Excellent question! Is Israel’s security barrier a terrorism deterrent or political tool? by Josh Hasten

A growing chorus of experts disputes the notion that the security barrier in Judea and Samaria has been effective in preventing terrorism, while pointing to the barrier instead being used as a political tool to divide the land.

Josh Hasten..
JNS.org..
26 December '18..

Many have pointed to Israel’s security barrier in Judea and Samaria as being one of the primary contributors to the reduction in Palestinian terrorism since the years of the Second Intifada, from 2000 to 2005. However, a growing chorus of experts disputes this notion, while pointing to the barrier instead being used as a political tool to divide the land.

A new study on Israel’s separation fence in Judea and Samaria asserts that while the yet-to-be-completed barrier was constructed under the guise of security against Palestinian suicide-bombers (only around 62 percent of the 790-kilometer route has been erected), the fence is in reality a political apparatus, which would likely become an international border between Israel and a future Palestinian state.

And that border, according to Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA), who conducted the study in conjunction with the Kohelet Policy Forum, would lead to Israel’s demise.

(Continue to Full Article)

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 as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Surprise? BBC World Service on counter-terrorism: Israeli measure is ‘highly controversial’ - by Hadar Sela

...In short, even in a programme specifically relating to security and counter-terrorism that ostensibly sets out to inform listeners what other countries do to “minimise the risk to their citizens” and even as we see that the BBC clearly appreciates both the purpose and the efficacy of the anti-terrorist fence, the corporation cannot resist promoting its knee-jerk “controversial” theme and refrains from informing audiences of the actual statistics relating to the reduction in attacks following construction of the structure.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
02 June '17..

Over the last decade and a half BBC audiences have grown very used to hearing Israel’s anti-terrorist fence described as “controversial” or even worse. Despite the fact that the BBC’s ‘style guide’ instructs its staff to use the term ‘barrier’ to describe the structure, audiences very often hear or see it described as “the wall”. Not only is it is extremely rare for audiences to be informed of that counter-terrorism measure’s record of effectiveness, but BBC produced content frequently promotes the propaganda myth that it is intended to facilitate a “land grab” rather than to curb the number of Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli civilians.

Following the terror attack in Manchester the BBC World Service radio programme ‘Newshour Extra’ – presented by Owen Bennett-Jones – devoted its May 27th edition to the question “How Can We Make Our Cities Safe?“.

“In the wake of the suicide bomb attack at a concert venue in Manchester, Newshour Extra this week is asking how major cities around the world can minimise the risk to their citizens from such atrocities. Owen Bennett Jones and his guests consider urban security, counter-terrorism, and the compromises different cities make between civil liberties and public safety.”

Although one might have thought that Israel – with its sadly considerable experience of tackling that topic – would have featured in such a discussion, the sole brief reference to Israeli counter-terrorism measures appeared at 14:41 when Bennett-Jones addressed a bizarrely expressed question to one of his three guests; Professor Bill Durodie of the University of Bath.

(Continue to Full Post)

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 as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Stupidity, The Hinde Street Methodist Church and Israel - by David Collier

...Katherine ‘knows the truth’. So much so, she persuaded the Hinde Street Methodist church in London to spread the word to others. A vile display that portrays hearsay as eye witness accounts, ignores history, refuses to condemn violence and doesn’t seem to care why the checkpoints were introduced in the first place. Just how much did they waste on this?

David Collier..
Across the Great Divide..
19 September '16..

It’s the 19th September 2016. My attention was drawn this week to an exhibit in London at the Hinde Street Methodist Church. An exhibition that seeks to enlighten Londoners about ‘what it is like to cross a checkpoint everyday’. It is called “You cannot pass today”. It is based on ‘checkpoint 300’, a crossing between Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

Odd really. Even internal European travel can be problematic, and just a few weeks ago I stood for over an hour in a queue at an airport. Not sure what ‘experience’ Londoners are lacking. Borders can be frustrating. We all know that.

Yet Hinde Street Methodist Church decided that it wishes to divert funds from a deserving cause so yet another exhibition against Israel could go ahead.

I was busy preparing for the new academic year. Soon, I will be moving from campus to campus, talking to students, trying to understand the hate. Then Hinde Street knocked on my door. I decided to go and see what they wanted me to learn.

