Wednesday, March 23, 2022

03/23 Links Pt1: Two mothers of 3, a Chabad rabbi, a brother of 4: The terror victims named; Ukraine can happen in Israel too; Why Israel's Iron Dome Won't Help Ukraine Against Russia

From Ian:

Two mothers of 3, a Chabad rabbi, a brother of 4: The terror victims named
The four people killed by an Arab Israeli knifeman in a Beersheba terror attack on Tuesday were named as Doris Yahbas, 49, a mother of three, Laura Yitzhak, 43, also a mother of three, Rabbi Moshe Kravitzky, a father of four, and Menahem Yehezkel, 67, a brother to four.

Yahbas was from Moshav Gilat, west of Beersheba, the Merhavim Regional Council said in a statement. She is survived by her husband and children.

Her funeral was planned for Wednesday at Gilat’s cemetery.

Yahbas’s nephew, Yisrael Ozen, a paramedic for the Magen David Adom first responder service, had rushed to the scene of the stabbing where he discovered that one of the victims was his aunt.

“While giving treatment I noticed that it was my aunt, my mother’s sister,” he said.

Yahbas, who was stabbed in the entrance to a clothes shop, was already showing no vital signs and medics were forced to declare her dead, he said.

“I was shocked,” Ozen admitted, but said he could not linger and needed to attend to his uncle, Yahbas’s husband, who had arrived at the location.

Another victim was identified as Menahem Yehezkel, a 67-year-old resident of Beersheba. He had no children and leaves behind four siblings, Ynet reported.

“He never bothered anyone. He just went out for a walk,” his nephew told Ynet. “It’s a heavy blow, a terrible tragedy.”


Funerals begin for Beersheba terror victims as bereaved families mourn ‘heavy loss’
Funerals were held Wednesday afternoon for two of the four victims of a terror attack in Beersheba the day before, with a third planned for later in the evening.

Menahem Yehezkel, 67, was laid to rest in a cemetery in the southern city while the burial ceremony for Doris Yahbas, 49, was held in Moshav Gilat, a small community close to Beersheba. Hundreds attended both funerals.

At 7 p.m. Rabbi Moshe Kravitzky, 50, was to be buried in the same cemetery as Yehezkel. The funeral for Laura Yitzhak, 43, has yet to be scheduled.

“Doris, my dear wife, mother of my children, who raised them with me, we ask you for forgiveness, we will never forget you all of our lives,” Yahbas’s husband Yossi said at her funeral.

“You were the mainstay and the central link of the whole family,” he said. The terrorist “cut you away from us. You will always be with us, in our heart and soul. I promise to look after the children as you looked after them.”

Public Security Minister Omer Barlev attended Yahbas’s funeral, where he said that “a murderous terrorist incident took place, carried out by a vile killer who murdered women only because of the hatred that burned in him, and committed this heinous crime.”

The minister raised some eyebrows when he vowed to put the terrorist, who was killed in the attack, in jail. Barlev later said he had been asked to talk at the last moment and misspoke, having intended to say any accomplices would be brought to justice.

At Laura Yitzhak’s funeral, husband Tal said: “I fell in love with you at first sight when we served together in the army.” The attacker, he said, “decided to kill in cold blood for no reason, because she was Jewish.”

“What will I do now?” Tal said. “You are the one who takes care of me, the girls, our home.”

One of Yitzhak’s three daughters, Efrat, eulogized her, saying: “Mom, I can’t take it in that you’re not here. I thank you for how you taught me. I will not forget you, I promise to look after the children. You are a hero.”


Israeli Cop Finds Out Sister Among Terrorist’s Victims; Paramedic Declares Own Aunt Dead
An Israeli cop tasked with responding to a terrorist attack in the southern city of Beersheba on Tuesday discovered that his sister was among the four fatalities, while a paramedic who arrived at the scene had to declare his own aunt’s death.

The Magen David Adom paramedic said he was “among the first on the scene, and began to treat an injured, unconscious woman,” Israel’s Walla! News reported.

In the midst of administering treatment, he recounted, “I recognized that she’s my aunt, my mother’s sister. She was without sign of life and we had to declare her death. I was horrified, but I had to continue to function and take care of my uncle, who was on the scene.”

