If the practitioners of terrorism are barbarians, what does that make their advocates?

Raya Yaron, an official from Machsom Watch, an Israeli group that
offers comfort, comforts the mother of Hakim Awad, Nawef, who was still in the
post-murder, denial stage when the photo was snapped. 
But then she got over it (see below) [Image Source]

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
01 March '13..

Many Israelis, but almost no one else in the world, remember the name Fogel and shudder at the memory of a sleeping family decimated by a March 2011 assault by terrorists who attacked and murdered in their own home a young mother and father and three of their children including a newborn baby girl only four months old.

There's an epilogue to the horrifying story in today's news.

To refresh our memory of the facts, here are two of our earlier posts:

19-Apr-11: What happened that awful Sabbath night in Itamar?

16-Jan-12: Smiling baby-slashers, men who hide bombs in their clothing and bags, and reporters confused between facts and their own prejudices

The barbaric career of two young Palestinian Arabs who executed the massacre of the young Fogel family in their home in the community of Itamar on a quiet Sabbath night is on hold, at least for the present.

(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.

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The Fogel family - "They’re always with us."

Grandparents Yehuda and Tali Ben-Yishai have taken it upon themselves to raise the three orphans in circumstances that are as normal as possible • They look for points of light amid the tragedy that shocked the nation.

Yehuda Shlezinger..
Israel Hayom..
15 February '13..

In the Jerusalem home of Rabbi Yehuda Ben-Yishai and his wife Tali, photographs of their daughter Ruti, their son-in-law Ehud, and their children — 11-year-old Yoav, four-year-old Elad, and three-month-old Hadas hang on the walls of every room.

These are the members of the Fogel family who were massacred in their home two years ago by two terrorists. "They’re always with us," Rabbi Ben-Yishai said of his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren. "We talk about the parents. We talk about them with the children and live their legacy at the same time. We are learning to live with the fact that they’re with us all the time though they’re not here." That is the essence of their daily routine since that terrible Friday, now known as "the Itamar massacre," which transformed Yehuda and Tali Ben-Yishai from the grandparents to the parents of the children who survived: 14-year-old Tamar, 10-year-old Roi and four-year-old Yishai.

The family’s friends commemorate them also. In two days, when Itamar marks the second anniversary of the terrible event, the cornerstone of a new building at the yeshiva, to be named for the family, will be laid. A beit midrash (study hall), named Mishkan Ehud, was built even before that. Dozens of memorial pamphlets were produced, and the home — which has since been sold — has become a place of pilgrimage.

Although Yehuda and Tali Ben-Yishai are made of rare fiber, the terrible pain of their loss is etched on their faces. Their voices tremble and their eyes are sad, but they look to the future. "What happened was so inhuman that we have gained superhuman strength," Tali says. "We know these children will be great people. They will be all right. They will not be damaged. They’re not in trauma anymore. Some children are afraid of what happens around them, but they’re not like that. They’re not the sort who don’t want to go to school or don’t want to get out of bed and spend the day crying."

The three children lead ordinary lives. "They get up in the morning, go to school, prepare sandwiches for themselves, come back with report cards. A normal routine," says Yehuda. Only Yishai, who was two years old when the murder took place, calls Yehuda and Tali mother and father. "If he looks at the photographs, he can identify his father, Udi, and his mother, Ruti, but he’s all right. He was little, and he’s grown up under different circumstances," Tali says.

She continues: "The move from Itamar to Jerusalem wasn’t easy, but they’re good kids. They understand what happened, but amazingly, they’ve chosen to feel their terrible pain, and at the same time gather strength and look to the future. Roi is already ten years old, and we feel that despite all the pain he’s in, he decided to keep going forward. He doesn’t let himself get bogged down in painful thoughts, collapse and cry. Sometimes he cries over other things, like any kid does. Maybe his crying over the other things is mixed with the pain of what happened, but he’s all right.

Rontzki - Child murderers deserve to die

Rabbi Avichai Rontzki
Israel Hayom
27 November '11

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=907

"Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed" says the Book of Genesis. This is not a trivial statement. Our ancient ancestors, at the very beginning of human history, demanded measure for measure where murderers were concerned.

The ancients' healthy instincts, not yet warped by the ideas of subsequent intellectuals, told them that the only way to stop evildoers was to remove them from this earth.

Not every transgression justifies an eye for an eye punishment. But this kind of punishment does apply to cruel evildoers, particularly child murderers like the killers of Udi and Ruti Fogel and their three children Yoav, Elad and Hadas.

One of the two perpetrators of these painful and horrific murders, the mastermind Amjad Awad, is scheduled to be sentenced on Monday in the Samaria Military Court. The other culprit was sentenced last week to five consecutive life sentences. This was a mistake, in my view. The only rightful punishment in such cases is the death penalty.

One must recall that the murderers wiped out almost an entire family. And we have not yet discussed the shocking method used to commit the murders: through close-range physical contact, by slitting throats, including the throat of a three-month-old baby.

Justice and humanity would be served if such murderers, perversions of human society, not continue to exist among us.

Many nations have enemies - but what do you call people like this barbarian?