The event apparently is part of the “World Week for Peace in Palestine & Israel”. I found information on this from ‘The Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF)’ which judging from their stated goal of ‘ending the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories’, is just another one sided anti-Israeli movement hiding under the umbrella of a church group.

(Continue to Full Post)

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 as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

A security barrier, reconsidered - by Arnold Roth

...Most Israelis know to ignore the inevitable shrill criticism accusing us of apartheid and land-grabbing, particularly when it emanates from people who can't quite figure out how to condemn the people doing the stabbing, the shooting and the vehicle-ramming. But at the end of the day, if fewer innocent people are going to be hurt on both sides by the completion of a half-built physical fence, then let it be.

Standing outside the International Court of Justice
in The Hague in February 2004, Arnold Roth,
 holding a photo of his murdered child,
is interviewed by BBC News

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
09 March '16..

In the midst of violent drama being visited upon us by our neighbors, the government of Israel seems to be on the verge of acting on a matter that we have wanted to see happen for many years.

For background, see "11-Oct-07: Reacting to 7 more frustrated mass-murders". And "5-Oct-08: Learning the lessons of the checkpoints". And "28-Apr-12: Security barrier proves yet again to be a life-saver". And this interview from 2004 in which Arnold Roth explained to CNN how security fences can look to people who have personal experience of life without security:

She [our murdered daughter Malki] wasn't caught in any crossfire. She wasn't a bystander. She was the target. People outside of this country have to understand that, that whatever we do to protect our lives has got to be seen as being our prerogative and perfectly legitimate. We want out government to do whatever is necessary to keep our lives safe and our children safe... ["Crisis in the Middle East - The Israeli Barrier", CNN, February 22, 2004]

Now today's news:

(Read Full Post. Please Share)

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 as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

.

Why Netanyahu's Fence Isn’t Trump’s Wall

...But any attempt to compare Trump and Netanyahu falls apart when you look at what they want and the problems they are seeking to address. Both countries may need fences but the purposes and the point of such efforts are very different, and Americans should thank heaven that, however justified their worries about the border might be, they are nothing like the fears that Israelis must confront.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
11 February '16..

Israel’s left-wing critics had a field day this week when, during a tour of Israel’s border with Jordan, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced his plans “to surround the entire state of Israel with a fence.” The project would extend fencing that already exists along the country’s borders with Gaza and Lebanon that are run by hostile powers and is also intended to include features that would prevent the building of tunnels underneath any obstacles such as those used by Hamas in 2014 to facilitate kidnapping and murder raids inside the country. Given the increasingly chaotic situation in the region with ISIS terrorists on the loose in the Egyptian Sinai as well as the threat of the Islamic State in a Syria where central authority has collapsed, the measure is nothing more than common sense. But that isn’t how Israel’s detractors are viewing it.

Netanyahu’s comments in which he said that the Jewish state needed to act to protect its citizens against “predators” in the region — a line that was widely mistranslated as “wild beasts” — were interpreted in some quarters as more evidence of his alleged racism against Arabs. Others on the left not only disparaged the prime minister’s concern about terrorism but also made comparisons with presidential candidate Donald Trump’s vow to build a wall along the U.S. southern border and have Mexico pay for it. That was a position that some of Trump’s supporters, such as the conservative Breitbart.com website, echoed, as it proclaimed that, “Netanyahu Goes Full Trump.”

While pro-Israel backers of Trump are happy with the comparison, their effort to link the two issues are as misguided as those of the Jewish state’s foes. Israel’s border dilemma and the one faced by American leaders are as different as the terrorists that cross Israel’s borders are from the economic migrants that illegally come into the U.S.

It’s true that the principle behind U.S. border security is the same as the one that motivated Israel’s efforts to protect its territory. Both countries have not only the right but also an obligation to defend their borders. Thus, while it’s possible to mock Trump’s blithe assertions about building an equivalent to China’s Great Wall along the Rio Grande and having another nation foot the bill, there is nothing absurd about Americans wanting to secure a border that is notably porous. That there are national security implications of an unprotected border is also undeniable as the routine use of illegal crossings by drug gangs and the potential threat of terrorists behaving in the same manner is a real and present danger. To the extent that they can, Israel’s leaders also wish to curtail the flow of economic immigrants coming from Africa in the same way that Latin Americans want to come to the U.S.

But that’s where the comparisons begin and end.

