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Monday, December 29, 2014

One small incident that sums up Israel's conflict with the 'Palestinians'

If you're wondering why Israel cannot make peace with the 'Palestinians,' here's an incident that should go a long way in explaining the problem.

37 children between the ages of 5 and 12, who lost their fathers in this past summer's Gaza war, were to have been brought to Israel on Sunday for a day of relaxation and recreation sponsored by Israel's Kibbutz movement (i.e. the Israel Left). At the last minute, Hamas canceled the previously granted permission for the children to go. No, they were not worried about the children's safety. They worried that the children might - gulp - return home less hostile to Israel.

Eyad Bozum, a spokesman for Hamas, said the children were prevented from traveling Sunday to "protect the culture of our children and our people" from normalizing relations with Israel.

He says Hamas turned the children back when they arrived at a crossing into Israel. He says Hamas would make sure such an attempt "will never happen again."

...

[Kibbutz Movement representative Yoel Marshak] waited for hours Sunday morning for the children to cross together with representatives of Israel's Bedouin community, who also took part in putting the event together.

"We did everything we could to allow them to enter Israel," Marshak said, standing over a table full of candies the organizers had brought the kids. "We passed on their names to the relevant state bodies and they were all okayed. This is a very rare step on Israel's side, but sadly it was Hamas' men at the crossing that created issues."
According to Marshak, "Arab media is very angry with Hamas, there were a lot of people waiting to meet these kids, we received a lot of support and help. We will continue to work, mostly at the diplomatic level, to allow them to come. If not today, then in the future."

In response to the report, Hamas said that it rejects any kind of normalization with Israel, saying "these types of encounters are Israeli attempts to brainwash the children so that they forgot the Palestinian issue and give up their principles."

Somehow, I don't expect 'peace' to break out before I return home later this week. War seems far more likely. Do any of you wonder why?

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Sunday, December 28, 2014

The 'Palestinian' contribution to world peace

The 'Palestinians' are contributing to world peace by teaching everyone how to stab police officers, just like they did in Jerusalem on Friday.
The step-by-step video, titled “How to stab correctly,” was circulated on YouTube and its links were shared with the Facebook and Twitter groups of Palestinian organizations and activists in East Jerusalem, the Hebrew news site NRG reported Saturday.
The 72-second clip comes in the wake of a number of stabbing attacks throughout Israel and the West Bank. Most recently, two border policemen were injured when an assailant attacked them in the Old City of Jerusalem Friday morning.
Here's video of Friday's stabbing in Jerusalem. Let's go to the videotape. 
 
video

More on Friday's stabbing here. And here's more about the 'instructional video.'
The video, set to an industrial metal track, depicts two masked men — one holding a knife and the other playing the victim — and demonstrates how to achieve maximum damage in target areas such as the neck, abdomen and heart. The video depicts a number of different techniques and situational circumstances, including how a would-be attacker could stab someone and walk away.
The clip comes to with the text “What are you waiting for / Rise up and stab.”
NRG reported that the clip was created by the Hamas terror group, which frequently creates videos that promote its ideology and attempt to intimidate the Israeli public. The terrorist group disseminated a Hebrew-language music video this summer in the lead-up to the war in Gaza that boasted of successes against IDF soldiers and attacks against the Israeli populace.
Yeah, sure. Let's blame Hamas and pretend that the 'Palestinian Authority' doesn't support and do the same things. What could go wrong?

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Partners in Protest

In an article in the New York Post, Professor William Jacobson talks about the connection between the anti-police protesters in New York City, Ferguson and other places, and anti-Israel 'activists.'
For several months, anti-Israel activists have attached themselves to the racial-grievance and anarchist-extreme leftist protests in an attempt to redirect anger toward Israel.
In the earliest days after the killing of Brown on Aug. 9, violent protests erupted in Ferguson, with protesters clashing with police.
Anti-Israel activists immediately spotted an opportunity, and organized a Twitter campaign, whereby Palestinians expressed solidarity by tweeting advice for how Ferguson protesters could cope with tear gas.
Under the Twitter hashtag #Palestine2Ferguson, anti-Israel activists spread images equating Palestinian and Ferguson protesters — for example, comparing a Palestinian throwing a rock and a Ferguson protester throwing a Molotov cocktail.
False claims were spread on anti-Israel Web sites, Facebook and Twitter that Israel had “trained” the Ferguson police, including in crowd-control tactics. Dozens of anti-Israel activists and groups issued a solidarity call:
“We understand the impulse to rebel against the infrastructure of a racist capitalist system that systematically pushes you to the margins of humanity . . . With a Black Power fist in the air, we salute the people of Ferguson and join in your demands for justice.”
...
Last Saturday, Ismaaiyl Brinsley executed NYPD Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos. Brinsley’s final Instagram note referenced Brown and Garner, and ended with the phrase from Ferguson that was spread by the anti-Israel crowd: “I’m Putting Pigs In A Blanket.”
Next week will mark the 50th anniversary of the 'Palestine Liberation Organization.' Amidst all the 'celebrations' of 'putting the Palestinian cause on the map,' those of us who still care about civilization ought to remember that it was the 'Palestinians' who introduced terror as a political tool to the world. It's definitely not something laudatory.

