Israel has been enforcing a no-man's land buffer zone between 100 and 300 meters from the Gaza fence, to ensure that Hamas or other terror groups do not try to infiltrate into Israel.
The weekly Gaza riots have been inside this buffer zone.
After 18 months of the riots with limited Israeli responses, Hamas has decided to make their children into human shields once again.
In a major ceremony this week, the playground - called Al Awda (Return) Park - was inaugurated with speeches from people who noted explicitly that the park was built as a challenge to Israel, not a needed place of recreation for kids.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
The Kurdish experiment, in at least the territory's current quasi-independence, has shown the world a decent society where all its inhabitants, men and women, enjoy far greater freedoms than can be found anywhere else in the Arab and Muslim world.
The Jewish state must now, more than ever, not ignore the 35-40 million Kurds, who remain stateless and shunned by the world and who seek, at last, the historic justice they have craved for centuries, nay millennia, but have been denied; an independent Kurdish state of their own.
According to an article titled "Can Israel make it alone?" written some years ago by James Lewis in the American Thinker, Lewis wrote: "Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests - like survival." He realized that with the stark reality of a profoundly unfriendly Obama Administration towards the Jewish state, creating facts on the ground was more important than ever. He wrote:
"If the United States abandons the Jewish State, Jerusalem will have to seek new alliances." Fortunately that is what Prime Minister Netanyahu successfully and largely has achieved. Since then Israel enjoys the friendliest American President it has ever experienced, but there is never any guarantee that a president will succeed to a second term.
Turkey has now chosen to break its alliance with Israel and instead has sought alliances with rogue states such as Iran and Syria, along with the Hamas occupied and terrorist infested Gaza Strip. Under Erdogan it has turned on Israel with a viciousness that is quite desolating. It is a nation turning its back upon the Ataturk secular revolution of the 1920s. Instead, it is sliding remorsefully back to the 7th century mindset and cesspit that so many of its neighbors wallow in.
Israel should advance the restoration of a profoundly just, moral and enduring pact with the Kurdish people, and assistance towards creating a future independent State of Kurdistan. An enduring alliance between Israel and Kurdistan would be a vindication of history, a recognition of the shared sufferings of both peoples, and bring closer the advent of a brighter and strategically stronger future for both non-Arab nations.
UNRWA’s mandate from the General Assembly comes up for renewal every three years. Due to expire in June 2020, it was renewed during the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, which came to end on September 30, 2019. Nothing has emerged in the media to suggest that Guterres’s investigation into the ethics report came up in the discussions.
Speaking during the 42nd session of the UN Human Rights Council on September 23, 2019, former UNRWA general counsel James Lindsay declared that the agency must evolve or dissolve. UNRWA’s major structural problem, he said, is its unique definition of who qualifies as a refugee. This differs fundamentally from the definition used by the UNHCR, which is responsible for all other refugees around the world. By not demanding that UNRWA adopt this definition,” says Lindsay, “the General Assembly has elevated politics over morality.”
Also speaking on September 23, former Knesset member Einat Wilf said the Palestinians had “hijacked” UNRWA after refusing to accept the outcome of the 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel.
“The core issue,” she said, “is that in their mind the war is not over. In their mind, the State of Israel is temporary. If they view Israel as temporary, they will never sign an agreement that will bring peace. They will wait it out.”
Wilf castigated Western donor states “whose definition of peace is two states” but who continue to “funnel money into this organization that makes [Palestinian refugees] think otherwise.”
All in all, the Palestinian refugee story is one of heartless exploitation of Arabs by Arabs – the callous manipulation of powerless victims for political ends, with little regard for their welfare or human rights. Whatever the result of the inquiry into the UNRWA ethics report, this inhumanity must be brought out into the open, the UNRWA farce of “refugee status” in perpetuity must be ended, and steps must be taken to allow people and their families who may have lived in a country for 50 years or more to settle and become full citizens.
Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki: "There is no avoiding an escalating policy on the ground with great momentum from the masses, which will not allow the occupiers to live routine lives. Their occupation of our land must have a heavy price, which they will pay every day"
"If we [Fatah and Hamas] consolidate our ranks and unify our internal front... then we will certainly defeat our enemy, which is Israel."