Frimet/Arnold Roth
This Ongoing War
06 June '11

http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2011/06/6-jun-11-many-nations-have-enemies-but.html


The massacre of the Fogel family - father, mother and three children aged 11, 3 and a three month infant, all slashed to death in their beds - had a devastating effect on Israeli society when it happened on a Sabbath night in March in the quiet Samaria community of Itamar. Not because murders of innocents in their homes is unknown in this country. Far from it. But unlike a bombing or a shooting or a drive-by killing, these murders were carried out by people who could see, touch, smell their victims as they slashed their flesh. The grandfather of the three slaughtered children said the scene was "horrendous, beyond description, beyond comprehension".

Two cousins, Amjad Mahmad Awad and Hakim Awad, from a village a short hike from Itamar, were charged with the murders, indicted in an Israeli court and confessed. DNA evidence found at the Fogel family home connects the two Awads to the crime.

Now in a reminder of how this ongoing war is not based on grievances or claims but on hatred so intense, so all-encompassing and profound that it leaves civilized people gasping, Amjad Mahmad Awad, 19, has given voice to the credo of terrorists everywhere:

"I don't regret what I did, even if it means I'm sentenced to death... I'm proud of what I did."

People who have not had to confront terrorism from close up often have difficulty comprehending just how far from familiar norms the values and standards of such people are. The hatred harbored by these people is simply in a different league. Imaging a life in which you compromise and come to terms with such people is something you cannot do once you become aware of the barbarity animating their lives and actions.

Now go try to find a single non-Israeli news channel that has published yesterday's statement by this vile and repulsive man.

For the record, the murderer of our daughter is made of the same sickening material.

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Radical Israelis Prefer Murderers

Raya Yaron, the Machsom
Watch spokeswoman, tried
to comfort Shama Awad,
mother of suspected
murderer Hakem Awad

Yaacov Lozowick
Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
22 April '11

For years I've believed - and have said in print - that for all my disagreements with far-left Israelis, they were a legitimate voice and deserved respect for criticizing from inside the war zone: if proven wrong, they'd be here to pay the price; when Palestinian or Hisballah murderers do their best to kill random Israeli Jews, the far-left Israelis are here along with all the rest of us. This creates a qualitative distinction between them and their foreign fellows in malice.

I'm no longer convinced. As I've long been documenting in this blog, the contribution Israel's radicals make to the Big Lie against Israel is immense; sometimes the entire anti-Israeli argumentation comes from them. Absent them and the hatred of the Jewish State wouldn't go away, but its purveyors could present far fewer arguments.

This week we've had a further example which to my mind crosses all the lines of simple human decency. The Hebrew part of the Internet has been all a-buzz about the story of the Israeli radicals who went to the West Bank town of Awarta to give succor to the families of the murderers of the Fogel family, while disseminating unforgivable slander against the IDF and the law enforcement agencies.

(Read full "Radical Israelis Prefer Murderers")

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Washington Post Strains Murder through Palestinian Filter

Eric Rozenman
CAMERA Media Analysis
18 April '11

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=38&x_article=2028


The Washington Post covered the early April murder of Juliano Mer Khamis, a Jewish-Arab actor and director of a drama school for Palestinian Arabs, with detailed articles and photographs on two consecutive days.

By contrast, the newspaper virtually ignored the murder of five members of an Israeli family, presumably by Palestinian terrorists, a few weeks earlier.

And in reporting on Mer Khamis’ killing, The Post air brushed his anti-Jewish politics. At least one Israeli, writing in Hebrew (Kalman Liebeskind, "I did not cry about Juliano," Ma’ariv, April 11), reported that Mer Khamis once termed Zionism one of the greatest crimes in history and found "armed resistance" (anti-Israeli terrorism) acceptable.

Compare:

* On April 5, The Post published "Israeli actor fatally shot in Jenin camp," by special correspondent Joel Greenberg. (Greenberg, a former New York Times correspondent, often fills in when Jerusalem bureau chief Janine Zacharia handles events elsewhere.) "Israeli actor fatally shot" ran 402 words and included a color, thumbnail head shot with the cutline "Juliano Mer Khamis was attacked outside the youth theater he founded in the West bank town of Jenin."

Greenberg writes that "a prominent Israeli actor and director who mentored young Palestinians … was fatally shot Monday in the community’s refugee camp." Mer Khamis, "born to a Jewish mother and a Christian Arab father, personified the complexities of the conflict dividing his country …. Following in the footsteps of his mother, who ran a youth theater in Jenin in the 1980s, Mer Khamis founded the Freedom Theater in the town’s refugee camp in 2006 with Zakaria Zubeidi, a former Palestinian militant leader."

More detail follows on the actor-director’s assassination, attacks on his theater and his professional accomplishments. As for "militant Zubeidi" and Mer Khamis’ and Freedom Theater’s staff views on peace and violence, more below.

* On April 6, the paper played its second-day coverage of the murder as the lead story on its "The World" pages, ahead of other international news including Japan’s continuing nuclear reactor crisis. Headlined "For young Palestinians, a mentor lost; Slaying of Israeli actor-director who bridged the chasm between societies leaves many in Jenin refugee camp bereft," this 764-word news feature was illustrated by a huge four-column color photo. The cutline read "Palestinian actors in Jenin mourn their teacher, pictured on two posters. The Arab text reads: ‘The martyr of freedom and culture, genius Juliano Khamis.’"

