Sunday, December 21, 2014
Ben-Dror Yemini: Intellectuals in service of Palestinian propaganda
Petition urging European parliaments to support statehood only reinforces rejectionist approach and drives further anti-Semitism.Netanyahu: We will not ignore even one rocket from Gaza
What exactly goes through the minds of intellectuals when they sign a petition that urges European parliaments to support the Palestinian Authority's demand for statehood?
But what the hell qualifies them to poke their long noses into political issues and developments?
After all, the Palestinians have time and again rejected the offer of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
After all, they've rejected the formula of two states for two peoples time and again too.
After all, Mahmoud Abbas has made it clear, recently too, in an interview with Akhbar Alyoum, that his opposition to a Jewish state is a direct consequence of his demand for the right of return.
After all, this appeal to the European states and United Nations is not designed to promote a peace settlement, but to dodge the formula of two states for two peoples instead.
Israel's safety is the number one priority, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday, regarding a rocket from Gaza that landed in Israel on Friday and an IAF attack on a Hamas cement factory on Saturday in response.Young Boy Recites Song on Hamas TV: The Jews Are Barbaric Apes, the Most Evil of Creatures
Speaking during a Hannuka candle lighting ceremony at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said "I want to thank you soldiers for your contribution to Israel's safety. Israel's safety comes first. I won't allow even one rocket, and that is why the IAF responded to the rocket and destroyed a cement factory that was making cement to repair tunnels that were hit during Operation Protective Edge. Hamas will be held responsible for every escalation. We will protect Israel's safety. Happy holidays to everyone," he said.
Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon also spoke on Saturday evening saying that Israel will not tolerate a new "trickle" of rockets from Gaza.
"Last night's IAF airstrike in Gaza, which was in response to Friday's rocket attack, was on a factory making cement that would be used to build tunnels. It is a clear message to Hamas that we won't put up with a 'trickle' of rockets on our citizens. We hold Hamas responsible for what happens in the strip, and we know how to respond to the attacks if they don't know how to stop them," Ya'alon said.
In a recent Hamas TV children's show, a young boy recites a song titled "I Do Not Fear the Gun," in which he says: "Oh sons of Zion, oh the most evil of creatures, oh barbaric apes, Jerusalem rejects you and vomits your filth." The show aired on Al-Aqsa TV on December 5, 2014
Video Shows Extreme Sport Performance on top of Al Aqsa Mosque
Muslim extremists have been upping their violent campaign against Jewish visits to the Temple Mount in recent months, claiming that the presence of religious Jews is tantamount to an "invasion" which "defiles" the Al Aqsa mosque complex there.
But while the site of Jews quietly touring the Temple Mount is considered a "provocation" (Jews are forbidden to pray there, despite it being Judaism's holiest site, as authorities fear an Islamist backlash), the use of the Al Aqsa mosque for an extreme sport is apparently no problem for the Waqf Islamic trust which administers the site.
A video uploaded to YouTube Sunday shows a man giving a public "Parkour" performance on top of the mosque, clambering and leaping around the top of the structure as crowds of Muslim visitors look on.
Jihadist Islamism: Our generation’s challenge
For many of us, growing up in the shadow of September 11 has been initially a shocking experience and then a slow acclimatization to callous acceptance of mass murder and terrorism. Bali-Beslan-Mumbai- Kano-Peshawar, the list of mass killings of civilians at the hands of various jihadist-Islamist groups grows by the year. Since 2001 they have been getting more frequent and horrific. They span the globe. It is our generation and the next generation’s challenge to wrestle with and defeat this evil that stalks us all.Charles Krauthammer: Despite home-grown ‘lone wolves’, terrorism is a foreign import
9/11 was not the first Islamist terror attack of its kind. Charles Allen’s excellent 2007 book God’s Terrorists traced the history of the Wahhabi cult from Saudi Arabia to India, Pakistan and back again beginning in the 18th century. But all of those who get bogged down in the details of Hassan al-Banna or Cherif Gousmi and their “contributions” to the Islamist death cult miss the forest for the trees. Jihadist Islamism is a forest, and the trees are named al-Qaida, al Nusra, Boko Haram, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), Taliban, al-Shabab, Abu Sayyaf, Jema’ah Islamiya and many others. It didn’t begin in 2001, it was boiling under the surface in Algeria, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Pakistan, China, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philipines, Somalia and many other places for years. But after 9/11 a distinctive shift took place.