Zaki in speech to Palestinian youth: "If this enemy [Israel] and America continue with their arrogance, then [our descendants will wave the flag] above Jaffa, the Negev, the Galilee, the Carmel, the Triangle, etc. Land that we don't restore - we are not worthy of it."
One of Fatah's top officials, Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, has called for Fatah-Hamas to unite in order to "defeat" Israel, the common "enemy": "If we consolidate our ranks and unify our internal front we will begin to work with an open mind, will, and strategy that are undebatable, then we will certainly defeat our enemy, which is Israel."
[Donia Al-Watan, independent Palestinian news agency, Sept. 22, 2019]
In response to US Envoy Jason Greenblatt's statements at a UN Security Council Open Debate on the Middle East on July 23, 2019, that the West Bank is "disputed" and not "occupied" territory, Zaki called for escalation "on the ground" - implicitly calling for violence against Israelis - to "not allow the occupiers to live routine lives" but make them pay "a heavy price every day": "There is no avoiding an escalating policy on the ground with great momentum from the masses, which will not allow the occupiers to live routine lives. Their occupation of our land must have a heavy price, which they will pay every day."
[Al-Dustour, Jordanian news website, Sept. 8, 2019]
Fatah official: We will obliterate Israel “If enemy [Israel] and America continue their arrogance”
Fatah official: “Wherever there is a problem in the world, behind it is a Zionist fingerprint”
TRANSCRIPT: Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki: “Libya is also about to come out of its crisis.” Host: “How?” Abbas Zaki: “The external interference [in Libya] is the problem... Wherever there is a problem in the world, behind it is a Zionist fingerprint.” [Lebanese Al-Mayadeen TV, Jan. 1, 2019] Abbas Zaki also holds the position as Fatah Commissioner for Arab and China Relations
The Jewish holidays keep on coming. Wishing a chag sameach to my readers for the Sukkot holiday starting tonight.
I will not be online until at least Tuesday night.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
A private American organization is to build a hospital at the northern end of the Gaza Strip. Israel has already admitted hospital equipment into the Strip. But the project is being condemned by the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Health, which claims that "the American hospital project is not innocent, and its goals are dangerous." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 27, 2019]
Elaborating on these alleged "dangerous goals," an op-ed in the official PA daily claimed that the hospital is run by "the CIA," and its purpose is not to treat the sick Palestinians but "to carry out experiments on the sick Palestinians," and "to be a partner in trafficking in human organs":
"The American administration and the CIA, which are actually supervising the hospital and its staff, transferred it to the southern Palestinian districts (i.e., the Gaza Strip) to serve the US as an early warning, monitoring, and espionage station where it was established. This was in addition to a matter that I think not one of the observers have noticed: The hospital has an additional functional role, which is to carry out experiments on the sick Palestinians, and not to treat them and care for their health... and it is possible that the hospital will be a partner in trafficking in human organs." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 2, 2019]
The PA Ministry of Health said that it considers it Israel's "deliberate step to finally and completely separate the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by preventing any connection on any level between our people in the two parts of the homeland."
Palestinian Media Watch has exposed previous PA libels claiming Israel does medical experiments on prisoners and steals organs from dead terrorists, the so-called "Martyrs." Even the Arab League has repeated these PA lies.
As anti-Semitism grows in America, synagogue safety has become an urgent concern for most American Jewish leaders. Not so, it would seem, for the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis (MBR). Recently, MBR joined forces with the Hamas front group CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations) to picket the Ahavath Torah Congregation in the South Shore town of Stoughton for hosting speakers whom CAIR calls “anti-Muslim hate group leaders.” The scare campaign ended up working. The synagogue had to permanently shut down its speaker series after CAIR and MBR publicized the synagogue’s address on social media. The synagogue’s rabbi, Jonathan Hausman, got death threats and was forced to hire security guards for his family.