Read the whole thing.

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Merry Christmas from 'Palestine'

I'm embedding the entire post so you don't miss Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner's comment:


You won't see that one in the New York Times....

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If Joseph and Mary were trying to reach Bethlehem today.... UPDATED

Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.

Here's a great comment in the Washington Post from the Volokh Conspiracy's David Bernstein. What would happen to Joseph and Mary if they were trying to reach Bethlehem today, before Jesus' birth?
Mehdi Hasan, political director of the Huffington Post, UK, has a post up entitled, “If Mary and Joseph Tried to Reach Bethlehem Today, They Would Get Stuck at an Israeli Checkpoint.”
How would that carpenter and his pregnant wife have circumnavigated the Kafka­esque network of Israeli settlements, roadblocks and closed military zones in the occupied West Bank? Would Mary have had to experience labour or childbirth at a checkpoint, as one in ten pregnant Palestinian women did between 2000 and 2007?
Well, since Joseph and Mary were Judeans, i.e., Jews, from Nazareth, they wouldn’t need to be afraid of Israeli roadblocks needed to combat Palestinian terrorism, but of being murdered by terrorists from Hamas or Fatah.
Seriously, this sort of historical revisionism, treating ancient Jewish Judeans as if they were Palestinian Arabs, and then analogizing modern Israel to the oppressors of Jesus and his family, a common trope in the UK, would be laughable if it were not  so pernicious. Pernicious not simply because it’s a ridiculous distortion of history, and not simply because it’s often accompanied by a large dose of anti-Semitism, with Palestinians playing the role of Jesus and the Israelis being the foreign oppressors crucifying him.  But pernicious because it goes to the true heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict–the failure of the Arab side to recognize that the “Zionists” are not the “European settler-colonialists” of Third Worldist imagination, but a people with a three thousand year plus tie to the Land of Israel, whose religion was born there, who ruled two separate kingdoms there, who have prayed toward Jerusalem for two thousand years in their ancient Hebrew language, and so on.
Read the whole thing. There's a great punch line at the end.

UPDATED 9:42 PM SATURDAY BOSTON TIME

Here's more from Charisma Magazine
First of all, on the approach to Bethlehem, they would encounter a sign telling them that as Israelis, it's illegal and unsafe for them to continue to Area A (under full control of the Palestinian Authority, of which Bethlehem is part according to the 1990s Oslo agreement).
If they proceeded anyway, whether by foot, bicycle, car or donkey—given the current state of affairs—they would likely be met with problems from the get go, including possibly being stoned, firebombed, shot at or lynched. Recent instances of Israeli Jews going into or near other Palestinian Arab communities have played this out.
Yes, the town in which an Orthodox Jewish boy was born a little more than 2,000 years ago has become hostile and inhospitable—and, in fact, dangerous—to Jews today. Yet as much as Jew hatred is common in the region here today, it's not much more hospitable to Christians.
Recently the Pope decried the situation that Christians face from throughout the Islamic Middle East as did the Vicar of Baghdad. Bethlehem is no better.
The 2002 siege of the Church of the Nativity by Palestinian Arab terrorists, desecrating the place and the faith, is a distant memory. However, the ideology and thugery behind that remains.
As a result, the town that is not just the birthplace of Jesus but arguably of Christianity, has seen a decrease in its Christian population from 70 percent just decades ago to about 30 percent today. This is not because of Israel's "occupation" or other problems blamed on Israel, but because life in Bethlehem as a Christian is hostile and inhospitable at best, and even downright dangerous.
...
So glaring is Jesus' absence from Bethlehem this season, one ministry paid to put up a "radical" billboard celebrating Jesus. But they also had to rent a generator and full-time security people because no private companies would provide electricity to light up the sign, and for fear that someone would deface it or burn it down.
What's behind all of this? How is the situation going from bad to worse? I asked a Christian friend who had spent considerable time in Bethlehem until called in by police and told he was at risk and they couldn't protect him. He packed and left, and I drove him to my home where he couldn't be threatened.
Read the whole thing

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Friday, December 26, 2014

'Are you brain dead'?

