When peace activists essentially hijacked the nation’s day of mourning - by Jonathan S. Tobin

We should mourn all victims of senseless violence, be they Jews, Arabs or any other people. But we should be wary of efforts to establish a false analogy between those who died to save Jewish lives and those whose purpose was to spill Jewish blood.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
28 April '20..

Outside of Israel, it was the alternative ceremony that got the most coverage. The official commemoration of Yom Hazikaron—the country’s Memorial Day that occurs the day before celebrating the Jewish state’s Independence Day—began with a one-minute siren that sounded throughout the country and continued at the Western Wall, where President Reuven Rivlin and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi led a small ceremony that, due to the coronavirus pandemic, had no audience.

Most Israelis, all too many of whom have lost a loved one or friend who was killed during the country’s wars or as a result of terrorism, will deal with the pain of this day of remembrance each in their own way though they will not be able to go to cemeteries, which are closed this year because of the ongoing lockdown.

But outside of Israel, most of the attention was neither on official efforts to remember the fallen nor the private grief of the families. Instead, much of the press was reporting about the efforts of peace activists to essentially hijack the nation’s day of mourning and turn it into a day devoted to promoting coexistence and mutual recognition of the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians.

This “Joint Memorial Day” event, which was started in 2006 by Israeli parents of fallen soldiers, is organized by two groups with both Israeli and Palestinian members: Combatants for Peace and Parents Circle Families Forum. But this year, it received an outpouring of support from American Jewish groups, including the Reform movement’s Union of Reform Judaism, J Street, the New Israel Fund, Peace Now, as well as the openly anti-Zionist IfNotNow and Churches for Middle East Peace, an interfaith Christian group that is also deeply hostile to the Jewish state.

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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.   

And when the darkness threatens to overwhelm us, we respond by growing even brighter - by Forest Rain

...For 2000 years we dreamt of return to our land, to be a free nation in our land. No Arafat will succeed in taking that away from us. Jewish sovereignty and freedom are more than the legal and self-sufficient Nation State. They are dependent on the determination of the Jewish spirit. We are small in number but ours is a light that will not go out – and when the darkness threatens to overwhelm us, we respond by growing even brighter. We are Ori.

Forest Rain..
Inspiration from Zion..
13 February '19..

My Facebook feed is full of Ori’s photo. She looks different in the different images but in each, her radiant smile is the same.

Ori, “my light” in Hebrew, was obviously a fitting name for this sunny girl. The more we hear about Ori from friends, family and the people she volunteered with helping underprivileged youth, we learn about the light that was stolen from us – Ori was a role model, an inspiration, a light that pointed the way for many to a better and happier world.

Israel and the Jewish community around the world have paused in horror at the discovery of Ori’s brutal murder on February 7th.

The rest of the world, not so much.

Who cares about a dead Jewish girl? Women are raped and murdered all over the world. It’s nothing unusual. Sad, but not newsworthy. Certainly not on an international level.

From a distance, it is probably difficult to understand why this case is different.

It is not just that our nation is so small and every life is precious.

It is not just that Ori was lovely and innocent. It is not just the stark contrast between her sunniness and the viciousness with which her life was ripped from her, the darkness rising up to stomp out the light because it knows that even a small light can banish great darkness.

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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. 

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Being both a mother and hero, she saved her kids from the Gaza rocket - by Elder of Ziyon

...Those asking about sending funds, Miri and family received a few thousand dollars for immediate needs from the Jewish Agency for Israel and from the Jewish community of Montreal, Beer Sheva's sister city. Israeli government agencies have lots of experience in such cases, unfortunately.

Elder of Ziyon..
19 October '18..

A short Twitter thread from Lenny Ben David, slightly edited:
________________

Beer Sheva mother's called national hero.

She woke to sirens in middle of night, ran upstairs to grab 3 sleeping kids from 3 bedrooms, ran downstairs; got all into bomb shelter and shut the blast door just as the rocket hit.

Commentators say that had there been casualties, #Israel would be at war.
Her house was totaled. The woman, Miri Tamano, raising her 3 kids, is a divorcee who was laid off 6 months ago. With a BA and writing skills.
BTW, she's a Ethiopian Jew.

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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. 

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Ari Lit The Way For Us - by Varda Meyers Epstein

...Ari would tell you, if he were here, that the forces of evil are great in our day, but while our numbers are smaller, our impact is greater, more important. And you can know it with your heart when you see the tidal wave of grief that has swept through our nation. You know it at midnight as an orderly crowd sings quiet songs of faith as one, brought together in a pine-scented space in the land Ari loved, he the Lion of Judah, us now the inheritor of his torch, to light the way of truth, to never give up.

