Maybe something positive can come out of this ugliness - by Yahya Mahamid

...He gets up and gives me an innocent smile and waves. I smile back . Another bomb follows immediately after, above us this time and we are told to retract behind cover. I don't see him again but I hope the situation will improve for him and me one day.

Yahya Mahamid..
08 April '19..
w/permission from author

Sitting with my back to the metal barrier, I take a second to adjust my helmet when all of a sudden I hear a loud bang against the barrier. It's started- the Friday riots on the Gaza border. I adjust my Kevlar vest, take a breath and stand up to take a look at the other side, all while trying to keep as much of my body under cover.

I'm shocked to see mothers going hand and hand with their kids. Yes, kids, not older than 10-13 coming to the weekly protest as if it were a normal Friday activity.

Our orders are clear. Respect human life and the purity of our arms, it's nothing new after all; it's the IDF code of ethics and that's how we always operate.

I take my sharpshooter sight and start scanning the crowds looking for anything suspicious (bombs & guns). While looking through my sight, I start smelling the familiar smell of burned tires. I know that tear gas will follow so I put on my gas mask and look at the madness that is assembling in front of my eyes.

The adults, mothers & fathers I assume, sitting on the green grass plane enjoying some cold drinks and snacks, while their kids are running towards the security fence, throwing rocks and anything they can get their hands on at us.

I take cover after another rock hits the barrier again. I could've sworn that these rocks travel almost as fast as my bullet. I adjust my protective glasses and take another peak-we can't have the security barrier get damaged.

I stand up again to take a look at the crowd that's growing like a hate tumor on steroids and suddenly I hear an explosion. I look through my sight again, while looking through the black & grey crowd.

I see him. He's sitting with a large blue hoodie, looking straight at me. I take a look at him through my sight to get a closer look and he is just sitting there, looking straight at me like he's staring into my soul. He's not older than 10 years old

For European Union Officials, Anti-Israel Behavior Is Routine - by Karen Harradine

The EU’s agenda should concern every Jew living in Europe, because their taxes contribute to the salaries of the prolifically anti-Israel apparatchiks who dominate the EU.

Karen Harradine..
Algemeiner..
08 April '19..

Brexit is now dominating the headlines in Europe, bringing the European Union (EU) into more focus than ever before.

But this much-lauded organization is not the paragon of virtue that it, and its supporters, suppose it to be. The EU is blatantly anti-Israel. Their support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and their veneration of Israel’s enemies, places them in this category. The EU’s default position is that whatever is good for Israel must be condemned.

There are several pro-Israel lobbying groups within the European Parliament whose work is admirable, but they don’t make much of an impact. They are drowning in the EU’s quagmire of systemic anti-Israel bias.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Israel Pre-election Observation: Say No to the Generals - Civilians Superior on Critical Decisions

To be clear: our nation owes its great respect and appreciation to the the leadership of the IDF, past and present - including the generals heading Blue and White - for the many bold and heroic operations that they lead. Appreciate. Yes. Hand them the keys? Absolutely not!

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA..
07 April '19..
Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=73491

There is nothing more frustrating for senior brass than to sit there and listen to some civilian challenge their recommendations - or even worse propose an alternative.

And it is understandable.

Behind the scenes the IDF is carrying out incredible operations that the brass is confident would humble the civilians to silence if only the shroud of secrecy could be lifted.

Unfortunately, the IDF brass fails to appreciate that the ability to successfully plan and execute special operations doesn't give them a monopoly on smarts when it comes to the bigger picture.

A reminder:

The greatest achievement of the Second Lebanon War - Operation Specific Gravity - was thanks to the insistence of civilian DM Amir Peretz who overruled all the brass who thought he was an idiot for ordering that the IAF destroy the Fajr Rockets threatening Tel Aviv before they could be repositioned by Hezbollah. The brass wanted to start by pounding Lebanese infrastructure.

Hear Peretz describe the decision in his own words: https://youtu.be/SM_LMb10qsQ

And it is worth listening to it as he describes the pressure he faced from the brass.

Just a few of the many other instances that the brass was incredibly wrong:

Aren't we the lucky ones. Ben Rhodes is back for more Israel-bashing - by Stephen M. Flatow

Rhodes has harsh opinions about Israel. He seems proud that he helped trick the public into accepting the Iran nuclear deal. And he’s proud of his role in Obama’s policies towards Israel—in fact, he regrets that they weren’t harsher.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
05 April '19..

One of Barack Obama’s very last actions before leaving office seemed, at the time, to be one his strangest: the appointment of his deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

Rhodes has no connection to the Holocaust or to Jewish communal life. Although his mother is Jewish, his parents raised him Episcopalian. Yet suddenly he became part of the leadership of the agency that runs the largest and most famous Holocaust museum in the world.