A reminder that I'm in Boston where it's many hours until the Sabbath starts.

An American Jewish teenager takes on a brain dead CNN executive.
As a group of young Conservative Jews, our main motive for attending this meeting was to open up a discussion about CNN’s coverage of affairs in Israel. Amidst everything else that was discussed in that conference room, the conversation continuously circled back to the Har Nof Synagogue massacre and the abysmal media coverage of events on that day. Davis’ explanations for the aforementioned, horribly misleading and false headlines boiled down to human error. In an attempt to explain CNN’s headlines, which did not account for the terrorist actions or reasons these people were killed, Davis said that these headlines only surfaced for minutes before being taken down. However, he said, because of the world we live in, someone took a screenshot and circulated those headlines and spread them around the world. This, Davis said, was not CNN’s fault. To expound on how the words “mosque” and “synagogue” could have been swapped, Davis gave an even more infuriating response.
Apparently, in the room where the headlines were written, there was some conversation taking place regarding a mosque in Damascus. “Haven’t you ever written something you heard instead of what you meant to write?” he asked.
As more questions came in from my peers, each response deviated further from the questions at hand and grew more negative toward Israel. As our time with the CNN execs came to a close, Davis explained to those of us who were still listening that we simply have opinions about Israel. And, he went on, when one person has an opinion about anything, a news report may seem wrong to that person. However, to everyone else, it could be perfectly right. I know I was not alone in feeling that his justification of CNN’s misleading reporting was a farce.
Moreover, we were distraught about his implication that so many news sources have anti-Israel tendencies because Israel is in the wrong.
As everyone filed out for lunch, I decided to go get in one last word with Richard Davis. I questioned him on the HarNof headlines again. I first had to prove to him that I had in fact even seen the headlines I was questioning. When I managed to satisfy his questions, I wanted to know why CNN, when releasing the headlines at issue, couldn’t call it a terrorist attack. Davis explained that they would never jump to a conclusion that anything is a terrorist attack. “Okay”, I said, fully understanding the weight that the word “terrorist” carries. “But by the time it was known that it was four Israelis and two Palestinians, it was known that there were meat cleavers and stabbings involved. Why couldn’t you call it an ‘attack’?” I continued. His response? “You’ve got to be kidding me? One word? Are you brain dead?”
Read the whole thing.

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Is the 'supreme court' at fault again?

The State of Israel released for burial on Thursday the bodies of the two terrorist cousins who carried out the Har Nof massacre five weeks ago. Although we have not been told who demanded their release and why they were released, the 'supreme court' ordered that the two scumbags be buried in the 'West Bank,' which may mean that the court also ordered their release in the first place. That would be in character.
The Israeli government has been withholding the bodies of cousins Uday and Ghassan Abu Jamal, who were shot dead by police after killing four worshipers and a cop in an attack during morning services on November 18.
Under an Israeli court order, the two terrorists will be buried in the West Bank and not in Jerusalem, where they resided, and only 40 people will be allowed to attend the funeral, the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency reported.
It was not immediately clear why Israel had decided to release the bodies, which it had been holding as a punitive measure.
Nadia Abu Jamal, the widow of slain terrorist Ghassan Abu Jamal, has been ordered deported to Judea and Samaria, and her Jerusalem-born children have been denied health insurance coverage as an inducement for her to leave. We can only hope and pray that Jamal is in fact expelled. In the meantime, demolition orders against the terrorists' homes have been stayed by the 'supreme court' and have not been carried out. 

Maan News reports that those present at the funeral were to have been limited to 40 relatives and that the burial was to have taken place within 90 minutes of the bodies having been released. It doesn't look like that happened.

Israel notified the families of Uday and Ghassan Abu Jamal that their bodies must by buried within 90 minutes of being returned at the cemetery of al-Sawahira al-Sharqiyya, lawyer Muhammad Mahmoud told Ma'an.

Only 40 relatives were to be allowed at the funeral, he added.

The family was forced to deposit 20,000 shekels ($5,000) to guarantee they would adhere to the stipulations.

"After they have been laid to rest, we will feel some relief after some very hard days following the martyrdom of Ghassan and Uday," a relative said.

...

Around 300 mourners joined the funeral procession, raising Palestinian flags and chanting patriotic slogans.
Someone please tell me that the government kept the NIS 20,000 and will give them to the families of the terror attack victims.... Somehow, I'm sure that won't be the case. 

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Fools all

Inspired by Stand With Us' Israel IQ project at UCLA, Lions for Israel sought to discover what Penn State students know about Israel as well. It wasn't much.

