Sunday, May 05, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
The Israel Defense Forces on Saturday bombed more than 120 targets in the Gaza Strip, including a cross-border attack tunnel, an underground rocket factory and a six-story building used by Hamas’s military intelligence, in response to the hundreds of rockets and mortar shells fired at southern Israel throughout the day, the army said.
The army said it was prepared to continue conducting airstrikes if the attacks from the Strip continue.
Terror groups in Gaza made similar threats, saying they were prepared to attack deeper into Israel, including toward the city of Beersheba, if the IDF continued its strikes on targets in the enclave.
The fresh exchange began on Friday evening when Palestinians in the Strip shot two soldiers on patrol near the border in southern Gaza. A male soldier was moderately wounded, and a female soldier was lightly hurt, the IDF said. In response, the Israeli military bombed a Hamas post, killing several of the terror group’s operatives.
On Saturday morning, terror groups in the Strip began launching rockets and mortar shells at Israel. As of Saturday night, over 250 projectiles had been fired, most of them at the towns closest to the Gaza border, but some reached as far as Rehovot and Ashdod. At least two Israeli civilians were wounded in the attacks.
In response, the military launched a series of strikes from air and land, hitting targets throughout the coastal enclave connected to Hamas, which rules Gaza, and the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
200+ rockets rained down on the homes of Israeli families today. WATCH: pic.twitter.com/XZoqPabuQ6— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 4, 2019
RAW FOOTAGE: Incoming rocket fire from Gaza at Israeli civilians, as filmed by the Israeli civilians that Hamas is targeting. pic.twitter.com/Kz1d1KwCle— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 4, 2019
The army was investigating the possibility that a Palestinian sniper targeted a senior Israel Defense Forces officer during riots on the Gaza border Friday.Attack tunnel discovered and destroyed as IDF strikes hit Gaza
The army’s Gaza division would conduct an investigation into the shooting, which injured two soldiers who were part of a patrol near the border in the southern Gaza Strip, the Walla news site reported.
One soldier was moderately wounded in the attack and a female soldier was lightly hurt, the IDF said. Both were evacuated by helicopter to the Soroka hospital in Beersheba. Media reports said the male soldier, an officer and a tracker, had a gunshot wound in the thigh, while the female soldier was hit by shrapnel.
In response to the shooting, an IDF aircraft attacked a nearby Hamas post, the army said.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said two people were killed in the strike and two others were wounded. The ministry identified the two killed as Abdullah Ibrahim Mahmoud Abu Salouh, 33 and Alaa Ali Hasan al-Boubli, 29.
Hamas, an Islamist terror group, confirmed the two men killed in the airstrike were members of its military wing and pledged to respond to what it called an “Israeli aggression.”
IDF tanks and helicopters began attacking terrorist targets belonging to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, managing to destroy a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) attack tunnel entering Israel from the southern part of the strip, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit reported on Saturday.Gaza Factions Launch Dozens of Rockets at Israeli Territory
The tunnel was, until Saturday, under surveillance by the IDF. It was destroyed by fighter planes. The tunnel was dug by members of the PIJ in order to carry out a terror attack inside Israel. It was over 20 meters deep with several entrances.
"The resistance is always ready to respond to the crimes of the occupation," the Hamas Spokesperosn in Gaza said, while the Islamic Jihad claimed that "We are committed to protecting our people and to deter Israel at all costs and under all circumstances."
Islamic Jihad Deputy Khalil al-Hayya added that "There is no escape but that the occupation will be committed to understandings and to break the siege. The resistance has tools capable of forcing Israel to maintain the understandings reached."
The Islamic Jihad leader Baha Abu al-Ata was invited to Cairo and immediately left Gaza through the Rafah border crossing. Israel has threatened to kill Abu al-Ata more than once, since he is responsible for the launching of many rockets into Israeli territory.
Since the beginning of the weekend, five Palestinians have been killed according to Palestinian sources. The Gaza Health Ministry, however, reports that one was killed and nine injured.
Saturday, May 04, 2019Elder of Ziyon
On Saturday evening, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry reported that a 14-month-old Palestinian child, Saba Mahmoud Hamdan Abu Arar, had been killed and her mother, Falastin Saleh Abu Arar, when an Israeli airstrikes hit their house in Gaza City. Several hours later, the ministry said that Falastin had succumbed to her wounds.
On Twitter, the Israel Defense Forces’ Arabic-language spokesman said the mother and child did not appear to have been killed in an Israeli attack.