The peculiar appointment of Rhodes to the Holocaust council was, I suppose, no more peculiar than his rise in the Obama administration. Rhodes had no experience in the realm of foreign policy when, at age 29, he met then-candidate Barack Obama in 2007. In fact, his college degree was in creative writing. But Rhodes and Obama became personal friends, and that was sufficient for Rhodes to zoom up the ladder from minor campaign speechwriter to deputy national security adviser and close confidant to the new president.

It’s always difficult for the public to figure out which of a president’s advisers has his ear on which policy. But Rhodes could not wait until Obama left office to start crowing about the role he had played in promoting the disastrous 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

In an infamous interview with The New York Times in May 2016, Rhodes boasted how he had manipulated public opinion by creating what he called an “echo chamber” of nongovernmental organizations, nuclear “experts” and sympathetic journalists. They waited anxiously by their phones for talking points from him on how to whitewash the Iranian regime and promote arguments in favor of the deal.

Now, thanks to Rhodes’s appetite for attention, we have important information, straight from the horse’s mouth, about what was going on behind the scenes in shaping Obama’s policies towards Israel.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Bloodthirsty – in the mind of the anti-Israel activists - by David Collier

...This habit of choosing to take the story at face value – despite 1000s of examples of where this has been a mistake, is beyond irresponsible and a huge part of the problem. Especially footage from Hamas controlled Gaza. Israel is always guilty first, even though the witness in the box is a serial liar. The anti-Israel activists, and even many professional reporters have no interest in truth – what they want is food for their demonisation campaign and a body count.

David Collier..
Beyond the Great Divide..
04 April '19..

One of the biggest lies currently being sold to populations in the west is that anti-Israel activity is related to a movement of peace or justice. Relying on a strategy of intersectionality, this deception has permitted violent, racist ideologies to take a firm foothold within other well-known ’causes’. Infecting them and leading them astray. These people may call themselves members of ‘solidarity movements’ or ‘pro-Palestinian’ but they are nothing to do with ‘peace-makers’ in the traditional sense. I’ve been inside these movements, pretending to be an activist, infiltrating their social media groups and I’ve been researching them for years. Anti-Israel activity is full of little but fake news, hate and demonisation. In their twisted world, Palestinians are sacrificial, and these movements act as a bloodsucker, leeching onto the conflict, yearning for blood and only satiated when it flows.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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And What Happens After the Takeover? Handing Gaza to Abbas Will Solve Nothing - by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen

Overthrowing Hamas and handing rule in Gaza to Mahmoud Abbas will not bring about a solution to the Gaza problem. It was, after all, Yasser Arafat, Abbas’s predecessor as PLO leader, who transformed Gaza into an ineradicable terrorist hotbed by flouting the Oslo Accords that he had signed. The solution to the Gaza problem does not lie in Ramallah but rather in the Strip’s historic hinterland – the Sinai Peninsula.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,132..
04 April '19..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/gaza-mahmoud-abbas/

When a single rocket launched from Gaza into central Israel forces the Israeli PM to cancel an important slate of meetings in Washington and return post haste to Jerusalem, it is clear that the Strip has become a major strategic threat rather than a containable terror problem. Yet while public discourse on the latest conflagration revolved around the desirable IDF response to Hamas’s growing brazenness, with the customary recommendations ranging from dealing a harsh blow that would “restore lost deterrence” to a campaign to vanquish Hamas, it is worth taking a broader look at how the Gaza problem came to pass in the first place.

A city in a cul-de-sac

The current tendency is to see the Gaza problem as originating in the refugee population that burgeoned there after the 1948 War of Independence. It would make more sense, though, to go back a few steps further and consider the city’s millenarian geographic location as an intermediate station on the ancient highway – between Asia and Africa, between Mesopotamia and Egypt.

Without that main route as its wellspring, Gaza cannot go back to being what it was. Even after the 1906 drawing of the international border by Britain (which had controlled Egypt since 1882) and the Ottoman Empire, traffic through Gaza did not stop. It was the establishment of the State of Israel that blocked this ancient route, severed Egypt from the Arab east (mashriq), and turned Gaza into a cul-de-sac at the edge of Egyptian territory.

The March 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty considerably exacerbated the Gaza problem. In a shrewd move, President Anwar Sadat shifted the Gaza problem exclusively to Israel’s purview. After the Israeli town of Yamit and neighboring villages had been razed and the Sinai in its entirety had been restored to Egyptian sovereignty all the way to the 1906 international border, Gaza could no longer develop westward into the potential open space between Rafah and El-Arish. The Strip was thus closed in the Egyptian direction and deposited on Israel’s doorstep as an urban pressure cooker on the verge of explosion.