The second article, also by Greenberg, included new details about Mer Khamis. It said most of his mother’s family "had died in a Nazi concentration camp and that most of his father’s relatives became refugees in Lebanon after Israel’s creation." The Post cited an associate of Mer Khamis that the point of his work "was to promote ‘cultural resistance, with words and pictures,’" to what the newspaper termed "years of Israeli-imposed movement restrictions that isolated Jenin ...."

The murders of five members of the Fogel family, including a baby -- the parents stabbed to death, the children’s throats slit -- as they slept on a Shabbat evening in their home at Itamar, a Jewish community in Samaria, did not merit anything resembling similar treatment by The Post.

Murdered Jews mere statistics

The radical left identifies with the families of the murderers from Awarta

NGO Monitor
21 April '11

Kalman Liebeskind
Maariv
April 17, 2011

[Translated by NGO Monitor]

http://www.nrg.co.il/app/index.php?do=blog&encr_id=79974780b5e0d394fddbd1a00f4f21d3&id=2353

A week ago, subscribers to the mailing lists of extreme left organizations received an important invitation. The activists were summoned to visit the village of Awarta on Saturday, and to call it a "solidarity visit" is not a distortion. The email invitation, which was signed by the Coalition of Women for Peace, Combatants for Peace, Gush Shalom, and Humans without Borders, included a few lines on the plight of the villagers of Awarta following the attack in Itamar and after the IDF began to suspect that the killers were from there: Harsh searches, property damage and curfews. Bus transportation [to the solidarity visit] would be provided from Tel Aviv, Kfar Saba and Jerusalem.

Today, the names of the murderers were released -- Palestinian human animals who slaughtered the Fogel couple and their children. Today, everyone who heard the details, exposed in the GSS interrogations, could not remain indifferent. This terrorist attack horrifies, boils the blood, and maddens the mind.

But within our midst, there are groups who, more than being concerned for the murdered, are worried about what the killers and their families are going through. It is not the murder that keeps them up at night, but the details of how the IDF treats the suspects. Disgusting.

As mentioned, this visit of extreme left-wing activists can not be called anything other than a solidarity visit. With what exactly do they identify? This I leave to your imagination. However, this is what one of the organizers, Yaakov Manor, posted on the website of the Alternative Information Center (AIC) after the visit:

"Zacharia and I arrived today at Awarta around 3:00 pm. The village was under curfew; a military jeep blocked the main entrance to the village. We found a way to bypass the obstruction. We held the first meeting at the Village Council building. Qais Awad, head of the Council and other local activists attended. The local participants reviewed the situation in the village since the killings in the settlement of Itamar ... Since the murder, most of the searches by Israeli security forces focus on Awarta ... Dozens of villagers were arrested for investigations that were conducted roughly and under threats... more than 20 villagers are still detained by the security forces."

Manor details here, in shock, the version of some detainees on the insulting questions asked and the treatment they received from their interrogators. His Palestinian hosts in Awarta also had an explanation as to why the IDF's searches were focused specifically on them. Is it because there is intelligence information about their involvement? Absolutely not. Is it because this village has already produced several murderers? No way. Is it because maybe the two killers of the Fogel family used to live next door to some of the villagers and were assisted by some villagers? Of course not. The head of the council explained to the left-wing activist "that the army is laying the groundwork for expropriating over 1,000 acres of olive groves near the settlement." You get it? It's all a conspiracy. The activists, it seems, were easily convinced.

The website excitedly reports about the IDF's intrusion into the villagers' homes and searches conducted while damaging property and hurting residents. Really terrible. It would have been better to pick up a phone and ask if it would please the killers to enter the nearest police station. The friends of the extreme left activists in Awarta would probably help immediately. Actually not. Do you know why not? Because the "village elders," so tells us Manor, "firmly denied any guilt in the act and claimed collective punishment in the most brutal fashion." Well, if the friends from Awarta strongly deny, who are we not to believe them? In any event, after the meeting, the justice seeking left-wing activists went to the homes of two families, to show their sympathy for their sorrow. Yes, you guessed it. It is the families of the murderers. "The horror we saw in house of Mohammed Awad's family, can not be described but as a pogrom for its own sake," wrote the left-wing activists. The murder in Itamar did not remind the Tel Avivian friends of a pogrom. The search in the house of the killer is what triggered memories of dark days. The family was taken from their beds in the morning chill, and an IDF soldier even took one of girl's blankets. The activists sympathized with the family. The son of these poor wretches - the murderer, slaughterer, butcher, or whatever you choose - was arrested that same morning. The leftists were troubled by his sister's blanket. Manor describes him as a first year university student, and his mother "seems broken, stunned by grief and sorrow. The fear and terror can still be seen in her eyes." Indeed difficult images. "No wonder there was a gag order imposed on all the events in the village. Under this cover you can pull any mischief without criticism," he concludes.

These friends, from the radical left, are proceeding to remove themselves from Israeli society. They are no longer part of us. Those who are damaged the most by their activity is the legitimate Zionist left, who must denounce them and remove them from its camp. It must.

