Three Sides, Fighting Big Knives and Bad Ideas in Israel

...To members of the third group fighting in this conflict, however, such fluctuations in the actual state of observable reality hardly matter. Like college freshmen newly introduced to the most potent strain of cannabis, they stare at the events unfolding through a thick purple haze of pleasant perceptions. Don’t tell them about Hamas, or Hezbollah, or the Islamic State. Don’t bother them by noting that while Israel, like every other democratic state, has many flaws to address, it also stands alone in its arid region, offering liberty and opportunity where others mete out punishment and misery and death. Don’t mention the Palestinian Authority’s kleptocratic corruption or its murderous incitement. You’ll only be spoiling the high. And who doesn’t love a good high?

Liel Leibovitz..
Tablet Magazine..
October '15..

You’ve been getting the arithmetic of war all wrong: The bloody battle unfurling in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and Ra’anana and elsewhere in Israel involves three sides, not two.

One consists of people like Isra Abed. She’s 30, an Israeli-Arab divorcee with a young child living with her parents in Nazareth. Not too long ago, Abed graduated from the Technion, one of the world’s finest institutions of higher learning. She could have followed in the path of another recent Israeli-Arab Technion grad from Nazareth, one not much older than Abed, and focus on discovering ways to cure cancer. She could’ve enjoyed the privileges associated with her prestigious degree and joined her fellow alums in the Israeli workforce, where a Technion grad’s average monthly salary is approximately $6,558, much higher than the average wage in the local economy. Instead, she took a large knife, traveled to the central bus station in the northern town of Afula, and tried to stab Jews. Soldiers arriving on the scene just in time shot and wounded her.

What motivated Abed to put down her baccalaureate and pick up the knife? If you get your wisdom from the mainstream American—and, often, Israeli—press, the answer, naturally, is the Occupation, which breeds despair, which, in turn, begets violence. After all, what other way does a citizen of a democratic country with a priceless education and endless economic opportunity have of expressing her frustration with the pace of regional politics but through seeking to slash the arteries of three or four of her neighbors?

There is, of course, a better explanation, and, as is often the case, it’s the simplest one. Abed and the other Israeli Arab and Palestinian men and women who have taken to the streets with knives and screwdrivers and other sharp objects to jab into Israelis are operating on a simple model, perfected not so long ago in lands not so far away. If you believe Zionism to be a colonialist project—which is pretty much gospel among Palestinians and those who support them these days—you can take inspiration from the brothers and sisters who have driven the Europeans out of Arab lands. Take Algiers: As 1959 drew to an end, it swarmed with more than a million Pied-Noir, French colonialist settlers. In their zeal to drive the French out, Algerian nationalists, too, took to the knife: In Oran, for example, they cut the throats of thousands, not before warning their innocent victims that their choice was between the suitcase or the coffin. Most Pied-Noir opted for the suitcase: By the end of 1962, more than 800,000 French Algerians had fled back to the mainland.

In the Palestinian imagination, the Jews of Israel now ought to do the same. Stab and slash and spear them enough times, the theory goes, and eventually they’ll despair and return to the lands from which they came in 1882 or 1923 or 1948. That’s the only context in which a decentralized campaign of terror makes sense: It’s designed to break the resolve of an occupying force, which is not a strategic approach but a psychological and emotional one.

Except that members of the second group involved in this fight, consisting of most Israelis, don’t see it that way. Knowing full well that they can’t go back to Krakow, not to mention Cairo, and fiercely attached to their homes and their homeland, most Israelis understand this wave of wanton violence in its proper context, as a simple struggle between two national wills.

Israelis do their best to deflect the attacks without responding in kind. They allow the attackers their day in court: Earlier this week, the three terrorists who pelted the car of Alexander Levlovitz with rocks on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, leading to his death, were found guilty of manslaughter, not murder, a controversial decision that speaks volumes about the ability of Israeli courts to remain impartial even as the nation comes under attack. The same is true of Israel’s hospitals, where it’s not uncommon for Palestinian stabbers, shot mid stabbing spree by Israeli soldiers or police, to lie just a few doors down from the civilians they’ve just tried to butcher.

Crazy like a fox by Caroline Glick

...No, the Holocaust was not Husseini’s idea. But he was a partner in perpetrating and promoting it. He also made it inevitable.

Caroline Glick..
Column One..
22 October '15..

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is crazy like a fox.

Netanyahu’s assertion on Tuesday before the World Zionist Congress that the founder of the Palestinian people, Haj Amin al-Husseini, convinced Adolf Hitler to eradicate rather than expel the Jews of Europe was an overstatement of Husseini’s role.

No, the Holocaust was not Husseini’s idea.

But he was a partner in perpetrating and promoting it. He also made it inevitable.

As I detailed in my book The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, during the course of Husseini’s meeting with Hitler in Berlin in November 1941, Hitler told the Arab leader of his plan to eradicate European Jewry.

Husseini told Hitler that he would support the Nazis, and rally the Arab world to their side, if Hitler agreed to two conditions: that Hitler support his bid to rule over a postwar Arab state comprised of present-day Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel; and that Hitler support the genocide of Middle Eastern Jewry.

As both the official Nazi record and Husseini’s summary of the meeting in his diary report, Hitler accepted Husseini’s demands.

And it makes sense that he did.

Husseini proved his loyalty to the Nazis long before he arrived in Berlin. His romance with them began with Hitler’s election victory in 1933. From then on, Husseini’s followers in Mandatory Palestine greeted one another with the Nazi salute. Swastikas festooned their towns. The Nazis began directly funding Husseini’s terror war against the Jews of Israel and British Mandatory officials in 1937.

In 1937, the British forced Husseini to flee the country. In 1941, he organized and incited a pro-Nazi military coup in Iraq. The British were forced to invade Iraq in response to the coup.

Husseini then fled to Rome where he met with Mussolini and went on the Berlin, where he remained for the duration of the war.

As the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Husseini invented and shaped the Palestinian national ethos in a manner that aligned with his pathological hatred of the Jews. Rather than providing the Palestinian Arabs with a positive vision of a future state that would safeguard and cultivate them as a distinct Arab nation, he shaped Palestinian society as a wholly negative phenomenon. It was seeded in a hybrid hatred of Jews that fused Koranic hostility to Jews with racism-based annihilationist European anti-Semitism rooted in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which Husseini translated and published in Arabic.

The goal of Husseini’s nationalist drive was not to form a Palestinian Arab state, but to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state and to annihilate all aspects of the Jewish national liberation movement through a campaign a terror and political warfare.

Husseini’s goal of leading an Arab state that encompassed Iraq and the entire Levant shows that the founding father of the Palestinian national project did not view “Palestine” as a distinct territorial entity.

After Hitler agreed to both of Husseini’s conditions, Husseini began his active collaboration in the Nazi war effort. He participated in the Holocaust directly. In 1943, he formed the SS Handschar Division comprised of Bosnian Muslims. His troops exterminated 90 percent of Bosnia’s 14,000-member Jewish community.

