't have religion."
Ellison's voting record also does not support his claim that he has become a "friend" of Israel. He was one of only 8 Congressmen who voted against funding the Iron Dome program, developed jointly by the U.S. and Israel, which helps protect Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets. In 2009, Ellison was one of only two dozen Congressmen to vote "present" rather than vote for a non-binding resolution "recognizing Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from, reaffirming the United States' strong support for Israel, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process." And in 2010, Ellison co‐authored a letter to President Obama, calling on him to pressure Israel into opening the border with Gaza. The letter describes the blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip as "de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents."
Even beyond Ellison's past associations with anti-American and anti-Semitic bigotry and his troubling current voting record with regard to Israel, his appointment as head of the DNC would be a self-inflicted wound on the Democratic Party at this critical time in its history. It would move the party in the direction of left-wing extremism at a time when centrist stability is required. The world at large is experiencing a movement toward extremes, both right and left. The Democratic Party must buck that dangerous trend and move back to the center where the votes are, and where America should be.

2 Iranians charged with plan to attack Israeli embassy in Kenya
A Kenyan prosecutor has charged two Iranian men with collecting information to carry out a terrorist attack after they were allegedly found with video footage of the Israeli embassy.
State Prosecutor Duncan Ondimu said in court on Thursday that Sayed Nasrollah Ebrahim and Abdolhosein Gholi Safaee were arrested Tuesday in an Iranian diplomatic car while taking the pictures of the Israeli mission using a mobile phone, including when they were intercepted.
They were detained in the capital, Nairobi after they had come from visiting Kamiti Prison where they saw two other Iranians who have been jailed for 15 years on terrorism charges.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem had no comment on the incident.
A Kenyan driver, Moses Keyah Mmboga, who was chauffeuring the vehicle belonging to the Iranian embassy has been charged along with the suspects and also faces a separate charge of “abetting terrorism,” Ondimu said.

  • Thursday, December 01, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Ammon News (English):
The Jordan Media Commission (JMC) on Wednesday circulated a gag order to all media outlets, banning publication of any reports about the Jordan Armed Forces-Arab Army, except statements made by its media spokesperson.
The decision, which covers social media networks and other websites, was taken to achieve "public interest."
Freedom House gives background on the JMC:
Further changes to the Press and Publications Law were passed in 2012, imposing restrictions on online news content and requiring news websites to obtain licenses to operate. The amendments apply the law’s existing provisions to websites, making it unlawful for online outlets to insult the royal family, harm “Arab-Islamic values,” or incite sectarian strife, among other prohibitions. Site owners are also responsible for patrolling reader comments to ensure that they do not violate the law. The government’s Media Commission—a new body created from the merger of several media regulators in 2014—can issue orders, without a court ruling, to block foreign and domestic websites that fail to comply with the law. Press freedom advocates have said the changes have had a chilling effect on free expression online, as the government has used the revised law in numerous prosecutions.
This story is already 24 hours old, in plain English, and no one has reported on it yet. Certainly there is no outrage about such sweeping censorship in a supposedly modern country - one that gets a billion dollars a year in aid from the US.

Imagine the harsh criticism if Israel - which does have a military censor for very specific, time sensitive stories - would do anything this sweeping. The anger from the media itself would have pushed the story to the front page by today.

But the liberal media simply doesn't expect Arabs, even moderate Arabs, to be held to the same standards as others.  Even when the media is the victim.




We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
  • Thursday, December 01, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon

Mosaic Magazine has translated, into English, for the first time, a 1911 essay by Ze'ev Jabotinsky called "Instead of Apologizing." In the essay, Jabotinsky describes how Jews should react to the blood libel that was still popular at the time, and his advice applies very well to the similar libels hurled against Jews and Jewish nationalists today.

Read the whole thing, but here are large excerpts, perhaps 40%  of the essay:


Taking a long, hard look at the current penchant for accusations of ritual murder, one is left with a most oppressive feeling—a feeling that any impressionable individual will find hard to bear. Just think about it: these things are being said about us—about me, about you, about your mother! So whenever we Jews speak with a Gentile, we must remain aware, every one of us, that our interlocutor may at that very moment be cowering to himself and thinking, “How do I know that you, too, haven’t been tippling from the glass of ritual murder?” Just try and get your head around that! I mean, when it comes down to it, this is even worse than everything else we have to put up with in this prison of a country.

I can imagine that an impressionable person—if he reflects on this accusation and all of its ramifications—may be driven mad with resentment and despair, or at least will need to sob and tear his hair out. A person less fainthearted but still naïve will need to run outside and grab passersby by their coattails and try to prove to them, until his throat is hoarse, that this is slander and that we are not guilty of anything of the sort.

But in the end someone who has been blind from birth (and we have very many people like that) will take a different course of action. He will console himself with the usual soothing phrases: that no one really believes in such absurdities; that even those making the accusations do not themselves believe them; that the blood libel is merely a political tactic; that the entire sensible segment of the Christian community (which naturally constitutes its majority) will never listen to such slander, and is even scandalized by it—in a word, that everything is just fine...