Read NGO Monitor's full "European government-funded NGOs' "Solidarity visit" with Families of Murder Suspects"

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The Fogel family massacre: who really did it?

myisraelHE
19 April '11





The Fogel family massacre: who really did it?



http://www.myisrael.org.il

http://www.facebook.com/myisrael

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Fogel murderers and Palestinian Arab society

Hakim Awad, one of those
arrested for the Itamar murders

Fresnozionism.org
17 April '11

The IDF has arrested the two perpetrators of the vicious slaughter at Itamar, and several accomplices. The murderers are members of the Progressive Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the second largest (after Fatah) faction of the PLO, which the Oslo accords recognize as the ‘sole legitimate representative of the ‘Palestinian people’, and from which was constituted the Palestinian National Authority (PA). The PA plans to declare a state in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem with UN sanction this September.

The murderers came from the nearby Arab village of Awarta:

The suspects have been named as Hakim Maazan Niad Awad, an 18-year-old high school student, and Amjad Mahmud Fauzi Awad, 19 [cousins], both from the West Bank village of Awarta, located 2 kilometers south of the settlement of Itamar…


The suspects have confessed to the stabbings and re-enacted the murders, security forces said on Sunday. According to Army Radio, they did not express remorse for their crimes.


Both men are affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP) terror group and received significant assistance from family members and friends after the attack, security forces added.


The suspects planned the stabbings days ahead of time. On the night of March 11, after unsuccessful attempts to obtain firearms from a local PFLP representative in their village, the two set out toward Itamar on foot, armed with knives, a wirecutter and masks to cover their faces.


After walking one kilometer, they cut the wire fence that surrounds Itamar, climbed through a forest and over a hilltop, and reached a row of homes. The suspects at first entered a home adjacent to the Fogel residence, but found that nobody was home. They stole an M-16 rifle from the home, ammunition and body armor, before walking on.


“They saw children sleeping in the home, and entered the Fogel family residence,” the IDF said. Immediately after entering the home, the youths set their knives on two young brothers sleeping in their beds, 4-year-old Elad and 11-year-old Yoav.


They then entered the parents’ bedroom, where they launched a knife attack on Ehud and Ruth Fogel. The parents fought back, attempting to fend off the attackers, but died of their stab wounds during the struggle.


The two then left the house. One of the suspects returned and stabbed the three-month-old baby Hadas to death in her crib after she began crying.


According to Israel Radio, Amjad said that he was unaware that there were two other children in the house, and that if he had known, he would have stabbed them as well.


After completing the slaughter, the suspects walked back to the village and told Hakim’s uncle, PFLP member Salah Adin Awad, what they had done. Salah hid their firearms and instructed them to burn their clothes, which were covered in blood. — Jerusalem Post

The murderers were identified by DNA evidence left in the struggle with Ruth and Ehud Fogel. During the investigation, there were numerous complaints from village residents and also from the PA as well as left-wing Israeli groups that their rights were being violated.

How did the murders become familiar with Itamar? At least one of them had been there:

Hakim Awad, 18, was permitted to enter Itamar along with other PA Arabs in order to harvest olives.


The IDF Civil Administration allowed PA Arabs from the nearby village of Awarta to harvest olives within Itamar that they claimed belonged to their village, despite concerns voiced by Itamar residents, who expressed fear that some PA Arabs could use the opportunity to learn the layout of the town in order to plan an attack.


Residents of Itamar even said they would be willing to pick the olives themselves, and deliver them to residents of Awarta, rather than open their town to potentially hostile PA residents. However, Civil Administration officials insisted that Awarta residents not only be given possession of the olives in question, but be allowed to harvest the produce themselves…


The IDF and the Civil Administration face pressure each year from the PA and the foreign and Israeli left to allow Arabs to harvest olives freely, regardless of security concerns. Many far-left groups, among them the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and Rabbis for Human Rights, hold annual “olive harvest” events aimed at forcing Israel to allow PA Arabs to enter Israeli land during the harvest. — Israel National News

More information is at The Muqata and Israel Matzav. Israel Matzav also has a recording in which a PA minister reiterates the PA demand to ‘release all Palestinian prisoners’ — specifically including these suspects — regardless of the charges against them, because of their ‘right to resist occupation’.

The ‘alleged’ (yeah, right) murderers grew up under the Palestinian Authority regime of Yasser Arafat, and breathed the atmosphere of racist hatred promulgated in PA media, schools, textbooks, mosques, camps, etc. ever since 1993. Note that even though Mahmoud Abbas and other PA officials have promised to stop the hateful incitement to murder in the official media and educational system, they have not done so.

Think about what it would take to make your average 18-year old capable of slitting a baby’s throat — and think about the premeditation, the adults that helped them, and the whole town, many of whose inhabitants are related, that knew about it. Think also about the megalomania that informs Palestinian Arab culture, which permits them to complain about violation of their rights in these circumstances. Think about their assertion of a ‘right to resist occupation’ which includes butchering Jewish children.

Understand that these are the people that want to be given control of a highly strategic area next to Israel’s major population centers, while refusing to agree that a Jewish state has a right to exist and to end all claims against it in a ‘peace’ agreement.

Many have suggested that a death penalty be instituted for particularly vicious terrorism, and I agree.

Some have also suggested that village of Awarta should be razed to the ground. I have another idea: just convert it into an institution for the incarceration of the criminally insane. Unfortunately, it isn’t big enough to hold the one-third of Palestinian Arabs who approve of the murders.