Husseini used his position as well to scuttle British attempts to trade German prisoners of war for Jews. In one such documented episode, in 1943 Husseini appealed to SS commander Heinrich Himmler to cancel a deal to exchange 4,500 Jewish children and 500 Jewish adults from Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria to cancel the deal and send the Jews to Auschwitz.

Himmler bowed to his appeal. The Jews were sent to the gas chambers.

Husseini contributed to the Holocaust indirectly.

Beginning shortly after his meeting with Hitler and extending through the end of the war, Husseini broadcast regular programs to the Arab world on Nazi short wave radio in Arabic. In those broadcasts he engendered support for the Nazis and the extermination of world Jewry. Using the mix of Islamic Jew-hatred and European annihilationist anti-Semitism he had developed in Jerusalem, Husseini cultivated a culture of support for the annihilation of Jews and the destruction of the Jewish (then nascent) state in the Land of Israel. That culture, bred through those broadcasts heard regularly by millions throughout the entire Arab world, still holds today.

Husseini was indicted as a war criminal in Nuremberg. Rather than try him, the allies allowed him to flee to Egypt in 1946. There he was greeted as a war hero by King Farouk.

It is true that Hitler didn’t need Husseini to convince him to annihilate European Jewry. By the time Husseini arrived in Germany, the Nazis had already murdered a million Jews.

But Netanyahu’s claim that Husseini made it impossible for Hitler to suffice with expelling the Jews from Europe is true. The only place that wanted the Jews of Europe was the nascent Jewish state in the Land of Israel.

A Once Venerable News Network Becomes a Propaganda Mill

...If there remain journalists at NBC and MSNBC committed to providing viewers with an accurate and informed account, they should review Dermer's points, seek out information from other reliable and credible sources and discard their current trove of propaganda.

Steven Stotsky..
CAMERA Media Analysis..
22 October '15..

Television news has undergone dramatic changes since the days when the three major American networks, CBS, NBC and ABC, dominated the airwaves. As the recent coverage of the Palestinian knifing attacks makes evident, change has not been good for NBC and its more overtly political stepsister, MSNBC.

In recent weeks, viewers have been treated to erroneous reporting, program hosts using visual props to promote historical revisionism and an article published on the NBC web site that is sheer propaganda.

Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes

Palestinian journalist, Ayman Mohyeldin, in a live report on October 15, repeatedly casts doubt about an Israeli account that a terrorist was shot as he threatened them with a knife. Mohyeldin reports,

They didn't find any explosive devices on him. I was trying to keep an eye to see if they were taking anything off of his body, perhaps if they took a gun, if there was a gun that was visible. There was no gun that was visible. And at one point, we could clearly see from where we were lying, from where we were standing where his body was lying, both of his hands were open and both of his hands did not have a knife.

Mohyeldin suggests that all that happened was a Palestinian man failed to heed warnings to

halt and was shot and killed.

Even as he spoke, a split screen showed still film frames of the knife-wielding terrorist. The MSNBC anchor, Jose Diaz-Balart, at loss as to how to finesse this obvious misreporting, interrupts Mohyeldin, injecting

But in the video that we have, that you have, that is, as you say -- I don't think anybody else has this video -- we can clearly see the man in camouflage T-shirt and pants with what appears to be, at least in his right hand, a knife. And take a look at this video right here…like at least a five-inch or longer black blade.

Mohyeldin has tried to explain his erroneous reporting. His explanation is not very convincing.

Things We Really Need to Stop Hearing About the ‘Stabbing Intifada’

...Intolerable, finally, the minor mythology growing up around this story of daggers: The weapon of the poor? Really? The weapon one uses because it is within reach and one has no other? When I see those blades, I think of the one used to execute Daniel Pearl; I think of the beheadings of Hervé Gourdel, James Foley and David Haines; I think that the Islamic State’s videos have clearly gained a following, and that we stand on the threshold of a form of barbarity that must be unconditionally denounced if we do not want to see its methods exported everywhere. And I mean everywhere.

Bernard-Henri Lévy..
The Algemeiner..
21 October '15..

It is painful to hear the phrase “lone wolves” applied to the handful — and perhaps tomorrow the dozens and then the hundreds — of killers of Jews “liked” by thousands of “friends,” followed by tens of thousands of “Tweeters,” and connected to a constellation of sites (such as the Al-Aqsa Media Center and its page dedicated to “the third Jerusalem intifada”) that are orchestrating, at least in part, this bloody ballet.

It is equally painful to listen to the refrain about “Palestinian youth no longer subject to any control,” after seeing the series of sermons published by the Middle East Media Research Institute, in which preachers from Gaza, facing the camera, dagger in hand, call upon followers to take to the streets to maim as many Jews as they can, to inflict as much pain as possible and to spill the maximum amount of blood; doubly painful to hear that refrain from Mahmoud Abbas himself, at the outset of this tragic chain of events a few weeks back, describing as “heroic” the murder of the Henkins in the presence of their children, and then expressing indignation at seeing the “dirty feet” of Jews “defiling” the Al-Aqsa Mosque and declaring “each drop of blood” shed by “each martyr” who dies for Jerusalem “pure.”

Not only painful and intolerable, but also inapplicable, is the canned phrase about “political and social desperation” that is used to explain — or excuse — criminal acts. Everything we know about the new terrorists, their motives and the pride their relatives take in converting, post-mortem, crime into martyrdom and infamy into sacrifice, is, alas, much closer to the portrait of the robotic jihadist who yesterday would take off for Kashmir and today turns up in Syria or Iraq.

It is highly doubtful that “intifada” is the right term to apply to acts that bear more resemblance to the latest installment of a worldwide jihad of which Israel is just one of the stages.

It is doubtful that erudite disquisitions on occupation, colonization and Netanyahu-esque intransigence explain much about a wave of violence that counts among its favored targets Jews with sidelocks — that is, those Jews who are the most conspicuously Jewish, those whom their killers must consider the very image of the Jew, and who, by the way, are often at odds with the Jewish state when not in open secession from it.

It is doubtful that the very question of the state, the question of the two states and thus the question of a negotiated partition of the land — which is, for moderates on both sides, the only question worth posing — has anything to do with a conflagration in which politics has given way to fanaticism and to theories of vast conspiracy, one in which some decide to stab random others as they pass by because of a vague rumor reporting a secret plot to deny Muslims access to Islam’s third holiest site.

Surprise! Bull$h!t on the Pages of the New York Times

...Thrall’s piece is on the opinion pages, and he is entitled to his own opinion. But when he justifies his conclusions with one lie after another, the Times should not publish his work. The New York Times has a responsibility to ensure that there are minimum factual standards for opinion pieces. Otherwise, his column is no more than propaganda. In other words, Bull$h!t

Yarden Frankl..
Honest Reporting..
20 October '15..

