Sunday, April 16, 2023

04/16 Links: Israel’s Worst Mistake; Anti-Zionism as a prerequisite for antisemitism; All About the Benjamin; 80 years of renewed Jewish life in Gush Etzion celebrated

From Ian:

Israel’s Worst Mistake
We are fast approaching Sept. 13, 2023, which will mark 30 years since the Oslo Accords were signed on the White House lawn under the auspices of then-President Bill Clinton.

It was one of the worst mistakes Israel has made over its 75 years of statehood. The Accords elevated arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat into a statesman, but he never changed his stripes. Israel has suffered immensely since Arafat and his minions were given diplomatic status and legitimized.

Since the Oslo Accords were signed, at least 1,661 Israelis have been murdered in terror attacks. Many more have been wounded. Sixty-four Americans have been killed by Palestinian terrorists as well. Not a whisper from the State Department.

The Oslo Accords were by no means accepted by a clear majority of Israelis. Shimon Peres convinced two members of the right-wing Tzomet Party, Gonen Segev and Alex Goldfarb, to vote for the Accords. They were given ministerial positions in return.

Had Segev and Goldfarb voted with the rest of their party, the Oslo Accords would have never come to be. The Tzomet Party was led by true right-winger Rafael Eitan and how Segev and Goldfarb could have broken ranks still troubles me 30 years later.

Israelis by and large see the Oslo Accords as a mistake, but Israel continues to fall prey to the same type of thinking that brought them into existence. Giving guns to terrorists is always a bad idea, but this was precisely what Israel did. The consequences have been tragic and devastating: More than twice as many Israelis were murdered from 1993 to the present as from 1967 to 1993.
Anti-Zionism as a prerequisite for antisemitism
THOSE WHO deny Israel’s very right to exist use classic, age-old, cruelly outlandish antisemitic tropes when referring to Israel or hold Israel to different standards than they hold other nations and are crossing over into antisemitism. These are clear criteria but an issue remains: many people do not even know what Zionism is.

Critiquing Israel doesn’t mean you’re an anti-Zionist. No one opposes Russia’s right to exist following the invasion of Ukraine or the United States’ right to exist following Trump’s Muslim ban. Even Iran is spared despite the regime’s danger to the world. Criticizing a country’s actions does not mean opposing its very existence and advocating for its destruction.

That is exactly what Zionism is: the belief in Israel’s right to exist; specifically, the support for Jewish self-determination in the ancestral home of the Jewish people, Israel (a.k.a. Zion). Being a Zionist does not require supporting Netanyahu or annexation of the West Bank. Nor does it require unequivocally supporting all of Israel’s actions. It simply means supporting Israel’s existence as the revived homeland of the Jews.

Zionism is the modern-day manifestation of the over two-thousand-year-old Jewish aspirations to return home. Despite what some think, it doesn’t ignore the existence or legitimacy of Palestinians. The founders of the political Zionist movement were secular socialists who deeply believed in peace and prosperity for all peoples of the land.

Many Jews and Israelis support the self-determination and aspirations of the Palestinian people, as well. Zionism has always been a diverse spectrum but the common denominator is the support for the existence of a Jewish state in the indigenous 3500-year-old homeland of the Jewish people.

Zionists get to define their own word. Just as Jews get to define when they feel threatened (antisemitism); Black people get to define anti-Black racism and Muslims get to define Islamophobia. So, if you are anti-Zionist and deny the Jewish people the right to self-determination – a right you support for all other peoples – then you are antisemitic. If more people understood that, there would be fewer people identifying as anti-Zionists and there would simply be people critical of aspects of Israel.

Anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism; not always out of ill intent but often from ignorance to a term regularly spewed but rarely defined clearly.
All About the Benjamin
There are few world leaders these days who have served in their country’s military, fewer still who have seen active service, and, as far as I am aware, just one who has taken part in a successful operation to free a planeload of hostages from a band of terrorists, getting himself shot in the arm in the process.

In case you didn’t know that, Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, makes sure you’re apprised in the very first pages of Bibi: My Story, his compellingly told memoir of a lifetime in politics, business, diplomacy, and a lot of shooting wars.

