The Children's Intifada... Again - by Michael Lumish

...I know that it makes me a "racist" to oppose being targeted for death... but I suppose I can live with it, at least for awhile. Meanwhile, Palestinian-Arab society, via its media, is actually encouraging their children to chase after Jews with knives or scissors or hand-axes in the hope of killing those Jews or dying as beloved "martyrs" with the blessings of Allah. Meanwhile their allies throughout the West honestly want Jewish kids to believe that we are the source of the violence against us.

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
12 March '16..

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon.}




This is the Children's Intifada.

"Knife Intifada" or "Stabbing Intifada" does not cut it.

This is the Children's Intifada.

It is, perhaps, the most insidious thing that I have known in my lifetime.

Outside of the various fun-filled activities of, say, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 1970s, I can think of no more vile political movement than the Jihad, as expressed within organizations like ISIS or Hamas or Hezbolah, and the never-ending effort to screw around with the Jews of the Middle East and Europe by Jihadi Muslims for religious reasons... and coming, I suspect that you know, to an American theater near you.

I know that it makes me a "racist" to oppose being targeted for death... but I suppose I can live with it, at least for awhile.

Meanwhile, Palestinian-Arab society, via its media, is actually encouraging their children to chase after Jews with knives or scissors or hand-axes in the hope of killing those Jews or dying as beloved "martyrs" with the blessings of Allah. Meanwhile their allies throughout the West honestly want Jewish kids to believe that we are the source of the violence against us.

Throughout western college campuses and the western media, elite progressive intellectuals and activists tell one another just what the Nazis told one another: the Jews are bad. Of course, they're not actually brave enough or honest enough - within living memory of the Holocaust - to blame Jews directly, so instead they use the Jewish state as a stand-in for the Jewish people or they conjure up Zionism as some sort-of essential evil that is responsible for everything from global warming to the misery and violent pathologies of the Arab world. Some Arabs even believe, as EOZ readers are undoubtedly aware, that Israel has created Zionist sharks and terrorist Zionist puffer fish and crazed Zionist squirrel spies, or whatever.

The Elder of Ziyon actually put together a referenced list that includes heinous Zionist eagles,

Zionist rock hyraxes, Zionist boars, Zionist storks, Zionist super-rhinos... "super-rhinos"? - Zionist vultures, European Zionist bee-eaters, Zionist puffer fish, Zionist dogs, Zionist jellyfish, Zionist sharks, Zionist cows, Zionist wolves, Zionist lions, rats, sheep and squirrels.

I have to say, if I actually thought that the Jews were so capable of making alliances with so much of the animal kingdom, I might be inclined to think that we must be doing something right!

Business as usual for Abbas and crew and as in any comedy, there is a clown. - by Khaled Abu Toameh

...So it is business as usual for Abbas and crew. As in any comedy, there is a clown, and Biden was played for a fool by a PA leadership that finds that it pays to point its finger at Israel. In Arabic, a language in which Western leaders are perhaps not fluent, Palestinian media outlets and spokesmen vomit poison against Israel. Condemnation of attacks on Israelis would be rather unlikely in such a drama. And so the curtain rises on another act of the ceremonial, make-believe theater of the Middle East. In Abbas's sneaky script, it is about settlements. In reality, it is about the refusal of the Americans to read, speak or even translate Arabic.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on March 10, hoping to persuade
Abbas to issue a "condemnation" of the wave of terror attacks
against Israelis. The next day, Abbas's Fatah party invited Palestinians
 to commemorate the 38th anniversary of the "martyrdom" of
Dalal Al-Mughrabi. Al-Mughrabi was a Fatah member who participated
in the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in Israel, in which 38 civilians
were killed, including 13 children.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
14 March '16..

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Ramallah last week, and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his top officials are laughing their heads off.

Why not laugh? Biden arrived in the region hoping to persuade the Palestinian leaders to issue a "condemnation" of the reign of terror, which they continue to describe as a "popular and peaceful uprising." This in itself reeks of gallows humor.

But what Biden got was even funnier, from the point of view of Abbas and his friends.

The Palestinian president offered "condolences" over the killing of a U.S. citizen in Jaffa the previous day: "The President [Abbas] offered his condolences over the killing of the US citizen, while stressing at the same time that the occupation authorities have killed 200 Palestinians over the past five months," according to a statement released by the PA leadership in Ramallah.

Abbas's crocodile tears were shed for Taylor Force, a West Point graduate from Texas who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian during a rampage on the Jaffa beachfront promenade. Abbas is doubtless also upset because Israel has killed Palestinian stabbers and shooters.

Just before Biden arrived in Ramallah, Abbas's Fatah faction praised the murderer of Force, calling him a "martyr." But Fatah was quick to delete the posts to avoid embarrassing the Palestinian leadership during Biden's visit.

It seems that the murder of an American visitor is condemnable, but the murder of some 34 Israelis since last October, including a pregnant woman and civilians, is somewhat less so.

Where was the condemnation of the wounding of nine Israelis in the attack that killed Taylor Force? Where was the condemnation of the attacks the took place on that very day in Jerusalem and Petah Tikva?

But Abbas explained everything to Biden: Israel was in fact fully responsible for the "violence and bloodshed" because of the "occupation" and "settlements."

Here is a dirty little secret: the Palestinian attackers were not driven to murder Jews because of "settlements" and "checkpoints."

The theologically-inspired martyr count, has grown by several more "heroes" this morning - by Arnold Roth

...The theologically-inspired martyr count, so beloved of the many parties doing the inciting to murder within Palestinian Arab society, will have grown by several more "heroes" this morning. Each such canonization - via the Arabic media via the work of village and mosque preachers and via the disgraceful abuse of political leadership on constant view in Mahmoud Abbas' office - ensures more dead and more suffering on both sides.

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

Back-to-back vehicle-ramming attacks in Kiryat Arba this morning

A windy, chilly, stormy morning and there have been two vehicle-ramming attacks against Israelis in Kiryat Arba, an Israeli community with a population of about 8,000 on the edge of Hebron.

Today's terror assaults, though unlikely to have much impact in the West, encompass three of the four major weapon groups that have featured in the raging Palestinian Arab violence of the past half year: rammings, knifings and shootings.