CAIR is a strange ally for a rabbinical board. CAIR’s Massachusetts branch is headed by an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist and an anti-police activist with a history of Israel-bashing. In 2009, a federal district judge ruled that there is “at least a prima facie case as to CAIR’s involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas.” Ever since, the FBI has refused to work with CAIR because there might still “be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas.” Even the United Arab Emirates, not exactly the most Israel-friendly country in the world, banned CAIR as a terrorist organization in 2014.
Unlike CAIR, Ahavath Torah’s guest speakers would seem like strange enemies for a rabbinical board. Invited by Rabbi Hausman for a talk titled, “National Security Chaos: Are We Passing the Tipping Point?”, the panelists were all former U.S. government officials. One, retired Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin, is an American hero. A veteran of many wars, General Boykin commanded the Delta Force units in the Mogadishu battle dramatized in the movie Black Hawk Down. Off the battlefield, he served as the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence between 2002 and 2007. Another guest was former congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, who worked at a kibbutz as a teenager and has spoken at many an AIPAC event without previous rabbinical umbrage. General Boykin and the event moderator, Tom Trento, together with the third guest, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, have all been honored with “Genesis Awards” by the Boston-based group, Christians and Jews United for Israel, which represents the values and opinions of many Jewish New Englanders.
She was going to participate in a few sessions in a conference on "Racism and Antisemitism" at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard. One of them were about how to work with people with different opinions on President Trump, and another was about "Racism and Zionism: Black-Jewish relations."
Her first session, though, was called "Who Needs Antisemitism?" with Ruth Wisse and Shany Mor. This session wasn't about Israel or Zionism, but purely about antisemitism today. It was the only session where Jews discussed antisemitism.
That was the only session that was targeted by protesters from Students for Justice in Palestine.
Ungar-Sargon was mystified, and spoke to the protesters: "I told them that I respected their passion and commitment to what they thought was right, but asked why they had picked this panel.
"'Come to my panel tomorrow,' I said. 'Come protest my comments on Zionism. I’ll be talking about the occupation. Bring your signs.'"
Ungar-Sargon tried to explain to them that they can come and protest at her session on Zionism the next day, that she would let them ask all the questions they want. She tried to explain to them that they were undercutting their own cause by targeting a session on antisemitism when they always claim that they are merely anti-Zionist.
She kept trying logic on people who were animated by hate not for Israel but for Jews. Yet she couldn't quite believe it - these were people she often agrees with about Israel, couldn't they see that protesting three Jews talking about Jew-hatred was antisemitic?
Her biggest shock, though, came from her fellow speakers and other academics who defended the obviously antisemitic protest.
“I disagree with what she is saying,” Shahanna McKinney-Baldon, who was to be part of Batya's panel on racism and Zionism the next day, told the SJPers. “I support what you’re doing. I think you should protest.”
When the session began, students started their planned interruption when Ruth Wisse spoke. Ungar-Sargon noticed that several of the conference speakers were applauding the students.
Not one person apologized to her for these interruptions. No one from the conference denounced the attempts to shut down a session on antisemitism by antisemite. Academics seemed to welcome the explanation given by one of the protesters that any discussion of antisemitism is really about supporting Israel.
Worse yet, at a party afterwards for conference speakers, Etienne Balibar, a French philosopher at Columbia University, told Batya he supported the protesters. “Why are you silencing Palestinians?” he demanded. “There should have been a Palestinian discussing anti-Semitism. They have many thoughts about it!”
This was a session about antisemitism in America.
To Batya's credit, she had enough. At her planned session on Black-Jewish relations the next day, she gave a short speech about what she had experienced. She noted her bona-fides at publishing more Palestnian voices in her opinion pages than all major media combined, how she convinced Jews to vote for the Arab parties in Israel - but that what she experienced wasn't anti-Zionism but antisemitism, and her fellow panelists who she used to idolize as luminaries were cowards who egged on pure antisemitism when it appeared right in front of them.
And she walked off the stage.
If anyone claims that there is no such thing as leftist antisemitism, this proves they are just as craven and complicit as the academics that applauded the supposedly "pro-Palestinian" SJP when they interrupted a session on antisemitism - just because talking about antisemitism might get people to be more sympathetic to Jews.