As much as commentators and politicians want to convince us of the theory that these groups have “goals” and ideology and there is “dialogue” and “diplomacy,” people must disabuse themselves of these theories. The only reason these groups get away with massacring a whole school of children, or bombing bars and nightclubs, and then saying they want to “negotiate” is because they instinctively sense the weakness of character, spirit and heart of those that oppose them. They also know, particularly in the West, that the ideology of “diplomacy” or “moderation” is palatable to a normative worldview that no longer believes in good and evil. But if the groups doing the killing were any organization besides a jihadist one, there would be no negotiations.
These groups inspire and influence because of their prestige, which, as for most messianic movements, depends on their successes — measured in growing power, territorial conquest and persuasive propaganda.Aaron David Miller: Why We Should Delay The Israel-Palestinian Peace Process
You don’t find many local terrorists invoking al-Qaeda nowadays. They fly the flag of the Islamic State. It is the strong horse, on the rise.
The first line of defense against lone wolves is, of course, protective measures: identification, tracking and pre-emption. But given the sheer number of the disturbed, unstable and potentially impressionable among us, and given the strictures that civil liberties have placed on prior restraint, that defensive posture can take us only so far.
The Islamic State has discovered that the projection of terror does not depend, al-Qaeda-style, on sending expeditionary cells to kill infidels abroad. It can do so long-distance by inspiration, by wire, as it were. Which is why the ultimate line of defense against lone wolves is to turn the fortunes of the warrior tribes themselves, the script writers of jihad.
The great new spectre is the homegrown terrorist. But he is less homegrown than we imagine. He is fed from abroad. Which is where, as ever since 9/11, the battle must be fought.
Woody Allen once remarked that 80 or 90 % of life was just showing up. But the comedic genius was wrong; success in most dimensions of the human enterprise is showing up at the right time.Is Europe about to give in to Hamas terror?
So what is it that the Arabs, Palestinians and Europeans don’t understand? Now is hardly the time to be doing anything on the so-called peace process other than trying to avoid an explosion on the ground. Efforts to push meaningless draft resolutions at the UN and others by European Parliaments to recognize Palestinian statehood certainly don’t threaten Israel in any serious way. But neither will they advance a two state solution.
If the European and Arab objective is to embarrass the US, feed Palestinian fantasies that international recognition will somehow produce a real state, and buck up the Israeli right, then full steam ahead. But if the goal is to maintain any hope—grim as it is— for serious negotiations leading to a two state solution. they’d be better advised to defer UN votes, kick this particular can down the road until after the March 2015 Israeli elections, and spend more time watching Woody Allen movies. And here’s why.
In Oliver Twist, published in 1838, Charles Dickens has one of his characters, Mr. Bumble, declare, “If the law supposes that, the law is an ass, an idiot.” One hundred and fifty years later Mr. Bumble would have used the same words in referring to a decision of the General Court (GC) of the European Union.Proposed UNSC Resolution (satire)
On December 17, 2014 GC ordered the EU to remove Hamas from its terrorist blacklist.
The Council of the European Union in Luxembourg on December 27, 2001 adopted a common position as its response to combating terrorism. This meant freezing the funds of individuals and groups on a list adopted by the Council.
The list included Hamas and has maintained that group on the list since then. Other countries, including the US in October 1997, and Australia, Canada, Japan, Egypt, and Britain regarding the military wing, have put Hamas on their own terrorist lists.
The GC is an independent court, attached to the European Court of Justice, composed of one judge from each of the 28 member states of the EU. It is regarded as the second highest tribunal of the EU, and its decisions can be appealed on a point of law to the ECJ. It took the case C 400/10, Hamas v, Council of the EU and delivered judgment.
But that judgment is bizarre if not hypocritical in making a political decision. The GC called its decision a procedural one, a “technical issue,” not a political one by it or by the EU countries. The decision it said did not “imply any substantive assessment of the question of the classification of Hamas as a terrorist group.” It said nothing substantial about the status of Hamas.
Yet, it challenged the very basis of the EU political decision that put the al-Qassam Brigades (the Hamas military wing) in its first terrorist blacklist in December 2001. As a result of a number of Hamas suicide bombings during the second Intifada, the EU added the political wing of Hamas to its terrorist list in 2003.