(Read 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 as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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(Video) Question. What would you do with 3 million dollars?

Charity, traveling the world, teaching the next generation, and sports cars - these are just a few ways that people in Tel Aviv would spend 3 million dollars.

Israel Defense Forces..
13 March '16..





If you asked Hamas, you would get a very different answer.



Hamas spends 3 million dollars on each tunnel that they build - and they keep building. There are better uses than terror.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk-1WQXdjKY

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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Old merchandise covered in a new wrapping of false hope - by Dr. Limor Samimian-Darash

...The time has come to refute these urban legends.

Dr. Limor Samimian-Darash..
Israel Hayom..
11 March '16..

Not even 24 hours passed after Tuesday's spate of terrorist attacks before we heard Opposition Leader MK Isaac Herzog tell us that only separation from the Palestinians could halt the wave of terrorism we have been experiencing since last fall. With this and other similar nonsensical statements, Herzog and like-minded individuals have been trying to sell us old merchandise covered in a new wrapping of false hope. The time has come to refute these urban legends.

First of all, the Left tells us that Palestinian terrorism stems from despair. According to this outlook, the Palestinians are murdering us because they have lost hope. If we just change the atmosphere, renew the diplomatic process and give them something to lose, the terrorism will stop. This is not only a myth, it is also the height of cynical thinking. The waves of Palestinian terrorism in the 1990s after the signing of the Oslo Accords took place when there was a diplomatic process. Back then, the Left called our dead "victims of peace." That was wrong then, just as it would be wrong now to call the Israelis killed in recent terrorist attacks "victims of despair" or "victims of the lack of a diplomatic process." Instead, they are victims of the Palestinians' sanctification of death and refusal to recognize Israel's existence.

Secondly, let us dispel the notion of "lone wolf attackers." The media, and many Israelis of all political stripes, have uncritically adopted this term, as if the attackers are acting in a spontaneous, unorganized and uncontrolled manner. I am not saying we have the means to stop all potential attacks. But it is not up to us. We can fix holes in the security fence, but the main onus for stopping terrorism lies with the Palestinian Authority. PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his ilk continue to incite against Israel and provide funds to terrorists and their families. So not only is the PA not fighting terrorism, it is in fact systematically encouraging it. Palestinian terrorists draw from years of hatred they learned in PA-run schools. It is the PA that could bring the wave of terrorism to an end, if only it so chose.

Surprise? BBC News silent on Abbas’ rejection of Jewish state - by Hadar Sela

...In other words, the BBC has not fulfilled its obligation to “build a global understanding of international issues”.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
11 March '16..

Last week the Fatah Revolutionary Council held a meeting in Ramallah titled “Session of the Martyrs of Jerusalem Call and the Popular Uprising”.Fatah meeting 2 3

At that meeting the PA president, PLO chairman and Fatah head Mahmoud Abbas stated that the “Palestinian leadership categorically rejects the idea of a Jewish Israel” –i.e. it will not recognise Israel as the Jewish state.

Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh reported on March 9th that a Palestinian Authority official had made a similar statement.

“Our position remains as clear as ever: there will be no recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and no compromise on the right of return, which must be solved according to UN resolution 194.”

The subject of recognition of Israel as the Jewish state came up during the talks between Israel and the PLO in 2013/14 and the BBC failed to accurately inform its audiences of the significance of that issue at the time.

(Read 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 as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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BDS South Africa’s Terrible Week. How About 2 in a Row? - by Jonathan Marks

...And to think, the week started out with so much promise.

Jonathan Marks..
Commentary magazine..
11 March '16..

I have written here before about the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement in South Africa. This week was supposed to be a good week for its supporters. Israeli Apartheid Week ran from March 1st through the 10th (because in South Africa just one week isn’t enough to unburden oneself of one’s loathing of Israel). The ruling African National Congress had, as it has in prior years, heartily endorsed Israeli Apartheid Week and made members of its executive committee available for various events associated with it. Things were looking up.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the celebration of anti-Israel bias. BDS-South Africa proved that it does not know how to play a winning hand.

The Daily Vox, a South African paper written by and for young people, has been running a series called Apartheid 2.0. The Vox, though it is affiliated with no political party, is no lover of Israel. Indeed, Apartheid 2.0 is about “Palestine, Israel’s settler-colonial project, and apartheid policies over the Palestinian people.” But the editors made the error of running two pieces critical of the BDS movement.

Neither piece was pro-Israel. One ended “Israel must fall.” The other complained that “Zionist influence has strengthened” as a result of the incompetence of the BDS movement.

As if to prove the latter point, BDS-South Africa responded by attacking the paper. When the editors offered Muhammad Desai, a BDS leader (and himself a nasty piece of work) a chance to respond, he consulted his board. Farid Esack, a professor at the University of Johannesburg wrote back to Desai, but copying the Vox: “This is fuckin malicious! Couldn’t these guys have waited a week or two until after IAW to run these piece. Where the hell do they expect us to get the time to do replies in the middle of this week. Just what is their agenda?” BDS-South Africa promptly canceled a previously scheduled online discussion hosted by the Daily Vox.

Surprise! Peace Now Head Yariv Oppenheimer Condemns Terror Victim’s Self-Defense

...CAMERA has previously noted Peace Now’s bias and credibility problems....Future reports would do well to note that the organization’s head has now put himself on record as accusing an Israeli who acted in self-defense, protecting himself and others as being guilty of murdering the terrorist who had tried to murder him.

Sean Durns..
CAMERA Snapshots..
11 March '16..

The head of Peace Now, an Israel-based organization that repeatedly has opposed the policies of the Israeli government, has condemned a victim of a Palestinian terror attack for defending himself.

Yariv Oppenheimer, the head of the organization, accused terror victim Yonatan Azarihab of “executing” his attacker without trial.

Azarihab was one of 11 wounded in a March 8, 2016 Palestinian terror attacks in Jaffa and Petach Tikva. The Jaffa attacks took the life of tourist and U.S. Army veteran Taylor Force, 29, a graduate student at Vanderbilt University.