Adraee indicated that the deaths may have been caused by a failed rocket attack against Israel, noting that many of the projectiles fired at Israel were launched from within populated areas.
“There are more and more indications reaching us from the Gaza Strip that put serious doubt on the truth of the statement from Hamas’s healthy ministry about the death of the baby Saba Mahmoud Hamdan Abu Arar and her mother Falastin Saleh Abu Arar,” Maj. Avichay Adraee wrote in a tweet.
“According to these indications, the death was caused by terrorist activities by Palestinian militants and not by an Israeli strike,” he said.
 |
| Egyptian politician kissing dead baby killed by Hamas |
“The Israeli plane fired a missile near the house and the shrapnel entered the house and hit the poor baby,” Seba’s aunt said.If it was shrapnel, then there must be a huge impact crater or a collapsed building right nearby. No one is claiming that.
“They were sitting at the yard in their house with their mother.” said Abu Nidal Abu Arar, a relative living next door.
“They were shocked by a missile landing on them. This occupation is criminal.”
Much of this has taken place in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. According to the NYPD, assault and robberies on Jews in Crown Heights went from two in 2017 to 10 in 2018. The attackers tend to be African-American, and they sometimes yell out anti-Semitic slurs. There have been at least three such attacks so far this year. You can see a lot of this violence in recovered surveillance footage, but not much of it makes it to the front pages of major newspapers.Most hate crimes reported in New York City are anti-Jewish, police say
And it’s not just happening in Crown Heights. On Tuesday morning, Rabbi Uriel Vigler was heading to his synagogue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan when he was accosted by a black man calling him a “f***ing Jew” and “the devil.” The man fled when he saw a security guard. Vigler captured some of the aftermath on video.
These incidents aren’t talked about much because they have no political utility. There’s no fake soul-searching because the attacks have nothing to do with Israel. And there’s no finger-pointing because they have nothing to do with Donald Trump and white nationalism.
There are still other reasons that black-on-Jewish hate crime is largely ignored: Democrats would rather not speak of it because they’re hyper-sensitive about offending African-American voters (and not too worried about losing Jewish ones). Some on the left are so frightened to address this kind of anti-Semitism that they’ve decided it isn’t anti-Semitism at all. An article in the Forward last December more-or-less chalked it all up to the effects of gentrification. And if Republicans bring it up, they’ll immediately be called racists, as they are when they point out Rep. Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism.
Meanwhile, everyone’s favorite new moderate, Pete Buttigieg, just earned his official Democratic presidential-candidate badge by going up to Harlem to get the nod from the mellowing elder statesman of black anti-Semitism, Al Sharpton. Any genuine reflection on the left would surely end the ritual of seeking blessings from a man who said, in in the wake of a murderous pogrom in 1991, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.” But Democrats still stand in line every four years to kiss his ring.
More than half of all hate crimes in New York City reported in 2018 and so far in 2019 targeted Jews, authorities said Thursday.Synagogue asked for security funds a year ago; they arrived days before attack
According to New York Police Department figures released Thursday, of the 145 hate crimes reported in January through April 2019, 82 incidents – nearly 57 percent – were anti-Jewish.
In 2018, there were 353 total hate crime complaints, up from 325 in 2017, and the NYPD made 149 arrests. Of these hate crimes, 186 – or nearly 53% – had anti-Jewish bias, up from 151 in 2017.
The NYPD tally is of reported complaints and arrests, not convictions.
Three precincts with large Hasidic populations, all in Brooklyn, reported the most anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2018. The 71st Precinct, which encompasses part of Crown Heights, reported nine anti-Jewish hate crimes, the most of any precinct. Precincts including Williamsburg and Borough Park each had seven.
Sixty-nine – or 37 percent – of 2018’s anti-Jewish hate crime reports resulted in an arrest. Forty of the alleged perpetrators were white, 25 were black, two were Hispanic and two were Asian.
The Chabad of Poway synagogue, where a gunman on Saturday fired his semi-automatic rifle at Jewish worshipers, had applied for a federal grant to install gates and more secure doors to better protect that area. The $150,000 was approved in September but only got awarded in late March.
“Obviously we did not have a chance to start using the funds yet,” Rabbi Simcha Backman told The Associated Press.
Backman, who oversees security grants for the 207 Chabad institutions across California, declined to provide details on the planned security enhancements or to speculate whether they might have changed the outcome of Saturday’s attack.