Let's go to the videotape.



Some people are probably pleased with this lack of knowledge. And I'm sure that media elites are among them. But then we should have known that Penn State is not exactly a hotbed of people who know anything about Israel or Judaism.

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Thursday, December 25, 2014

And again: 11-year old girl badly burned in 'non-violent' firebomb attack

The 'international community' seems to think that unless there are suicide bombings, there is no terrorism in Israel. Unfortunately, that assumption has once again been proven untrue. A firebomb attack on a car driven by Avner Shapiro has resulted in both he and his 11-year old daughter Ayala being badly burned.

Let's go to the videotape.



The Shapiros, especially Ayala, need a lot of prayers.
The two suffered burns, but managed to escape from their burning vehicle. They were treated on the scene by Magen David Adom rescue workers and taken to the burn center at Tel Hashomer Hospital. The girl is on a respirator and said to be in serious condition by doctors.

The incident occurred on a service road between Maale Shomron and the new community of El-Matan. Ma'ale Shomron is located off Road 55, which stretches between Kfar Sava and Shechem. IDF troops were in pursuit of the terrorists.
If Avner had left his car and shot at the terrorists, he would have been prosecuted by the police. This is insanity. Because the 'Palestinians' know that their deadly force will not be met with deadly force, they don't hesitate to do things like this. Disgraceful.... 

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Arab party seethes over campaign video

I'm sure that most of you recall the name of terror supporting MK Hanin Zoabi. Once again, she's running for the Knesset. And Likud MK Danny Danon has released a video to try to stop her. The video is in Hebrew, but there's a link below with some of it translated into English.

Let's go to the videotape.



Zoabi's Balad party has vowed to file a complaint with the police over Danon's video, calling it incitement. More here.

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Israeli high tech takes away your last excuse for not losing weight

Good morning and greetings from Boston.

Israeli high tech has taken away your last excuse for not losing weight. Meet SCiO.

Let's go to the videotape.



More here.

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Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Even Livni admits it: It was Abu Bluff's fault

Even Tzipi Livni admits that it was 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen who brought about the failure of last year's 'peace talks.' She did it in an interview with anti-Israel New York Times columnist Roger Cohen.
Livni acknowledged that dealing with Netanyahu on the talks had always been difficult, but from her perspective the Palestinians caused their failure at a critical moment.
On March 17, in a meeting in Washington, President Obama presented Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, with a long-awaited American framework for an agreement that set out the administration’s views on major issues, including borders, security, settlements, Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem.
Livni considered it a fair framework, and Netanyahu had indicated willingness to proceed on the basis of it while saying he had reservations. But Abbas declined to give an answer in what his senior negotiator, Saeb Erekat, later described as a “difficult” meeting with Obama. Abbas remained evasive on the framework, which was never made public.
...
Still, prodded by Secretary of State John Kerry, talks went on. On April 1, things had advanced far enough for the Israeli government to prepare a draft statement saying that a last tranche of several hundred Palestinian prisoners would be released; the United States would free Jonathan Pollard, an American convicted of spying for Israel more than 25 years ago; and the negotiations would continue beyond the April 29 deadline with a slowdown or freeze of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Then, Livni said, she looked up at a television as she awaited a cabinet meeting and saw Abbas signing letters as part of a process to join 15 international agencies — something he had said he would not do before the deadline.
She called Erekat and told him to stop the Palestinian move. He texted her the next day to say he couldn’t. They met on April 3. Livni asked why Abbas had done it. Erekat said the Palestinians thought Israel was stalling. A top Livni aide, Tal Becker, wrote a single word on a piece of paper and pushed it across the table to her: “Tragedy.”
...
Talks limped on around the idea of a settlement freeze and other confidence-building measures. Then, on April 23, a reconciliation was announced between Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah — something since proved empty. That, for Netanyahu and Livni, was the end: They were not prepared to engage, even indirectly, with Hamas. A long season of negotiation gave way to recrimination and, soon enough, the Gaza war, with nearly 2,200 Palestinians dead and about 70 Israelis.
Livni met Abbas in London on May 15. “I said to him, the choice is not between everything and nothing. And your choice in the end was to get nothing.”
What's missing here is the acknowledgment that the 'Palestinians' don't want peace on any terms - they only want to destroy the Jewish state and murder its Jewish inhabitants. When will that acknowledgement be forthcoming? I'd say it's about as likely as the 'Palestinians' ever agreeing to real peace. In other words, never.

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Yes, I'm traveling again

I was so busy downloading documents this morning that I didn't even get to post at the airport. But now I'm sitting in a British Airways lounge waiting for a flight to my year-end closing.

Will post when I can.

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