Varda Meyers Epstein..
Judean Rose/Elder of Ziyon..
17 September '18..

It was a morning like any other here in Israel, the day that Ari was taken from us. A blue, cloudless sky, a cup of coffee, Facebook. The making of lists, the folding of laundry, punching the clock at work. You cannot know when you wake up, the nature of the day, the evil it holds, and the holiness.

Until you know. Until the family Whatsapp pings: “Everyone ok? Pigua tzomet hagush* 2 injured.”

Telling your heart to be still, you think: “My husband.”

You do a head count.

Then you know it’s not your family, and the wondering begins. Who is it?

And it comes to you. You don’t know why and you push it away, the knowledge. But somehow you know. It’s Ari Fuld.

There is no reason to think it. No reason this particular name comes to you. You don’t know why you know, but you do.

(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. 

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Long past time for Washington to pursue Palestinian terrorists who murdered Americans - by Michael Freund

...There is no reason why the Palestinians should continue to receive any American aid, or their representative offices should be allowed to operate on US soil, while they continue to harbor terrorists who killed Americans.

Michael Freund..
Pundicity/JPost..
19 October '17..
Link: http://www.michaelfreund.org/20447/american-victims-palestinian-terrorism

For over two decades, Palestinian terrorists have literally and figuratively gotten away with the murder of dozens of Americans, slaying at least 64 US citizens in a chilling variety of stabbing, shooting and bombing attacks.

And yet, despite Washington's undisputed commitment to fighting terrorism, not a single Palestinian perpetrator has been brought to justice for spilling American blood, nor has the Palestinian Authority been held to account.

After eight years in which the Obama administration did virtually nothing to pursue Palestinians wanted in connection with the murder of American citizens, essentially giving the terrorists a free pass, now is the time for the Trump administration to take a much tougher line on this critical issue.

Indeed, this week marks the 14th anniversary of one of the more brazen examples of anti-American Palestinian terrorism. It was on October 15, 2003, that Palestinian terrorists set off a remotely controlled explosive device on a Gaza road as a US diplomatic convoy passed by. The bomb killed three Americans: John Branchizio, 37, of Texas, John Linde Jr., 30, of Missouri, and Mark Parsons, 31, of New Jersey. One other American was wounded in the blast.

Despite the fact that the attack took place in broad daylight and the American vehicles all bore diplomatic license plates, the Palestinian Authority, first under Yasser Arafat and then with Mahmoud Abbas at the helm, refused to take action, preferring instead to allow the murderers to roam free.

Not surprisingly, the incident came in the wake of weeks of ongoing anti-American incitement in the official Palestinian media.

Just five days prior to the bombing, Palestinian television broadcast a sermon delivered in Gaza in which the preacher threatened "destruction for the United States" and noted ominously, "From this place [i.e.Gaza] we warn the American people that this president is dragging them to the abyss."

Incredibly, a year after the attack took place, PA military intelligence chief Musa Arafat told Reuters in September 2004: "Palestinian security forces know who was behind the killing of three Americans in Gaza nearly a year ago but cannot act against the factions while fighting with Israel continues."

In December 2008, Israeli forces managed to track down and kill one of the ringleaders of the attack, Muhammad al-Dusaqi, who was a leader of the Popular Resistance Committees. But that can hardly serve as much comfort to the relatives of the US victims, as others involved in the assault continue to evade justice.

Malki's killer needs to be brought to US justice. We're looking for some friends to help make this happen.

...We have campaigned to bring Tamimi to US justice since she was permitted to walk out of her Israeli prison cell. (She served just 8 years of a 16 life-terms sentence!)...We feel we are getting closer but we need wide public support.

Tamimi's FBI Wanted poster is on the
FBI Most Wanted Terrorists site [here]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
24 August '17..
Link: http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.co.il/2017/08/24-aug-17-help-us-bring-malkis-killer.html

We are Frimet and Arnold Roth of Jerusalem. We produce This Ongoing War: A Blog, and we are the parents of Malki. Our daughter was one of the innocents murdered in the August 9, 2001 Hamas attack on a central Jerusalem pizzeria.

The mastermind of that atrocity is a Jordan woman, Ahlam Tamimi. Israel set her (and 1,026 other Palestinian Arab terrorists) free in the catastrophic Shalit Deal in October 2011. She has been living in her home country Jordan since then. There she is a celebrity because of her terrorism. There she enjoys patronage and protection from the king and the government.