Nathan Thrall’s recent New York Times column is an error-filled diatribe that has no place on the pages of any legitimate newspaper. Worse than simply misleading readers, his bottom line is frightening. He claims that efforts to restore calm and prevent violence are actually not constructive:

But what does seem guaranteed is that most Palestinians will continue to believe that if the occupation is cost-free, there will be little incentive to end it.

In other words, the path to peace lies in making the conflict more “costly” to Israelis rather than negotiating for peace. It is clear from the column (in which he cites the “success” of the previous Intifadas) that what Thrall means by “cost” is deadly violence against Israelis.

But let’s first count the lies which he uses to come to his poisonous conclusion.

1. “JERUSALEM — THE streets of Jewish West Jerusalem are eerie and still.”

FALSE: While there are less people out and about, to claim that the streets are eerie and still is simply not accurate. Disclaimer, I am writing this from the HonestReporting office in the center of Jerusalem. The streets outside our office are neither eerie nor still. (I’ll leave the fictional name Jewish West Jerusalem for now.)

2. “Jerusalem’s gun-wielding mayor has called on Israeli civilians to carry arms.”

PARTIALLY TRUE: Mayor Nir Birkat does indeed carry a gun. He spent six years as an officer in the Israeli Paratroops Division. He has called for former soldiers who have firearms training to carry their licensed weapons. Here is what he actually said:

Here we have trained combat soldiers, who, when they finish their army service, are still reservists,” Barkat explained. “They are well trained, and some of them have civilian licenses to carry weapons.”

These are not novices to warfare, these are “professionals,” he said.

“I am calling those professionals to carry their guns, because you don’t know where a terrorist attack can happen.

Thrall makes it sounds like the Mayor is calling for vigilante attacks against Arabs, which he is definitely not doing.

3. “Jewish mobs chanting “Death to Arabs” have paraded through the streets.”

FALSE: While we cannot attest to what every single individual Israeli has said in response to the terrorist shooting, stabbing, and ramming attacks, the idea that racist mobs are roaming the streets is patently false.

The Rabin Finger-Pointing Fest by Sarah Honig

...Rabin’s yahrzeit is a stipulated fixture of this time of year but it increasingly necessitates intensive hype to resuscitate waning public interest. Inevitably our prescheduled fall polemics are kicked off with Yom Kippur War flagellations and end with Rabin’s Memorial Day faultfinding. No season is as crowded in terms of politically-loaded dates as is the Israeli autumn. And for good measure it’s all staged in duplicates – both according to the Hebrew and Gregorian timetables.

Rabin in the Knesset (c. 1976)- He
was hardly the dove that leftist
historiographers posthumously portray
for propaganda purposes.

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
21 October '15..

We had recently been informed in rather dramatic headlines that during his first stint as prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin had denigrated settlement movement ideologues “a cancer.” No less.

This supposedly startling revelation came from a hitherto never-broadcast 1976 interview granted by Rabin to an unnamed Channel 2 reporter. The segment features in a documentary Rabin: in his own words, which was aired at the Haifa Film Festival. There – how unsurprisingly – it was crowned best in its category.

Presumably Rabin’s antiquated aspersion should have sent us all dutifully reeling with shock.

But it isn’t as if Rabin’s vocabulary choices were ever restrained. After all, post-Oslo he denounced those who disagreed with him as “Hamas collaborators.” For all he cares, he hectored abrasively back in the day, his critics can spin like propellers. That, Rabin proclaimed in his far-from-minced words, was the only outcome which undesirable sorts could conceivably expect of democratic dissent.

Incongruously, though, Rabin’s mid-Seventies government actively aided and expanded settlements. It even initiated the establishment of some, most notably those in Gush Katif at Gaza’s gates. What was odious in Rabin’s eyes weren’t settlements per se but organizations like Gush Emunim, in which he detected stirrings of political opposition to himself. He, in fact, directly singles Gush Emunim out for excoriation in the unaccountably sensationalized interview.

Its reveal-date was hardly inadvertent. The aim was that it would coincide with the 20th anniversary of Rabin’s assassination and spark renewed controversy, recriminations and those abusive accusations that pass in our milieu for coherent civilized debate.

Rabin’s yahrzeit is a stipulated fixture of this time of year but it increasingly necessitates intensive hype to resuscitate waning public interest.

Inevitably our prescheduled fall polemics are kicked off with Yom Kippur War flagellations and end with Rabin’s Memorial Day faultfinding. No season is as crowded in terms of politically-loaded dates as is the Israeli autumn. And for good measure it’s all staged in duplicates – both according to the Hebrew and Gregorian timetables.

It’s not hard to predict which anniversaries will get played up to the hilt by our professedly objective media. It’s likewise obvious which milestones in our collective annals will be shoved ever deeper into dark oblivion by the same sect of snooty spinmeisters who presume to parade as impartial news-purveyors.

The one common denominator is a devil-may-care attitude to the truth. The self-issued license to skew is resorted to both regarding what’s tendentiously amplified or what’s tendentiously repressed. Annually the same supercilious clique decrees how we ought to remember what or what we need to put entirely out of our minds.

The bestial lynching of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah 15 years ago and the terrorist execution of government minister Rehav’am Ze’evi 14 years ago don’t feature among the omniscients’ commemoration priorities.

Dates they ballyhoo will be given reverberating promotion and just as surely the dismal birthday of the Oslo folly will get no mention. Indeed, dwelling on the latter is deemed heresy by our infallible high priests of political correctness.

France’s war against the Jews by Caroline Glick

...Contrary to what the French government would have us believe, France’s Temple Mount gambit is not an effort to quell the violence. French protestations of concern over the loss of life in the current tempest of Palestinian terrorism ring hollow. France doesn’t really oppose Palestinian terrorism. To the contrary, it facilitates it.

Caroline Glick..
Our World/JPost..
21 October '15..

France's plan to use its position at the UN Security Council to bring about the deployment of international monitors to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem has been condemned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers as biased, unhelpful and detached from reality.

Certainly it is all those things. But France’s decision to use its diplomatic position to advance a plan which if implemented would end Israeli sovereignty over Judaism’s holiest site is first and foremost a French act of aggression against the Jewish state.

Contrary to what the French government would have us believe, France’s Temple Mount gambit is not an effort to quell the violence. French protestations of concern over the loss of life in the current tempest of Palestinian terrorism ring hollow.

France doesn’t really oppose Palestinian terrorism.

To the contrary, it facilitates it.

Every year, the French government pays millions of euros, dollars and shekels to Palestinian NGOs whose stated goal is to destroy Israel. Through its NGO agents, France finances the radicalization of Palestinian society. This French-financed radicalization makes Palestinian terrorism inevitable.

Much of the current rhetoric used by the Palestinians to reject Israel’s legitimacy and justify violence against Jews is found in strategic documents that France paid Palestinian NGOs to write.