Will Ungar-Sargon be more aware that a lot of the people she proudly publishes in The Forward are also antisemites in "anti-Zionist" clothing, no better than the academics she called out? I don't know, but at least here she recognized antisemitism when she saw it, and she acted in the most effective way she could.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Tunisian run-off presidential candidate Kais Saied, spoke during a television debate on the issue of normalization with Israel.
Saied said, "Normalization is a high betrayal, and anyone who deals with an entity consumes a whole people must be prosecuted."
He said that the word normalization is not accurate, and "we are at war with a usurper entity."
Asked about permits to visit synagogues in Tunisia, Saied said he would refuse entry to those holding an Israeli passport, and said: "We accept Jews, not Israelis."
Saied and his runoff opponent Nabil Karoui were the top two vote getters with about 18% and 15% of the votes in the elections three weeks ago, and now go head to head for the final voting.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Today's Europe has two faces. On the one hand, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decided last week, almost without mentioning Israel, that Holocaust denial is not a part of freedom of speech or a human right.
The petitioner, Udo Pastörs, is a member of the German far-right NPD party, who was already convicted for his inciteful language in court.
On the other hand, anti-Semitism continues to run rampant and this Yom Kippur, it led to an anti-Semitic attack on a German synagogue.
What is antisemitism? This is the hottest topic in Germany these days.
Last week, neo-Nazis marched the streets of Dortmund, calling for the Palestinians to destroy Israel.
Meanwhile, there is a debate about whether the BDS campaign is antisemitic. The German Bundestag already decided a few months ago that the answer was yes.
So did many other European countries that adopted this definition of antisemitism.
Extreme left circles, also from Israel, campaign against the decision and against the definition.
The debate intensified following a series of decisions linking political or racist positions with freedom of expression and creativity.
What would have happened if a city in Germany were to award a prize to Pastörs for his literary work, and only afterwards did it turn out he was an activist in an antisemitic movement?
The antisemitic movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel has gained a lot of traction in the music industry, thanks in large part to the activities of Roger Waters. BDS activists frequently threaten and harass musicians who schedule concerts in Israel, in an effort to intimidate them into cancellations. Irish singer Sarah McTernan told the Irish Sun, after she participated in the 2019 Eurovision contest in Israel, “Oh my God, I got threats, I got letters. Horrendous stuff online with someone threatening to do something to me. I had hundreds and hundreds of people messaging me saying the most horrible stuff. I got a few sinister threats.” Singer Eric Burdon told Israel Hayom in 2013, after cancelling and then rescheduling a performance, “it wasn’t my decision to cancel the show, but that of my manager, following numerous threatening emails, she was scared for my life.”
Prior to 2019, the music magazine Rolling Stone resisted being drawn down this road. In March of this year, however, the publication put BDS supporter Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on its cover, and did a glamour photo shoot and video with her as well as three other Congresswomen. In May, the magazine uncritically quoted the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, without any rebuttal, in its coverage of Madonna’s Eurovision performance in Israel. In August, in an article having nothing to do with music, Rolling Stone called BDS a movement that “aims to put economic pressure on the nation in order to force the nation to give equal rights to Palestinians.” (After contact from CAMERA, the magazine changed it to the only slightly better, “aims to use economic pressure to push the nation for large-scale changes in its policies related to Palestinians.”)
Then, on Friday of last week, Rolling Stone continued this unfortunate trend of promoting BDS’s goals in its coverage of the Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Demi Lovato’s trip to Israel. (“Demi Lovato Apologizes for Accepting Controversial Trip to Israel,” Brittany Spanos, October 4, 2019.)
The change in direction appears to coincide with Rolling Stone’s coming under the full ownership of Penske Media, a company that, in February of 2018, sold a $200 million stake to the Saudi Arabian company Saudi Research and Marketing Group. SRMG is headquartered in Riyadh and is majority-owned by the Saudi government.
Gail Bradbrook, a former biophysicist and co-founder of the climate protest group, Extinction Rebellion, reportedly shared social media posts dismissing Labour antisemitism as a “smear” and defended offensive comments by Ken Livingstone.