Sadat thus set in train the transformation of Gaza and the West Bank into a single entity and made Israel solely responsible for solving the Palestinian problem in the territories it held. As Ezer Weizmann, defense minister at the time of the Egyptian-Israeli peace negotiations, put it on the tenth anniversary of the peace treaty: “I have a feeling that [PM Menachem] Begin is sitting at home not because of the commonly assumed reasons [i.e., 1982 Lebanon war] but because he has realized that with the signing of the 1978 Camp David Accords he put the future of ‘Greater Israel’ in a delicate situation, if not in jeopardy.”

The 1993 Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority further marginalized Gaza in comparison to the governmental and economic center in Ramallah. Discussion of a strategic solution to the Gaza problem must, therefore, begin with the geographic background that spawned the Strip’s distress as a territory with no egress. Even if the IDF removes Hamas from power, Gaza’s plight will continue, and it will require a solution that cannot be found solely in the domain of Israel’s responsibility.


And what happens after the takeover?

Four huge cultural obstacles that are the real barriers to Israeli-Palestinian peace - by Lawrence J. Haas

So, here’s an idea: Let’s escape the comfort of our irrelevant debates over settlements, borders, and Jerusalem and, for a change, grapple with the cultural obstacles that represent the true barriers to Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Lawrence J. Haas..
The Hill..
03 April '19..

“The attacks on civilians, breaking their arms, and beating them, constitute humiliation, disgrace, and injustice,” Nasser Al-Laham, the editor-in-chief of the Palestinian Authority’s Maan News Agency, said about Palestinian rule in the territories.

“Prison cells? Torture? Burn marks?” he asked. “What have we adopted from the Arab countries apart from their garbage?... Is this the kind of homeland we want — a homeland in which I can no longer trust my neighbor? A homeland in which my fellow citizen comes and, in front of my wife, drags me by my feet or by my hair and tramples me underfoot?... You’re doing this under the pretext of fighting Israel? You’re lying!”

Al-Laham’s outrage, which he voiced in a recent TV interview, puts the lie to the well-entrenched narrative that borders, settlements, and Jerusalem explain the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Peek below the surface and you will find the cultural obstacles, and the distrust they engender, that really drive the conflict — and that will require nothing short of a Palestinian cultural revolution to erase.

Based on the events of recent days, here are four huge cultural obstacles that prevent progress toward peace:

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Let Hamas Lose - by Prof. Eyal Zisser

Similar to its fights with other enemies in the region, Israel's battle with Hamas won't end in some form of a magic knock-out punch. It is an ongoing struggle where the side that is most steadfast, and also capable of self-restraint, will emerge victoriously. Hamas is driving quickly toward a dead end, devoid of hope for a future. Neither a military clash with Israel nor an arrangement with it will alter this reality.

Prof. Eyal Zisser..
Israel Hayom..
02 April'19..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/let-hamas-lose/

Despite the efforts to secure understandings with Hamas for a cease-fire, Israel is struggling to restore peace and quiet along the Gaza border. The rocket fire at Gaza-adjacent communities is continuing unabated, together with violent disturbances on the border fence, incendiary balloons and even infiltration attempts.

In light of the difficulties involved in establishing a modicum of calm along the border, some Israelis are calling on the IDF to enter and reconquer the Gaza Strip. The IDF is undoubtedly capable of doing so, but the question is not how many days it would take for the army to defeat Hamas, rather what would happen the day after. More specifically, how much time would Israel have to before it is forced to remove its forces under an onslaught of international pressure? And even if U.S. President Donald Trump fully backs the Israeli government, we must still consider the Israeli public's patience before it starts calling on the government to return the boys home and leave Gaza to the Gazans, or in other abandon them to Hamas yet again.

We can, of course, hope against hope that the Egyptians or even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will agree to govern Gaza on their own. However, we can't realistically expect the Egyptians to voluntarily spill their own blood in a fight to topple Hamas and Abbas is likely incapable of imposing his rule in Gaza, which he lost to Hamas a decade ago.

In Israel, there are those who seemingly want to turn Hamas into Hezbollah. After all, this is the implication of their calls to establish a "Lebanese quiet" along the Gaza border: Completely disengage from Gaza under an umbrella of agreements and understandings with Hamas, similar to those with Hezbollah. To secure complete quiet along the Gaza border, however, Hamas must not only be as strong as Hezbollah but free of the restrictions and blockades currently squeezing it.

To be sure, even those who hail the quiet on the northern border cannot ignore the price: Hezbollah has armed itself with over 100,000 missiles, which blanket the majority of Israeli territory. It's not certain that fleeting peace and quiet on the Gaza border is worth such a price.

It's important to note that the current calm along the northern border could also come with an expiration date, after which we will learn yet again that the missiles in Hezbollah's warehouses haven't rusted quite as fast as hoped, and that the gun from the first act will reappear in the last act shooting.