According to NGO Monitor, between 2010 and 2013, France gave $6.5 million to a consortium of Palestinian NGOs called the NGO Development Center. It paid for the NDC to put together a strategic plan to advance its members’ goals. That French-initiated and financed document includes a list of activities not aimed at promoting peace, enhancing the daily lives of Palestinians, or expanding economic growth.

Rather, the French-financed strategic planning document provides a list of activities that the NGOs will undertake to delegitimize and criminalize Israel and ensure that Palestinians hate the Jewish state and view it as the cause of all their suffering.

The Need for Israel to Take Action: Redeeming the Captive Yosef

...a few hours later, Kever Yosef was overrun and quickly reduced to flaming ruins. In retrospect, it was and remains abundantly clear that Israel made a grievous strategic mistake in pulling out of Joseph's Tomb. The withdrawal marked the first time that Israel had directly retreated under fire in the face of Palestinian violence, sending the other side an unequivocal message of weakness and vacillation.

Michael Freund..
Pundicity/HaModia..
20 October '15..

In the early hours of the morning on Friday, October 16, an outrageous assault took place, one that should have aroused indignation across the civilized world.

In an act of unrestrained barbarism, a mob of over 150 Palestinians stormed Kever Yosef in Shechem (Nablus), wreaking havoc as they desecrated the holy site and set it ablaze.

The only reason for the assault was hatred, pure and simple. To vandalize and despoil a holy place is straight out of the playbook of the Taliban and the Islamic State (ISIS). It is an assault on everything held sacred by the Jewish people, an affront to our people's history and a telling reminder of the kind of enemy that Israel faces.

Needless to say, the incident was not widely reported in the international press, undoubtedly because it defies the narrative of Palestinian victimhood that much of the media has been peddling for far too long.

But this act of savagery underlines the need for Israel to take action. Indeed, it is time for the Jewish state to reassert full control over Kever Yosef, which it ignominiously abandoned 15 years ago this month in the wake of a previous Palestinian attack.

Kever Yosef, of course, is the burial place of one of our greatest Biblical forebears and it is one of Israel's premier sites of religious, historical and archaeological significance.

The late Dr. Zvi Ilan, one of Israel's foremost archaeologists, described Kever Yosef as "one of the tombs whose location is known with the utmost degree of certainty and is based on continuous documentation since Biblical times" (Tombs of the Righteous in the Land of Israel, p. 365).

According to sefer Yehoshua (24:32), "The bones of Joseph which the Children of Israel brought up from Egypt were buried in Shechem in the portion of the field that had been purchased by Jacob." The site is also mentioned in the Midrash. Ancient Christian scholars, Arab geographers, medieval Jewish pilgrims, Samaritan historians and even 19th-century British cartographers all concur regarding Joseph's Tomb and its location.

But ever since Israel abandoned the site under a hail of Palestinian gunfire on October 7, 2000, it has fallen out of the consciousness of too many Jews.

But who can possibly forget that fateful day, when a tempestuous throng of Palestinians assaulted Kever Yosef, and demolished it in a matter of hours.

At the time, in scenes broadcast worldwide, Palestinians armed with sledgehammers put on a memorable display of their notion of religious tolerance as they hacked, chopped, smashed and destroyed one of the most hallowed sites belonging to the Jewish people.

The pristine sounds of Jewish prayer which had once filled the skies over Kever Yosef were replaced by plumes of smoke as the invading Arab throng pillaged the compound, setting alight holy books and other sacred religious objects.

The attack on Kever Yosef 15 years ago was the culmination of a process that had begun several days beforehand, when Palestinian policemen and Fatah terrorists launched a coordinated assault on the Israeli soldiers guarding the location. A 19-year old Druze Israeli border policeman was shot and killed in the attack.

Why Israeli citizens deserve to be murdered according to the left

...stabbings in Israel haven’t only exposed an ugly new Islamism in the Middle East. They have also exposed the moral disarray of those in the West who pose as progressive. The universalist, tolerant left that was sensitive to the scapegoating of Jews for the world’s problems is no more. And so it is left to Jews to defend Jews, bereft of left solidarity, the West merely shrugging its shoulders.

A protester tells Israelis to “go home to Poland”
 in central London on Saturday.

Brendan O'Neill..
Editor of Spiked-Online.com..
JewishNews.co.uk..
20 October '15..

It’s been clear for years that the left has been losing the moral plot. But I never thought I would see it apologise for, even defend, the stabbing to death of Jews. The silver lining for the left is that it’s impossible for it to sink any lower. This is as low as it gets.

The response in the West to the spate of foul murders by car, knife and meat cleaver in Israel has been almost as shocking as the killings themselves. Many have stayed silent, a global version of “bystander culture”, where people look awkwardly at the ground as someone is battered in front of them. The Western media is currently a shameless shuffling bystander to murders in Israel.

Others have asked, “Well, what do Israelis expect?” The crashing of cars into rabbis waiting for a bus and the hacking at Israeli citizens doing their weekly shop is treated as a normal response by Palestinians to their woes.

When the Guardian glorifies these killings as a “knife intifada”, and radical writers describe them as a natural kickback against Palestinians’ “ongoing humiliation”, they’re really saying Israeli citizens deserve to be murdered.

It’s understandable. It makes sense. These offerers of chin-stroking explanations for why a rabbi just had to be rammed with a car actually dehumanise both Israelis and Palestinians. They treat Israelis as collectively guilty for what their government does, meaning the old woman on a bus is a legitimate target.

And with their handwringing over “Palestinian despair”, with one writer claiming Palestinians are lashing out with knives because it’s “the only option left to them”, they infantilise Palestinians, reducing them to robotic knife-wielders who aren’t responsible for what they do. They heap contempt on both sides, demonising Israeli citizens and pitying Palestinians so much that they end up seeing them as mentally deficient, with no choice but to hack at the nearest Jew.

Worst of all, some in the West are supporting, implicitly, the killing of Jews with screwdrivers.

This week in New York, I saw what can only be described as a pro-stabbing demo: hundreds of anti-Israel activists hollering about Palestine being free “from the river to the sea, by any means necessary”. “Bombs, guns, knives — resistance is resistance”, said one.

In London, the keffiyeh-wearing, self-hating middle classes of the pro-Palestine lobby gathered to condemn, not the stabbings — don’t be silly! — but their bete noire, the thing they get out of bed every morning to rail against: Israel.

The 'Jerusalem Awakening': What the carnage is really all about

...Those in the West who are urging Israel “to redivide Jerusalem by relinquishing its holy sites,” Dore cautioned, “may well believe that they are lowering the flames of radical Islamic rage, but in fact they will only be turning up those flames to heights that have not been seen before.” If Kerry’s State Department and other Western diplomats are intent on mollifying the Arab street by pressuring Israel to divide Jerusalem as a peace offering to the Palestinians, it may well be setting into motion the exact opposite result—a jihadist, apocalyptic movement invigorated by the misguided diplomacy of the West that, once more, asks Israel to sacrifice its security and nationhood so that Islamists can realize their own imperial and theological ambitions at the Jewish state’s expense.