According to The Sun Dr Bradbrook shared a post in 2016 that described claims that certain comments made by Mr Livingstone were antisemitic as “ridiculous” and “scurrilous” and that “you will hopefully then agree that what is happening is part of a massive project to manipulate public opinion against, and to destroy the popular progressive movement supporting, Jeremy Corbyn.” The post went on to say that “Corbyn represents a threat to the stranglehold the Netanyahu right-wing Israeli extremists have over any mainstream media coverage of the oppressive Israeli occupation of the little left-over scraps of Palestine.”
Another post reportedly said that Mr Corbyn’s critics “smear him with sexism, misogyny and antisemitism by finding sexist or antisemitic comments by a handful of his millions of supporters”.
The Sun, which broke the story, quotes Dr Bradbrook as saying: “I’m not interested in getting involved in a discussion that is clearly an attempt to create division. Antisemitism is a huge problem across the whole of society and I’m longing for a time when all of us are safe.”
Previously it was also reported that a Facebook page administered by Dr Bradbrook entertained numerous conspiracy theories, linked to a blog which quoted from the infamous antisemitic tract The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and contained a post expressing solidarity with disgraced Labour MP Chris Williamson a day after he was suspended for claiming Labour had been “too apologetic” over antisemitism.
This (sadly untranslated) video was shown on Jordan's Al Ghad TV this past week. It is apparently an hour long show (48 minutes without commercials) all about how Jews are using the Jewish holidays to "desecrate" Al Aqsa Mosque, the Temple Mount, by peacefully strolling and sometimes quietly praying there.
This is incitement that the West ignores.
There are many news stories from the Arab world every week about Jews visiting their holiest spot, in print and on video.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
The two victims in the Yom Kippur shooting at a synagogue in Halle, Germany have been named as Jana Lange, 40, and Kevin S., 20.
Lange was shot by extremist anti-Semite Stephan Balliet, who livestreamed the attack via a helmet camera as she attempted to stop him from shooting up the synagogue.
Balliet went on to shoot Kevin, whom local media described as a soccer fan, who was at a nearby kebab stand during the terrorist attack.
German media described Lange as a "warm, funny" person and a devoted music lover. She liked to share pictures of artists she admired on social media.
Kevin, the second victim, was a painter. He worked at a building site near the synagogue.
Kevin's father began to fear the worst when reports about the shooting began to circulate.
"All we know is that you're at the construction site nearby and you lost your phone. Kevin, we love you more than anything," the father wrote on his Facebook page prior to receiving the news of his son's tragic death.
The U.S.-funded Arabic channel Alhurra TV recently brought on Octavia Nasr, a former CNN senior editor who left the network after publicly expressing sympathies for a Hezbollah-tied cleric, as a consultant tasked with helping lead the outlet’s revamp.
Nasr has largely been out of journalism work for the past decade after losing her role as CNN’s editor of Mideast affairs. Her demise at the network she worked at for two decades came after she used her CNN Twitter account to praise Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, a highly controversial Shia cleric who supported Islamist terrorist attacks and was regarded as the spiritual leader for Hezbollah, a militant group based in Lebanon. The U.S. State Department currently labels Hezbollah a foreign terrorist organization.
“Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot,” wrote Nasr in July 2010.
A source who spoke to Mediaite about Nasr’s role at the outlet said she acted as a producer, assisting the network with how they covered subjects and what details they decided to omit or include in their reporting.
When reached for comment, Alhurra’s spokesperson described Nasr’s role at the outlet as “a consultant on technical issues,” but claimed she has “completed her contract.”
“MBN is an equal opportunity employer. The company does not discriminate on any basis,” the spokesperson added in response to questions about Nasr’s past employment issues.
Nasr did not respond to Mediaite’s requests for comment.
In recent days, Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry published a report documenting some 100 examples in which activities of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign qualify as antisemitic, based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which has been adopted by 15 countries and by the European Parliament. Given the difficult task of operationalizing what antisemitism is, all cases documented in the report manifest at least one of the following characteristics: expressions of classic antisemitism; Holocaust inversion; and denial of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination.