Yet, after being stabbed in the neck, Azarihab fought back. The Israeli removed the knife from his own body and then used it to kill the terrorist who reportedly had set about to find other victims.

According to Israel National News, Oppenheimer blamed Azarihab for this act of self-defense that possibly saved lives. The Peace Now head took to the social media platform, Twitter, claiming:

“This is how it goes [,] from neutralizing terrorist to execution without trial.”

Ignoring numerous instances of poor and biased anti-Israel media coverage (for a list of some examples, see “Wave of Palestinian Violence Accompanied by Spate of Bad Writing, ”CAMERA, Oct. 14, 2015), Oppenheimer claimed “in the present atmosphere, no one in the media dares to report and deal with the issue.” Perhaps this is because the “issue” of Israeli extrajudicial killings is virtually non-existent. However, Palestinian Arabs wantonly trying to murder Israelis is very much an issue.

Dutch Zionist Christians defy labeling with ‘Made in Israel’ warehouse - by Cnaan Liphsiz

A Christian Zionist businessman in Amersfoort, some 25 miles east of Amsterdam, Karel van Oordt sought to strengthen the Jewish state economically by purchasing its exports to feed his family of eight. But it wasn’t easy. “At the greengrocer, my father asked for Jaffa oranges, but they didn’t offer those,” Pieter van Oordt recalled. “Then at the liquor store, dad asked for Israeli wines. Same reply.” Four decades later, those Israeli goods and thousands more are available across the Netherlands thanks to the international advocacy group founded by Karel van Oordt in 1979. 

Pieter van Oordt, left, with his brother,
Roger, at the Israel Products Center in
Nijkerk, the Netherlands, Feb 19, '16.
 (Cnaan Liphshiz/JTA)

Cnaan Liphsiz..
Times of Israel..
10 March '16..

JKERK, Netherlands (JTA) — As a boy, would often accompany his father, Karel, on the elder van Oordt’s weekly shopping excursions specifically seeking out products made in Israel.

A Christian Zionist businessman in Amersfoort, some 25 miles east of Amsterdam, Karel van Oordt sought to strengthen the Jewish state economically by purchasing its exports to feed his family of eight. But it wasn’t easy.

“At the greengrocer, my father asked for Jaffa oranges, but they didn’t offer those,” Pieter van Oordt recalled. “Then at the liquor store, dad asked for Israeli wines. Same reply.”

Four decades later, those Israeli goods and thousands more are available across the Netherlands thanks to the international advocacy group founded by Karel van Oordt in 1979. Pieter and his brother, Roger, have run Christians for Israel since their father’s death in 2013.

Through its own import agency, the Israel Products Center, or IPC, the organization brings in 120,000 bottles of Israeli wine each year, as well as many tons of Dead Sea cosmetics and other merchandise. Most of the products are sold in IPC’s own store, on its website or by a corps of 200 volunteer door-to-door sales agents, a majority of them women.

The effort is unique in Europe, and not only because IPC profits are distributed annually among a small group of shareholders who reinvest the money back into the business. Also because IPC openly promotes the sale of settlement goods, part of a conscious effort to bolster the settler movement and push back against European efforts to distinguish them from goods produced in Israel proper.

Last month, Pieter van Oordt, who runs IPC, wrote a letter to his customers recommending they purchase two brands of wine, dates and olive products produced in the West Bank.

“Now the government wants to say on our products that they’re not from Israel,” said Pieter van Oordt, referring to the adoption in November of EU regulations mandating that goods produced in Israeli settlements are labeled as originating in Palestinian territory. “So we must tell our customers that it’s not true.”

Most IPC customers probably agree with van Oordt. The company’s most dedicated patrons are ideological supporters of the Christians for Israel movement, which is popular among European Protestants who believe it is their religious and moral duty to help Jews return to their ancestral lands.

No Consequences for Abbas? - by Jonathan Tobin

...This administration is fond of ginning up conflicts with Netanyahu in which they can accuse the Israelis of insulting the president or even the vice president. But they appear ready to do nothing when Abbas spits in Biden’s face. Action is required to show the Palestinians that they will gain nothing from support for terrorism. But to a president who thinks he knows more about what is good for Israel than the Israelis and who has always refused to concede that it is the Palestinians that don’t want peace, even Abbas’s support for terrorism is not enough to distract him from his grudge against Netanyahu.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
10 March '16..

If the Mahmoud Abbas was looking to validate President Obama’s view of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, fate had given him the perfect opportunity. The terrorist attack in the old city of Jaffa that took the life of an American tourist not far from where a visiting Vice President Biden was having dinner was a moment when the PA leader could have sent a strong statement to both the world and his own people that the “stabbing intifada” had run its course. He could have seized on the incident as an indication that the murder spree in which individual Palestinians have attempted to randomly murder Jews wherever they could be found was hurting their cause. The fact that the American victim was not Jewish and that Arabs were among those wounded could have served as an excuse to say that such actions deserved the condemnation of the entire Palestinian people.

But that did not happen.

Abbas not only failed to make a statement about the immoral nature of this intifada or that it was counterproductive. He also did not even condemn it. He did offer condolences to Biden about the death of Taylor Force, a 28-year-old U.S. Army veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But he compounded the failure to condemn by saying that “occupation authorities” have killed 200 Palestinians in recent months without mentioning the fact that almost all of those fatalities were individuals who were engaging in terror attacks or otherwise violently attacking Israeli forces.

Of course, that wasn’t all that was wrong about the Palestinian response to the attack. Official Palestinian Authority television — an entity that is directly controlled by Abbas’s government — called the Jaffa terrorist a “martyr” who earned praise for what they called a “complex operation.” The report also referred to the slain American and the ten people injured in the “operation,” which consisted of the terrorist running along the Jaffa port and the Tel Aviv beach promenade stabbing passers-by, as “settlers.” The social media operated by Abbas’s Fatah Party also called the Jaffa assailant a “hero” and a “martyr.” Nor is this an aberration since the PA has treated all Palestinians who commit terror against Israelis and Jews as martyrs. Abbas also referred to the perpetrator of another Palestinian attack this week as a martyr.