In 1972 he led a group of special forces soldiers in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit of the Israeli military in a raid on a hijacked Sabena plane that had been diverted to an airport outside Tel Aviv, Israel. He recounts with evident pride how he tussled with his older brother Yoni, also in the elite unit, who wanted to pull rank on him and lead the raid himself. Bibi resisted, and prevailed.

It’s easy to see why he begins with this story. It's kinetic and cinematic, freighted with daring rescues and fraternal rivalries. (Tragically, Yoni was killed four years later in another successful Israeli operation—the rescue of the hostages on board an Air France flight at Entebbe airport in Uganda.)

But the story is a proper beginning in another sense.

"To understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was 20," Napoleon is supposed to have said. Netanyahu was 23 during the Sabena operation, but he had been serving in Israel’s military for more than three years; and you don't have to be a committed determinist to see his subsequent career as a long, steady unspooling of the tightly wound fiber of the young man in those early days of conflict. Here it all was: patriotism, courage, fierce competitiveness, cunning, a not-insignificant amount of headstrong, gung-ho, screw you impetuosity: a man with few doubts about his cause, passion for his allies, and pure enmity for his enemies.


Seth Frantzman: Winds of change in the Middle East: Will the focus shift to West Bank, Gaza?
The US is focusing on China and Russia. Terror groups are being reduced. Into this vacuum comes a major push by regional countries to do things on their own.

Saudi Arabia is a key example of this independent policy. Other countries, such as Egypt, Turkey, the UAE and Iraq are all maneuvering. None of them seem particularly focused on the Israel-Palestinian issue. But that doesn’t mean they won’t eventually come around.

Right now there are winds of change blowing. These are the kinds of changes that took place during the era of the 1950s and also the 1990s. In the 1960s the region shifted to Arab Nationalism as colonial powers faded. In the 1990s the Cold War ended and the region became part of the US global hegemony.

The weakening of the Arab regimes, such as Saddam’s Iraq led to a different era. Islamic groups flourished and the monarchies came to dominate again. Soviet funding and arms dried up. Ossification set in for leaders of Yemen, Libya, Egypt and Tunisia. They fell from power.

The Palestinians benefited from the winds of change. They gained support in the 60s and 70s at the UN and their cause became a cause celebre. In the 1990s the end of the Cold War led to the Oslo Accords. But two states didn’t come into being. Instead, the Palestinians were also affected by the winds of extremism sweeping the region and groups like Hamas believed suicide bombings could win against Israel.

Instead, they lost and ended up beholden to Iran’s rocket engineers, blockaded in Gaza. But all things change eventually. Now Hamas leaders are once again jet-setting around the region, and it looks like they might be making new inroads. They may benefit as Iran shifts priorities from Yemen.
JPost Editorial: How Israel should approach Saudi-Iranian normalization
As the Post’s Seth Frantzman pointed out, the reason why the Saudi-Iranian deal was initially portrayed as a setback for Israel is that just days before it was announced, there had been reports in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times that Saudi Arabia had presented conditions for normalizing ties with Israel – including security guarantees from the US.

Saudi-Iran deal reduces chances of nuclear arms race
Frantzman argued that although the Saudi-Iranian deal might pave the way for relations between Riyadh and Syria, which would worry Israel, it could also lead to Iran scaling down its nuclear program, which would be a welcome development. “Saudi Arabia will not want to sign a deal and then suddenly have Iran develop a bomb that threatens the region,” he wrote. “Clearly, regional stability means not having a nuclear-armed Iran or a nuclear arms race.”

Jerusalem and Riyadh have maintained clandestine contacts over establishing relations and Netanyahu said after meeting with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in January that they had discussed “the next steps to deepen the Abraham Accords and widen the circle of peace, with an emphasis on a breakthrough with Saudi Arabia.”

No Israeli officials have gone on record about the resumption of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, or the fact that it was a diplomatic victory for China in a region in which the US has historically played the dominant role. Still, the hope in Jerusalem is that, as in the case of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia’s detente with Iran will not prevent it from forging relations with Israel in the near future. Perhaps it will even expedite the process.