Three central claims emerge from the more than 90-page report.
• One: Delegitimization and demonization of the State of Israel by the BDS movement invariably results in the stigmatizing of Jews worldwide and in Israel.
• Two: Some members of the BDS leadership are antisemitic.
• Three: The argumentation patterns and methods of the BDS movement – which include the denial of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland and the singling out of Israel for boycott – are antisemitic.
It is worth scrutinizing each of these conclusions separately.
• The first point, which links the delegitimization of Israel spearheaded by BDS to the stigmatization of Jews, is also reflected in research conducted by the Institute for National Security Studies, based in large part on interviews with members of Jewish communities across the globe. We have seen this phenomenon play out in the personal security sphere. One domain in which the connection between BDS and manifestations of antisemitism is most readily traced in our research is the academic realm.
In this setting we found that Jewish (and Israeli) students studying on campuses outside of Israel fear for their personal safety, are intimidated by BDS activists, and experience obstacles related to their Jewish identity in competing for student leadership positions. While it is impossible to trace every antisemitic manifestation experienced by students to BDS, the ministry’s report is instrumental in demonstrating the connection between BDS and antisemitism on campus life through the documentation of antisemitic imagery and rhetoric adopted by student BDS-promoting organizations.
In their recent book Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel’s Most Important Leaders Shaped Its Destiny, Dennis Ross and David Makovsky—who both have had long careers as Middle East experts inside and outside the U.S. government—analyze the “courageous decisions” made by David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, Yitz?ak Rabin, and Ariel Sharon. Not coincidentally, three of these four decisions involved territorial concessions. Ross and Makovsky use the book’s final chapter to compare their profiles in courage with Benjamin Netanyahu’s cautious approach on the Palestinian front. Calling this an “almost cartoonish juxtaposition,” Haviv Rettig Gur writes:
Netanyahu’s indecision on the Palestinian issue is not shallow. Indeed, it may be what his voters like most about him. The optimism that animated the imaginations of leaders like Rabin and Sharon—who imagined peace with the Palestinians, then unilateral separation and deterrence—is now understood by the vast majority of Israelis to be relegated to a more naïve past. The Oslo process in the 1990s ended in the suicide-bombing waves of the second intifada in 2000, and the Gaza withdrawal of 2005 in the Hamas takeover of the territory in 2007, a result that may yet play itself out on a much larger scale if Israel pulls out of the West Bank.
To most Israelis, the shift from the era of Sharon to the age of Netanyahu does not feel like a country somehow grown less ambitious or innovative—witness other fields of human endeavor in which Israelis continue to shine—but rather like a country that has become wiser and more aware of the limits of optimism.
Netanyahu’s refusal to initiate new peace processes is not just about what his rightist flank will say (though of course that is one pressure he clearly feels). It is also due to the simple fact that he is convinced it will fail. . . . He has shown that he can be decisive, courageous, and as rude as any of his iconic forebears when he believes the times require it, as in his brazen and intensive efforts to torpedo the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
But there is another message in this book, a subtler critique of present-day Israeli leadership that begins by rejecting the usual run of the debate. Ross and Makovsky challenge the simplistic declamations of past U.S. administrations and countless foreign observers that the occupation is “unsustainable.” The diplomatic costs, they note, instead “remain manageable” for Israel, as do the military and financial burdens of the conflict, if only because Israelis do not see better alternatives. . . . And that’s the key: Israel’s indecision flows not from decline, but from strength.
“Until 1967, Israel did not hold an inch of the Sinai Peninsula, West Bank, Gaza Strip or Golan Heights...Year after year Israel called for …peace. The answer was a blank refusal and more war”-Yitzhak Rabin, 1976
The most righteous of men cannot live in peace if his evil neighbor will not let him be– from Wilhelm Tell Act IV, scene III, by Friedrich von Schiller, 1804.
It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion. – R. Inge, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, 1915.