The US government announced serious Federal criminal charges against Tamimi in March 2017. It sought her immediate arrest and her extradition to stand trial in a US Federal court. Jordan immediately rebuffed the request. An extradition treaty has existed between Jordan and the US since 1995. The US authorities say it is fully in force. Jordan, which has extradited several people to the US since the treaty came into effect, says it is invalid and unconstitutional under their law. We believe strongly that their claims are insincere and untrue.

We have campaigned to bring Tamimi to US justice since she was permitted to walk out of her Israeli prison cell. (She served just 8 years of a 16 life-terms sentence!)

Arnold was interviewed by Tamar Yonah on Israel News Talk Radio this week and explained some of the background. Click here to listen to the audio.

We feel we are getting closer but we need wide public support. To help that happen, we have decided to create an email list through which we will keep supporters in the picture. We hope you will sign on. We will use it to share information that in some cases may help bring Tamimi to justice.

Please fill in your contact information by clicking this link.

We promise never to abuse your trust and in particular never to share your contact information with anyone.

Thank you!
Frimet and Arnold Roth
Jerusalem
thisongoingwar@gmail.com

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. 

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The Taylor Force Act - Ending Aid to Terrorists

...The truth is these payments are blood-soaked gifts from a Palestinian leadership still devoted more to destroying Israel than to building a Palestinian state. This has always been the chief impediment to peace. Mr. Obama is unlikely to act in his final days, but the Trump Administration and new Congress could send a powerful message by passing the Taylor Force Act.

Wall Street Journal..
13 November '16..
Link: http://www.wsj.com/articles/ending-aid-to-terrorists-1479081865




Palestinian law rewards those who kill Jews, including Americans.

In his eulogy recently for Israeli statesman Shimon Peres, President Obama spoke of the “unfinished business” of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Now he or Donald Trump have an opportunity to advance the cause—by backing legislation to stop the flow of U.S. tax dollars to Palestinian terrorists.

Since the 1990s, as the U.S. and other countries have sent billions of dollars in aid to the Palestinians, Palestinian leaders have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in rewards to those who carry out bombings, stabbings and other attacks in Israel. These payments, codified in Palestinian law, are an official incentive program for murder that in any other context would be recognized as state sponsorship of terror. But the U.S. and other Western states have looked the other way while continuing to send aid, giving Palestinian leaders no incentive to stop.

Senators Lindsey Graham,Dan Coats and Roy Blunt have introduced a bill to end U.S. economic aid unless Palestinian leaders stop rewarding terrorists. It’s called the Taylor Force Act, after the 28-year-old U.S. Army veteran stabbed to death in March by a Palestinian in the Israeli city of Jaffa. Other American victims of recent Palestinian terrorism include 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel and 18-year-old Ezra Schwartz.

“They will never achieve peace when you pay one of your young men to kill someone like Taylor Force. That’s inconsistent and it needs to stop,” Mr. Graham (R., S.C.) says. “We’re not going to invest in a group of people that have laws like this. It’s just not a good investment.” The same Palestinian laws guarantee civil-service employment to terrorists upon their release from prison—the bloodier their crime, the cushier their post.“If you’re in jail for five to six years, you come out with the civilian rank of department head or lieutenant in their security forces, you get to choose. If you’re in jail 25 to 30 years, you become a deputy minister or a major general,” Mr. Graham adds.

Signs of genuine decency and humanity at the UN? For Israeli victims of terror, a fruitless search.

...Sitting back and waiting for a political or diplomatic process to bring something constructive and sustainable to our side or for that matter to the Arabs is, it has to be said, not only a waste of time but, as we have seen ourselves, deeply humiliating and harmful to the human spirit. This, emphatically, is not how things should be.

The Meir family bury their wife and
mother in January [Image Source]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
08 May '16..

Remember the murder of Dafna Meir, a Jewish nurse and a young mother of six children?

We wrote about it here ["18-Jan-16: Multiple Arab-on-Israeli attacks and a Jewish mother is murdered at her front door"]. We noted at the time that the BBC had managed to report that savage murder - by a youth who stabbed her to death at the door to her Otniel home in the presence of her children - without mentioning the word "terror" (or any variant of it) even once. A death. Perhaps a crime. Perhaps an accident. Next.

Mrs Meir's husband, at the urging of one of the Israeli terror victim groups, went to the United Nations along with his oldest daughter Ranana, 17 on April 19, 2016 to be present at a UN Security Council debate on the Middle East that was scheduled to touch on matters concerning the Arab/Israel conflict. (Background at Israel National News and Jerusalem Post.)