This language is significant because it indicates once again that the government of Abbas, the man President Obama has lauded as a moderate and a champion for peace, not only isn’t willing to condemn terrorism but also thinks of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa beachfront as “occupied territory” inhabited by “settlers.” Though Abbas at times pays lip service to believing in a two-state solution, the reaction to this and other acts of terrorism that occurs in land that is inside the 1967 lines shows that he and the PA think of all of Israel as “occupied” and not just the West Bank or even parts of Jerusalem.

This makes sense when you consider that Abbas has already refused an offer of peace and independence that would have given the Palestinians the state they claim to desire in almost all of the West Bank, Gaza and a share of Jerusalem. Moreover, even though President Obama is seeking to lay down a framework for Middle East peace via a United Nations Security Council Resolution that would enshrine those terms in law in a way that would further limit Israel’s negotiating position, Abbas reportedly refused to acquiesce to this very pro-Palestinian plan when Biden presented it to him yesterday.

Why? Because doing so would have also required Abbas to give up on the right of return for the descendants of 1948 Palestinian refugees and to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Both conditions remain unacceptable even to Palestinian moderates for the very same reason that PA TV calls Jews in Tel Aviv “settlers.” They won’t recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn.

To his credit, Biden not only condemned the terror attack but also “the failure to condemn these acts,” a pointed reference to Abbas though he didn’t call him out by name.

But at this point, with the Palestinians apparently committed to a campaign of terror and opposed to even the friendliest efforts by the administration to promote peace, the question is what will Washington do about it?

Will the U.S. end aid to the PA as an organization that aids and abets terror? Will it cease calling on Israel to hand over more territory to a PA that is committed to supporting terrorism? Will it promise to veto any effort at the UN to give them statehood without first making peace with Israel as well as to oppose further efforts by the Palestinians and their foreign cheerleaders?

The answer to all those questions is no.

Already past the time to take the initiative - by Nadav Shragai

...There may be a certain logic to the decision not to act, but the fact is that the number of illegal weapons held by Palestinians in the West Bank is only growing, meaning that the cost of action is getting higher. A future operation would be vastly more complex and difficult than one would be today. Also, in the current situation, the Palestinians have the ability to decide if and when to use their weapons, which is extremely problematic for Israel.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
10 March '16..

The biggest open secret in the West Bank is the abundance of light weapons -- including pistols and rifles -- that Palestinians are hiding in their homes. Unlike the weapons possessed by the Palestinian Authority security forces, these private weapons are unregistered and illegal. They are traditionally fired in the air in joy at weddings and other celebrations. They are also used from time to time to achieve another type of joy -- the joy of martyrdom achieved by killing Jews, which is also a tradition in these parts.

The Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet are holding back from taking comprehensive action against the illegal weapons phenomenon. This stems from a cost-benefit analysis calculated by Israel's political and military leaders. It is believed that a house-to-house search operation would spark a wider-scale conflagration, including the possibility of a new flare-up in the south.

There may be a certain logic to the decision not to act, but the fact is that the number of illegal weapons held by Palestinians in the West Bank is only growing, meaning that the cost of action is getting higher. A future operation would be vastly more complex and difficult than one would be today.

Also, in the current situation, the Palestinians have the ability to decide if and when to use their weapons, which is extremely problematic for Israel.

The price you pay to be free - by Caroline Glick

...From 1982 through 2000, Israel restrained Hezbollah and prevented it from taking over Lebanon by maintaining security control over the security zone in Lebanon. For 28 years, Israel prevented the Palestinians from becoming a terrorist society dedicated to the destruction of the people of Israel, by exerting security and civil authority over Judea, Samaria and Gaza through its military government and its civil administration. And it worked. By fighting our enemies rather than empowering them, we weakened them....Governing enemies is unpleasant. It brings no instant gratification. Instead it promises only thankless, Sisyphean efforts. In other words, governing your enemies is the price you pay to be free.

Caroline Glick..
Column One/JPost..
10 March '16..

This week we learned that Lebanon is no more. It has been replaced by Hezbollah’s Iranian colony in Lebanon.

Two weeks ago, Saudi Arabia listed Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and canceled its $3 billion aid package to the Lebanese military. The Gulf Cooperation Council followed suit. Rather than support the move by his sponsors and allies, Saad Hariri, the head of the anti-Hezbollah March 14 movement, flew to Syria to meet with Hezbollah leaders.

Saudi Arabia’s decision to end its support for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) doesn’t mean that Saudi Arabia is making peace with Hezbollah.

It means that the Saudis are no longer willing to maintain the fiction that with enough support, the LAF will one day challenge Hezbollah’s effective control of Lebanon.

Hezbollah and its bosses in Tehran don’t seem too upset about the Sunnis’ decision to acknowledge that Hezbollah is a terrorist group. And they are right not to care. In essence, the Saudi move is simply an admission that they have won. Lebanon is theirs.

Hezbollah’s isn’t the dominant force in Lebanon because it has better weapons than the LAF.

Unlike the LAF, Hezbollah has no air force. It has no armored divisions.

Hezbollah is able to dominate Lebanon because unlike the LAF and the March 14 movement, Hezbollah is willing to destroy Lebanon if doing so advances its strategic goals.

This has all been fairly clear for more than a decade. But it took the war in Syria to force the truth above the surface.

And now that it is clear to everyone that Lebanon has ceased to exist and that the country we once knew is now an Iranian colony, the time has come for Israel to reckon with the lessons of its own misadventures in our neighbor to the north.

Since the mid-1990s, Israel has implemented three strategies in Lebanon and in Syria. All of them originated on the Left. All of them failed.

The first strategy was appeasement.

From the mid-1990s until the Syrian war began five years ago, Israel’s strategic framework for understanding Syria was appeasement. Initially, the notion was that Syria was our enemy because we control the Golan Heights. If we surrendered the Golan to Syria, we would have peace in exchange.

In the years leading up to the Syrian war, our leaders embraced the idea that Syria was the weakest link in the Iranian axis. If we gave the Golan Heights to Syria, they said, then the Assad regime would withdraw from the Iranian axis.

As it turned out, these positions had no basis in reality. Appeasement failed.