As much as illegal immigration is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, Mexico is a friendly nation, and the reason why so many of its people want to come to the U.S. without permission is that they seek to take advantage of economic opportunities here, not to slaughter Americans. Trump’s assertions that the Mexicans coming over the border were largely drug dealers and rapists were as inaccurate as they were offensive.

But when Netanyahu spoke of predators lurking beyond Israel’s borders he wasn’t making a value judgment about Arabs and Muslims. He was merely noting the undeniable fact that large-scale terrorist forces seek to cross into Israel, kill its people and to dismantle their state and replace it with yet another Islamic state such as the one that currently operates in Gaza.

Surprise! The Guardian Electrifies Israeli Security Barrier

...Not a huge surprise that The Guardian has unilaterally given a non-existent Palestinian state ownership over the West Bank. However, the report also contains a glaring factual error

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
02 March '15..

It appears that Israel isn’t the only state preventing terror through the construction of a physical barrier. The Guardian reports that Kenya is to build a wall on the Somali border to keep out al-Shabaab terrorists.

The report also makes comparisons with Israel’s security barrier:

Kenya is going to build a wall. Not just any wall, but a “separation barrier”, to employ the euphemism coined by Israel to describe the towering, snaking structure that now separates it from Palestine’s West Bank.

Not a huge surprise that The Guardian has unilaterally given a non-existent Palestinian state ownership over the West Bank. However, the report also contains a glaring factual error:

How is Israel's separation fence different than all the others? by Dr. Mordechai Kedar

...A few months ago, Turkey began building a concrete separation wall along the border it shares with Syria to prevent infiltration of terrorists from the war-torn country, parts of which are effectively under the rule of al-Qaida. The response, or rather lack thereof, of the international media, academics and officials represents a prime example of hypocrisy, revealed here in all its ugliness. The international community keeps mum on this matter, as do the so-called human rights groups - that rush to the defense of all and sundry, provided they are not Jewish.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar..
i24 News..
01 May '14..

We all remember the onslaught of anti-Israel propaganda that followed the construction of the separation fence (between Israel and the West Bank). Who didn't condemn us back then? The media, politicians, artists, Palestinians, Arabs, Europeans, Americans, South Africans and even Israelis - all joined in with the chorus aimed solely at vilifying Israel, as the country sought to protect itself from the scourge of suicide bombings, which has claimed the lives of upward of 1,000 Israelis since 1993.

This preventive, non-violent measure that greatly reduced the number of terror acts on our streets was branded as racist by our neighbors.

A few months ago, Turkey began building a concrete separation wall along the border it shares with Syria to prevent infiltration of terrorists from the war-torn country, parts of which are effectively under the rule of al-Qaida. The response, or rather lack thereof, of the international media, academics and officials represents a prime example of hypocrisy, revealed here in all its ugliness. The international community keeps mum on this matter, as do the so-called human rights groups - that rush to the defense of all and sundry, provided they are not Jewish.

The Turkish separation fence proudly joins the ranks of the many other separation fences around the world, such as the ones between the US and Mexico; Saudi Arabia and Iraq; Saudi Arabia and Yemen; Morocco and all its neighbors; South Korea and its neighbor to the north; India and Pakistan; Pakistan and Afghanistan; Botswana and Zimbabwe; Thailand and Malaysia; Uzbekistan and Tajikistan; Kuwait and Iraq; the UAE and Oman; Morocco and the Spanish enclaves Sveta and Malia; Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, and the list goes on.

Yet for some reason, the only separation fence to enjoy worldwide notoriety is the one that delineates Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Jerusalem from Israel proper.

Rocks, firebombs, their users and the real Bethlehem have a new religious inspiration

...Had they asked us, we might have suggested a more honest name for this shabby exercise. Not Bethlehem Unwrapped, since that town remains tightly in the grip of forces about which the church cannot admit, but Anglicans Unraveling.

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
07 January '13..

At St James's Church in Piccadilly, they must be laughing into the sleeves of their cassocks this morning.

The area around Bethlehem - the real Bethlehem, a short stroll south of Jerusalem, not the Hollywood-like "art installation" erected on the grounds of the London church to make concrete the Israel-bashing that emanates from its politically-extreme clergy's pop theology - has been rocked in recent days by escalating acts of lethal-minded Palestinian Arab violence.