Richard L. Cravatts..
Frontpage Mag..
19 October '15..

The carnage in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel continued this week with an increased ferocity and barbarity, with stabbings, shooting, bombings, car ramming, rocket attacks, and other assaults on Israeli citizens claiming the lives of five Israelis and twenty-five Palestinians in the past two weeks alone. While the violence intensifies and seems to be spiraling out of control, not only touching Jerusalem but also the West Bank, Gaza, and other Israeli towns, officials are intent on identifying the inspiration for the latest escalation of jihad against Jews.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was quick to assign blame, not to the perpetrators of the deadly attacks—psychotic young men acting in the name of Allah to purge the land of Jews—but to the victims themselves, Israelis. Speaking at the Belfer Center at Harvard University, Kerry disingenuously observed in a question and answer session after his talk that, “There’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years and there’s an increase in the violence because there’s this frustration that’s growing.” Blaming the settlements for being an obstacle to peace is a favorite refrain for this administration, of course, and it puts the responsibility for the outbreak of violence squarely on Israel, and Netanyahu, instead of where it more justifiably belongs: namely, with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority, and a culture of death where “resistance” and martyrdom are promoted as virtuous rather than inhumanly counterproductive.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was more accurate in identifying the inspiration of the current uprising, this so-called “Jerusalem Awakening,” that has increased the tension of everyday life for Israelis and Arabs alike. At a weekly cabinet meeting Netanyahu correctly observed that Israel is “. . . in the midst of a wave of terrorism originating from systematic and mendacious incitement regarding the Temple Mount – incitement by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and the Islamic Movement in Israel.”

Secretary Kerry may well wish that it is the dreaded settlements that have motivated young Arab men to begin indiscriminately slashing and shooting Jews, but the prime minister’s view is clearly more accurate, and more believable, given PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s own words of warning when he spoke at the UN at the end of September. He was, he said before the morally-challenged audience, “. . . compelled to sound the alarm about the grave dangers of what is happening in Jerusalem, where extremist Israeli groups are committing repeated, systematic incursions upon Al-Aqsa Mosque . . , while preventing Muslim worshipers from accessing and entering the Mosque at those times and freely exercising their religious rights.”

These actions, Abbas claimed, are “in direct violation of the status quo since before 1967 and thereafter, [and are] aggravating the sensitivities of Palestinians and Muslims everywhere. I call on the Israeli government, before it is too late, to cease its use of brutal force to impose its plans to undermine the Islamic and Christian sanctuaries in Jerusalem, particularly its actions at Al-Aqsa Mosque, for such actions will convert the conflict from a political to religious one [emphasis added], creating an explosive in Jerusalem and in the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory.”

Putting aside the laughable contention that Muslims care even the slightest bit about the sanctity and protection of Christian holy places, the claim that Israel is trying to destroy or undermine mosques on the Temple Mount is an oft-repeated charge, used by Arabs against Israel as a way of inciting hatred toward Jews for their alleged perfidiousness and guile. Israeli columnist Nadav Shragrai has referred to this tactic as the “Protect the Al Aqsa Mosque” blood libel—a propaganda tool that has been employed since the 1920s to cause mistrust of Jews when the then-Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, Hitler’s Middle East ally, exhorted Muslims everywhere to defend Islamic holy places in Jerusalem from the pernicious Jews, causing riots, bloodshed, and 133 Jewish deaths.

Abbas was surprisingly candid in admitting that the incursion onto the Temple Mount, where Jews and Christians have traditionally been barred from worshiping, changed the nature of the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis from a political debate to a religious war. Of course, a holy war against Israelis specifically, and Jews in general, has been a core tenet of Islam since Jews rejected Mohammed in the seventh century, and animates the foundational charters of the PA and Hamas as part of a theological responsibility devout Muslims feel to purify the world through the extirpation of the rapacious, thieving Jews.

UNESCO and the End of U.S. Honor by Jonathan Tobin

...Rather than reaffirming an American commitment to this bankrupt body, the message from the United States should have been to tell UNESCO that there would be consequences if it passes this resolution. Congress has done all it can by cutting off funding and not even the creative law breaking efforts of the administration has found a way to contravene that law. It will have to fall to Obama’s successor to find a way to make plain the American people’s refusal to have anything to do with an anti-Semitic UN agency. But even if that successor eventually does the right thing, the disgrace of Kerry’s humiliating exhibition in Paris should never be forgotten.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
20 October '15..

On Monday, some Democratic members of Congress and a united front of major Jewish organizations expressed outrage over the imminent prospect that the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) would vote to declare Jerusalem’s Western Wall to be a part of the al-Aqsa mosque. That one-sided resolution was proposed at the UNESCO executive council by six Arab nations acting on behalf of the Palestinian Authority and may be adopted as soon as Tuesday. The resolution also included a laundry list of anti-Israel measures including condemnations of Israeli self-defense against terrorist attacks as well as of the Jewish presence in Jerusalem. The certain passage of the resolution will confirm UNESCO’s moral bankruptcy and act to further incite Palestinian violence against Jews. But on the same day that some Americans were voicing outrage about what the UN agency was doing, the nation’s chief diplomat was at the group’s Paris headquarters to speak to that same executive council with a very different agenda. On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry came to UNESCO hat in hand, praising the group and begging for the U.S. to be re-elected to the group’s executive board while not even mentioning the resolution that it would soon pass.

Kerry’s humiliating speech was not without a strategic purpose. But it also reflected the Obama administration’s ideological commitment to the United Nations. The secretary believes that the United States can do more good by remaining inside the UNESCO tent and influencing its actions than it can by boycotting. Though other administrations have refused to go on being part of the UNESCO farce when its actions have crossed the line into outright anti-Semitism, President Obama and Kerry look at the equation differently. They may formally oppose the most blatant forms of bias against Jews that are routine fare at UNESCO and most every other UN agency. Yet their worldview is so closely bound up with the world body’s global agenda that they cannot bring themselves to imagine leaving it under any circumstances, including provocations like the pending resolution on the Western Wall.

But Kerry’s Paris speech showed where the administration’s priorities lie when it comes to UNESCO as well as the Middle East.

The secretary’s big problem is that the U.S. stopped funding UNESCO in 2013. That happened because U.S. law mandated a halt to American support of the agency after it admitted the Palestinian Authority as a full member state in violation of both international law and American warnings. The U.S. used to supply 22 percent of UNESCO’s budget and now owes over $300 million in back dues. That makes it highly unlikely that the UNESCO board will vote to re-elect the U.S. But that didn’t stop Kerry from flattering them and to “declare the depth of the commitment the U.S. has to this body.”

In a world in which the United States had the clout to exercise the kind of influence at UNESCO that would prevent its adoption of biased resolutions about the Middle East, such diplomatic flummery might make sense. But we don’t live in such a world. Even if President Obama and Kerry were able to find a way to contravene the law and resume the flow of taxpayer dollars to UNESCO, that wouldn’t give them the ability to stop such resolutions from passing. Though UNESCO does some worthwhile work around the world, any good it does is more than balanced by the harm it does by lending the imprimatur of the world body to anti-Semitism.