Update [1117 PDT]: Daniel Viflic,the 16-year-old boy who was wounded in the Hamas antitank missile attack on a school bus near Gaza last week, has died. May Hashem revenge his blood, and the Fogels’ and all the rest of the victims of the ‘Palestinian cause’.

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From Israel: We've Got Them!!

Arlene Kushner
Arlene from Israel
17 April '11

I extended my Pesach greetings late last week, but knew I had to do this additional posting before Pesach began.

A gag order that was in effect during the course of the investigation of the terrorist attack on the Fogel family -- which saw the parents and three of their children (pictured below) cruelly slaughtered -- has now been lifted.

~~~~~~~~~~

The commander of the IDF in Samaria Col. Nimrod Aloni has announced: "The murderers are in our hands."

The terrorists are Amjad Awad, 19, and Hakim Awad 18, from Awarta, an Arab village near Itamar, where the Fogel family lived. Members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), they were assisted by at least six others, four of them from the Awad family. All have been taken into custody.

They have confessed and expressed readiness to become "martyrs." Not only have they not expressed regret for their actions, they said they would have killed two other brothers who were in the house, had they known they were there.

~~~~~~~~~~

Even during the blackout on news about the investigation, it was clear that the focus was the village of Awarta, where large numbers of people were rounded up and questioned. At one point residents were complaining because they were asked to give DNA samples. What seemed likely at that point was that at least one of the terrorists, having fought with Ruth Fogel, left behind hair, or blood, or skin under her nails.

~~~~~~~~~~

Prime Minister Netanyahu congratulated the Shin Bet and the police today on the thoroughness of the operation that led to these arrests. "I was updated on the investigation's progress in the last number of weeks and days, and I must commend the Shin Bet and police who wanted to make sure their findings were complete, not only on the murderers themselves, but also for their accomplices."

~~~~~~~~~~

Involvement with terror seems to be an Awad family proclivity. Arutz Sheva reports that the father of Hakim was also with the PFLP and had served time in Israeli prison, while an uncle was involved in a 2002 terror attack in Itamar that killed five people.

Still another uncle, says Arutz Sheva, burned the boys' bloodstained clothes, and took the knives they had used to Ramallah. Incredibly, the boys returned to school as if nothing had happened.

The weapons have now been recovered by Israeli authorities; the man who hid them is one of those now in custody.

~~~~~~~~~~

Council chief of Awarta, Kais Awad (how much of this village consists of the Awad clan?), says he will demand an "international inquiry" because the boys who have been apprehended are "just children" and couldn't have done this. He believes the confessions were secured under duress and that "Israel wishes to cover up the crimes it committed in Awarta over the last month..."

Yea, yea, it's about Israeli "crimes" again.

But the fact that two young men -- they are NOT children -- could have done this makes it all the more chilling.

~~~~~~~~~~

Already, there are calls for capital punishment for the slaughterers, following a judicial conviction. And I think this is a splendid idea. In fact, it should go as the Eichmann trial did -- boldly public, so the world can begin to see.

My gut tells me that anyone who slits the throat of a three-month old baby without remorse (decapitates that baby?) deserves to die. But there are issues of law. Adolph Eichmann is the only one who has ever been executed in Israel. Yet the law reads that capital punishment is possible in cases of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the Jewish people.

I'll likely come back to this after Pesach. But it's time to send a bold message to our enemies and to the world: we will tolerate this no longer. That is, if there is the courage to go this route when the perpetrators are being called "children."

~~~~~~~~~~

Col Aloni indicated that the motivation of terror groups in Judea and Samaria to carry out attacks against Israeli civilians is still high.

As far as I am concerned, this makes any suggestion (whether it was Barak's suggestion or Netanyahu's) that we pull back the IDF from certain areas of Judea and Samaria either breathtakingly stupid, or a sin.

~~~~~~~~~~

And there's more. Also to be noted by my readers with great attention:

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director of IMRA, placed a phone call today to S'ad Nimr, Minister of PA Detainees, and asked about PA policy with regard to the current PA demand for the release of all "detainees" (which includes all Palestinian Arabs in Israeli prisons for terrorist acts).

Asked Lerner, would the PA also demand the release of the two men just caught by Israeli authorities in connection with the murders in Itamar? Well, said Nimr, we don't know if the accusations are accurate. Assuming for the moment that they are, said Lerner, would the PA include these men in their demand that detainees be released?

Yes, replied Nimr. Palestinians have "a right" and "an obligation" to "resist the occupation."

Be very clear on this: a PA minister is justifying (as an "obligation") the brutal murder of children because of the "occupation."

This, of course, is no different from Hamas. Our "peace partners."

