Striking terrorism relentlessly, both appropriate and to be encouraged

...Those who wish to avoid the dubious pleasure of having a rocket explode in their backyard or a Palestinian suicide bomber explode on their street would do better to support and encourage those who tirelessly work to keep such threats at bay.

Zvika Fogel..
Israel Hayom..
24 March '14..

The search for a less intimidating name for terrorism has become all the rage lately. It started with the term "low-intensity conflict," meant to differentiate the war on terror from a full-scale war with an organized enemy's army, and has recently settled on the term the "battle between the wars."

Is there anyone out there who believes the soldiers on the ground -- those whose mission it is to storm terrorists -- care about the euphemisms used by politicians and generals? Field commanders and the troops on the ground know exactly what it is -- a war for the very future of the State of Israel.

According to reports made public by the Shin Bet security agency, the past year has seen more than 100 terror attacks a month in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. Not attempted attacks or intended attacks, but actual terror attacks, which included planting explosives, the use of Molotov cocktails, and shooting and stabbing attacks.

The operations and intelligence efforts security forces pursue are neither a "low-intensity conflict" nor a "battle between wars." It is a daily battle against an enemy that is trying to destroy us, and it has a name -- it is called a struggle for survival.

The City of Peace and the Arab Strategy to Turn Jerusalem Into a Battleground

Eli E. Hertz..
MythsandFacts.org..
08 May '13..

Palestinian Arabs have concentrated many of their terrorist attacks on Jews in Jerusalem, hoping to win the city by an onslaught of terror who seek to make life in the City of Peace unbearable. But this is not a new tactic. Arab strategy to turn Jerusalem into a battleground began in 1920.

Unfortunately, Arab leaders often turn to violence to gain what they were unable to achieve at the negotiating table. When talks broke down at Camp David in 2000, Palestinian Arab leaders unleashed the al-Aqsa Intifada, which amounted to a full-blown guerrilla war against Israel.

It began the day before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, when Arab mobs hurled rocks from the Temple Mount onto Jewish worshipers praying at the Western Wall below. That rock attack turned into a steady campaign of terrorist attacks. As the priming powder for the Intifada, Palestinian leaders incited Palestinians and Muslims throughout the world with fables that falsely suggested that Jews began an assault on al-Aqsa when Ariel Sharon made a half-hour visit to the Temple Mount during tourist hours. The truth is that Palestinians’ plans for warfare had begun immediately after Arafat walked out of the Camp David talks.

The highly selective use of "Israeli" and "Racism" together

Hagai Segal..
Middle East and Terrorism..
20 March '13..

During the month of February, 138 terror attacks were recorded throughout Judea and Samaria. The monthly report of the Shabak [Israeli Security Agency] notes 15 bomb explosions, an incident of fire from light firearms, two stabbings, a single incident of a driver targeting and running into a person or persons and 119 petrol bombs. By the way, this impressive list of attacks does not include stone throwing, perhaps because the Shabak was not able to keep tracking this very common phenomenon statistically. Who can keep track of stone throwing in the "territories"? The Israeli media certainly don't. And they don't use the term "racist" or "racism" when describing attacks carried out by Palestinians. Since the establishment of the state, no independent Hebrew radio station or newspaper has reported about a "racist attack" of Jews by Arabs. This blatantly derogatory term is reserved only for attacks of the opposite sort. When an Arab attacks a Jew he attacks for nationalistic reasons; when a Jew attacks an Arab he is first and foremost a racist.

The meticulous verbal distinction between the two situations is intended to stain us all as racists, not just the attackers themselves, and this is part of the ongoing leftist campaign of "look what the occupation has done to us". A few of unrelated incidents of recent attacks, no more than a few, has been getting media attention lately as if it were on the scale of an organized mass attack. The wall-to-wall condemnations of the attacks didn't help, and neither did the cracks that were discovered here and there in the version of those who were attacked. Someone wanted, and succeeded, to create an impression that the State of Israel is experiencing a tremendous wave of racism in the spirit of the famous warnings of Yishayahu Leibowitz, obm.

(+Video) To not be "Obsequious beggars pleading for a little peace and quiet".

Calev..
LOTL..
14 January '13..