His aunt, 49-year-old Doris Yahbas from Moshav Gilat in southern Israel, was a mother of three children. She will be buried on Wednesday. Her killer, former convict Mohammad Ghaleb Abu al-Qi’an, was shot at the scene.

Another victim was identified as Laura Yitzhak, whose cop brother was on duty at a police station in Beersheba at the time of the attack, Walla! reported. While making his way to the scene, he found out that his sister was among the dead and immediately went to the hospital. Yitzhak was a 43-year-old mother of three daughters and a resident of Beersheba.


Guns to be returned to citizens who shot at Beersheba terrorist
The two men who shot at a terrorist who murdered four people in Beersheba Tuesday will have their guns returned to them Wednesday morning, police said.

Ballistic tests on the weapons were completed overnight in Jerusalem, police said, and the guns will be given back to their owners.

On Tuesday, a police spokesperson said in a statement that ballistic tests on the guns were an “inseparable” part of the investigation into the attack.

“In order to avoid mental anguish for citizens who acted bravely and determinedly, the necessary tests will be done tonight and when finished the guns will be returned to their owners,” the statement read.

The statement, which also praised the two for their actions, seemed to come as a response to pressure from right-wing politicians and others who derided the decision to take away the shooters’ guns for tests.

One of the shooters, whose name has not been publicized, had fought with police and refused to leave a police station, saying he feared traveling to his West Bank home without his gun.
US, UN Condemn Terror Attack in Southern Israel That Killed Four People
International officials condemned the Tuesday terror attack that killed four civilians and wounded at least two others in the southern Israeli city of Beersheva.

“Despicable terrorist attack today in Beersheva,” said US Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides. “This has to stop! My heart goes out to the victims and their families.”

Four civilians were brutally murdered in one of the worst nationalistic incidents in recent years. The terrorist has been identified as Muhammad Abu Al-Kiyan, 34, who has spent time in an Israeli prison and was known to be a supporter of ISIS, reported Kan News.

The UN Special Coordinator for Middle East Peace Tor Wennesland also condemned the attack, saying there is “no justification for violence or terrorism.”

“There is nothing heroic in the killing of civilians, and there is no excuse for praising such acts. It must be condemned by all,” he stated.

Wennesland went on to say that he is “increasingly alarmed by the continued violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel that is taking place on a daily basis. This is the seventh stabbing attack against Israelis this month.”

He added that these incidents “only highlight the volatility of the situation and the urgent need for all leaders to work together against the spiral of violence.”


PMW: PA invited yesterday’s terror and will reward it
Yesterday's terror attack in which an Israeli Arab murdered 4 Israelis in Be’er Sheva in southern Israel using a car to murder one and a knife to murder three more, is exactly the kind of terror that the Palestinian Authority has been actively calling for.

The Palestinian Authority calls this kind of murder "peaceful popular uprising/resistance." It uses these euphemisms to hide from the international community and especially donor countries that it is calling for terror and murder.

The PA, Fatah, and PLO leaders lately have increased the calls for “popular” terror. Last month, the PLO held a major event and the “main topic” of the entire event was increasing murderous “popular resistance”:
“The main topic of the [PLO] Central Council meeting yesterday was popular resistance. All the sessions, meetings, and conferences, whether of the Fatah Movement or of the other factions, and also His Honor President [Abbas called] in all his speeches to initiate popular resistance.”

[Official PA TV, Feb. 8, 2022]

Mahmoud Abbas’ spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeina confirmed that calling for “popular resistance” is coming from the top of the PA:
“Official [PA] Presidential Spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeina said that ‘Peaceful popular resistance remains the most important and effective weapon for restoring the Palestinian rights.’”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 14, 2022]


AFP Purges Hamas Praise For Deadly Beersheba Terror Attack
Agence France Presse’s article yesterday about the deadly terror attack in Beersheba egregiously covers up Hamas’ praise for what it called the “heroic act” in Beersheva, “Four dead in Israel stabbing, car-ramming, assailant shot.” Selectively reporting Hamas’ response to the attack, AFP’s Daniella Cheslow wrote:
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, released a statement that did not claim the attack but blamed it on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

Speaking to a Hamas-controlled radio station, group spokesman Hazem Qassem said the “operation is a response to the policy of ethnic displacement practiced by Israel against our Palestinian people inside the occupied territories.”