How well do you imagine that went? Our own negative experiences at the UN gave us reason to be pessimistic when we read about the Meirs' impending trip. It turned out to be traumatic and deeply upsetting and they want people to know.

Natan Meir has just sent a brief open letter to the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, reflecting on the quite shocking way he and his daughter and their message were treated and making some serious points about how diplomats view real, live, in-the-flesh terror victims when they occupy the same room. It's searing.

Excerpts from the letter which he has now published via Facebook:

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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.

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Our daughter won't be with us today as we remember her birthday

...Today on Malki’s birthday, please help us in our quest to educate others about terrorism in Israel. Remember her, remember her purity and kindness and remember Ahlam Tamimi, the Islamic terrorist who murdered her.

At a friend's birthday party
in Jerusalem on August 8, 
2001. Malki was murdered 
the following day.

In terror victimhood, all are equal
Frimet Roth
Times of Israel | November 27, 2015

Frimet's blog appears online on the Times of Israel website today. Please consider sharing the link with your friends.

Today is my daughter Malki’s birthday. As in each of the past fifteen years, it will be marked with a visit to her grave. The one other time we go there is to mark the anniversary of the day she was murdered.

I have always insisted on using that word, jarring though it is. I never say that Malki died. Or that she was killed or perished or passed away. It is significant to remember that she was snatched from us in that manner. And it is crucial to specify that her murderer was not your garden-variety blood-thirsty psychopath, but rather an Islamist terrorist.

Nowadays, my husband and I feel especially compelled to publicize that last point. We and the rest of the world must be reminded – and in some cases convinced — of how Jewish terror victims are one with terror victims of other nationalities.

Sadly, this is not a given. Many, even some Jews, view our victims as the collateral damage of a territorial conflict only vaguely connected to the terror threat confronting the rest of the world. The inference, of course, is that unlike the victims in Paris last week, my child’s murder had an explanation, a justification. Implying that as Jews residing in Israel, we invited our tragedy upon ourselves.

Unfortunately, the task of rectifying this abominable misconception has fallen to the victims themselves.

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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.

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(Video) A grieving father has a message for the Palestinian terrorists

"You won't break us. This is our country and we will fight to the end. The people of Israel live."

The Israel Project..
24 November '15..






A grieving father has a message for the Palestinian terrorists who murdered his brother and son: "You won't break us. This is our country and we will fight to the end. The people of Israel live."



Our thoughts and prayers are with the Mizrahi family as they mourn the tragic loss of their son Ziv -- murdered yesterday by Palestinian terrorists.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH0w-GL8V5c

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.

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What a difference 20 years can make: Saying goodbye to a victim of terror

...Late last week, As the news reports came in about the murder of Ezra Schwartz, the Massachusetts teenager also in Israel to study Torah, I wondered how the Israeli government would act when it was time to send him home to his parents. Would it stick its head in the ground, as did the Rabin government, at its failure to contain terrorists whose goal is not to rid the West Bank of settlers but to kill as many Jews as they can in a 100-year old genocidal war? Or would it allow Ezra to receive the tribute he deserved for standing up as a Jew in our homeland and casting his lot, as did Alisa, with the people of Israel.

Stephen M. Flatow..
Times of Israel..
22 November '15..

What a difference 20 years can make.

It was late Tuesday evening, April 11, 1995. 36 hours earlier I had arrived in Israel to be by the side of my daughter Alisa who had been mortally injured in a bus bombing. Now I was being ushered by Israeli protocol people into the VIP lounge at Ben Gurion Airport to await my El Al flight that would return me with Alisa’s body to the States.

I sat on a couch at one end of the room, next to a military chaplain who didn’t speak a word of English. On the opposite side were members of the press who asked a few questions. Frankly, I don’t remember what those questions were, or what I said in reply.

During a lull, I learned that students who knew Alisa wanted to have access to the airport in order to give Alisa a proper send off. The answer from the Rabin government was, “no.” No one would be allowed in the airport or on the tarmac while Alisa’s coffin was present in order to say goodbye. It was for safety reasons, I was told.

Shortly before the flight was to leave, I was brought along the tarmac to the rear of the plane. There was Alisa’s coffin, with an Israeli flag draped over it, and on top of that a wreath from the government of Israel. A protocol officer was there to extend her condolences and the chaplain who had joined me in the VIP lounge was there to say the kaddish.

But none of Alisa’s friends or fellow students was there, and there was no outpouring of public support at the airport in the face of the horrific murder of a 20-year old American college student studying Torah in Israel.