That's "lethal" as in likely to take someone's life and/or organs, rather than a reference to some movie.

Last night (Monday), a pipe bomb was thrown into the car park of the ancient Rachel's Tomb, injuring an as-yet unidentified person. Ynet said police and Border Guard forces were searching the area for the attackers. Times of Israel noted that this happened just hours after Secretary of State John Kerry flew out of Israel after another peace-making visit and in the wake of "sporadic attacks throughout the West Bank" that have grown more frequent (we would say more intense) as a result of those visits.

Earlier in the day, Palestinian Arabs hurled a grenade towards an IDF base near Bethlehem. Again, fortunately, no casualties, no damage. That is plainly not the outcome intended by those behind the attack who put their lives on the line when firing at armed security personnel. They mean business, and though yesterday they failed, it is a certainty they will keep trying.

Why, by the way, would there even be a need for armed security personnel in the vicinity of the peaceful little town of Bethlehem?

For the same reason that Rachel's Tomb, a modest place of Jewish pilgrimage since Roman times, is today dwarfed by thirty-foot-high walls and guard towers that entirely encase it in concrete: because of the gunmen and grenade hurlers who live nearby and are urged on by political and religious leaders to do everything they can to hurt the Jews.

(Continue)

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 as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out! 
.

These lives would have been saved had the security barrier been in place

...Here, then, is an instructive question: why is there no art installation decrying the EU's 'apartheid' security barriers on the Spain-Morocco border? What about the human rights of impoverished Moroccan and sub-Saharan African illegals, who surely deserve a temporary monument in a major capital city (and an accompanying festival) at least as much as jihadis determined to infiltrate Israel and murder innocent men, women and children, deserve one? Perhaps such a project will be next on the agenda for the baleful coterie of trendy British priests and fading, 'socially conscious' media figures currently assembled at St. James's Church.

John Allan..
American Thinker..
02 January '13..

An Anglican church together with some would-be 'fashionable yet politically aware' types, unveiled an installation in London's city center last week, a mock-up of the walled part of Israel's security barrier -- and invited members of the public to write what the organizers presumably anticipated would be anti-'Zionist', anti-Israel graffiti on it. The wall is the main attraction of the church's ideologically poisoned Christmastime festival "Bethlehem Unwrapped," which runs until January 5, 2014.

One of the commenters under Robin Shepherd's piece in The Commentator on Thursday suggests posting 'pictures of Israeli victims of terror on the wall at St James's Church with a placard saying "These lives would have been saved had the security barrier been in place."'

Anyone who travels to see this exercise might also like to take along the information below: a lengthy (though probably incomplete) list of security walls, barriers, and fences around the world, most of them maintained to prevent terrorism, amongst other rampant evils, yet none of them obsessively given attention by media outlets and by celebrity demagogues like Jeremy Hardy and Mark Steel.

There appear to be no replicas in London of these 50+ other walls or barriers, which nevertheless, according

to St. James's Church website '...divide and confine peoples, restricting free movement and dominating the imagination of those who live behind them.' (The remainder of the paragraph sounds like a parody of Roger Waters himself: 'We believe that bridges not walls are the only lasting foundation for peace. ...We join with people of all faiths in praying for the day when the Wall will come down.')

Saudi Arabia, for example, is almost entirely walled in (all seven of its land borders and two of its three coastlines) and nobody bats an eyelid. The Channel Tunnel between the United Kingdom and France incorporates a range of security measures that includes surveillance, electrified fencing, and a permanent military presence on its French site, in order to root out potential terrorists, smugglers, and illegal immigrants; no-one is suggesting that such measures are anything apart from plain common sense.

Where stunted and distorted theological pretensions praise evil, condemning the innocents

...Sadly, we know from experience that people who will spend untold amounts of money and months of effort in creating a stunt like St James's neither listen nor understand. Trying to share the complexity of the situation with them is like talking to a wall. So too is reminding them of the life of our daughter, Malki, ended so brutally by the thuggish Hamas murderers with whom the worshippers of St James's have so articulately expressed their solidarity

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
30 December '13..

From a distance, events in our part of the world can appear to be oh-so-simple, particularly to those for whom the most complex of narratives reduce down to strong and bad versus weak and good.