On that point, there can be no doubt or waffling from the United States. UNESCO already crossed the line from routine anti-Israel bias to anti-Semitism when it officially recognized both the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb outside of Bethlehem to be Muslim sites. Both Jews and Muslims revere the Hebron site, but the Ottomans and the British forbade Jewish worship — an outrage that was ended after the 1967 Six Day War. Rachel’s Tomb has never been anything but a place of Jewish worship.

But by declaring the holiest sites of Judaism to be Muslim, UNESCO will be declaring war on both Judaism and the Jewish people.

Children and what a soulless society can do to them

...No immediate word on how firmly the ANC stands behind children with daggers or the adults who put them there. Or whether they subscribe, as Hamas does, to the uplifting value of viciously murdering unarmed Jews and other Israelis as part of its efforts to “free Al-Aqsa”.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
20 October '15..

"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children."Nelson Mandela 1918-2013, addressing the launch of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, Pretoria, South Africa, May 8, 1995 [source]

Hamas, which more closely resembles a death cult than a functioning government, organized a rally this past Friday night in Rafah, Gaza Strip. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these representative photos below, published originally in Arabic-language channels and not (yet) syndicated by the major news agency names, sum up the tragedy of the Palestinian Arabs.

They also highlight the hypocrisy of those who ignore the evidence in front of their faces in the rush to embrace the Islamists and their "struggle" to "resist". So does the utter silence emanating from the many child-protection agencies around the world who published heart-rending images of under-nourished or war-impacted or genitally-mutilated children (as they should) but will not touch the rampant, highly public child abuse that is a daily reality in the world of the jihadists, and in particular the dark netherworld of Hamas.

Bear in mind as you glance at them what's going on in the late Nelson Mandela's homeland the last few days:

(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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What is the war all about?

Abu-Mazen went to war in order to circumvent the Israeli voter’s decision, and force the elected leader to capitulate to him. Anyone who supports his demands is acting in contravention to democracy

Yoel Bin-Nun..
Makor Rishon..
Translated by Sally Zahav..
16 October '15..

Operation Protective Edge, which began with the abduction and murder of the three youths, has never ended. The shooting and stabbing war in the roads continues all the time, as well as the occasional missiles from Gaza, even though the Shabak (General Security Service) and the IDF eliminated 55 gangs of gunmen during one year, until the Nablus cell, operating under the radar, murdered Rav Eitam and Na’ama Henkin. Prevention of a planned terror attack is a victory in battle, and not just an interception.

The main change that has occurred now is Abu-Mazen’s decision to conduct the war against Israel himself, and not leave it in the hands of the Islamic movements. He announced that he would set off a “bomb” at the UN, and he did, indeed – he instructed his people to continue the security cooperation in order to put Israel off guard and to please the Americans, but he removed his checkpoints set up to stop attacks and sent a green light to the Palestinians to go to war. He also continues to wage the terror war and describe it as a “defensive war” in his speeches.

What does he want? No Arab leader in the world has ever entered into diplomatic discussions with Israel without getting Israeli and international commitment ahead of time, about what he would receive at the end of the negotiations. Negotiations have always been conducted only on the details. The only Israeli leader who has refused to play according to these rules for years is Netanyahu, who has demanded “negotiations without preconditions” again and again, like the governments of Israel did from the Six Day War until the Yom Kippur War. Head of the opposition Isaac (Bugi) Herzog stated this explicitly in his recent statement when he said that Netanyahu reminds him of Golda Meir before that war.

Heads of government and heads of the opposition in Israel have continued and still continue to play the game according to Arab logic, presenting Abu-Mazen ahead of time what he can get and what he can expect from them. Most have done this and still do this without the authority to do so, either when a government was at the end of its term or in the case when they had not been elected because the public had rejected them democratically; therefore they do this without any Knesset or governmental (cabinet) decision. They continued to meet with Abu-Mazen for the entire time in order to strengthen an anti-democratic commitment ostensibly in the name of the State of Israel, but without the authority to do so.

Who puts a stop to this? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has also told his emissaries what he was prepared to agree to, but there is a big difference between the willingness on his part, with sanction and authority, and the promises that Abu-Mazen continues to get from Herzog and Tzipi Livni – without sanction and without authority.

Since they did not manage to overthrow Netanyahu in the elections, in the Knesset or in the eyes of the public, and he succeeded to survive, Abu-Mazen decided to set off a “bomb” and start a conflagration, which he hopes will result in Israeli-American commitments consistent with his minimum lines, that he will bring with him to the negotiating table.

Abbas, Hamas, and the NIMBY factor

...Once this crisis is over, Israel should give careful thought to how it governs east Jerusalem and size of the “normal” police presence there (and from the Israeli press, it’s clear that this debate has already begun). Meanwhile, Hamas and Abbas seek to maintain order where they rule, but promote violence where they do not. NIMBY works in the Middle East, too.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
19 October '15..

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas was quick to denounce the violence and arson at Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus. Moreover, he has instructed Palestinian Authority police to prevent a new intifada. But this is the same Abbas who has encouraged violence. He continues to spread the lie that Israel is undermining the Haram al-Sharif or Temple Mount, and said “Al-Aqsa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet.” He has verbally supported violence, reacting to the series of stabbings this way: “Each drop of blood that was spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood as long as it’s for the sake of Allah. Every shahid (martyr) will be in heaven and every wounded person will be rewarded, by Allah’s will.”

In Gaza, Hamas tries to prevent Islamic Jihad and other groups from launching attacks into Israel, and restrains its own cadres. But Hamas has glorified the stabbings and killings of recent days and urged its followers to go out and kill Jews.

Why the apparent contradictions? Simple: both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are saying “NIMBY”, or “not in my backyard.” The PA wants calm where it rules, in the West Bank, and fears that a new intifada could help Hamas. But it sees violence in Israel, and especially in Jerusalem, as potentially helpful politically–and is certainly not going to condemn it. Similarly, Hamas wants more violence everywhere but Gaza, including in the West Bank and Israel, especially Jerusalem. Restraining its young terrorists from action is always a problem for Hamas, as is assigning them to stop Islamic Jihad. These young thugs did not sign up to police the borders of Gaza on behalf of Israel. So Hamas reminds them of its true terrorist vocation by inspiring and assisting violence elsewhere.

Maybe European taxpayers should know how pro-Palestinian groups use their money?

...It is no surprise that these NGOs are the most active at the UN. In addition to financing their absurd commentary on the conflict – European funding pays for salaries, plane tickets, hotels, and advertising. European diplomats are seen unabashedly palling around with these anti-Israel activists in UN halls, and they are permanent fixtures at the immoral NGO events. One final question: It would be useful to know from these diplomats just how much they agree with the NGO messaging they are financing?