Then there was unconditional surrender – or disengagement. Then-prime minister Ehud Barak implemented this strategy when he removed IDF units from the security zone in south Lebanon in May 2000.

From the mid-1990s on, Yossi Beilin was the chief advocate of unconditional surrender in Lebanon. The logic of surrender was similar to that of appeasement – of which he was also a principal architect and advocate.

The surrender strategy in Lebanon was based on the idea that Hezbollah fought the IDF in south Lebanon because the IDF was in south Lebanon. If the IDF were to leave south Lebanon, Hezbollah was have no reason to fight us anymore.

So if we were gone, Beilin argued, Hezbollah would stop fighting, ditch terrorism and Iran, and become a normal Lebanese political party.

The war with Hezbollah in 2006 destroyed the credibility of the surrender strategy. But the Left didn’t despair. They simply replaced surrender with the strategy of internationalization.

What is Obama’s Real Mideast Legacy? - by Jonathan Tobin

...Peace plans that don’t take changing this reality as their main focus and starting point are pointless. Worse than that, they convince the Palestinians that they need only wait for the West to abandon Israel. Sadly, President Obama has done much in his time in office to encourage them in that belief. His real Middle East legacy isn’t a peace plan but a framework for violence that Israelis and now even American tourists continue to pay for in blood.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
10 March '16..

Today’s front-page story in the New York Times on President Obama’s plans to promote Middle East diplomacy was about as ill-timed as an article could be. It was published on the day after a horrifying murder spree by Palestinian terrorists including an attack in the Old City of Jaffa that took that life of an American tourist who was also a veteran of the U.S. Army. That Vice President Joe Biden was dining not far away when the incident took place only highlighted the indiscriminate nature of the surge in Palestinian terrorism. It also was a reminder that Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority that President Obama has lauded as a champion of peace, is, in fact, a major source of the incitement that has created the current violence.

But just as important, the juxtaposition of the leak to the Times of President Obama’s possible plans to promote a resolution laying down the framework for an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians at the United Nations with the latest terrorist attacks illustrates everything that is wrong with the administration’s Middle East policy. Having come into office determined to create more daylight between Israel and the Palestinians in the mistaken belief that doing so would promote peace, apparently Obama is determined to exit the White House pursuing the same course. Though virtually everything that has happened in the region during the last seven-plus years has proved that his thesis was dead wrong has had no impact on the president’s thinking.

As the Times reports, the goal of the lame-duck Obama initiative is nothing less than to “save” the two-state solution, which the president and his foreign policy team believe is dying on their watch. While the details were not laid out in the article, the implication would be that the U.S. would insist on Israeli territorial withdrawals with the 1967 lines as the starting point for discussions, the creation of a Palestinian state and some sort of division of Jerusalem along with security guarantees. In other words, this would be what the foreign policy establishment has spent the last two decades telling us is the solution that “everyone knows” must be implemented.

In theory, some form of this effort might be the ideal solution to the intractable problem of two people struggling over one land. But rather than a gesture for the future that sets out principles that the two sides must point toward, the administration effort is very much mired in the reality of the present. And that is why it would be a colossal mistake that could serve as the starting point for even more violence rather than peace. Indeed, the proposal is a microcosm of all the mistakes made by Obama since January 2009 that exacerbated an already bad situation and set the stage for the very bloodshed that Biden was forced to deplore during his visit.

Surprise? BBC News reports on three terror attacks without using the word terror - by Hadar Sela

...The absence of that information obviously compounds the BBC’s ongoing failure to provide its audiences with meaningful reporting on the issue of the incitement and glorification of terrorism from official Palestinian sources which fuels the current wave of violence against Israelis. That ongoing failure – now in its sixth month – actively prevents the corporation from meeting its obligation to enhance audience awareness and understanding of this particular international issue.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
09 March '16..

On March 8th three terror attacks took place in Israel within the space of a couple of hours. Earlier in the day an additional attempted stabbing attack by a woman from the Umm Tuba neighbourhood was averted in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Just before 5 pm a Palestinian terrorist stabbed an Israeli man in a shop in Petah Tikva. Around a quarter of an hour later two members of the security forces on patrol in Jerusalem were seriously wounded in a shooting attack carried out by a terrorist apparently from the neighbourhood of Issawiya. At around 6:30 pm a Palestinian terrorist from Qalqilya attacked a number of people near Jaffa port and in the surrounding area with a knife. An American tourist – Taylor Force – was murdered and ten other people, including his wife, were wounded. Mr Force’s death brings the number of people holding US citizenship killed in terror attacks since October 1st 2015 to five.Pigua Yafo 8 3 vers 3

Some two hours after the attack in Jaffa took place the BBC News website published an article (its first concerning terror attacks against Israelis since the month of March began) which was originally titled “One killed and several wounded in attacks on Israelis”.

Obviously that headline contributed nothing to audience understanding of who carried out those “attacks on Israelis” and the replacement headline which appeared around two and a half hours later – “US tourist killed and several wounded in Israel attacks” – was even more confusing.

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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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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:

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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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Pew Polls, Arsonists and Arab MKs - by Evelyn Gordon

...Yet rather than helping to cultivate such a new leadership, both American Jews and Israeli leftists have been enthusiastically supporting the very Israeli Arabs who are doing the most to destroy coexistence. Hadash chairman Ayman Odeh, for instance – who condemned the GCC for declaring Hezbollah a terrorist organization, but won’t condemn Palestinian knife attacks because “I don’t think it’s my place to tell the people how to resist” – was feted by Jewish groups when he visited America last year. Thus, it’s high time for Arabs and Jews alike to realize that supporting arsonists like Odeh is no way to foster coexistence. Otherwise, the “alienation and disgust” reflected in the Pew poll will only keep growing.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
09 March '16..

The Israeli media were virtually unanimous yesterday in headlining a new Pew survey of Israeli opinion. All highlighted the finding that nearly half of Israeli Jews support expelling Arabs. The only reporter who thought to ask an expert what this figure really means was Haaretz’s Ofer Aderet. But to understand the expert’s answer, one other fact is helpful: Just a day before Pew published its survey, two of the Knesset’s three Arab parties publicly condemned the Gulf Cooperation Council for declaring Hezbollah a terrorist organization, on the grounds that this declaration might benefit the country in whose parliament they serve.