The shooter killed a woman and wounded an 8-year-old girl and two men — one of them the rabbi presiding at the service on the last day of Passover.
Backman said the synagogue north of San Diego is considering asking authorities to allow some of the money be used to hire security guards, which it doesn’t have now.
Friday, May 03, 2019Elder of ZiyonChild Narrator: Those who accept humiliation – what is the point in their existence? Those who reject oppression are the ones who assert their existence, and they eliminate the injustice from the land of the Arabs.Here are some more excerpts:
Children Singing: Rebels! Rebels! Rebels! Glorious steeds call us and lead us onto paths leading to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The blood of martyrs protects us. Paradise needs real men!
The land of the Prophet Muhammad's Night Journey is calling us. Our Palestine must return to us. Oh Saladdin, your men are among us – shame will be washed away!
[You need] force and the Quran, oh free people! We must persevere no matter what happens, and with the help of the Omnipotent Lord, day will follow night.
Take us, oh ships, until we liberate our lands – until we reach our shores and crush the treacherous ones!
Blow, oh winds of Paradise – flow, oh rivers of martyrs! My Islam is calling, who is going to heeds its call? Rise, oh righteous ones!
Girl 1: Our martyrs sacrificed their lives without hesitation. They attained Paradise, and the scent of musk emanates from their bodies. They compete with one another to reach Paradise. Will Jerusalem be their capital city, or will it be a hotbed for cowards?
Girl 2: We will defend the land of divine guidance with our bodies, and we will sacrifice our souls without hesitation. We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque. We will lead the army of Allah fulfilling His promise, and we will subject them to eternal torture.
The Palestinian Authority is again crying wolf over the financial crisis it is currently facing. Let there be no mistake: this is a fake, self-created crisis that is a direct result of the PA's "pay for slay" policy. Since its creation, the PA has paid monthly salaries to imprisoned terrorists and allowances to the families of dead terrorists. These are not dependent on social need but are simply financial rewards for terrorism. Moreover, if a terrorist spends five years in an Israeli prison, he is entitled to a guaranteed "pension" for life.Abbas Is Trying to Scare Israel and the World
In 2018, Israel passed legislation according to which any sum expended by the PA on "pay for slay" during a given year would be deducted from the tax revenues Israel transferred to it the following year. Accordingly, in February 2019, the Israeli cabinet decided to deduct $11.7 million a month from tax transfers to the PA - the sum the PA had publicly admitted to paying to terrorist prisoners.
While this monthly deduction was no more than 6.2% of the total amount to be transferred, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas decided to plunge the PA economy into the abyss by refusing to accept any tax revenues. True to form, instead of castigating the PA for squandering billions on incentivizing and rewarding terrorists, French President Macron, the EU and the UN are pressuring Israel to capitulate to Abbas' blackmail and find a way to give the PA all the funds.
The Palestinian Authority is refusing to accept any funds transferred from Israel because Israel has begun deducting the value of stipends the PA pays to terrorists and their families. As a result, the PA is now telling the world it faces economic collapse. PA President Mahmoud Abbas is trying to scare Israel and the world community into believing the result will be chaos and terror. The PA leadership is emulating Hamas' behavior by threatening that a humanitarian disaster will ensue unless more financial aid is rendered.Dr. Martin Sherman: Let the PA collapse
One way to reject the forthcoming American peace proposal and yet not be blamed is to engineer an economic crisis that diverts attention from continuous Palestinian intransigence regarding any and every attempt at peacemaking.
Israel is doing more than its share to bolster the Palestinian economy - providing jobs to Palestinians in the Israeli labor market; supplying water, electricity and health services to Palestinians; and keeping Hamas from overthrowing Abbas' PA.
While it is best for all concerned to ensure a decent standard of living for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, it is highly unlikely that the PA will collapse since it is a source of significant income for Abbas and his coterie.
PA collapse as an opportunity, not a threat
In this regard, there should be a sea-change in the prevailing perception of the significance for Israel of the collapse of the PA and with it, of the entire mendacious Oslowian edifice.
After all, if the only way for the PA to endure is for Israel to collaborate in the financing of the slaughter of its own citizens by transferring “pay-to-slay” funds to perpetrators of terror, grave doubts must be cast on the prudence—indeed, the sanity—of sustaining this state of affairs.