I am not one of those impressionable people who cry out in amazement, nor am I one of those naïve people who make excuses, nor one of those blind-from-birth folks who cannot see what is happening right under their noses. I must dissociate myself most emphatically from the last category. It is all very fine and convenient to imagine that your enemies are mere charlatans and fraudsters, but in the long run this kind of oversimplified explanation of an enemy’s psychology always leads to the severest outcomes. By no means are all of our enemies dimwits, and by no means are all of them liars. I strongly advise my coreligionists not to delude themselves on that score.

...For several years now, Jews in Russia have all too frequently found themselves sitting on the defendants’ bench. That is not their fault. But what definitely is their fault is this: they have been behaving like people on trial for a crime. We are continually justifying ourselves at the top of our voices. We swear that we are in no way revolutionaries, we do not shirk our soldierly obligations, and we haven’t sold Russia to the Japanese.


Then out jumps [the Jewish socialist terrorist Evno Fishelevich] Azev and we start swearing that we are not guilty, that we are not at all like him. Out jumps [the Jewish anarchist assassin Dmitry Grigorievich] Bogrov and once again we are being hauled into the dock by the scruff of our necks and once again we take on the role forced on us and we start justifying ourselves.
Now they have raised a rumpus over ritual murder, and once again we have taken on the role of prisoners on trial: we press our hands to our hearts, with quivering fingers we leaf through old stacks of supporting documents that no one is interested in, and we swear right and left that we do not consume this drink, that never has a drop of it passed our lips, may the Lord smite me on the spot. . . .

How much longer will this go on? Tell me, my friends, are you not tired by now of this rigmarole? Isn’t it high time, in response to all of these accusations, rebukes, suspicions, smears, and denunciations—both present and future—to fold our arms over our chests and loudly, clearly, coldly, and calmly put forth the only argument which this public can understand: why don’t you all go to hell?

What kind of people are we that we have to justify ourselves before them? And who are they to demand it of us? What is the point of this whole comedy of putting an entire people on trial when the verdict is known in advance? How does it benefit us to participate voluntarily in this comedy, to brighten up these villainous and humiliating proceedings with our speeches for the defense?

Our defense is useless and hopeless, our enemies will not believe it, and apathetic people will pay no attention to it. The time for apologies is over.

...We think that our continual readiness to subject ourselves without a murmur to searches, to turn out our pockets, will finally convince humanity that we are honorable people. We are constantly saying, “Look at us! We are such gentlemen! We have nothing to hide!”


But that is an outright error. Real gentlemen will never allow anyone to search their apartments, their pockets, or their souls for any reason whatsoever. Only people under surveillance are prepared to be searched at any time of day or night. And that is precisely the position we are putting ourselves in, thus tempting the most terrible danger of all: suppose we are framed for theft?
...The reason that we are not liked is not because all kinds of accusations are leveled against us: no, they level accusations against us because they do not like us.
That is why there are so many of these accusations; that is why they are so diverse and so contradictory. One day people are shouting that we exploit the poor, the next day that we are sowing socialism and leading the poor to revolt against their exploiters. One Polish newspaper recently claimed that the Jews partitioned Poland and handed it over to the Russians, while a hundred Russian newspapers claim that Jews want to partition Russia and hand it over to Poland. The Italians are saying that attacks on them in the European media are organized by the Jews, and the Turks are saying that the Jews put Italy up to capturing Tripoli [in its 1911 invasion of Ottoman Libya].
What is the point of reacting to all of this shrieking and barking with sworn statements, reassurances, and pledges? There is no point, and it should be unthinkable to behave thus. As soon as we rebut one argument, another is born. There are no limits to human spite and stupidity.
We have nothingto apologize for. We are a people, just like all peoples; we have no pretensions to be any better. One of the first conditions of equal rights is that we claim for ourselves the right to have our own blackguards, just as other peoples have theirs.  Yes, we have subversives, human traffickers, draft dodgers. Not only do we have them, but what is truly odd is that we have so few of them under present circumstances. Other peoples have an abundance of this kind of human asset, as well as embezzlers, pogromists, and torturers. But so what? They live side by side as neighbors and have no scruples about it.
At the end of the day, whether they like us or not should make no difference to us whatsoever. We do not practice ritual murder, and we never did; but if they absolutely must believe “there is this one sect . . . ,” well, let them go ahead and believe whatever their imaginations come up with. What business is it of ours and why should it worry us? Do our neighbors blush because Christians in Kishinev hammered nails into the eyes of Jewish infants [during the bloody 1903 pogrom]? Not at all. They walk along with their heads held high—and quite rightly, because the persona of a people is sovereign, is accountable to no one, and is not obliged to explain itself, even when something happens that requires explanation.
Why should we be happy to be thrust into the dock—we who have heard these same slanders for centuries, and know what they add up to, for ourselves and for them? We are not obliged to give account to anyone, we are not sitting for an exam, and no one is entitled to demand an answer from us for any charge he wishes to direct our way. We were here before them, and we will be leaving after them. We are fine just the way we are. We will not be any different, nor do we want to be.
(h/t David B)




We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
  • Thursday, December 01, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
Mahmoud Abbas gave a three-hour speech to the Fatah conference on Wednesday, where he had the chance to lay out his vision of both the past and the future.