Regardless, now is not the time for Israel to take a wait-and-see approach, but rather to engage with both the US and – through appropriate channels – Saudi Arabia and explore how the window of opportunity for normalization can be maintained and eventually seized.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas Invited to Visit Saudi Arabia
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was invited for an official visit by the King of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, according to Palestinian reports.

Abbas will be joined by the Minister of Civil Affairs of the Palestinian Authority Hossein al-Sheikh and the head of the PA’s intelligence Majed Faraj, the reports said on Sunday.

The visit will allegedly take place from Monday to Wednesday. Earlier on Sunday it was reported that Saudi Arabia is hosting a senior delegation of the terrorist organization Hamas.

Saudi Arabia has previously severed relations with Hamas over their takeover of the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority. Riyadh also accused Hamas of sabotaging negotiations with the Abbas’ Fatah movement.
Saudis said set to host top Hamas delegation, further dimming Israeli hopes for ties
A senior delegation representing Palestinian terror group Hamas was set to visit Saudi Arabia on Sunday, according to multiple Arabic media reports, representing a major development as Israel’s hopes of forging official ties with Riyadh appear to dwindle further.

For many years, Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Hamas has been cold and tense, and the kingdom even arrested many people with ties to the jihadist group, which rules the Gaza Strip and openly seeks Israel’s destruction.

But following its landmark rapprochement with Iran, Riyadh appeared set to host a high-level delegation including Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh, his deputy Saleh al-Arouri, and the head of the group abroad, Khaled Mashaal, according to various Palestinian and Arabic-language media outlets, including Jordan’s Al Ghad and the London-based Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

The delegation will reportedly pay a pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest site in Mecca and try to mend Hamas’s relationship with Riyadh, which has been frosty since 2007, when the terror group overthrew the Palestinian Authority and took over Gaza in a bloody coup. Saudi leaders had blamed Hamas for the failure of attempts at reconciliation between it and the PA’s Fatah party.

In 2019, Saudi authorities arrested dozens of Hamas-linked operatives, saying they were threatening the kingdom’s rule.


Netanyahu pays condolence visit to Dee family in Efrat
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday paid a condolence visit to the Dee family in Efrat, after mother Lucy Dee and daughters Maia, 20, and Rina, 15, were killed in a Palestinian terrorist attack.

The April 7 shooting took place on the Route 57 highway near the Hamra Junction. Terrorists opened fire on the Dees’ passing vehicle, causing it to crash into the road’s shoulder. The terrorists then approached the car and riddled it with nearly two dozen bullets.

“The Land of Israel is acquired through trials and tribulations,” Netanyahu told Rabbi Leo Dee on Sunday, adding, “Now, your wife and daughters will live within us.”

Rabbi Dee told the premier about the family’s aliyah and said that despite the tragedy, Lucy would have no regrets about fulfilling 2,000 years of Jewish longing by immigrating to Israel.
BBC double standards on terrorism evident in Hamra attack reports
On April 13th the British foreign minister sent a letter to the husband and father of the victims which shows that the British government recognises that the incident was an act of terrorism:

Britain’s national broadcaster, however, continues to apply double standards in its use of language when reporting terrorism which, in addition to being offensive, do not contribute to audience understanding of the issue of Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis. Those double standards are the result of the fact that the BBC adopts differing approaches to acts of terrorism depending on their location because its handling of the topic does not distinguish between method and aims, means and ends. The result is that the BBC’s use – or not – of the word terrorism hinges on its political judgement of the aims of the perpetrators and the description of the means is adjusted accordingly.

That editorial policy clearly continues to seriously undermine the corporation’s claim that it avoids “value judgements” and that it aspires to “remain objective”.


PMW: PLO pays Palestinians to erase Israel in Ramadan quizzes
As is its custom, official PA TV entertained Palestinians with quizzes during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Contestants won monetary prizes merely by denying Israel's existence, giving a “right” wrong answer. The following are four examples of such quizzes:


PreOccupiedTerritory: After Delay, Abbas Condemns Spraying Of Israeli Car With Bullets: Used Too Much Ammo (satire)
The President of the Palestinian Authority bowed to mounting international pressure today and issued a belated denunciation of a fatal attack on a family of Israelis the week before last – in which a group of Palestinian terrorists ran the family’s car off the road, then shot 22 clips of bullets into the vehicle, killing two Jewish girls and fatally injuring their mother – as an unnecessary waste of those bullets when a fraction of the quantity could have achieved the same end.