Moreover, for Israel to back down on this issue would not only greatly undermine its credibility—and hence its deterrence capabilities—but would constitute a sharp slap in the face for its staunch allies in the US Senate, who passed the Taylor Force Act to curtail American support for the PA—unless it halts payments to perpetuators of terror and/or their families.
It is generally considered that the imminent financial collapse of the PA comprises a threat to Israel, heralding increasing instability and security problems.
Although this may be true to some extent in the short run, it must be rejected as a long term constraint on Israeli strategic thinking. Indeed, rather than a threat, the impending collapse of the PA should be perceived as an opportunity to extricate the nation from the hazardous cul-de-sac into which the deceptive Oslo process lured it.
Friday, May 03, 2019Elder of Ziyon
Academic fraud
The ‘uniqueness’ of the Holocaust flows from Ashkenazi pride in their racial superiority. Its corollary is not denied but defended: non-Jews count for very little, which can be traced back to the Old Testament thesis on the acceptability of the Canaanite genocide because Yahweh willed it. Israel’s killing of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims since its founding has been similarly justified. Suffice it to mention the 1200 civilians killed in Lebanon in July 2006 and the 1400 civilians (including 400 children) killed in Gaza in January 2009. It is evident that the chosen Jew–unchosen non-Jew divide has been globalised. It is even accepted by many ‘Third world’elites, including Saudi, Jordanian and UAE Arab leaders who endorse the US–Israeli agenda without demurral. Its legitimacy, its ‘truth’ has long been settled. The dissenters among Jews are aberrations.Dossa has a bit of an obsession with Ashkenazic Jews, whom he usually defines as "white Jews." In a footnote he blames a researcher's racism on his being an Ashkenazic Jew. "Lemkin held a racist view of Africans; he labelled them ‘savages’ and ‘cannibals’ and even blamed them for killing fellow Africans on the orders of their Belgian masters. It testifies to the resilience of chauvinism in Ashkenazi culture that a man like Lemkin could succumb to its vile charms."
Friday, May 03, 2019Elder of Ziyon
Friday, May 03, 2019Elder of ZiyonEven experts critical of the Brotherhood agree that the organization does not meet the criteria for a terrorist group.From reading this onegets the impression that the Muslim Brotherhood is opposed to all forms of violence by Muslims.
Under the British-backed monarchy in the 1940s, the Egyptian Brotherhood was one of several factions to create paramilitary wings. In 1948, a 23-year-old veterinary student who belonged to the group assassinated the prime minister. Two weeks later, another member of the outfit was arrested for attempting to bomb a courthouse.
Mr. al-Banna denounced the perpetrators and their actions. “They are neither Brothers nor are they Muslims,” he said.
In the 1960s, a small circle of Muslim Brothers were arrested for plotting to reestablish an armed wing. That is when the Brotherhood formally codified its opposition to violence in a tract titled, “Preachers, Not Judges.”
Here is an example from January 2018 where the Brotherhood approvingly quoted Hamas' support of the murder of Rabbi Raziel Shevach.
Thursday, May 02, 2019Elder of Ziyon
Faculty and student members of the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis seek at all times to uphold this university’s basic principles of non-discrimination and equal opportunity in our relationships with other NYU departments and programs. We feel that these principles, set forth in the Code of Ethical Conduct, are being effectively violated in the operation of NYU’s study abroad program in Tel Aviv. Access to the program is clearly being obstructed by Israel’s long-standing discriminatory policies (as acknowledged by the State Department) of barring entry to Palestinians or persons of Arab descent and Muslim heritage, and by the recent amendments to its Law of Entry, which advocate for the exclusion of persons on account of their political speech. Moreover, the Israeli government routinely prevents Palestinian students from enrolling in higher education institutions outside of the West Bank and Gaza.
The NYU administration has indicated its disagreement with the Israeli state's policy of barring entry based on political speech. However, in noting that "no NYU student has been prevented from going to Israel," the administration fails to take into account the Palestinian members of the NYU community from the West Bank and Gaza who are unable to enter Israel, in addition to those with American citizenship who have been banned based on their Palestinian heritage and political activity. Participating in the program while members of our own department are barred entry to their homeland and sites of research serves to reproduce the racial inequalities of Israel's policies in our own workplace.
We pledge non-cooperation with the Tel Aviv program until (a) the Israeli state ends its restrictions on entry based on ancestry and political speech and (b) the Israeli state adopts policies granting visas for exchanges to Palestinian universities on a fully equal basis as it does to Israeli universities.