Irresponsible dumbing-down of that kind lies behind the embrace by Europeans and Americans of vile and racist terrorism, jihadism and religion-driven violence. And it's behind the infuriatingly dishonest stunt just executed by the management of a prominent London church in honour of this holiday season.

In the courtyard of St James's Church in Piccadilly, London, as part of what they have disingenuously labelled “Bethlehem Unwrapped”, the church celebrated their holidays this year via the pricey construction of a wall. It's 26 foot replica of the security barrier erected by Israel in the past decade as an entirely non-lethal response to the relentless, utterly lethal attacks by Islamist terrorists on ordinary Israelis, an expression of hatred and war.

The St James's leadership have pretty much adopted the same jihadist strategy, using their wall as a focus for a campaign of vilification and hatred against Israelis and projecting anti-Israel propaganda onto it.

But there is a different and much more positive sort of message that the St James's wall has evoked, without meaning to. An article entitled "Why Israel’s security barrier matters: a harrowing story often forgotten", by Raheem Kassam of TrendingCentral.com points out what the stunted and distorted theological pretensions of that Piccadilly church seeks to hide.

(Continue)

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 as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out! 
.

(+Video) Since The Guardian won’t, let the Palestinian Islamic Jihad chief make the point instead

...But why let journalistic balance ruin a perfect mood created by Sherwood, B’Tselem, and five photogenic Palestinians?

Pesach Benson..
Honest Reporting Backspin..
21 November '13..

An interactive feature at The Guardian look at walls and barriers around the world. From the US-Mexico border, to the 2,500 mile barrier separating India and Bangladesh, along with 99 walls separating Belfast’s Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods, call it “wall-to-wall coverage.”

Israel’s security barrier is featured too.

Harriet Sherwood (with some credited assistance from B’Tselem) has plenty of comments, photos and videos of Palestinians talking about how the wall impacts their lives.

Left outside The Guardian gates, unfortunately, are Israelis sharing how the security barrier impacts their lives. That would mean addressing the deadly Palestinian suicide bombers who wreaked havoc in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv during the second intifada.

Tear down the Judea and Samaria security barrier? Go for it!

...While the Arabs claim that the fence was built as a tool for Israel to implement a policy of “land grabbing” and “settlement” expansion,” the fence in fact deters Israel from legally building additional communities in Judea and Samaria to serve its housing needs.

Josh Hasten..
Times of Israel..
11 July '13..

This week, The PLO issued a statement reiterating its demand that Israel implement the 2004, recommendations of the International Court of Justice and tear down the Judea and Samaria (they of course say “West Bank”) security barrier.

The court’s opinion was issued despite the fact that statistics indicate that the barrier, constructed at the height of the Oslo War, no doubt protected Israeli population centers from the wave of suicide bombings which plagued the country at the time.

While the barrier does have its benefits, I agree with the PLO on this one.

I say: ‘tear down this fence!’

While I concur with the PLO that the fence should be dismantled, I diverge when it comes to their reasoning for doing so.

While the Arabs claim that the fence was built as a tool for Israel to implement a policy of “land grabbing” and “settlement” expansion,” the fence in fact deters Israel from legally building additional communities in Judea and Samaria to serve its housing needs.

While its official or unofficial government policy, how many times have we heard politicians make a differentiation between communities to the West of the fence and those to the East?

In other words, while the Arabs view all “settlements” as being illegal regardless of where they are located, WE OURSELVES have placed both a physical and a psychological chasm between the Jews living on one side of the barrier and the other.

At War With The Truth - CBS chairman Jeff Fager and 60 Minutes

...“What’s obvious is that CBS News – and, specifically, CEO Jeffrey Fager – have abandoned their fundamental role and responsibility to the public: to provide reliable facts and to correct errors if they’re made,” says Levin. “It’s particularly absurd that CBS continues to claim that the town of Bethlehem is completely surrounded by a wall, like ‘an open-air prison.’ This is patently false and it’s shocking it that hasn’t been corrected a full year after the broadcast. The charge is one favored by anti-Israel propagandists. The question is: is CBS now in that category?”

Cindy Mindell..
Jewish Ledger..
15 May '13..

On April 22, 2012 CBS’s 60 Minutes aired “Christians of the Holy Land,” reported by Bob Simon and produced by Harry Radliffe. There were several factual errors in the segment, the most glaring of which described the security barrier built to stop suicide bombers entering Israel from the West Bank “completely surrounds” Bethlehem.