Anne Herzberg..
i24 News..
16 October '15..

The current wave of terror throughout Israel cannot be separated from the decades-long effort of the Palestinians and Arab States to demonize Israel and erase Jewish self-determination in the land of Israel. These campaigns include massive propaganda denying deep Jewish historical roots and presence in the region, boycotts and sanction attempts, and the rank exploitation of international legal and human rights rhetoric to bolster rejectionism.

A central manifestation of this political warfare is to erase the context of Palestinian terrorism and justify illegal attacks on Israeli civilians as a so-called “right of resistance”. The primary foot soldiers in this battle are dozens of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that claim to promote human rights. They are bankrolled by European governments and the European Union with hundreds of millions of pounds, kroner, francs and euros. Any time Palestinians inflame violence, these NGOs can be counted on to use their European taxpayer funds to issue hundreds of glossy publications, interactive media, and advertisements that deny Palestinian violence and condemn any and all Israeli measures to combat it. Their constructed narrative becomes ubiquitous in newspaper articles and on European radio and TV, and they offer a stream of anti-Israel invective at the UN and in European parliaments.

The latest campaign of Palestinian atrocities has been no exception. As during the 2014 Gaza War, NGOs funded by the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland via the Birzeit University Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat, have been the most offensive and profoundly immoral. The output of NGOs funded under this framework raise interesting questions their European government backers should be asking themselves.

For instance, on October 8, Secretariat grantee Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem hosted Adalah (also a recipient of Secretariat funding) to propagandize to Israeli Arab law students about “Israel’s attempts to Judaize [Jerusalem] and alter its historical Palestinian Character.” This in the midst of massive Palestinian incitement over the Temple Mount and rampant stabbing attacks. Questions for the NGO funders: Do the Civic Coalition and Adalah deny that Jews have historical connections to Jerusalem? Does holding such an inflammatory event while a tsunami of violence centered on the Temple Mount mitigate conflict?

Al Haq, recipient of a $710,000 grant from the Secretariat, issued an “action alert” condemning Israel for “targeting Occupied East Jerusalem” and the the “Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound” and complained that the Israeli police set up metal detectors at the entrances of the Old City. According to this Al Haq agitprop, such measures were not to prevent deadly stabbing attacks and other violence, but rather to “entrench[...] Israel’s control and illegal annexation over East Jerusalem,” and to “enflame tensions.” In character, Al Haq concludes with demands for an “embargo on military aid” to Israel and a “ban on the trade of settlement goods.”

The same statement incredulously laments the death of Palestinian Ghasan Abu Jamal, “who was shot dead by Israeli police in November 2014 after allegedly attacking a synagogue in West Jerusalem.” Of course, Jamal was shot on scene, interrupting his murderous rampage. It is unclear who exactly Al Haq believes hacked and shot at the worshipers in Har Nof, but perhaps its Dutch, Swiss and Scandinavian government benefactors can ask and find out. At the same time, Al Haq’s donors could ask the NGO that if metal detectors are an illegal and disproportionate means of preventing violence, what exactly would be an acceptable measure?.

Spontaneous Combustion at CNN: Joseph’s Tomb “Catches Fire”

...In CNN’s world, Joseph’s Tomb spontaneously combusts while Israelis fall victim to anonymous knives.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
18 October '15..





CNN managed to disgrace itself over a weekend in which Joseph’s Tomb, an important Jewish holy site located in Nablus, was torched by a mob of Palestinians. According to CNN, however, Joseph’s Tomb simply caught fire with not even a whiff of Palestinian involvement.

Eventually, CNN updated the headline:

Will Israel’s Arab sector impose on itself more homemade wretchedness?

...The plain fact, though, is that no boycott was ever declared, much less that one resulted from a plot by Israel’s leadership. This is the stuff of fables and fabrications that submerge Israel’s Arab communities in a mire of false premises, which distance them increasingly from the Jewish mainstream. The inclination of most Jews is to avoid giving their custom to those who identify with genocidal enemies. These are individual decisions which no authority needs to pump up and which none can reverse. It’s mostly in the hands of the Arab sector to correct or exacerbate.

Channel 2 screenshot of Nazareth mayor
Ali Salem yelling at MK Ayman Odeh.

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
18 October '15..

The kneejerk response in Israel’s Arab sector is to declare general strikes to underscore what is hyped as “popular anger.”

The latest expression of such “anger” took place last week when throughout Israel’s Arab communities businesses shut down for a day. Doubtless many were forced to do so but the truth is that many others were willingly swept up in the well-orchestrated volatility.

What did they aim to achieve? Whom did they aim to hurt?

Surely they realized that they are only shooting themselves in the foot. Their strikes simply and serially fail to awe the mystified Jewish majority. The only effect strikes have, if any, is to hone even further the already deeply ingrained impression that this country’s Arabs side unequivocally with Israel’s existential and implacable foes.

To resort to extreme understatement, this in no way contributes to the cause of coexistence.

Hot on the heels of a spate attacks against Jewish civilians in nearly every nook of this country, the Arab general strike invariably helped establish an association – whether subliminal or conscious – between Arab businessmen and the recurrent stabbings, shootings, fire-bombings and rock-throwing.

Such connections needn’t be iron-clad and incontestable. The delicate psycho-economic equilibrium can be easily upset by an intensifying sense of a tie between terrorists and the population that appears to support the deadly assaults on innocent Jews.

Inevitably this will keep Jews away – at least for the short haul – from Arab entrepreneurs. Some of the latter are already complaining vociferously against what they allege is a Jewish conspiracy to boycott them. Moreover, a sizable minority altogether charges that none other than the government is spearheading an anti-Arab boycott.

The plain fact, though, is that no boycott was ever declared, much less that one resulted from a plot by Israel’s leadership. This is the stuff of fables and fabrications that submerge Israel’s Arab communities in a mire of false premises, which distance them increasingly from the Jewish mainstream.

The inclination of most Jews is to avoid giving their custom to those who identify with genocidal enemies. These are individual decisions which no authority needs to pump up and which none can reverse. It’s mostly in the hands of the Arab sector to correct or exacerbate.

When they see no downside to even the most outrageous behavior

...On the question of holy places, when Jerusalem was reunited in 1967, Israel’s government chose to allow Muslims to retain control of the Temple Mount even though it was the holiest place in Judaism. Netanyahu continues to affirm that decision and Israeli police strictly enforce regulations at the site that discriminate against Jews by forbidding them to pray there. But what has Israel gained from these reasonable positions? Nothing.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
18 October '15..