He said nothing new.

But it is still instructive to reiterate what he did say, and what he always says, because the media studiously ignores his actual words and hypocrisy and pretends that only the "peaceful" parts are what is important.

I already elaborated on his specifying the worst terrorist leaders in history as being "martyrs."  Here are some other lowlights:

"I hope that the next conference will be on the Holy city of Jerusalem, the capital of the state of Palestine, which has been in the past, and it will remain so forever and ever."

When was it ever the capital of "Palestine"?

"The convening of this conference, seven years after the sixth conference, which was held in the city of Bethlehem, is a personification of our convictions and our commitment to guard them, it, and to preserve the democratic process of our movement."

There is nothing democratic about the conference. Abbas quashed any opposition, expelled troublemakers from Fatah and didn't allow them to attend.

"Fatah, which was launched in 1965 as a leading movement of Palestinian national liberation after the catastrophe of 1948..."

Fatah was founded in 1959, possibly earlier. 1965 was its first terror attack. It speaks volumes that the peaceful president considers that the real birth of the organization.

Abbas paid tribute to Ahmed Shukairy, the first leader of the PLO, whose original 1964 charter explicitly denied any claims over Gaza and the West Bank while Egypt and Jordan controlled them.

Abbas reiterated and bragged yet again that he has not changed the political position of the PLO one iota since 1988 - even before Oslo. No concessions in 1993, or 2001, or ever, for peace with Israel.

Abbas said Oslo was important, though, because it allowed the Palestinian leadership to return from abroad and it gave them some measure of sovereignty, although not enough, "it is a step forward, we still see steps forward, liberation of the country and access to independence is the accumulation of steps brick by brick by brick by brick, step by step." This is entirely consistent with Arafat's plan to destroy Israel in stages. 

He mentioned Israel's relinquishing of the Sinai and Gaza as examples of how he expects to gain a nation. Which means that Abbas agrees that Gaza isn't occupied.

Abbas said "I am against the so-called Arab Spring," calling it an Arab version of Sykes-Picot meant to divide the Arab nation. The will of the people is clearly not what Abbas is interested in. "In this regard, we wish our brothers in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, to ​​regain security, safety and stability, and to ensure the unity of their land and their people," Abbas is equating the desire of Arabs to achieve democracy with the terrorism of ISIS.

He is also telling the Kurds to go to hell.

"We kept on all of our commitments, but that Israel has reneged on those agreements...It has been agreed in accordance with the Declaration of Principles that was signed at the White House in 1993, and the subsequent agreements with Israel, that negotiating the final status issues of the Palestinian state would be a period not exceeding five years, before the end of 1999, followed by a signed peace agreement to end the Israeli occupation of the land of the occupied State of Palestine, based on the borders of June 1967."

These are outright lies. Nothing in the Oslo process said that it would result in a Palestinian state and nothing in the process said that the final border would be based on the "1967 lines." And the Palestinians continued to commit terror attacks even during those five years, in violation of the agreements, let alone the second intifada where the terror became all but official policy.

"The US administration through its Foreign Minister John Kerry insisted we go to negotiations, nine-month-sponsored (time period), but the Israeli government returned to the 'Shuffle' again, and made those negotiations going round in circles, and used them to gain time, and the imposition of new settlement facts on the ground."

Another absolute lie. Israel froze the settlements for the nine months while Abbas refused to come to the negotiating table for eight of those months, and then only pretended to negotiate in order to have the US pressure Israel to extend the freeze.

We have participated in the funeral of Shimon Peres in order to send a message to everyone that we are seeking to achieve peace, but we are ready to go anywhere, even to the end of the world, to realize the demands of our people for freedom and independence.

Seriously? Attending a funeral while adamantly refusing to negotiate is proof of wanting peace? Abbas is all about the "messaging" but nothing about actual negotiating, which means a give and take.

UNESCO recently issued decisions, aimed at preserving the heritage in the occupied East Jerusalem, effacement of systematic operations and changes carried out by Israel.

This historic decision was the fruit of joint efforts made by Palestine and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, together with our brothers and friends in the UNESCO, and these efforts will continue in order to protect our rights and heritage of the plots and schemes occupation.

Meaning, cynically using UNESCO to deny any Jewish history in Jerusalem altogether.

Abbas announced that he would name streets and squares in PA-controlled areas after Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

 "We will not accept a proposal to recognize the Jewish state." He said this twice.

Does anything else need to be said?




We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

AddToAny

EoZ Book:"Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism"

Printfriendly

EoZTV Podcast

Podcast URL

Subscribe in podnovaSubscribe with FeedlyAdd to netvibes
addtomyyahoo4Subscribe with SubToMe

search eoz

comments

Speaking

translate

E-Book

For $18 donation








Sample Text

EoZ's Most Popular Posts in recent years

Hasbys!

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

Donate!

Donate to fight for Israel!

Monthly subscription:
Payment options


One time donation:

subscribe via email

Follow EoZ on Twitter!

Interesting Blogs

Blog Archive