You can hear it all on Youtube. (Lerner's questions were not perfect in transmission, but the answers are quite clear.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOUPcrDIsoU

Kol hakavod (well done!) to Aaron Lerner on this.

~~~~~~~~~~

Prime Minister Netanyahu will be in the US in late May, and House Speaker John Boehner has announced he will be inviting the prime minister to address a joint session of Congress. Will the prime minister be advancing a "peace plan"? Don't know. I'm not sure if he has decided yet.

But what I do know is that this is Netanyahu's chance to make Israel's case, boldly and with self-assurance -- with the whole world listening.

His message the last couple of days is less troublesome than prior rumors would have suggested:

"We will stand for our principles and fight those who try to dictate terms that would strip us of security and peace.

"We have been steadfast these two years, making sure that any peace agreement brings with it a secure, safe peace. Not just peace on paper, but a sustainable peace. I have set two core principles to that effect: the first - Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel as the Jewish people's homeland; and the second - real security arrangements on the ground."

Now we have to see these words expressed in Israeli policy -- in a refusal to cave to make others happy.

~~~~~~~~~~

But what we're seeing right now with regard to policy is mixed. This comes as no surprise as Netanyahu often plays both ends against the middle, attempting to satisfy everyone at once.

A few days ago came a report from YNet that Netanyahu intends to honor his promise to residents of Itamar, following the grisly murder of the five members of the Fogel family, that building would be done in that community.

However, there was a legal proviso included: that Defense Minister Ehud Barak has to sign off on this as well. (My best information is that this is true, and that Netanyahu could not override it on his own, but would require some legal maneuvering.)

According to YNet, less than a week ago:

"Though Netanyahu's office refused to comment on the matter, sources told Ynet that he has ordered Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser and Minister Benny Begin to ask Barak to approve the plans as soon as possible."

However, I just spoke with Minister Begin, who says the report is in error and he has not been asked to do anything. He has no knowledge regarding whether Netanyahu will sincerely try to push this through, or will allow Barak to block it.

~~~~~~~~~~

And then, in an interview in the Mishpaha newspaper, Minister of Housing Ariel Attias (Shas) now claims that -- contrary to his public statements -- Netanyahu has caved to Obama's demands and has de facto frozen building in the parts of Jerusalem that the PA claims.

The prime minister's office denies this, but Attias says, “The facts are correct." He says he cannot market new housing units that have already received the necessary bureaucratic approvals, because the government has not allowed tenders to be issued for contractors.

~~~~~~~~~~

As to attacks from Gaza, Netanyahu said:

"We will not stand for fire on buses or on our children. We will not abide a situation where Israeli citizens are sleeping in shelters - anywhere."

Which means...?

~~~~~~~~~~

Former National Security Adviser Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland joined the ranks last week of those saying that Israel should consider implementing a Defensive Shield-like operation in Gaza. Operation Defensive Shield -- which was initiated in Judea and Samaria in April 2002, in response to terror attacks on Israeli civilians -- totally shifted the dynamic and has made it possible for the IDF to consistently nab terrorists.

~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, responding to the firing from Gaza of two Grad Katyusha rockets on Friday, has now said that there is no solution other than toppling the Hamas regime.

~~~~~~~~~~

The US Senate unanimously passed a resolution on Thursday calling on the UN Human Rights Council "to reflect the author's repudiation of the Goldstone report's central findings" and rescind the report. It also asks UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to work towards the "reform" of the Human Rights Council "so that it no longer unfairly, disproportionately, and falsely criticizes Israel on a regular basis."

Please, don't hold your breath waiting for this to happen. But celebrate a very supportive US Senate.

~~~~~~~~~~

I want to end this posting by sharing an unusual and inspiring video. This is a speech by Cory Booker, the black mayor of Newark, NJ, delivered in February to a Chabad group: "Any Jew who wants to shrink from who he is, is not being Jewish," he tells his audience. "This is the spiritual question of our age...Where are we? ...Why do we persist in playing small?"

He speaks to Jews, and, I would suggest, if you substitute "Israeli" for "Jew," his message also resonates.

http://youtu.be/anBHv4mu9_I

(Thanks to my sister, Loretta T., for bringing this to my attention.)

~~~~~~~~~~

© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.


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'We won’t allow murderers to roam free'

Hanan Greenberg
Israel News/Ynet
17 April '11

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4057960,00.html

Shomron Brigade Commander Col. Nimrod Aloni says capturing two Palestinians responsible for Fogel family murder example of security forces' commitment to spare no effort in hunting down anyone targeting Israelis

IDF officials were satisfied Sunday as news that the investigation into the Itamar terror attack – which saw five members of one family butchered by Palestinian terrorists – has been solved, were made public.

Hakim Mazen Awad and Amjad Mahmad Awad, residents of the Palestinian village of Awarta, were arrested in a joint security forces operation.

The two confessed, providing investigators with what sources called "one of the most shocking, cold, remorseless and detailed description," they had ever come across.


(Uploaded by idfnadesk on Apr 17, 2011  A month after members of Fogel family (parents Udi, 36 and Ruth, 35, and their children Yoav, 11, Elad, 4 and Hadas, 3 months) were brutally murdered at their home in Itamar while they were sleeping, the Commander of IDF forces overseeing the Shomron Regional Brigade to which Itamar belongs to, announces that the IDF has caught two of the killers in the nearby Palestinian village of Awarta.Col. Nimrod Aloni also states that the motivation of terror groups in the West Bank to execute attacks against Israeli civilians is still high. IDF Spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich: "The murders of five family members including a 3 month baby constitute a crossing of all red lines. The IDF has invested in numerous operational and intelligence efforts, and has worked closely with other security bodies in order to find those responsible for this vicious murder.")