Mahmoud Abbas called a press conference in the de facto Palestinian capital on Sunday morning to address the shooting two Fridays ago in which Palestinian gunmen murdered Maia and Rina Dee when they sprayed the Dee car with bullets; Leah Dee succumbed last Monday to her injuries from the attack. Abbas agreed to make a statement following more than a week of diplomatic and media efforts decrying his condoning of such brutality.

“I unreservedly condemn this,” he declared. “The deviants who perpetrated this act showed flagrant, irredeemable disregard for precious resources the Resistance needs to remove the usurper Zionist colonialist ape-pigs from our land. Bullets do not grow in trees.”

“I urge our people to do better,” he continued. “No one must be above the law, and I will be sure to enact a law limiting the number of bullets to be fired into the body of a Jew.” Abbas governs by fiat; he has effectively sidelined and rendered irrelevant the legislative branch of the Palestinian government, which has not held elections for either the legislature or the presidency in sixteen years.

Analysts noted that Abbas’s contention that bullets do not grow on trees, while literally factual, belies the truth that Palestinian-governed areas are awash with firearms and ammunition, much of it stolen from Israel Defense Force warehouses or smuggled into the territories.


Iran begins crackdown against violators of mandatory hijab laws
Police in Iran said on Saturday they have implemented a plan to deal with women who violate the country’s strict Islamic dress code.

The number of women defying the dress code that headscarves must be worn in public has increased since a protest movement triggered by the death in custody last year of Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini, 22, for allegedly flouting it.

A statement on the police website on Saturday said action would be taken “from today” over violations in public places, in cars, and other “sites where hijab is sometimes removed.”

“In this context, technology will be used for the smart identification of people who break the law,” it said.

“Removing hijab is considered a crime, and the police deal with social anomalies within the framework of the law,” the statement quoted Security Police chief Hassan Mofakhami as saying.

“People who break the law are responsible for their actions and should be held accountable for their behavior,” he added.


Emily Schrader: Meta to loosen content moderation standards on use of 'Shahid'
Facebook parent company Meta has announced a new content policy change that may embolden terrorist activity on the platform by loosening the moderation standards for the word “shahid” as a part of their Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy.

Meta’s Oversight Board, which consists of 23 “independent” members, has issued a call for public comment on the topic before formal implementation of the policy directive. Public comments will be accepted until April 17th.

Currently, the use of the word “shahid,” which translates to “martyr” in English, is prohibited in the context of praising any individual who is a member of a designated terrorist organization and carries out an act of violence.

Meta claims that the word is the most removed word on Facebook. However, the platform has issued a statement of intent to revise this interpretation of the word “shahid” under the argument that it is not always used to praise terrorists or terrorist acts, and the current standards of enforcement “may result in significant over-enforcement, particularly in Arabic-speaking countries."

Tal-Or Cohen, the founder and executive director of CyberWell which tracks online antisemitism and incitement, disagrees with the assessment that the policy on the word "Shahid" is being over-enforced.

"Meta's current policy is a good foundation upon which to build, and it should not be weakened," she told Ynet. In fact, Cohen believes the current policy should be more stringently enforced, “The gaps that CyberWell found not only support the enforcement of the existing policy, they suggest that it should be strengthened.”

CyberWell has proposed using “shahid” in conjunction with the word “Jews” as well as broadening linguistic variations of the word in Arabic (feminine, misspelled, plural etc.) in order to identify and remove violent content more effectively, rather than loosening the standards of enforcement, leading to more praise of violent content on social media.


CNN journalist urged to delete anti-Israel posts on social media
CNN journalist Tamara Qiblawi will delete a string of anti-Israel and pro-terror comments on social media, according to a CNN spokesperson, The Jerusalem Post has learned. The response came to an HonestReporting (HR) revelation last week that the journalist that wrote a slanted article on April 8 with the headline “Attacks in West Bank, Tel Aviv as tensions remain high following Israeli strikes,” initially failed to note that the airstrikes were in response to acts of aggression from terrorist groups in Gaza and Lebanon.