The four victims of a terror attack in Beersheba on March 22, 2022: Laura Yitzhak, top left; Rabbi Moshe Kravitzky, top right; Doris Yahbas, bottom left; Menahem Yehezkel, bottom right. (Social media/courtesy via Times of Israel) Hamas repeatedly voiced official, government-sanctioned high praise glorifying the attack, crucial information not reported in AFP’s story, but widely reported elsewhere. As Times of Israel reported yesterday (“Hamas ‘trumpets’ heroic Beersheba attack . . .”):
“We salute the executor of the heroic operation in occupied Beersheba,” Hamas spokesperson Abd al-Latif al-Qanou tells official Hamas radio.

“The occupation’s crimes shall be met with heroic operations: stabbings, ramming and shooting,” al-Qanou says.


Gil Troy: Ukraine can happen in Israel too
Imagine if Ukraine had 1,700 nuclear warheads at its disposal today because it had not surrendered them in 1994 – in exchange for supposedly-binding promises of peace and territorial integrity from Russia, America and the world. Admittedly, history is a river; you cannot isolate one current. Had Ukrainians resisted the American and Russian pressure then, Ukraine might be a rogue state today. Still, as they dodge another Russian missile, fight tanks with pistols, remove more corpses from rubble or flee their homes, historically-minded Ukrainians must be thinking, “Boy, were we suckers,” as sober-minded Israelis sadly agree.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine controlled one-third of the USSR’s nukes. Bruising negotiations led Ukraine to relinquish the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal. Years before this Putin-triggered invasion, one Ukrainian website called the Budapest Memorandum, which also neutralized the nuclear powers of Belarus and Kazakhstan, “the Greatest Treason in Ukrainian History.”

The international community’s impotence, and the irrelevance of promises made 28-years-ago, haunts Israelis. Despite Volodymyr Zelensky’s inaccurate Holocaust shaming, most Israelis have rallied with the rest of the Jewish community and the West to support Ukraine – sidestepping without sanitizing Ukraine’s blood-drenched Jew-hating past. But for most Israelis, Vladimir Putin’s war has stirred this rarely mentioned but ever-present anxiety that our little Promised Land paradise could become a warzone instantaneously.

We all know: Ukraine could happen here and we would be on our own far more than Ukraine because even some of our best friends would blame us, soft-pedaling our enemies’ enmity, deeming our tragedy self-inflicted.

Israel is super-skittish because as the Russian bloodbath grows despite impressive Western sanctions and massive arms shipments. The United States seems to be succumbing to Iranian charms again. Whenever someone from or for President Joe Biden’s administration says Putin’s aggression proved that you must take dictators’ threats seriously, I want to scream, “What about Iran?!”
Explained: Why Israel's Iron Dome Won't Help Ukraine Against Russia
Despite increasingly vocal calls for Jerusalem to provide Kyiv with missile defense technology, experts believe logistical and technological limitations mean Israel’s Iron Dome would likely provide little practical benefit to Ukraine as Russia ramps up its attacks across the country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared to demand that Israel provide his country with anti-missile capabilities on Sunday, calling on Israeli lawmakers during a video address to help limit the death toll in his country.

Putin's wild card, Ukraine's hope: LISTEN to Anshel Pfeffer in bombarded Kyiv "Everyone in Israel knows that your missile defense is the best. It is powerful,” he said.

“Everyone knows that your weapon is strong. Everyone knows you're doing great. You know how to defend your state interests, the interests of your people. And you can definitely help us protect our lives, the lives of Ukrainians, the lives of Ukrainian Jews.”

The president's comments aside, Tal Inbar, a senior research fellow at the U.S.-based Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, believes that while the system could likely intercept some Russian munitions, such as Grad rockets, the large land mass of Ukraine and the variety of Russia's projectiles means that exporting Iron Dome batteries “is more of a theoretical question and wishful thinking by Ukraine” than a practical solution.
‘Putin Is Blackmailing You’: Top Ukrainian Rabbi Urges Israel to Recognize Threat Posed by Russia
Ukraine’s chief rabbi has criticized the government of Israel for being insufficiently critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime, insisting at the same time that Russia’s relationship with terrorist organizations in the Middle East made it an adversary of the Jewish state.