Shomron Brigade Commander Col. Nimrod Aloni told Ynet that the military will spare no effort to hunt down anyone targeting Jews: "We will not allow them to roam free," he said.

"After weeks of effort, we have managed to apprehend the Fogel family murderers. We have concluded a month-long operation, which included dozens of raid in and around Awarta. This was a joint operation by the Shin Bet and the IDF, headed by Duvdevan Unit forces, who captured the killers."

"As we know, and as last month's murder has shown, terror groups' motivation to carry our murderous attacks is raging strong. We have a difficult battle ahead of us and we will not waiver.

"We know this offers little comfort for the families, who are suffering great pain. These efforts – to catch the killers and bring them to justice – it's a small step, but it can maybe help just a little, for them to know that this murderers are no longer free," he said.

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Abhorent - One Third Support the Fogel Massacre! Israel Straight Talk

Avi Abelow
Israel Straight Talk
IST #45
11 April '11

A study conducted by Hebrew University last week among Palestinain Arabs shows that one third of his respondants support the massacre of the Fogel family in Itamar. This is despicable!



Share this video to generate the awareness for this horrid reality we in Israel are dealing with! Visit us on http://www.facebook.com/israelstraighttalk and let us know what you think. All comments and questions are welcome.

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Dealing with Fear

Paula R. Stern
A Soldier's Mother
09 April '11

http://israelisoldiersmother.blogspot.com/2011/04/dealing-with-fear.html

This was supposed to be the post about Shmulik's wedding - yes, it was a few days ago. I didn't write about it in advance, having heard all these horror stories of criminals who troll the Internet to find out which houses will be empty. I was going to post pictures of the amazing evening, of the beautiful couple and more. Soon, I'll do that...but first this.

Passover is coming to Israel in just over a week. It's a major holiday with a huge amount of preparation. Israeli stores start stocking the special kosher for Passover foods two weeks before the holiday begins. I went shopping with Elie this morning to buy the first wave of canned and dry goods. Elie came over to the shopping carts and showed me something he wanted to buy.

"It's a window alarm," he said, "for Aliza's room. She'll feel safer this way."

It's been weeks since the terrorist attack and still Aliza, perhaps like many Israeli children, continues to cope with the fear that terrorists will come into her house and hurt her. She has no faith that her parents will protect her. After all, Tamar Fogel's parents couldn't protect her baby sister and two younger brothers, so she is afraid.

We blocked off her window, shutting the shutters against the view in the backyard because she was afraid. I gave her a small light to sleep with - and still she was afraid. We tried talking to her, reasoning with her, nothing.

Since Shmulik just got married - the post I keep meaning to make - we've had a shuffle of rooms. Elie moved to Shmulik's old room; Aliza moved upstairs and is now happily sleeping in Elie's room. She is less frightened, but insists on locking the door every night. We have secretly put a key to her door just outside in case we need to get inside quickly but she doesn't feel secure any other way.

She sleeps with a night light - something she has never done before, and now she has a window alarm. I am worried about this, but everyone seems to think she will get over it soon and for now, indulging her fear is better than forcing it away before she is ready.

I've dealt with my own fears and worries. They are not nearly as upsetting as those of a child. Slowly, somehow, we will deal with this but there is a slow burning anger in side of me that a child has to grow up with this kind of fear.

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The Truth About “Palestine”

P. David Hornik
frontpagemag.com
07 April '11
Posted before Shabbat

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/04/07/the-truth-about-%E2%80%9Cpalestine%E2%80%9D/

“With the winds of change blowing through the Arab world, it’s more urgent than ever that we try to seize the opportunity to create a peaceful solution between the Palestinians and the Israelis,” President Obama said yesterday after meeting with Israeli president Shimon Peres.

Peres’s visit is widely regarded as a groundbreaker for a visit in May by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is expected to come under a mounting tide of pressure on the Palestinian-state issue, culminating in a Palestinian attempt to secure UN recognition of a Palestinian state in September.

Meanwhile a poll by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has found that one-third of Palestinians approve the attack in the Israeli West Bank community of Itamar in March. In the attack five members of the Fogel family—the parents as well as their 11-year-old son, 4-year-old son, and 3-month-old daughter—were stabbed to death in their home.

Four decades ago America was shocked by the Manson murders, in which intruders shot and stabbed to death four adults and a teenage boy at the house of actress Sharon Tate in Los Angeles (Tate, one of the stabbing victims, was eight months pregnant). One can imagine the horror Americans would feel toward any society one-third of whose members would approve the Manson murders. On the scale of horror, the Itamar massacre, given the ages of three of the victims, was even worse.

And two other points should be made. One is that the Itamar perpetrators have not yet been caught—in contrast to other Palestinian terror attacks where Israeli security forces usually quickly nabbed the culprits. The delay this time is attributed to Israel having withdrawn its forces from much of the West Bank, to be replaced by U.S.-trained Palestinian forces.

And second, while the ages of the young Itamar victims may indeed have been “too much” for many Palestinians, that wasn’t the case with the 2008 massacre by gunfire of seven teenage boys and a young man in a Jerusalem yeshiva. That attack won the approval of 84 percent of Palestinians.