Proposed Resolution (2014)UNRWA Expands Refugee Status To Pets, Furniture (satire)
Presented by the Government of Israel
The Security Council,
Recalling the struggle of national independence movements against occupation forces,
Recognizing the infringement of the rights of the nationals of those national independence movements by occupation forces,
Acting under the Charter of the United Nations
Grants national recognition to Palestine, Tibet, Chechnya, Baluchia, Hawaii, Northern Ireland, Brittany, Catalonia and the Basque Territory.
The expansion to include household pets such as cats, sheep, goats, donkeys, mice, and crows emerged amid the realization that confronting refugee groups over alleged fraud would spark unpleasantness. As the organization’s mission is to foster an uncompromising sense of entitlement among the recipients of its aid, the administration sought a compromise in which claimants of UNRWA benefits would not engage in fraud, while at the same time the organization would be able to verify the existence of every dependent. The inclusion of pets, and of furniture and home appliances larger than a standard immersion blender, allows Palestinian refugees to demonstrate the existence of each dependent, or, failing that, to obtain one for each claim within a short time.Red Alert in Kibbutz Nir Yitzchak [video]
The compromise policy is aimed both at accommodating the burgeoning Palestinian refugee population and forestalling criticism from international bodies over accountability for the agency’s use of its funding. Concerns over inappropriate use of UNRWA’s budget to fund objectionable activities has garnered attention from various quarters, and the organization believes the expansion of the new expansion of refugee status will provide the necessary cover to stave off unwanted scrutiny.
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness told reporters the new aid criteria are actually more conservative than some had wanted. “Truth is we wanted to have a much more comprehensive roster of possessions and animal dependents,” he said. “But our aid recipients objected to having apes and pigs on the list, since they associate those animals with Jews, and of course we can’t offend our bos- I mean the people who receive our aid.”
Two girls in Kibbutz Nir Yitzchak were taking a selfie video when the rocket siren went off on Friday morning.Red Alert Goes Off in Kibbutz Nir Yitzchak
This is what life is like in Israel’s south:
Chemical Attack Hero Describes How He Took Down the Terrorist
The terrorist was neutralized by a bystander, M. who was driving home when the attack happened.Jordan Islamists threaten legal action over Israel gas deal
M. (24) described to Israeli site, Walla, how he stopped the terrorist in Gush Etzion.
M. a lifelong resident of the Gush was waiting at the traffic light near El Hadr when he saw the Arab terrorist running towards him holding a screwdriver.
He heard people screaming to stop him, and he quickly realized what was going on.
M. drove his car forward and clipped the terrorist, the terrorist fell, but he quickly got up and continued to run.
M.then got out of his car, pulled his gun and shot the terrorist twice.
Jordan’s main opposition Islamist party threatened Saturday to take legal action against anyone in the kingdom who signs a controversial gas deal with Israel.PreOccupied Territory: Report: Abu Ein Murdered By Telekinetic Israeli Soldiers (satire)
Amman’s plans to buy gas from the Jewish state have aroused fierce opposition at a time of mounting criticism of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians.
The Islamic Action Front, political wing of the Jordanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, said on its website that it “strongly rejects the deal in question, no matter what the pretext, political or economic, and will prosecute all those who agree to or sign such an agreement”.
The IAF said it regretted that the government “has stubbornly ignored the popular will to maintain suspect relations with the occupying power [Israel] and to conclude such an agreement.”
Sources within the IDF revealed that Uri Geller, a famous spoon-bending Zionist Jew, was recruited back in 2001 for the sole purpose of training telekinetic Jews and put them to work wreaking havoc among enemies of the Zionist entity. The classified unit’s duties mostly involve creating hazards and minor ailments among Palestinians and their supporters, but occasionally other nefarious schemes.Abbas: We Won’t Use Violence – Unless We Will
Uri Geller
The so-called Geller Unit, officially known as the Special Telekenesis Unit for Paranormal Intifada Disruption (STUPID), was also behind Yasser Arafat’s severe hemorrhoids, which he developed after a group of parapsychotic Jews sat simultaneously in front of 40 television screens in 2002 and stared at the leader’s image with ill intent. The most likely cause of Arafat’s death in 2004 was an undiagnosed infection, the source of which could easily be a ruptured hemorrhoid.
The late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez similarly developed his fatal cancer after he publicly denounced Israel. The STUPID source described that effort as involving planting crystals in specific spots around the Earth so that when Chavez passed through the virtual lines they created, his DNA began mutating and cells metastasizing.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu denied the STUPID allegations.
Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas sent mixed messages Sunday regarding violence against Israel, claiming that the PA does not plan to take up weapons against Israel – but then warning of a potential “explosion” of terrorist violence.Former Top Fatah Official Ghazi Al-Husseini: The PA Has Committed High Treason
Abbas’ comments to an Egyptian television station were translated by Israel’s Reshet Bet.
He stated that the PA would use diplomacy, not weapons, in its efforts to claim the entirety of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. However, he said, “if the Palestinian people feels there is no hope – it will explode.”
Abbas claimed that the PA would be powerless to prevent an outbreak of violence. His comments come in the wake of several brutal attacks on Jewish civilians.
While Abbas attempted to portray himself as an innocent observer of Arab terrorism, countless reports have shown that the PA intentionally, and systematically, incites Arab youth to commit acts of terrorism. Terrorism is lauded, and those who commit violence against Jewish civilians are embraced as heroes.
In a recent TV interview, former top Fatah official Ghazi Al-Husseini, who heads the Jerusalem committee of the Palestinian National Council, said that the PA's security cooperation with Israel constitutes high treason. Al-Husseini is the son Abd Al-Qader Al-Husseini and the brother of Faysal Al-Husseini. The interview aired on the Jordanian Roya TV channel on November 19, 2014.
Hamas seeks to douse flareup on Gaza border
Seeking to quell rising tensions over the weekend, Hamas informed Israel on Saturday night that it was not interested in an escalation in the Gaza Strip, and would crack down on the Palestinians behind the rocket fire at the Eshkol region on Friday, the Palestinian al-Quds daily reported.Jordanian Preacher Proposes Place of Worship for Jews on the Temple Mount
Hamas conveyed its message to Israel through an Egyptian mediator, while emphasizing that it did not stand behind the rocket attack, the report said — the third of its kind since a ceasefire agreement in August ended the most recent conflagration in the Strip.
The terror group pledged to locate those responsible for firing the projectile, which drew a retaliatory Israeli airstrikes over the weekend.
“We are interested in upholding the understandings that were reached, because there are priorities that must be kept at this point,” Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk said, according to Israel Radio.
In a statement posted on the Internet on December 18, 2014, Jordanian preacher Sheik Yassin Al-'Ajlouni said that the Jews should be given a place of worship on the Temple Mount. "There should be a special place of worship for the Jews among the Israelites, under Hashemite and Palestinian sovereignty," he said.
Harvard Dining Services Backtracks on Decision to Pull Israeli-Made Soda Equipment
It all started last spring when HUDS officials agreed to stop buying products from a company recently acquired by “SodaStream,” whose factory operations are housed in the West Bank, a piece of Israeli-occupied land that is home to millions of Palestinians and the center of ongoing conflict.Revered Harvard Psychologist Blasts Campus Capitulation on SodaStream
After talks with students from the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, and the Harvard Islamic Society, as The Crimson reported, who told HUDS that some undergraduates and graduates might be offended by the use of the machines procured from SodaStream, officials from the dining services agreed to pull the plug on doing business with the manufacturers.
That decision, which was discovered only yesterday by Garber and university President Drew Faust, after The Crimson published an article online, was out of bounds, according to the administration.
“As President Faust has indicated to members of the Harvard community who have made inquiries, she and I both learned of this issue from today’s Crimson,” Garber said in a statement. “She has asked staff to get to the bottom of how these conversations started, and to learn more about where matters currently stand.”
HUDS backtracked their decision, which was based on input from members of Palestinian student groups, and admitted their mistake.
One of Harvard University’s most renowned professors, psychology theorist and philosopher Steven Pinker, has written a harsh letter to the university’s president and provost protesting a decision by Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) to ban the use of SodaStream water systems. SodaStream, an Israeli company, became the target last year of intense boycott efforts despite the fact that it employed hundreds of Palestinian workers in its Maaleh Adumim factory under conditions identical to those enjoyed by their Israeli counterparts.Expert: BDS May Become a Political Movement in America
In his letter Pinker assailed the capitulation to pressure in a way that contradicts the central mission of Harvard University. The letter, which was quoted at length at Powerlineblog and can be read in full here, spelled his objections out as follows:
"Equally foreign to the mission of a university is the idea that students are to be protected from “discomfort” or so-called “microaggression” when they are exposed to beliefs that differ from theirs, or when the university does not accede to demands that it prosecute their moral and political crusades. Discomfort is another word for tolerance. It is the price we pay for living in a democracy and participating in the open exchange of ideas.