In fact, maps provided by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the United Nations, B’tselem, and even the PLO indicate that this is not so: the security fence is located to the north and west of Bethlehem and leaves the rest of the city’s perimeter open to the West Bank.

In response, the Boston-based watchdog organization, CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) posted articles on its website indicating the errors and informed CBS of the network’s error. Leaders of the organization showed up at a CBS shareholders’ meeting and submitted a proxy to call on the CBS Board of Directors to make sure that CBS News lived up to its policy of corrections. In August 2012, CAMERA took out a half-page ad in the Wall Street Journal pointing out the erroneous information included in the report.

CBS never made the correction.

Then, on April 7 of this year, CBS chairman Jeff Fager spoke at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in New Canaan, where he is a member, as part of the church’s weekly program, “Abraham’s Tent: Jews, Christians and Muslims in the World Today.” The church website states the intent of the program as follows:

“We must educate ourselves with a basic understanding of each other’s perspectives. We must also look honestly at our conflicts, and we must work to live together in peace. This series will give people the knowledge and understanding they need to do this.

“The educational program from September to June will be organized in three terms around these three topics. In the fall, St. Mark’s will look at The Common Word, examining what we have in common. In the winter, they will look at our conflicted history, and in the spring they will explore ways in which to live together in peace.”

On the day Jeff Fager spoke, CAMERA media analyst Dexter Van Zile was in the St. Mark’s audience. Upon entering the church, he first noticed copies of CAMERA’s August 2012 Wall Street Journal ad displayed on a table for audience members to take. Before Fager began his presentation, Reverend Peter F. Walsh, rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, distributed copies to those who did not have one. According to Van Zile, “Fager showed the 60 Minutes segment and then complained about the angry response the show had elicited. In particular, he condemned the Wall Street Journal’s decision to run CAMERA’s ad, which he said was intended to create havoc on the CBS show’s reporting. Fager then told his audience that CAMERA got it wrong about the security fence in its ad and that ‘Bethlehem is surrounded by a wall.’”

After Fager’s presentation, during a Q & A session, Van Zile identified himself as a CAMERA employee, pointed out the error and offered to give $5,000 from his own pocket to a charity of Fager’s choice if Fager could prove that the security barrier in fact completely surrounded Bethlehem. According to Van Zile, Fager answered, “Okay.” But he ignored the challenge until May 1, when Van Zile phoned the chairman’s office. The next day, Fager contacted CAMERA through a CBS staff-person who stated, “We are looking into your points about the security barrier.”

To date, however, 60 Minutes has failed to issue a correction, either during its Sunday broadcast or on its website – contrary to CBS’s corporate policy which states that “significant errors of fact must be corrected clearly and promptly in the broadcast or on the web page of the program in which the error was made…”

Att: Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News - It’s not the error. It’s the stonewalling.

Dexter Van Zile..
JNS.org..
09 April '13..

Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News, has a problem. Either he doesn’t know what he’s talking about or he’s lying about the security fence that Israel built to protect its citizens from suicide bombers coming from the West Bank during the Second Intifada.

I came to this troubling conclusion during a talk he gave at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in New Canaan, Conn., on Sunday, April 7, 2013. Invited to speak at the church by his pastor Rev. Peter Walsh, Fager showed an audience of more than 200 of his fellow parishioners a segment about Palestinian Christians that aired on the CBS “60 Minutes” program in April 2012.

During the segment, correspondent Bob Simon stated that the security fence “completely surrounds Bethlehem, turning the ‘little town' where Christ was born into what its residents call ‘an open air prison.’”

The fence does not completely surround Bethlehem, as Simon reported. The security fence is located to the

north and west of Bethlehem and leaves the rest of the city’s perimeter open to the West Bank. The factual misstatement raised some questions about the notion that Bethlehem is an “open air prison.” If conditions in the city are so bad, it shouldn’t be necessary to exaggerate the extent of the security fence, but Palestinians spokespeople do it all the time. And journalists fall for it on a regular basis—even “60 Minutes.”

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), pointed out the “60 Minutes” error in an article on its website soon after the segment aired and in a half-page ad that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Aug. 14, 2012.

Nevertheless, the CBS show has not issued a correction to this day.