Aside from our residing in Kiryat Arba-Hevron, we do a great deal of hosting as well as taking visitors out and about our town. While enjoying this, there is a degree of awareness and responsibility that one must take when moving about with guests unfamiliar with the neighborhood and its nuances. And sometimes, while not a common occurrence, one may have to just step up to the bat, or perhaps with something similar to one.

Those familiar with the area will know that to travel between the neighborhoods of Kiryat Arba above to the the neighborhoods in Hevron below, does require on Shabbat passing through areas that at times have displayed other than a friendly face. During peak hours on Shabbat there is a fairly large security presence. During off-peak hours though you basically fend for yourself, which is also o.k., albeit a bit disconcerting to some guests. The ever present question following the realization is usually, "Do you carry a ..., bet you can fill in the blank, and no I don't. A heavy walking stick more than suffices, and is part of the apparel for the tours.

It's Shabbat, nine young ladies and a mother in tow, and a couple of young Arab men with a reasonable supply of snowballs (although potentially with ice or other material inside) in hand approaching. Aside from ourselves, a few other male residents of the Kirya passed before us and most of what was in the hands of our two approaching, fell to the ground as they understood this was not a wise course of action. Of course they reserved one for our group but which fell short as they still felt the need to put some distance between us before throwing. Wise move, as I requested from our group to stay put and took off after them. The throwers were a bit surprised, ran,  momentarily thought about standing their ground, and when another local with his M-16 joined me, they departed.

Cartoon panel by Shira N.

In Jerusalem this morning .....

Bethphage, Jerusalem: August 20, 2012 [Image Source]

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
23 September '12..







It's a not-so-unusual morning here in sunny and warm Jerusalem.

An Arab woman from the Silwan neighbourhood of Jerusalem was arrested and will be charged with the attempted stabbing this morning (Sunday) of a police officer in the parking lot of East Jerusalem's Shalem police station. The alleged stabber is said [Ynet] to have been engaging in a form of movie criticism pertaining to a made-in-USA film demeaning the founder of the Islamic religion. The police officer, unconnected to the making of the film (which is actually the work of an Egyptian Copt with a history), managed to fight off the attacker and is unharmed.

A short distance away, and some hours earlier, three firebombs were hurled at Israeli police patroling the Shuafat neighbourhood. Reports say no injuries.

Medad - Vineyards Will Nevertheless Be Planted and Not Plucked Up

Yisrael Medad..
My Right Word..
15 April '12..





Have you ever read Amos' prophecy? This one, 9:13-15 -

Behold, the days come, saith the LORD...And I will turn the captivity of My people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be plucked up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God.

Some Arabs near us don't take too kindly to those words because on Saturday, our Shabbat, some four dunams of saplings were damaged (pictures here in this Hebrew site) at the vineyards of Achiyah. Up to a thousand were uprooted and a large section of the sophisticated irrigation system was destroyed. It will take some three years to restore the damage.

But it will be restored. For we have decided to replant ourselves in our land and with help, all will be restored: Jewish agriculture, Jewish sovereignty, Jewish morality.

Link: http://www.myrightword.blogspot.com/2012/04/vineyards-will-nevertheless-be-planted.html

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page. Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand 
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Hornik - Jerusalem and Jews Under Attack

P. David Hornik..
frontpagemag.com..
12 April '12..





This week on FP Raymond Ibrahim published a short but powerful report on a Tunisian church coming under threats and abuse from Islamists. “Church members,” Ibrahim notes,

are described [in Al Quds] as “living in a state of terror…. Salafis covered the cross of the church with garbage bags, telling the church members that they do not wish to see the vision of the Cross anywhere in the Islamic state of Tunisia.”

Ibrahim also points out that Tunisia has long been considered one of the most “secular” and “liberal” Arab countries—while now “its very few churches are not tolerated, and their crucifixes abhorred…. More evidence of the true nature of the ‘Arab Spring.’”

But it is not only minority groups in the region, like Christians in Tunisia and elsewhere, who suffer from this sort of abuse, and by no means only Salafi elements who perpetrate it. Jews are a majority in Israel, and they grant full citizenship to non-Jews in the country including those in East Jerusalem (who mostly decline it).
But it doesn’t necessarily help.

A recent Jerusalem Post editorial lamented a difficult situation on the Mount of Olives—the mountain ridge in East Jerusalem that has served as a Jewish cemetery for over three thousand years. In an incident late last month,

a young bridegroom wished to say a short prayer at his mother’s grave on [the] Mount of Olives…. He was driven up by his friend Dror Klein.