Middle East politics above all is a subject on which thoughtful people disagree; it is certainly not one on which a university should decree the correct position. While I am sympathetic with many of the students’ objections to the current policies of the Israeli government, I object even more strongly to the policies of the governments of countries such as Russia, India, Pakistan, China, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. In a world filled with governments with deplorable policies, it is pernicious for a university to single out one of them for opprobrium.
Professor Cary Nelson, formerly the head of the American Association of University Professors warned on Saturday that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) anti-Israel movement may become a political movement in the United States.Egyptian 'spy' charged for allegedly passing Israel intel on Iranian warships' movements
Speaking to Channel 1 News, Professor Nelson of the University of Illinois, said that the BDS movement’s influence in the United States has increased and that it poses a threat to Israel’s security.
Academic boycotts have become an all-too-common BDS tactic on American college campuses over the past year, whether through student organizations or official academic bodies.
An Egyptian court has sentenced a man to ten years in prison for a conviction on charges that he spied for Israel, AFP reported on Sunday.Retreating IS fighters call Kurds ‘dogs of Israel’
Mohamed Ali Abdel Baki, a shipping manager at the Suez Canal, was convicted of passing his Israeli handlers information about the movement of Egyptian and foreign warships, particularly Iranian ships, through the canal. The Port Said court also convicted in absentia the man's two alleged Israeli handlers to life in prison.
Baki allegedly made contact with the Israeli spies over the Internet in 2011 and later met them at the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok in 2012.
Egyptian prosecutors also claimed that Baki had also offered to give information about shipping movements to Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.
Islamic State fighters left behind graffiti calling Kurds “Israeli dogs” as peshmerga forces expanded a major offensive against jihadi-held areas in northwestern Iraq on Saturday after breaking a months-old siege.Saudis Slash Oil Prices to 'Block' Iranian Nuclear Weapon
A photo showing writing on a Kurdish flag that read “The flag of Israeli dogs,” was taken Saturday and posted on the Kurdish Rudaw news site, researcher Ceng Sagnic from Tel Aviv’s Moshe Dayan Center told The Times of Israel.
Ties between Israel and the Kurds run deep. A Mossad officer named Sagi Chori was sent to help his close friend, the late iconic Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani, manage the Kurds’ battles against the Iraqi army in the 1960s. There have also been persistent reports of Israel training Kurdish commandos. Nationalist Kurds tend to see Israel as a role model for an independent Kurdistan: a small nation surrounded by enemies and bolstered by a strategic partnership with the United States.
Oil prices have nosedived from $115 a barrel last August to under $60 a barrel by the middle of this month, with many analysts, in the wake of Arutz Sheva columnist and Middle East expert Dr. Mordecai Kedar, appraising that Saudi Arabia has intentionally caused the price drop as a weapon against Iran, over fears of a deal giving the Islamic regime nuclear weapons.French cops kill assailant who stabs three, shouts ‘Allahu Akbar’
As the US-led talks continue to meet and breach deadlines and Iran demands enough centrifuges to build 38 nuclear bombs each year, the oil prices are seen as way the Saudis can directly harm their Iranian rivals.
Even Iranian President Hassan Rouhani this month said the oil price drop is a plot against Iran, saying "the fall in crude price is not merely an economic issue. Rather, it is caused by a plot and political planning by certain countries."
According to Foreign Policy, Saudi Arabia is behind the drop in prices, with the paper noting that in September the Gulf state boosted oil production by half a percent to 9.6 million barrels a day, and then offered increased discounts to major Asian customers, causing global prices to plummet by nearly 30%.
French police on Saturday shot dead a man who attacked them with a knife in a police station while shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great” in Arabic), a source said.BBC, unable to call him "terrorist", says French police killed an "Allahu Akbar attacker"
The man injured the face of a policeman at the entrance to the police station in Joue-les-Tours near the city of Tours in central France and injured two other officers before he was shot, the source said, adding that anti-terrorist investigators were probing the incident.
In recent months France, which has Europe’s largest Muslim population, has been facing the fact that hundreds of its citizens have openly joined jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria and have even called for attacks on their homeland.