Five Broken Cameras? Actually, Five Perfectly Functioning Cameras

Uri Heitner..
Israel Hayom..
26 February '13..

This is a scene worthy of a movie: A man of Middle Eastern appearance steps onto a bus. The camera focuses on his face. He utters a sentence that reveals his Arabic accent. Suddenly, the driver stands up from his chair, grabs the man, ejects him forcefully from the bus and shuts the swinging doors behind him. Cut.

This kind of scene has the potential to teach audiences about the racism that permeates Israeli society, using the driver's actions, throwing a man off his bus just because of his ethnic background — just because he is Arab — as the means to convey the lesson. But what would have happened if just seconds after the cut, the man who was thrown off of the bus detonated an explosive belt? It would turn out that the driver had identified a suicide bomber, prevented a terrorist attack and saved the lives of dozens of passengers.

And that is how you make a documentary, calculating where to "zoom" and when to "cut." That's what it's all about. Whether you're using one functioning camera or five broken ones, the technical devices matter less than the director's decision-making process. The director's decisions express his or her agenda. If the director wants to represent Israeli society as a racist one, then he or she can do that by splicing the picture from the larger context — namely, the context that revealed a racist terrorist attack against Israelis and against Jews, and which was averted thanks to the driver's ingenuity. Over the years, there have been numerous bus drivers who have succeeded in staving off terrorist attacks and saving lives, just as described. Unfortunately, in many cases, this was not how things ended. For a long time, the conversation steered toward the topic of "exploding buses," but the truth is that it wasn't the buses that exploded. Rather, it was people who turned themselves into booby-traps and blew themselves up, hoping to slaughter as many Jews as possible in buses, malls and nightclubs.

The wave of suicide attacks that washed over Israel in the late 1990s and the turn of the 21st century expressed hope, not despair. The leading sentiment among Palestinians was that they had found the ultimate war doctrine, one that the enemy could not cope with, and one that would exhaust, break, crush and defeat the toughness of Israeli society.

Again, the security checkpoint system proves its worth

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




From Times of Israel this afternoon:

Border Police forces arrested a 20-year-old Palestinian carrying eight explosive devices at the Qalandiya checkpoint near Ramallah, on Tuesday. The man reportedly traveled to the checkpoint by taxi. A routine inspection of his bags revealed the bombs, which were assembled and ready for use. The man was taken into custody. The border crossing was closed and sappers disassembled the devices on the scene.

From other sources, we know the seizing of this terrorist happened around 12:15 this afternoon.

There are people who will read the news item above and see within it further confirmation that Israel maintains a cruel and strict regime of oppression over the Palestinian Arabs. They might include the film critic of the Observer/Guardian who this week cluelessly compared it to the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Soviet Berlin wall. The Arab media frequently refer to it as an apartheid wall, showing a fatal lack of comprehension of what it was that made Apartheid-era South Africa a racist and unjust regime.

We prefer to look at it this way. The young man arrested today knew he was going to have to pass through the security checkpoint. He may have done it before in the past. It was not suddenly thrown into his path - it's been there, in the same place, for years. He may have thought his luck would hold and he would get through. He had alternatives: the security barrier has never been completed and is not continuous; people regularly find ways to cross over without passing through the checkpoints.

Fulfilling His Duties, Israel Loses a Hero.

Lior Farhi

Efrat Forsher..
Israel Hayom..
10 September '12..

Lior Farhi, 40, the security coordinator for the community of Sha'arei Tikva, was killed Sunday morning as he tried to stop a car carrying illegal Palestinians into Israeli territory. A friend of Farhi's who was with him and documented the incident on film, said the driver sped up and hit Farhi on purpose. The two were documenting the entrance of illegal Palestinian workers to Israel, a daily occurrence.

Farhi, who is survived by his pregnant wife and three children, was recognized as a fallen member of the Israel Defense Forces because he was fulfilling his duties as the community's security liaison with the IDF at the time of his death. He will be brought to rest on Monday afternoon in a military ceremony at the Segula cemetery.

On Sunday morning Farhi left for an area along the West Bank security barrier used by Palestinians to cross the Green Line, near Road 505 between Oranit and Elkana. Part of the security barrier, between Sha'arei Tikva and Oranit, is still under construction and the breach, some 200 meters (656 feet) from the IDF roadblock, is exploited by Palestinians seeking to cross into Israel. Hundreds of Palestinians enter Israel illegally every day in such a manner, usually continuing to Rosh Ha'ayin or Tel Aviv.