Aderet queried Professor Sammy Smooha about the Pew finding because he’s Israel’s leading expert in Jewish-Arab relations, having tracked the subject since 2003 through a series of comprehensive annual polls. Smooha said Pew’s results disagreed with his own polls, which consistently found that about three-quarters of Israeli Jews support coexistence with Arabs. He offered two explanations for this divergence.

First, the Pew question was vague and confusing. Respondents were asked simply whether they agreed or disagreed that “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.” That’s easy to answer if you believe that Arabs should either always be expelled or never be expelled. But what if, like many Israelis, you believe the answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no?

Many center-rightists, for instance, favor expelling Arabs who openly support terror or seek to undermine Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, but not other Arabs. Many center-leftists believe East Jerusalem Arabs (most of whom are permanent Israeli residents but not citizens) should be forced to become part of the Palestinian Authority whether they want to or not, but not other Arabs. Thus for these respondents, the answer would depend on whether they interpreted the word “Arabs” in Pew’s question to mean “all Arabs” or “some Arabs.”

Smooha argued that most respondents who agreed with the statement interpreted it as meaning “some Arabs,” because if you read it to mean expelling all Arabs, the idea “is unrealistic and unfeasible.” Indeed, no Israeli party advocates expelling all Arabs, and very few individuals do; even diehard anti-Arab racists tend to make exceptions for the Druze, for instance.

His interpretation is reinforced by looking at voting patterns. According to Pew, rightist and religious Jews overwhelmingly support expelling Arabs. But the only right-wing party that actually advocates expelling sizable numbers of Arabs – Yisrael Beiteinu, which wants to swap certain Arab towns for the major settlement blocs under a final-status deal with the Palestinians – won a mere six seats in the last Knesset elections; the other rightist and religious parties, which advocate no such thing, won a combined 51.

In contrast, Pew found little support for expelling Arabs on the left. Yet the leading center-left faction – Zionist Union, with 24 seats – is also the one Israeli faction that advocates expelling large numbers of Arabs right now, as opposed to under some distant final-status agreement: The Labor Party, which accounts for most of Zionist Union’s seats, recently adopted a plan to unilaterally hand East Jerusalem over to the PA, thereby removing hundreds of thousands of Arabs from Israel.

In short, Pew’s results don’t fit actual voting patterns at all unless you conclude that most center-leftists interpreted its question as meaning “all Arabs,” and therefore disagreed, while most rightists interpreted it as meaning “some Arabs,” and therefore agreed.

This brings us to Smooha’s second explanation: He believes Pew’s finding primarily “reflects alienation and disgust with the Arabs more than it attests to agreement to grant legitimacy to the government to expel them.” In other words, many Israelis chose to interpret the question as meaning “some Arabs” – a position they could support – because they wanted to demonstrate their “alienation and disgust.”

Strength means upholding one's most basic and fundamental rights

...Perhaps millennia of exile and political anomaly -- living without our own state or the possibility for self-determination and consequently being subjected to the whims and mercy of foreign rulers -- has settled in the Israeli genome, leading even the most patriotic Israelis to unwittingly and subconsciously believe that this kind of security situation, unlike that of any other civilized nation on earth, is just the "Jewish normal." It is not, and if we wish to be a full-fledged state, respected by other states in the world, it can never be the "Jewish normal." Strength is the only thing that garners respect. And strength means upholding one's most basic and fundamental rights.

Judith Bergman..
Israel Hayom..
09 March '16..

The primary responsibility of every government is to provide security for its citizens so they can go about their daily business without fear of death or injury. When this security is fundamentally lacking, we are no longer talking about a society going about its normal business, but about a state of anomaly, whether the society and its government explicitly recognizes this or not. This means that the basic, most fundamental pact between the government and its citizens lies in tatters.

Israel is living in a state of anomaly. Those who will say that it has always been so -- that the current state of unceasing terror in which more than 30 people have been killed and almost 400 injured in terror attacks since September is no different -- are dangerously missing the point. Those who come up with a world of excuses as to why the situation cannot be remedied and daily security on the streets reinstated are even more off target. The only question that matters from the point of view of Israelis who are performing their civic duties -- serving in the army or sending their children to do so, paying their taxes, being law-abiding citizens -- is why the other half of this societal contract, their right to physical security, is not being upheld. One has a fundamental right to go about one's daily life without fear of being shot, stabbed, rammed by a car, or hit with a rock.

The answer to this question can never be that the international community may not like the measures needed for the government to provide such security. Physical security is every human's primary right. Nothing can stand above it. Besides, the international community, or what passes for an "international community" these days, has already proved beyond all doubt that it cares nothing for Israeli lives. The European Union keeps pumping millions of euros into the Palestinian Authority, despite the fact that the PA is an authoritarian and undemocratic regime that ceaselessly indoctrinates its own citizens to murder Israelis and ruthlessly abuses and brainwashes its own children in the process.

The international community does not care about Israeli lives, but it cares tremendously about Israeli houses. It spends endless hours debating "settlements" and the soil on which these "settlements" rest. It is Jewish houses, sheds and vegetables, not knives and guns and the Arab terrorists who wield them, that the civilized Western nations have a problem with. How many more decades do we need to learn that crucial lesson?

Carpe Diem (Seize the Day) in Jerusalem - by Rachel Sharansky Danziger

...Terror can kill or maim me. But as long as it fails to do so, the way I live my life is up to me. I refuse to cross the line from vigilant to paranoid. I refuse to give murderers the power to poison my life. These are my moments, and I will live them to the full. So I stopped on the way home, and carpe diemed by buying a pastry and dallying in the street.

Rachel Sharansky Danziger..
Times of Israel..
09 December '16..

When I walked out with my kids this morning, flashing police cars screeched by us, forming a blockade about 50 meters down the street. Men with guns were running in several directions. Store owners nervously gathered outside, checking their phones.

“We should go back home and lock the door,” said my five years old son, eerily collected.