Qiblawi is Georgetown-educated, originally from Lebanon, who has done work for CNN since 2015 and currently holds the position of Senior Digital Middle East Producer at the US broadcaster’s London bureau. According to HR, “Qiblawi’s social media history casts doubt on her commitment to CNN’s editorial standards, specifically when it comes to reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

HR pointed to a Facebook entry, dated May 15, 2015, in which Qiblawi described the events surrounding Israel’s founding with the Palestinian term “Nakba,” (“catastrophe” in Arabic), a term Palestinians use to describe their experience in the 1948 War of Independence, while denouncing the creation of Israel a safe haven for Jews, “mak[ing] way for an ethnoreligious exclusive state.”

She also wrote that Lebanon faced a “ruthless, genocidal onslaught of an Israeli invasion” and wrote of a “desire for resistance to the Zio-Saudi project.”

A CNN spokesperson responded to HR on April 11 that “Tamara Qiblawi has a track record of delivering excellent, balanced journalism for CNN on the Middle East and other topics. She has agreed to delete these posts.” Qiblawi actually deleted her Facebook account and locked her Twitter profile.
Fake News Easter: BBC Airs Orthodox Jew ‘Spitting on Nuns’ False Footage, Media Parrot Lie About Israeli Police
As Easter celebrations in the Holy Land culminated in the Holy Fire ritual on Saturday, the international media jumped at the opportunity to lambast Israel with discredited allegations of poor treatment of Christians by authorities.

Reuters quoted Jerusalem church leaders at length complaining that “heavy-handed” measures were restricting the rights of Christians to attend special Easter celebrations due to concerns about dangerous crowd numbers.

The BBC took a similar line, referencing Christian leaders’ urging of worshipers to ignore alleged Israeli restrictions and attend events at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre regardless.

Al Jazeera, meanwhile, tied the statement about restrictions to a reported increase of attacks against Christians by what are gratuitously labeled “Israeli settlers” in a story dramatically headlined, ‘”Death to Christians”: Violence steps up under new Israeli gov’t.’

Publications to run similar pieces included: The Guardian, TRT World, Associated Press, Middle East Eye, and others, all emphasizing Israeli authorities as being both responsible for imposing and enforcing crowd size restrictions during Easter.

However, an April 3 letter signed by Teo Metropoulos, the church architect of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was leaked on Friday, claims the restrictions on crowd capacity are actually due to the church itself — and not Israeli police.

Stressing that just 1,800 worshipers could “safely” enter the church, with a further 200 allowed in the courtyard, the letter states: “The only entrance to the church has an opening of 3 meters without any other dangerous exit, for this reason all the internal security corridors that have been marked by the police authorities must remain open until the end of the ceremony.”


Traffic control company sparks outrage after displaying antisemitic message on one of its vehicles
A well-known traffic control company has sparked outrage after an antisemitic message was displayed on the back of one of its vehicles.

Drivers were shocked to see an electronic message board with the words 'JEWS DID 9/11' on the back of a ute in Cairns, north Queensland, on Friday.

The vehicle belonged to traffic control company A2O Traffic Solutions.

The message had been referring to the horrific terrorist attack that took down the World Trade Centre and claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people in the US in 2001.

Conspiracy theorists have been peddling harmful rumours the Jewish community and Israel were linked to the event.

The 9/11 Commission found that Khalid Sheik Mohammed was the man who came up with the idea of the attack and took it to al-Qaeda, who made the horror a reality.

Local Samantha Brookes said she had been driving home from shops in nearby Kanimbla when she was confronted with the shocking display.

'I took down the license and vehicle unit number and rang the office,' she told the Cairns Post.

The 22-year-old said the act was unacceptable and she was 'disgusted anyone would display such a message'.


Ahead of annual memorial day, 147,199 Holocaust survivors living in Israel
There are 147,199 Holocaust survivors living in Israel, according to figures published Sunday by the Holocaust Survivors’ Rights Authority ahead of the upcoming Holocaust Memorial Day.

Israel officially marks its annual Holocaust Memorial Day starting Monday evening.