We urge other departments to pass similar resolutions in the spirit of abiding by NYU’s Code of Ethical Conduct and opposing racial and religious profiling on campus.
**According to the amendment, the excluded groups include
American Friends Service Committee, American Muslims for Palestine, Code Pink, Jewish Voice for Peace, National Students for Justice in Palestine, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and the BDS National Committee.
When you look at a rabbi with a white beard wearing a black hat, a long black coat and a gartl, what do you see? Anti-Semites see a refugee from the ghettos of Europe, a secret emissary of a global power intent on ruling from within. But what do you see?Washington State man arrested for making ‘extremely serious’ death threats against Ben Shapiro
When you look at an Israeli living in Sderot, what do you see? Anti-Semites see an emissary of Israeli intolerance, a thumb in the face of Palestinians, a hypnotizer of the world. But what do you see?
When you look at a 60-year-old Jewish woman living near San Diego, what do you see? Anti-Semites see a recipient of privilege, an inherent victimizer in the hierarchical power structure. But what do you see?
Anti-Semites see the Jews as part of a pattern. Each Jew is a data point in that pattern; every Jew can be pigeonholed as a member of a broader conspiracy. Right-wing white supremacist anti-Semites see the Jews as an eternal threat, a racially “mongrelizing” threat to white purity, a religious blot, a nefarious group of schemers threatening their race-based civilization. Radical Islamist anti-Semites see the Jews as the sons of pigs and monkeys, religious threats who must be exterminated. Left-wing anti-Semites see the Jews as defenders of brutal hierarchies, purveyors of exploitation.
Each of these types of anti-Semitism carries its own level of threat. White supremacist anti-Semitism, in the United States, is the type most likely to end with dead bodies: White supremacists have been responsible for an ever-increasing number of terrorist attacks, as more and more young men are radicalized through online forums. Radical Islamic anti-Semitism is the type most likely to end with dead Jews worldwide, in anti-Semitic attacks throughout Europe, as well as terrorist attacks against Jews in Israel. Left-wing anti-Semitism is the type most likely to be mainstreamed — just view The New York Times’ decision to print a virulently anti-Semitic cartoon that could have come from the pages of Der Sturmer. The fact that the Times’ editors didn’t even notice the anti-Semitism shows how easily anti-Zionism has merged, for the mainstream left, into outright anti-Semitic propagandizing.
TMZ reports that a man in Washington state was arrested today for making death threats against Ben Shapiro and his family.
Law enforcement sources tell us, Shapiro, who frequently appears on cable news shows and has a hugely popular podcast, filed a police report with the LAPD…
We’re told the Department got in touch with the FBI and created a joint task force to hunt down the culprit…
We’re told these threats were “extremely serious” … not just someone blowing off steam.
Shapiro confirmed the gist of TMZ’s report by tweeting a link to the story and thanking law enforcement:
Israel's basic purpose is to protect the Jewish people, both by serving as a place of refuge and by maintaining a standing military to defend the nation. Israel is of course the homeland of the Jewish people, where Jews yearned to return for 2,000 years. But even more fundamental is physical survival, both as individual Jews and as a people who share beliefs and traditions—a luxury that too often could not be enjoyed in exile. No Israel in the 1930s and 1940s meant millions of Jews were trapped in Europe. Imagine how many lives could have been saved.
Today, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and other efforts to destroy Israel as the Jewish state through demonization and delegitimization would undermine this basic purpose of protecting Jews. Indeed, they would undermine Israel to the point that it effectively ceases to exist as the world has come to recognize it. With anti-Semitism resurgent in Europe and all too prevalent in the Middle East, the implications for Israeli Jews would be disastrous. Moreover, these anti-Israel efforts are inherently anti-Semitic as they single out the Jewish state for boycott and condemnation when, by all relevant standards, other countries are far more deserving.
Abraham Foxman described the latter point well in 2015 shortly before retiring as national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "Fifty years ago," he explained, "prognosticators said: ‘Anti-Semitism, it's a historical fact of the past. You don't have to worry about it.' They said: ‘In 50 years, Israel will be a normal nation among all the nations.' Boy, how wrong they were! Israel has become ‘the Jew among the nations.'" What does that mean exactly? Foxman continued: "What everybody else can do, Israel can't do. Tell me a country in the world that can't decide its capital, has to defend its right to defend itself, has to deal with double and triple standards in terms of being told what it should do, how it should do it, who it can do business with, who it should play soccer with, what person can come and sing."