We did. My kids stood with me by the window, watching the scene. “Look, a bird,” said my two-years-old daughter. “Do you think they caught the bad guy,” asked my son. People criticized me before for explaining the security situation to him. As he stood by me today, keeping his cool under pressure, I felt validated in my choice.

When the police cars drove away, we embarked on “going to kindergarten, take #2”. This time we walked into a reality that was normal to the point of being surreal. Vendors smiled at costumers, people walked their dogs… You really couldn’t tell that only seconds ago, something out of the ordinary took place here.

The normalcy was terrifying: what the heck just happened? What is hidden under the mundane facade? Why is no one freaking out?

The normalcy was exhilarating: THIS is how good we are at resuming life. THIS is how resilient we are. In your face, terrorists!

But what happened? The question kept gnawing at me, becoming more and more urgent as minutes passed by and our street didn’t make the news. Lack of information does odd things to you. On the one hand, it offers relief: no news is good news. On the other, it unleashes your imagination. Was there a stabbing? A bomb? Did a terrorist come here carrying a gun? When I know the facts, I can delude myself into thinking I am in control. So I want to know.

I wrote “what just happened in our neighborhood” on Facebook but deleted my post right away. Spreading anxiety wouldn’t help.

My son, so relaxed mere minutes ago, started fidgeting too. “I don’t want to go to kindergarten today,” he said. His fingers clutched mine.

The knuckles became pale.

“I’ll stay with you here for a bit,” I suggested. “Everything will be fine. The police will guard us. You are safe.”

Is that a lie?

Maybe it is, I thought as we sat in the playground, distracting ourselves with stories about animals. None of us is really, truly safe. But it’s a lie we need to tell ourselves to keep living.

When my son regained his cheer, I walked him into his kindergarten. I waved goodbye, then pressed “refresh” on my phone.

Actually, It’s More Than Appropriate for Netanyahu to Say No - by Jonathan Tobin

...Though Israel’s critics in the foreign policy establishment and the press will try to make a meal of this latest “insult,” it is nothing of the kind. Those interested in supporting good relations between the two nations and promoting the dim prospects of peace with the Palestinians should ignore this non-story. Or, better yet, treat this incident as merely more evidence of how an administration that came into office determined to create more daylight between Washington and Jerusalem has succeeded in doing so at the expense of an alliance that is in the best interests of both nations.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
08 March '16..

It didn’t last long. The much-ballyhooed rapprochement between the Obama administration and the Israeli government in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal is apparently over before it started. When, after some back and forth about a possible meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama later this month in Washington during the annual AIPAC conference, the Israeli decided to pass on the trip, the administration didn’t take it lying down. As they have at every possible opportunity over the last seven years, they have inflated a minor disagreement into a major controversy. The White House leaked to the press that Netanyahu had snubbed the president after he was invited to meet with him. The Israelis have a different story. But the bottom line is that once again the U.S. is alleging that Netanyahu has insulted the president.

Dissension between the Jewish state and its sole superpower ally is never good for either party but especially for the Israelis, who find themselves increasingly isolated on the international stage. Thus, Netanyahu is being criticized at home for needlessly antagonizing the Americans. Some are terming this an unprecedented act of insolence on Netanyahu’s part because, if the White House story is to be believed, this is the first time an Israeli prime minister has refused to meet with an American president when invited.

But all the huffing and puffing about the alleged insult rings false. It may be that the Israelis mishandled their end of the negotiations over a possible meeting of the two leaders. But the only reason why this is now a matter of public debate is that the Obama administration wanted to take a shot at the Israelis.

The lethal anguish of "moderate" Abbas - by Arnold Roth

...Messages like those from Hamas ["Jerusalem: Hamas calls for third intifada"] and the president of the PA ["Abbas calls terror attacks 'justified popular uprising'"] ought to be seen for what they actually are: elements in a psychological warfare they and their trusted cronies are waging against vulnerable individuals in their own society. Yet more deaths and lives wasted in futile acts of terror are the certain outcome. There is no sign of outrage about this among even the most enlightened segments of Palestinian Arab society, and so it continues. As for outsiders, if serious-minded global humanitarian organizations are expressing outrage at the manipulation and the lives thrown away, they are being tragically modest and quiet about it.

The Abbas letter eulogizing
 the vehicle rammer

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

With three separate Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks in the late afternoon and early evening hours today (Tuesday), and with a dozen or more Israelis now wounded in the violence, let's take a moment to examine what the political leader of the side doing the stabbing and shooting means when he says

"We always oppose terror incidents and we firmly slam these events. We pray for the injured people's recovery." [Source]

Mahmoud Abbas is not a moderate - at least not in the sense of holding to the conventional meaning of moderate views. If there were any doubt about this, and about the duplicity in which he routinely engages, condemning terror while praising the Palestinian Arabs who do it, the letter below ought to put the matter beyond doubt. (But we're confident it will not for those chronically inclined to side with the terrorists.)

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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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International Women’s Day: Celebrating Murder With AFP - by Daniel Pomerantz

...Yet the most incomprehensible part of the article is why any journalist would think that glorifying the wives of terrorists is an appropriate way to mark International Women’s Day.

Daniel Pomerantz..
Honest Reporting..
08 March '16..

Today, on International Women’s Day, the Agence France Presse (AFP) wire service published an article celebrating the wives of convicted Palestinian terrorists. Not all terrorists of course, only those who attack Israelis.

AFP starts by explaining that, “More than 7,000 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons, with around 600 serving life sentences.” In a startling example of unashamed media bias, AFP makes no mention of why those prisoners are held, the terror that many have committed, or the number of lives they have claimed.

AFP says nothing of the Israeli victims or their families, nor does it mention that the Palestinian Authority government pays incarcerated terrorists sums far beyond what they could earn while free, thus creating a strong economic incentive to kill Israelis.

AFP goes on to make an emotionally charged case study of one Ahed Abu Golmi, mentioning only at the end of the article that he went to prison because of his role in the 2001 assassination of Rehavam Ze’evi, the Israeli Minister of Tourism. (Is there any country in the world where assassinating a government minister wouldn’t land the assassin in prison?) Not surprisingly, the article does not bother to interview, or even mention, Ze’evi’s family: he was survived by his wife Yael and their five children.