As they neared their destination, a bucket of white paint crashed into the front windshield, obscuring Dror’s view. A hail of stones followed.

In minutes some 30 to 40 young Arabs surrounded the vehicle, rocking it menacingly and hurling large rocks, cement blocks and broken pavement fragments at the two.

The bridegroom was dragged out of the car, a boulder was smashed on his head and he was beaten up to the sounds of Alahu Akhbar (God is great). Dror somehow managed to maneuver his Hyundai directly at the attackers. As they momentarily scurried, the bridegroom and his resourceful driver got away by the skin of their teeth.

Sultan Knish - Price Tag Attacks and Peace

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
07 November '11

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2011/11/price-tag-attacks-and-peace.html



To the sort of people who think that a few teenagers living in a shack on a hilltop represent the greatest threat imaginable to the peace process and world peace-- the so-called "Price Tag" attacks in which local Jewish farmers strike back against Muslim attacks as a deterrent against further violence are an obsession.

Whether there are actually any "Price Tag" attacks and how many "Price Tag" attacks there are is open to question. Security agencies tasked with going after "right wing extremists" usually get their man and after a splashy announcement and prolonged detention have to let them go because their case doesn't actually exist. At that point it doesn't matter, the arrests have already been widely reported and the conclusions have all been drawn.

The investigation of a mosque burning incident has already resulted in arrests of people who couldn't have physically done it. But the arrests themselves are a form of "Price Tag" exacted by the authorities against community members to send a message. It's a particularly ironic form of message when the goal is to clamp down on those types of "eye for an eye" tactics.

States tend to command a monopoly on violence which is well and good, it's one of the things that states are for, and one of the few things that they do well, but that monopoly depends on the state exercising its proper function. The ugly truth is that the Israeli authorities have lost control of parts of the country, not just in places like Gaza and the West Bank which have been turned over to terrorist control, but in the Galilee and many Arab villages well within the '48 borders.

A sizable percentage of Israel's Muslim population lives in "No Go Zones", areas where Israeli police cannot operate and which they do not enter except on rare occasions. This isn't an entirely new development. Arab villages ran things their way, received state funding and avoided involving outsiders in their affairs. The village elders, some of whose families had backed the Israeli side in the war, took care of business and the authorities didn't ask too many questions.

Just a Molotov cocktail

Elder of Ziyon
21 March '11

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/03/just-molotov-cocktail.html

Palestine Today quotes Israeli news as saying that a Molotov cocktail was thrown at an Israeli bus near Qalqilya on Sunday evening. Thankfully, no one was injured.

But this is not an isolated incident. A single well-aimed firebomb could kill many people, and Palestinian Arabs attack Israelis with firebombs a lot.

Yet the English-language media - even the Israeli English media - almost always ignores these attacks.

A quick glance at Hebrew media shows that there were two Molotov cocktails thrown at a soldier post near Rachel's Tomb a couple of weeks ago, and an Egged bus was shot at.

Last Friday, in Silwan, a Molotov cocktail was thrown towards an Israeli officer, and he briefly was set on fire. He is only lightly injured, but supposedly a video of the attack is making the rounds of Palestinian Arab media. (You can see a number of photos here, taken by Reuters but not picked up by any major newspaper that I could find.)

From reading the media, you would think that Palestinian Arabs merely throw small stones in their protests. You never hear about shootings, or firebombs. Yet they happen quite often.

They attempt to immolate and shoot Jews to death. Regularly.

But they don't usually succeed.

The Israeli media is used to this, so to them it is not news. The Western media doesn't care, so they don't allow it to be news.

And scenes like this are all but invisible to the world.

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Sheikh Jarrah in 1948

Elder of Ziyon
10 May '10

The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood has been in the news a lot lately. What is hardly mentioned is that it was the epicenter of Arab attacks on Jews in 1948.

In fact, that area - where Jews lived as well as Muslims before 1948, in quarters known as Shimon HaTzadik and Nahalat Shimon - was the scene of many Arab attacks in 1948 on their neighboring Jews.

Arabs from Sheikh Jarrah started attacking their Jewish neighbors almost immediately after the UN Partition vote. This article is from January 12, 1948, where it mentions that attacks had been coming from that area for three weeks already:



(Read Elder of Ziyon's full post)

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