The new reality was driven home in a video from the Islamic State group released in mid-November, showing three Kalashnikov-wielding Frenchmen burning their passports and calling on Muslims to join them or stage attacks in France.
The BBC, chronically unable to deploy the word "terrorist", has a uniquely-BBC approach to reporting this attack, under the headline "'Allahu Akbar' attacker shot by French police". The only mention of "terror" comes when they write "Anti-terrorism investigators were now working at the scene..."Bold New Campaign Launched Against Anti-Semitism in France
In France last weekend, a good dose of Jewish humor was recruited in the battle against anti-Semitism.National Film Registry spotlights Kindertransport film
The Organization of Jewish Europeans (OJE) launched a bold campaign to fight against anti-Semitism, a rising problem in France. The organization is set to distribute 10,000 boxes of "anti-Semitism first aid treatment" under the brand name "Antisémitox."
Each box contains three honey candies, detox patches, and the text of the law stating the penalties that apply to people who express anti-Semitism publicly.
The poster of the campaign features a doctor wearing a white coat and stethoscope brandishing a box of pills that reads: "Antisémitox, the first treatment against anti-Semitism. "
"The honey candies contained in the packages," the organization jokingly explained in a written statement, "works to immediately soften the anti-Semitic words and behavior that are the first symptoms. These include insults, curses, aggressive behavior, hallucinations, and quenelles [a reverse Nazi salute created by an anti-Semitic French comedian].
Oscar-winner “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport” has been selected for permanent preservation in the Library of Congress by the National Film Registry.Art and Recycling in the IAF
The film, released in 2000, documents the rescue of some 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi-dominated Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia in the months leading up to World War II.
All of them found refuge in Great Britain, but many were scarred by separation from their parents, most of who subsequently perished in the Holocaust.
Deborah Oppenheimer, producer of the documentary and herself the daughter of a Kindertransport, or Children’s Transport, survivor, said: “With the passing of so many eyewitnesses to that tumultuous period, the preservation of the film will recognize for all time the tremendous resilience of the children, the courage of their parents who were willing to entrust them to strangers, and the compassion of the British families who took them in at a time when so few would help.”
During the day, Sgt. Atalya Aufrichter serves as the coordinator between the Israeli Air Force and its reservists. At night and weekends, Atalya is an artist who uses everyday materials to create works of art that decorate her base at Ramat David.IDF Blog: 8 Miraculous Moments in IDF History
Sgt. Atalya Aufrichter, a soldier in the IAF, discovered a new creative way to recycle. A 2.5 meter-high Mona Lisa made from over 4,100 bottle caps is just one of the dozens of works of art that Sgt. Aufrichter has created. Today, the Mona Lisa adorns the dining hall of the Ramat David Airbase.
Atayla decided to use bottle caps to create the piece because of the look created by the mosaic. “The closer you stand, the more you notice the details but from far away you can see the whole image,” the soldier explained. From afar, the piece appears as one image of the famous painting Mona Lisa, but from close it can be appreciated for its construction from a variety of bottle tops.
Sgt. Aufrichter told us that thanks to her project, the base’s level of recycling has increased a large amount and the soldiers have focused on the process of recycling. “Suddenly those who did not care about recycling have become big recyclers in order to help me,” Atalya said.
#MiraculousMoment 4: Rescuing 103 Jewish Hostages from Entebbe
Operation Entebbe, 1976
On June 27, 1976, four terrorists hijacked an Air France plane that had taken off from Tel Aviv and was headed for Paris. The flight was diverted to Entebbe, Uganda, where Jewish and Israeli passengers were held hostage at the airport. After a week of preparations, IDF commando forces, pilots and medics embarked on one of our most ambitious rescue missions to date. They managed to surprise the terrorists and rescue 103 hostages. The return of the hostages to Israel to be embraced by their loved ones was a miraculous moment that Israelis will never forget.
#MiraculousMoment 5: Striking Iraq’s Nuclear Reactor
Operation Opera, 1981
On June 7, 1981, eight F-16 fighter planes and six F-15s took off on their way to Iraq to destroy the Osirak nuclear reactor in order to put a halt to the Iraqi nuclear program President Suddam Hussein used to openly threaten Israel. The mission was a huge success and proved to be truly miraculous ten years later during the Gulf War, when Iraq attacked Israel with rockets – none of which were nuclear.