The above—focusing on the murderous anti-Israeli hatred of many of the Palestinians who are supposed to be awarded a state abutting Israel—can be added to the many arguments against such a state, at least at this time, that make no impression on the devout. Or as Netanyahu himself said recently—not about a Palestinian state per se, but about the supposed centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the region and the world—“There is no evidence that these true believers will not ignore.”

Take, for instance, the above statement by Obama, who must be counted among those believers. Rationally speaking, the “winds of change blowing through the Arab world” should not make “more urgent than ever” the creation of a Palestinian state, but induce more wariness than ever. Those winds have already blown away the Mubarak government in Egypt, which upheld a formal albeit icy-cold peace with Israel for three decades, and is likely to be replaced by a far more hostile, quite possibly belligerent regime.

Then there’s Jordan, also formally at peace with Israel since 1994, now subject as well to instability and seething with Islamist and Palestinian hatred of Israel. As for Syria, while the Alawite regime of the Assads is already one of the most hostile toward Israel, it’s also a regime that has—out of pragmatism—maintained a peaceful border since 1973; its weakening, and the rise of Sunni Islamists in its stead, could well put an end to that pragmatism.

Rationally, then, the overall instability of the Middle East, where regimes can disappear overnight, is not an argument for creating yet another Middle Eastern state squeezed up against your borders; it’s an argument against it. To this must be added the results of Israel’s previous territorial withdrawals over the past decade—from Lebanon, leading to Hezbollah’s takeover of the south and eventually of the whole country, now teeming with military facilities directed at Israel; and from Gaza, leading to the empowerment of Hamas and an ongoing nightmare of rocket fire and warfare.

Put popular Palestinian hatred in the mix, and the idea of the Palestinian state as an urgent policy goal emerges as not just irrational but crazy. It’s been suggested that Netanyahu, instead of trying to parry the pressures with deft diplomatic games, should start boldly enunciating the truth. It makes a lot of sense.

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The Marvellous Professor MacEoin

Daphne Anson
07 April '11

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/04/tha-marvellous-professor-maceoin.html



He's the British academic about whom I blogged the other day: What a marvellous man he is, a beacon in dark times.

Here's part of an open letter he addressed to the orphaned 12-year-old Tamar Fogel, whose parents and siblings were slaughtered by Arab terrorists at Itamar.

"We have never met, nor are we likely to. I am not a Jew nor an Israeli, though for many years I have defended both Jews and Israelis from the physical and political attacks that are made on them....


The most important for you is to be sure that the only guilty parties were the terrorists who carried out the slaughter. And I need not tell you that these were not the first Palestinian terrorists to take out their hate, their resentment, and their jealousy on helpless Jews living on Jewish land.


.... After the Shoah, many rabbis tackled the question of hester panim, asking why HaShem had seemed to turn his face away from his people. I am not a Jew, and I cannot provide easy answers to those questions. You must seek your own answers from your rabbis and in your scriptures. One answer may be found in a short sound recording that was made in Belsen shortly after its liberation by British forces. It was made by the BBC and contains at the end description of a Shabbat service held by a British rabbi, at the end of which the survivors stand and sing HaTikva. They are weak, they are out of tune, some of them will still die: but they are singing in open defiance of the very great Nazi evil that had overwhelmed them and their families. Three years after that, the state of Israel was established.

I'm writing, first because I'm a writer and that's how I express my feelings best. But also because I want to convey just how many people's thoughts are with you. You have your grandparents and aunts or uncles, and after that you have your small and concerned community of I'tamar, but beyond that you have a world of people, Jews and non-Jews, who stand with you in your grief. We feel helpless, not knowing what we can or should do to help, yet longing to do so. How many people can say they truly love the murderers who came to your house that night? Some may hand out candies and dance in the streets, but how meaningful is that? They love themselves and their own dreams of glory, but who can truly love men of blood, people who kill infants in their cradles?....


You are in my thoughts and in the thoughts of millions of other people because the murder of your family has gone so deeply into so many people's hearts. The list of atrocities carried out on Jews, not just in Israel but beyond, is very long. As a result, it's easy to let them all blur together into one mass. But every so often one death or a group of deaths stands out and demands special attention. One day there will be a memorial to the sacrifice your family made. People from far away may come to visit it. Photographs of it will appear in the press. But the true memorial will be you, an ordinary girl, with a torn heart and a wounded soul, going to school, going to shul, making friends, baking bread, sewing, cooking, reading, blushing when a certain young man comes to speak to you, going to Kever Yosef to marry him, giving birth to your first child. 

I just mean to say that no-one expects from you heroic deeds, no-one wants you to have to shoulder resistance to all the evils you know better than most. It is your ordinary deeds, the day-to-day living of an ordinary life that are for the creators of horror the most painful thing of all, that Jews will continue to live on land sanctified by Jewish blood. At the end of that recording made in Belsen, someone calls out 'Am Yisrael Chai'. By living, the killers only bring eternal disgrace on themselves, their families, and everyone who shelters them. By living, you make clear to everyone that the People of Israel live, that their light will not be snuffed out, and that when your enemies have gone to dust and seen a darkness beyond measure engulf them, the light of the Jews will illuminate the nations. Grow and be happy and tell us what you see on your journey."

Read the rest: http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2011/04/open-letter-to-tamar-fogel.html

Hat tip: reader Shirlee

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