On Friday, President Obama once again demonstrated his tone-deaf approach to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. At a press conference, he spoke of the solution to the current tensions would come only when the leaders of both sides “tamp down rhetoric that may feed violence or anger or misunderstanding.” But, of course, the incitement to violence isn’t coming from both sides. It’s coming solely from a Palestinian leadership and official media that continues to spread lies about Israelis seeking to harm the mosques on the Temple Mount and treating those who seek to murder Jews as “our boys” that are being “executed” by Israeli forces. This was a week in which the administration had to dance around comments by Secretary of State John Kerry about settlements causing the violence and State Department spokesman John Kirby echoed Palestinian canards about Israel using “excessive force” against terrorists. But while Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu spent the same week repeating that Israel had no intention of altering the status quo on the Temple Mount and insisting that he would meet Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas anywhere and anytime to resume peace negotiations, the Palestinians were doubling down on hate.

Here are a few, brief examples of the Palestinian answer to America’s even-handed diplomacy:

In an address to the Palestinian people that many hoped Abbas would use to try to ease tensions, he did the opposite. Abbas repeated false charges about Israel’s intentions on the Temple Mount geared to incite a new holy war and treated terrorists as martyrs.

Hamas, the group that runs the independent Palestinian state in all but name in Gaza, reacted to the violence by expressing disappointment at the low total of Jews killed during the recent terror surge. They urged that Palestinians resort to methods of murder that might produce more Jewish corpses such as using cars to plow into people standing in crowded intersections or bus stops.

Lest their be any doubt about the level of incitement, Palestine Media Watch shared a video from PA TV in which one of the Muslim imams at the al-Aqsa mosque that the Muslim world wishes to defend against mythical Jewish threats, preached sermon broadcast to the Palestinian people in which he said the Jews were destined to build a shrine to worship the devil and that at the end of time Muslims will exterminate all the Jews.



The day after an Arab mob attacked and attempted to burn down the Tomb of Joseph, a Jewish shrine in Nablus, a group of Jews who attempted to visit the desecrated synagogue at the site were attacked and beaten by Palestinian Authority police. The incident was yet another example of the Palestinians’ lack of interest in safeguarding holy places while falsely claiming that Israel is violating their rights.

Question. If Israel Gets No Credit, Why Incur the Costs?

...Thus even though Israel has curtailed settlement construction and upheld the status quo on the Mount, much of the world – including the U.S. administration – is accusing it of doing the opposite, and then treating Palestinian terror as an understandable, justifiable response to these alleged crimes. In other words, Israel is reaping no diplomatic benefits for taking these steps. And in that case, why on earth should it continue incurring the costs?

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
15 October '15..

John Kerry’s speech at Harvard University on Wednesday and the State Department’s subsequent series of walk-backs left me with one clear conclusion: Israel ought to start building massively in the settlements and change the status quo on the Temple Mount. Because if it’s going to be blamed for doing both even when it is, in fact, doing neither, it should at least get the very real benefits that taking those steps would entail.

First, a word on those benefits: On the Mount, the status quo grossly violates Jewish rights. Jews are forbidden to pray at Judaism’s holiest site, and even acts as simple as shedding a tear are deemed “praying.” They also suffer nonstop harassment when visiting without praying. That the Jewish state discriminates against Jews in this way is simply a travesty.

As for settlement construction, Israel is suffering a severe housing crisis; an average apartment currently costs 146 average monthly salaries, up from just 43 in 2008. The primary shortages are in greater Tel Aviv, where little land is available for new housing, and Jerusalem, whose main land reserves are in the eastern section. Indeed, the capital loses about 18,000 Jews every year, and those leaving cite the housing shortage as their primary reason. But the settlement blocs that would remain Israeli under any conceivable agreement are all within reasonable commute of either Tel Aviv or Jerusalem; hence massive building in those blocs, along with Jewish neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, could significantly alleviate the housing crisis. Moreover, given the international community’s refusal to support Israel’s claims to any area not so heavily populated that evacuation is impractical, bolstering the population of areas Israel wants to keep would strengthen its position in future negotiations.

Thus unless restricting settlement construction and maintaining the status quo on the Mount genuinely contribute to Israel’s security or international support, there’s no upside to doing either. Which brings us to Kerry.

In his Harvard address, Kerry said, “there’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years, and now you have this violence because there’s a frustration that is growing.” The statement would be outrageous even had this “massive increase” actually occurred, given the implication that building houses in contested areas is sufficient justification for a spree of Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israeli civilians. And someone at State evidently realized that, because spokesman John Kirby quickly tried to retract it.

“The secretary wasn’t saying, well now you have the settlement activity as the cause for the effect we’re seeing,” he asserted. “Is it a source of frustration for Palestinians? You bet it is, and the secretary observed that. But this isn’t about affixing blame on either side here for the violence.”

Yet Kirby didn’t retract Kerry’s claim of “massive” settlement activity, which is a blatant lie. As I detailed here last year, settlement construction under Benjamin Netanyahu has been lower than under any previous prime minister. And the very day of Kerry’s speech, the far-left Israeli daily Haaretz – not a paper suspected of any sympathy for the settlements – published a news report confirming this fact.

“Since Netanyahu became prime minister in 2009, there has been less construction activity in the settlements than under any other prime minister since 1995,” Haaretz declared, and then gave the figures to prove it: From 2009-2014, an average of 1,554 homes a year were built in the settlements, compared to 1,774 under Ehud Olmert, 1,881 under Ariel Sharon, about 5,000 under Ehud Barak, and almost 3,000 during Netanyahu’s first term in 1996-9. In fact, Haaretz reported, fully 74 percent of the growth in the number of settlers under Netanyahu stemmed solely from natural increase (births minus deaths). The only way to stop that would be to institute a Chinese-style forced abortion policy – presumably not something State would espouse.

Surprise? Quds News and Ali Abunimah cheer terrorist disguised as media member

...Perhaps next time Al Jazeera gives Ali Abunimah a platform to air his views, they could ask him why he cheered this abuse of media credentials that are meant to protect staff working in conflict zones. No doubt Abunimah will come up with some excuse, and of course his sympathies for terrorism have not been a secret.

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
The Warped Mirror..
17 October '15..

This Friday, a knife-wielding Palestinian terrorist posing as a member of the press attacked and wounded an IDF soldier. As Reuters reported:

“[A] Palestinian posing as a journalist wounded an Israeli soldier with a knife before being shot dead near the West Bank town of Hebron, the Israeli military said.

Reuters television footage showed the Palestinian rolling on the ground and surrounded by Israeli troops after the attack. He was holding a knife and wearing a fluorescent yellow vest over a t-shirt marked “PRESS”.

The foreign press association in Israel and the Palestinian territories said it deplored the attack and called on Palestinian media organizations to verify all staff credentials.

The Palestinian journalists union said the knife attacker had no links to any media outlets and urged Israel not to use the event as an excuse to attack its press members.”

Concerns that this abuse of press credentials might endanger members of the media were also expressed on Twitter by the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg: “Palestinian knifemen disguising themselves as journalists are going to get actual reporters hurt.”

The Reuters report on the incident included a photo by Bilal al-Taweel with the caption: “A Palestinian (R) posing as a journalist runs after a wounded Israeli soldier to continue stabbing him before being shot dead near the West Bank city of Hebron October 16, 2015.