“I speak on Israeli television and on the radio almost every day,” Rabbi Moshe Azman told the NV Ukraine news outlet. “I said, Putin doesn’t take you into account on anything. Putin accepts all kinds of enemies of Israel — Hamas, Hezbollah — and he says that they are friends.”

Israeli policy towards Ukraine has come under increasing scrutiny in the wake of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech to the Knesset on Sunday. The Ukrainian government has been urging Israel to supply its armed forces with weaponry and impose tougher sanctions on Russia.

Azman said that he understood that Israel — which is dealing with a Russian military presence supporting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in neighboring Syria — was in a “difficult situation, fighting for its existence.”

However, “Putin is blackmailing Israel with Syria, Hezbollah, and Iran,” he argued.

He said he had called on Israel to supply Ukraine with its Iron Dome anti-missile system. “This is not an offensive weapon, it’s for the defense and protection of civilians,” Azman said. “Israel does not give, because Putin is pressuring them.”
“Country that commits war crimes has no place on UN Human Rights Council,” Ukraine’s Svitlana Zalishchuk tells UN
Svitlana Zalishchuk, a foreign policy advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, today addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council, in a joint statement with UN Watch. Her remarks follow below. March 22, 2022.

In 1941, my grandmother was captured by Nazis in the Nikolaevsky region and transferred to Germany as a forced laborer. Today, her son — my father — in the night under air raid sirens before potential rocket attacks, left the city and became a refugee.

The bitter irony is that on February 24, Putin started a war in my country, in the center of Europe, explaining it with the goals of the mythical denazification of Ukraine. Denazification of a country whose leader is of Jewish origin. Unprovoked. Unjustifiable. Unforgivable.

The success of Putin’s denazification in Ukraine speaks for itself. Thousands of innocent people killed, including more than 100 children. Rockets hit our churches, theaters, schools, hospitals and kindergartens. Three million people became refugees. Hundreds of thousands of people remain hostages of Putin — in some cities without water, food, heat and electricity.

Russian airplanes deliberately dropped several powerful bombs on the theatre in Mariupol, which was a shelter for women and children.

I call on the United Nations Human Rights Council to activate all the available mechanisms to investigate crimes against Ukrainians in order to bring war criminals to justice.

A country that commits war crimes has no place among the members of the UN Human Rights Council.

History is not only what we read in books about World War Two. History is what we are doing today to protect democracy and human rights. I’m calling on you to stand up for Ukraine.


Palestinian Authority Premier: Israel ‘Exploiting’ Ukraine Crisis to Boost Settlements
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said on Monday that Israeli was “exploiting” the Ukraine crisis by transferring Ukrainian refugees to Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, the UK-based Asharq Al-Awsat reported on Tuesday.

Shtayyeh made the remarks during the weekly PA Cabinet meeting, according to the report.

Earlier this month, Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan met with Ukrainian refugees at the Ukraine-Romanian border, inviting them to immigrate to Samaria or alternatively to shelter there until they could safely return to Ukraine, according to Israeli media reports.

“The heart of Samaria is with you; we’re all hurting with you—but we’ve decided not to be satisfied with words, but to take action,” said Dagan, according to Israel’s Channel 14. “We came here to personally invite you to make aliyah to Samaria, and to give you a home.”

His words were met with applause, according to the report.
Guardian suggests moral equivalence between Ukraine and Gaza
The fundamental premise of a Guardian op-ed by Moustafa Bayoumi (“Facebook’s solidarity with Ukraine is impressive. Now extend it to others”, March 19th) is based on an inaccuracy.

Last week, we learned that Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – has temporarily changed its rules and will allow certain posts calling for violence to remain on its platforms. Users of Facebook and Instagram who live in countries close to Ukraine will be permitted to post calls for violence against Russian soldiers and even for the deaths of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko – though without specifics of location or method, the company stipulated.

“As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules, like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders’. We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” Meta said in a statement.

Bayoumi goes on to argue in effect that Meta – via its Facebook and Instagram platforms – doesn’t apply their urules evenly, double-standards which impact Palestinians ‘resisting’ Israel. But, as we explained to Guardian editors in a complaint last week, the claim in his opening paragraphs highlighted above is based on erroneous information.