This phenomenon, explained Farhi's colleagues, concerned Farhi because among those Palestinians entering Israel for work were also criminal and terrorist elements.

The unbearable lightness of being a Guardian journalist: Israel’s life & death decisions as comic inspiration

Adam Levick
CiF Watch
23 April '11

The only thing even remotely funny about comedian Mark Thomas’s account of his tour along Israel’s security fence, in My travels: Mark Thomas on walking Israel’s West Bank barrier, Guardian Travel Section, April 23, is his comical historical comparison between the barrier and the Great Wall of China.

Israel’s security barrier, which he casually refers to as a “military folly”, is a source of amusement for Thomas, and, indeed, Thomas’s comedic travel diary prose assumes a sense of emotional detachment consistent with the reports on the region from the Guardian’s “serious” journalists, such as Harriet Sherwood.

The irreverent tone of Thomas’s narrative is best illustrated when he mockingly suggests that Israeli soldiers stationed along the fence’s parameter act to prevent infiltration according to their whims and moods:

“A buffer zone exists on the Palestinian side of the barrier and the degree to which it varies in size, and the rigor with which it is enforced, depends on the mood of the soldiers.”

Of course, the fence, and the soldiers he refers to deployed along its parameter, has led to a 90% reduction in the number of Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis. And, indeed, the decision to construct a security fence in and around the West Bank in order to protect Israelis from suicide bombers was taken during the height of the 2nd Intifada, in March 2002 – a month in which there were 32 separate Palestinian terrorist attacks, including 8 separate suicide bombings, as a result of which 135 innocent Israelis were murdered, and a further 721 were injured.

(Read full "The unbearable lightness of being a Guardian journalist")

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.
.

Karl "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace" Vick Is Back

Daled Amos
14 December '10

Karl Vick of the Times writes about the real victims of the impasse between Israel and the Palestinians--the next generation:

Palestinian terrorism has done more than destroy lives and hopes for peace. No less important, it has created a separation of the mind. Israelis say they simply think much less about Palestinians. Meanwhile, the West Bank regularly witnesses government-sponsored incitement of hatred towards Israelis, where honoring Palestinian terrorists who murdered Israelis has led to a generation of Palestinians coming of age without wanting to know what Israelis look like, much less the land both sides claim as their own. The absence of familiarity, names, basic knowing - the absence of the foundations of empathy - does not bode well for the chances of the two peoples one day living as neighbors in peace.

Actually, truth be told, Karl Vick does not blame the shrinking chances for peace on the incitement of hate in the West Bank--he makes no mention of it. For that matter, Vick mentions terrorism only once in passing.

No, according to Vick, it is not terrorism that does not bode well for the chances of living in peace--no, it is Israel's separation barrier that stands in the way.

(Read full "Karl "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace" Vick Is Back")

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.
.

Which Wall Would That Be?

Daphne Anson
11 November '10

Have a look at these earnest senior citizens in central London, mutely demanding “Stop the Wall”. Few if any of us would even consider for a moment that they might be demonstrating against the construction of some high wall nearby that’s going to impede residents’ view of a park or of a lake or of a cathedral’s close or some other scenic vista, or against some stark modern structure that bides ill with the locality’s architectural heritage.

Alas, we’re all conditioned, we all respond on cue, like Pavlov’s dogs. Owing to the relentless crusade of delegitimisation of a certain tiny country in the Middle East – a country more sinned against than sinning – we all know which wall they, and others, mean by “the wall”. Israel’s “apartheid wall”, of course.

“Labelling Israel as an ‘apartheid state’ is the embodiment of the new antisemitism that seeks to deny the Jewish people the right of equality and self-determination among the nations”, Professor Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan University has rightly observed. The people who are so swift to do so seldom if ever utter a word in condemnation of the male supremacist gender apartheid committed by some Islamic regimes, who prohibit the public space to their female chattels unless those unlucky enough to be of the "inferior" gender suborn their identities by concealing themselves behind grotesque portable walls (such as these shroud-like garments which make their wearers look like a nightmarish regiment of risen corpses in a horror movie  that impede their vision, hamper their breathing, make them perspire, and give their unborn infants rickets.

(Read full post)

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.
.