He who comes to kill you, rise up early and kill him first – The Talmud
The Oslo process that resulted in the signature of the “Declaration of Principles” on the White House Lawns on September 13, 1993, was in many ways a point of singularity in the history of Zionism, after which everything was qualitatively different from that which it was before. It was a point of inflection in the time-line of the evolution of Jewish political independence, at which what were once vaunted values became vilified vices.
Metamorphosis: From deterrence to appeasement?
Thus, almost at a stroke, Jewish settlement and attachment to land, once the essence of the Zionist ethos, were branded as the epitome of egregious extremism. Jewish military might, once exalted as a symbol of national resurgence and self-reliance, was excoriated as the instrument of repression and subjugation.
This metamorphosis is decidedly perplexing. After all, even by the early1990s, Zionism had proved to be one of the most successful—arguably, the most successful—movement of national liberation that arose from the dissolution of the great Empires—providing political independence, economic prosperity and personal liberties to a degree unrivalled by other such movements.
Turkey's official Jewish community Twitter account says (translated):
Which makes it sound like the Turkish Jewish community is an Erdogan mouthpiece.
Indeed, when you go to their webpage the last entries are about Erdogan's holiday wishes last Passover and Chanukah:
It sounds like a Turkish site for outreach to Jews, not a Jewish site serving the community.
This makes one worry about the safety of the Jewish community in Turkey if one Jew should actually say his or her own opinion.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Islamic Jihad mouthpiece Palestine Today warns all Gazans not to respond to social media posts by Israeli government officials, especially the Israeli in Arabic pages and COGAT pages, saying that their responses can be analyzed and help the Mossad entrap them.
Iyad al-Bazm, spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Gaza, stressed that "Israel always seeks to harm the Palestinian internal mood and attempts to strike and influence the resistance and recruit all means to achieve this purpose. "
Al-Bazm advised Gazans not to deal with the pages Avichai Adraee, Ofir Gendelman, and others, and not to comment on them, and not to be provoked by sarcastic comments. He explained that these pages are run by intelligence officers who analyze all the interactions on these pages and analyze the data and might be a gateway to infiltrating Gaza.
He praised the Palestinian media for doing their part to let citizens know of the danger.
Hamas actually started a billboard campaign urging people not to respond to the Facebook page of COGAT Arabic.
It does seem probable that Israeli intelligence does take advantage of what they learn from social media posts. However, if anything, this campaign indicates how popular Israeli army and government social media has been in Gaza.
It seems like Gazans are thirsty for the truth. The terrorist organizations want to stop them from getting it.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
Jonathan Sacks: Holy People, Holy Land Acharei Mot
-
Jonathan Sacks: Holy People, Holy Land Acharei Mot IsraelSeen.com
Jonathan Sacks: Holy People, Holy Land Acharei Mot I had been engaged in
dialogue for t...
Soros Funds the Protests and the Protested
-
Outside the mob of Hamas supporters were chanting “Genocide Joe” while
inside Joe Biden was trying to raise more money.
Yet the terrorist supporters ...
Out of the Box
-
[image: Dry Bones cartoon,War, America, Gaza, Jews, Jewish, Israel, Donate,
Oct 7, Jews, Mexico, Gaza Pier,]
* Here's an even BETTER IDEA!*
Help Dry Bones...
The Palestinian “Two-State” Plan: Duping the West
-
One of the great unsolved mysteries of the 21st century is why, given what
a catastrophe it proved to be, anyone, much less a whole phalanx of
politicians,...
06-Feb-24: Obituary: Naftali Gordon
-
The obituary that follows was published yesterday by *Times of Israel* under
the headline "*Master Sgt. (res.) Naftali Gordon, 32: A man of ‘honesty and
...
Closing Jews Down Under Website
-
With a heavyish heart I am closing down the website after ten years.
It is and it isn’t an easy decision after 10 years of constant work. The
past...
‘Test & Trace’ is a mirage
-
Lockdown II thoughts: Day 1 Opposition politicians have been banging on
about the need for a ‘working’ Test & Trace system even more loudly than
the govern...
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
After 18 months of the riots with limited Israeli responses, Hamas has decided to make their children into human shields once again.