It is important to keep Foxman's words in mind on a day when Israelis, no matter what they were doing, stopped for two minutes of silence to remember the six million Jews murdered as sirens wailed across Israel. Remembering the Holocaust should be a reminder of why Israel is so important to the Jewish people, and why demonizing it is so nefarious. The wellbeing of the Jewish people—and of Judaism itself—is tied to the wellbeing of Israel. Those serious about fighting anti-Semitism should be serious about defending Israel. Anyone else is either a bystander or, worse, part of the problem, isolating Israel as the Jew among nations.
And now... #Holocaust denial tweets read by Holocaust survivors. Because you jerks need to know how stupid you sound. https://t.co/uK1FtQ7IYo#NeverAgain #YomHashoah pic.twitter.com/gdIQZr0g87
— The Mossad (@TheMossadIL) May 2, 2019
Thursday, May 02, 2019Elder of Ziyon
Thursday, May 02, 2019Elder of Ziyon
Israel came to a standstill at 10 a.m. Thursday as sirens wailed throughout the country in memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during World War II.
The annual remembrance is one of the most solemn days on Israel’s national calendar, with much of the country all but shutting down to honor those who suffered under the Nazi killing machine.
The sirens will be followed by ceremonies marking Holocaust Remembrance Day in schools, public institutions, and army bases, including a wreath-laying ceremony at Yad Vashem’s memorial for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the Knesset’s annual recitation of victims’ names. The March of the Living at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland will begin at 1 p.m.
Events will officially come to a close in ceremonies at Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot (Ghetto Fighters) and Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, named after those who resisted the Nazis in Warsaw and the leader of the uprising, Mordechai Anielewicz.
The national day began Wednesday evening at sundown, as ceremonies were held throughout the country, with solemn songs, candle-lightings and remembrances from survivors and their descendants. TV channels and radio stations switched to exclusive programming about the Holocaust and stores and restaurants shuttered early in deference to the commemorations.
At Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and Museum, an official state event featured six torch lightings from those who lived through the genocide.
The entire country stops to remember the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust#NeverAgain pic.twitter.com/5M9bsMd4ry
— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) May 2, 2019
In a fiery, spellbinding performance of less than 20 minutes on Wednesday night, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showcased the oratorial mastery that helped him win reelection just three weeks ago, and showcased, too, his personal conviction that he is uniquely qualified to lead the Jewish state.
Addressing the nation at the start of the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, Netanyahu delivered an address that built from astonishing stories of Holocaust suffering and heroism, as told to him by a group of survivors with whom he had met on Tuesday, to a resounding assertion of Israel’s legitimacy and denunciation of its critics.
Speaking at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem to a large audience that heard him in absolute silence, and to a nation watching on TV, the prime minister hailed survivors such as Fanny Ben-Ami, who as a 13-year-old led a group of children to safety in Switzerland from France but who turned back when she realized that a three-year-old girl in their group had been left behind in the demilitarized zone. “Fanny went back to get her,” the prime minister marveled; she “zig-zagged under gunfire” to bring the toddler to safety: “An angel of salvation, aged 13.”
He went on to detail visits he has made in recent years to European countries “whose land is soaked with the blood of our brothers and sisters, and where we were turned into human dust,” but that have today become some of Israel’s greatest admirers and supporters. In these lands, he said, “I felt terrible pain at the disaster that befell us,” but simultaneously “immense pride to represent our people, that rose from the ashes in our independent state.”
Unable to protect themselves, millions of Jews in the Diaspora were condemned to their deaths, he recalled bitterly. “In exile, our abysmal weakness doomed us to our fate.” But now, restored to their homeland, the Jews have achieved “a miracle of revival” and their country has become a rising world power.
For all of Israel’s achievements, Netanyahu said, it dare not be complacent in the face of its enemies. This assertion, he insisted, preempting critics who accuse him of whipping up fear among Israelis, was not a case of “artificial scaremongering.” Even the greatest world powers must always be aware of the dangers they face, he noted. Indeed, “awareness of danger is a condition for living.”
The “paradox” of Israel’s revival, he said, was that it has been accompanied by an ongoing rise in anti-Semitism. “The extreme right, the extreme left and extremist Islam,” he said, “agree on only one thing: hatred of the Jews.”
Thursday, May 02, 2019Elder of Ziyon
Buy EoZ's books!
PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
.jpg)