According to the authority, which is part of the Social Equality Ministry, the average age of Holocaust survivors is 85, with around 30,000 over age 90 and 462 who have lived for over a century. The youngest Holocaust survivors are aged 76.

Five hundred and twenty-one Holocaust survivors immigrated to Israel from Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion.

Haifa is home to the largest number of Holocaust survivors in Israel, followed by Jerusalem and then Tel Aviv.

Of the Holocaust survivors living in Israel, 63 percent were born in Europe — 37% are from countries of the former Soviet Union, 11% from Romania, and 5% from Poland. An additional 2.7% are from Bulgaria, 1.4% from Hungary, 1.4% from Germany, and 1% from the former Czechoslovakia and France.

An additional 27,765 survivors are from Morocco and Algeria, where they suffered discrimination and harassment under the Nazi-allied Vichy government.
Bermuda and the Abandonment of the Jews
The name “Bermuda” conjures up a variety of images. Tourists think of it as a tropical vacation site. Scientists ponder the disappearance of ships in the Bermuda Triangle. But for those concerned with the history of the Holocaust, Bermuda is remembered as the site of a notorious U.S.-British conference, eighty years ago this week, that was organized for the ostensible purpose of rescuing Jews from Hitler, but instead abandoned them.

“All FDR Said Was ‘No’”

In early 1943, following the Allies’ verification of the Nazi genocide, some British parliament members and church leaders began pressing for rescue action. To appease the growing clamor, the Churchill and Roosevelt administrations announced they would hold a conference to address the crisis.

The island of Bermuda was chosen for the gathering. Nahum Goldmann, cochairman of the World Jewish Congress, suspected the remote setting was selected so “it will take place practically in secret, without pressure of public opinion.”

Jewish organizations asked permission to send representatives to the conference; their request was rejected. They sent the State Department a list of proposals for rescue action; the memo was ignored. Jewish congressmen met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to suggest rescue steps, “but the answer to all of [our] suggestions was ‘No’,” according to Congressman Daniel Ellison (R-Maryland).

Basking in the Sun
American Jewish groups were alarmed that U.S. Congressman Sol Bloom (D-New York) was chosen as a member of the American delegation to Bermuda. Bloom was a staunch defender of FDR’s harsh policy toward Jewish refugees; Jewish leaders feared Bloom would serve as “an alibi” for the administration’s claim that rescue was impossible. Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long wrote in his diary that he chose Bloom because the congressman was “easy to handle” and “terribly ambitious for publicity.”

The Bermuda gathering opened on April 19, 1943, which coincided with the first night of Passover and the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt against the Nazis. The British and U.S. governments decided beforehand that in their discussions, there would be no emphasis on the plight of the Jews, nor would they adopt any policies that would benefit Jews in particular.
80 years of renewed Jewish life in Gush Etzion celebrated
Celebrations commenced last week to mark eight decades of renewed Jewish life in Gush Etzion, a bloc of Israeli communities located in the Judean Mountains south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

“The Gush is developing due to your work establishing the Gush that stands strong, and with God’s help, it will stand forever,” Gush Etzion Regional Council head Shlomo Neeman told the crowd at Thursday’s opening ceremony, which took place at Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, the first out of the four original communities established in April 1943.

The regional council and the Kfar Etzion Field School organized Thursday’s event, which drew many veteran community members under a tent despite the unseasonal rainfall. Brig. Gen. Avi Bluth, commander of the IDF’s Judea and Samaria Division, was also in attendance.

Members of Masu’ot Yitzchak, Ein Tzurim and Revadim were present. These communities were founded in the immediate years after Kfar Etzion, which was conquered by Jordanian forces and destroyed during the 1948-49 Israeli War of Independence and reestablished following the 1967 Six-Day War.

On May 13, 1948, the day before Israel declared independence, Jordan’s Arab Legion with the help of local Arabs massacred 129 Jews at Kfar Etzion following a two-day battle. The site was re-established as a kibbutz in September 1967 as the first Jewish community restored in Judea and Samaria after the territory was liberated during the Six-Day War.

“For 19 years we were sure that we’d return. We lived it in our thoughts and our dreams, and we knew that we would rebuild it with reinforced and renewed strength,” said Shaya Altman, one of the founders of Kfar Etzion.




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