Bayoumi is basing his op-ed on reports from Reuters on March 11th. However, after three days, the tech giant clarified that their new rules are not what was being reported – as the Guardian itself reported on March 14th.
BBC WS radio claims Israel has ‘schizophrenic position’ on Ukraine
Henley then brought in Yolande Knell who described Zelensky as “basically questioning the Israeli official position of either ambivalence or neutrality” before going on:
Knell: “and he asked, you know, why cannot you send ammunition. Israel has sent 100 tons of humanitarian aid but has been reluctant to get more involved in terms of any kind of military assistance, even when Ukraine has been asking for things like flak jackets and helmets. Unlike most Western countries, Israel has not taken the decision to join sanctions on Russia…”

Knell continued:
Knell: “There has been a lot of questioning of how long Israel can stick with this sort of schizophrenic position where you have the foreign minister and the alternate prime minister Yair Lapid repeatedly denouncing Russia’s actions but the prime minister has pointedly not condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

After mentioning Bennett’s efforts to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, Knell went on:
Knell: “…but, you know, it’s well known within Israel that it’s protecting its own interests in the Middle East as well. It simply does not want to antagonise Russia because Israel has, by Russia, been given a kind of free hand to attack any Iranian and Hizballah forces in Syria next door so long as it doesn’t affect Russian troops.”

Once again listeners were given no reminder of the factors – including decisions taken by Western governments – which led to Russia controlling Syria’s airspace and Israel hence having to coordinate with Russia. The fact that other states, including members of the EU, are also employing pragmatic policies – such as the continued import of Russian gas – does not have a place in Knell’s framing of the story.

To date BBC audiences have not been informed of a video put out by Zelensky later the same day in which he appeared to moderate his position.

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky late on Sunday changed tack and thanked Israel in his nightly video address, after criticizing Israel bitterly in a speech to its lawmakers earlier in the day.

“Of course, Israel has its interests, strategy to protect its citizens. We understand all of it,” Zelensky said in a video he posts daily to social media.

“The prime minister of Israel, Mr. [Naftali] Bennett, is trying to find a way of holding talks. And we are grateful for this. We are grateful for his efforts, so that sooner or later we will begin to have talks with Russia, possibly in Jerusalem,” he said, according to a translation by Reuters.”

Interestingly, none of Knell’s reports inform BBC audiences that not all the members of the Knesset were present for Zelensky’s speech.

“The two Arab Israeli parties chose to snub Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech to the Knesset on Sunday night, with only one Arab lawmaker out of their 10 MKs showing up.

Joint List chief Ayman Odeh skipped the speech, as did the two other lawmakers from his Hadash faction, party officials said. A spokesperson for Odeh did not respond to a request for comment.

“Our position is that NATO and its leader America imposed this war,” said Mansour Dahamsheh, the Hadash party’s secretary-general, in a phone call with The Times of Israel.”

Clearly both the framing and omissions in Knell’s reports compromise audience understanding of the story she purports to tell.


PreOccupiedTerritory: Israel Not Doing Enough To Address Problems That Have Nothing To Do With It (satire)
Critics of the Jewish State continued this week to find areas in which the nation has taken either no or insufficient steps to solve issues irrelevant to that country or far beyond reasonable expectations of any state its size, such as solving the Russia-Ukraine crisis, stopping climate change, halting soil erosion in India, fighting burgeoning crime in San Francisco, or mitigating the pollution inherent in current methods of Southeast Asian strip mining, among others.

Pundits, activists, and commentators eager to find fault with Israel maintained their important focus on a country the physical size of New Jersey and a population roughly equal to that of Austria, a place with about as much influence on world affairs as the Los Angeles Clippers. Those critics have produced opinion articles, social media posts, blogs, videos, and other content to help ensure media attention remains directed at the world’s only Jewish state, and that said attention fosters outsize, unrealistic, and discriminatory expectations of that state, in keeping with the antisemitic assumptions governing the aforementioned focus.

The criticism has not restricted itself to factual events. Hollywood figures, talk show hosts, and other prominent opinion-shapers specifically called out Israel’s alleged refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month, when in fact Israel joined 193 other countries in doing exactly that at the United Nations. The same people and institutions lambasted the Jewish State for not providing aid to Ukraine, even as Israel has so far been the only provider of field hospitals within Ukraine, not merely sending volunteers to aid refugees in countries on Ukraine’s western borders, where Israeli volunteer and government organizations have also contributed materials, aid, and other support out of proportion to Israel’s relatively small population.






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