The rising forces of replacement theology and its concomitant hatred of Israel - by Caroline Glick

The largest Evangelical communities remain solidly supportive of Israel, and their size dwarfs that of the rising forces of replacement theology and its concomitant hatred of Israel. But...

Caroline Glick..
Our World/JPost..
08 March '16..

Monday the Bethlehem Bible College, an Evangelical Christian college in Jesus’s hometown, opened its fourth biennial Christ at the Checkpoint conference. The conference, which is directed specifically toward US Evangelicals, will run through the week.

Today, Evangelical communities in the US number anywhere between 60 and 150 million people, depending on who is counting. They form the backbone of American support for the Jewish state. It is the support of the Evangelical community, rather than the Jewish community in the US that ensures that come hell or high water, no matter how Israel is demonized in the media and in academia, the majority of Americans continue to support Israel.

But will this support last? One of the more surprising aspects of the 2016 elections is Evangelical support for businessman Donald Trump. Trump in many ways personifies everything that people who take the Bible seriously are supposed to oppose. He owns casinos. He curses and uses profanity in his public appearances. He has donated to Planned Parenthood and forcefully supported abortions on demand.

Trump has also insisted repeatedly that he will be neutral toward Israel.

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Evangelical support for Trump is that he takes these positions as he runs against primary opponents who all wear their faith on their sleeves. All of his opponents have records of standing with the Evangelicals on social and other salient issues – including support for Israel.

What are we to make of this seemingly inexplicable phenomenon? At least as far as Israel is concerned, the readiness of Evangelicals to support the most anti-Israel candidate running for the Republican presidential nomination is no surprise.

To understand why this is the case, the Christ at the Checkpoint conference taking place this week in Bethlehem is a good place to look.

According to its website, the mission of the biennial conference “is to challenge Evangelicals to take responsibility to help resolve the conflicts in Israel/ Palestine by engaging with the teaching of Jesus on the Kingdom of God.”

The problem begins with the organizers’ interpretation of those teachings. College officials, among them keynote speakers at the conference, embrace and teach replacement theology. That theology maintains that God’s covenant with the Jews ended with Christianity.

In recent years, replacement theology has extended its biblical revisionism from Jews as people reviled for their rejection of Jesus and their supersession by Christians to Israel. The Jewish state is reviled as a religiously prohibited entity whose very existence is a sin against God.

According to current replacement theology, Jesus was not a Jew. He was a Palestinian. The Jews are not a people. They have no rights to the land of Israel.

Israel, it is asserted, has no historical or theological right to exist. Rather, according to the rewritten scriptures, the Palestinians are the chosen people.

Jews are colonialist invaders who have taken the land of Israel away from their rightful, biblically sanctioned owners.

This basic view is encapsulated in the very name “Christ at the Checkpoint.”

Today a Jewish Jesus would be prohibited from entering Bethlehem. Jews are barred from entering Palestinian population centers because Palestinians have a habit of murdering them. Indeed, just last week two IDF soldiers who accidentally entered a Palestinian village north of Jerusalem escaped a lynch mob by the skin of their teeth.

On the other hand, a Palestinian Jesus can be in Bethlehem. But to leave he has to go through an Israeli checkpoint (to ensure that he isn’t a terrorist, to be sure, but whatever).

So the image evoked by the name “Christ at the Checkpoint” ignores the reality of Palestinian terrorism.

The Palestinian Knife Campaign: A Policy of Limited Liability - by Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser

...that up to this point the Palestinians are quite satisfied with the results of the campaign, and in discussions held by the Fatah Central Committee and other leaderships forums, the decision was made to continue supporting and encouraging this effort unabatedly. The assumption of the leadership is that the terror campaign would continue as long as there is no decision to stop it. This is based on the assessment that the psychological inculcation of the Palestinian youth will guarantee that at any given time there will still be young Palestinians who will decide to go out and stab a Jew. Just like popcorn kernels explode in the microwave at random with no indication when the first will explode and which will not, so are the Palestinian youngsters randomly ready to explode when the indirect message comes from their leadership.

A Palestinian cartoon after the
Har Nof Synagogue attack 

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser..
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs..
March '16..

Five months into the stabbing terror campaign, the Palestinian leadership keeps evaluating its costs and benefits to date and the prospects for its future. As described by Hirsh Goodman, the decision to embark on this course of action was a result of a combination of several factors:

A. The availability of the stealth terror tool, which is a result of the long-time and ongoing incitement and the inculcation of the people in the pillars of Palestinian national identity,1 with particular impact on children’s psychological make-up.

B. The ease of turning this option into action almost instantly by introducing religiously sensitive issues into the discourse such as the fate of the al-Aqsa mosque.

C. The need to employ this activity to restore international attention to the Palestinian issue and compensate for the damage done by the regional turmoil to Palestinian attempts to present the case that Israel’s attitude is the main reason for the tension between the Islamic and Arab world and the West.

D. The existence of a comprehensive Palestinian strategy adopted in the Sixth Fatah conference in 2009, which is based on a combination of unilateral diplomatic effort in the international arena and “popular resistance,” of which the current stabbing campaign is an example.

E. The assumption that the costs to the Palestinians for this kind of terror campaign will be limited and the benefits will be much greater.

Apparently, not much thought was given by the Palestinian leadership to the potential dilemmas that a long terror campaign may eventually present. One reason is that a previous attempt to embark on such a policy, in the second half of 2014, was quite successful. At that time, PA President Mahmoud Abbas called for such a campaign, raised the al-Aqsa alarm, and quoted a well-known verse from the Quran,2 enabling him to halt the campaign after things went out of control following the November 18, 2014, attack in a Jerusalem synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood where five rabbis were brutally murdered.

The Palestinian leadership was also not worried that the terror campaign would spin out of control and turn into something similar to the second intifada. This option, termed “the militarization of the intifada” (Askarat Al-Intifada) in internal Palestinian debate, was considered to be Hamas’ goal, but eventually was hard to execute because of Israel’s proven capability to thwart most of the terror attempts of this kind. Israeli security cooperation with the PA also helped prevent such violence.