Question. Does Hamas see Israel’s deterrence waning? - by Israel Kasnett

It is wholly possible that the main reason for Israel’s perceived failure in deterrence is due to Hamas’s dissatisfaction with the status quo, even though the terror group is fully aware of its military inferiority compared to Israel.

Israel Kasnett..
JNS.org..
01 April '19..

Israel is officially engaged in the throes of a low-intensity conflict with Hamas.

The March 25 rocket attack on Israel, which destroyed a home and injured seven members of a family in Mishmeret, north of Tel Aviv, demonstrates that this conflict poses a real threat to the citizens of Israel. And even though Israel pounded Hamas targets in Gaza pursuant to that attack, this week’s attacks—one on Saturday night, which saw five rockets fired at Israel, and another one on Sunday—suggest that Israel’s deterrence has lost some of its power.

Eran Lerman, former deputy director of Israel’s National Security Council, suggests otherwise. He told JNS that “Hamas takes us very seriously.”

He explained that there is a paradox here. Hamas’s behavior reflects an understanding that because it is so weak and Israel so strong, Israel will be careful not to obliterate the terror group because “we can do so easily.”

Lerman said this is a “paradox within a paradox.”

“The reason Israel does not feel obliged to go in and destroy Hamas,” he said, “is because Hamas is not a threat to our existence. It gets on our nerves. It’s an irritant.”

Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told JNS that “deterrence is a tricky notion. Of course, Hamas is afraid of Israel,” but it tests Israel’s tolerance threshold all the time.

Inbar said Hamas understands that Israel does “not want an escalation, particularly at this time before the elections,” and that Israel does not “object to Hamas rule, which weakens the Palestinian national movement.”

He explained that Hamas launched missiles towards Tel Aviv as a threat to escalate in order to get concessions from Israel, immediately announcing that it was a “mistake,” hoping the Israeli response would be tolerable.

“Bearing in mind that Hamas is not very sensitive to the cost Israel exacted, this is what happened. Once in a while, Israel has to escalate its responses to signal that the brinkmanship game could be very risky.”

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Surprise? The Jewish Nation-State Law under attack by Haaretz's Amos Schocken - by Victor Rosenthal

...Schocken and the rest of the Israeli Left passionately hate the recently passed Nation-State Law. To them, the statement that “Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people” is anathema. It is a statement of Zionism, which is Jewish nationalism. And they don’t care very much for either nationalism (except perhaps Palestinian nationalism) or anything connected with Jewishness. In fact, I suspect that they don’t care much for Jews either; but that’s another blog.

Victor Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
31 March '19..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2019/03/the-nation-state-law-under-attack/

Amos Schocken is the publisher of Ha’aretz, the employer of Gideon Levy and Amira Hass, of Rogel Alpher and B. Michael, and other writers who pour out their hatred of the Jewish state both in Hebrew and English translation. To someone like me who believes that the battle to defend Israel in the information sphere is as important as the kinetic conflict on the battlefields, Amos Schocken is the devil.

Schocken and the rest of the Israeli Left passionately hate the recently passed Nation-State Law. To them, the statement that “Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people” is anathema. It is a statement of Zionism, which is Jewish nationalism. And they don’t care very much for either nationalism (except perhaps Palestinian nationalism) or anything connected with Jewishness. In fact, I suspect that they don’t care much for Jews either; but that’s another blog.

For those who don’t know, Israel does not have a constitution as such. When the state was declared in May 1948, there was no time to create one in the midst of a war. The Declaration of Independence optimistically set a date five months in the future at which a constitution would be adopted. But the differences of opinion about the nature of the state, between religious and secular, socialist and capitalist, were so great that it was – and still is – impossible to develop a comprehensive document that everyone can agree on. Instead, it was decided on an incremental approach: to pass a series of Basic Laws that, taken together, would fully define the state. This task is still incomplete.

Reality Check Time: Goal of Gaza Rioters Is Expedite Growth of Military, Not Improve Quality of Life - by Dr. Aaron Lerner

From a long run perspective, the most humanitarian step Israel could take today would be to significantly reduce the security cost of dual use materials by decimating the armories, weapons factories, etc. in the Gaza Strip followed by a policy that any armories, weapons factories, etc. discovered after the operation are also destroyed rather than recorded in a "target bank".

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA..
30 March '19..
Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=73483

The goal of the organized Gaza rioters is to pressure Israel to increase the supply of dual use material to the Gaza Strip to expedite the construction of yet more attack tunnels and other military structure along with the production of weapons.

To be clear.

That's not to say that Israel should not be interested in finding ways to improve the living conditions of the Gazans.

Just that in the absence of a departure from the current "quiet for quiet"arrangement, any Israeli concession regarding the supply into the Gaza Strip of dual use material - cement, rebar, other metal , fiberglass roving and associated resin, etc., that can be used in the construction of military facilities or weapons production - will ultimately cost Israel as these materials are used to help prepare Hamas and others for war against the Jewish State.

From a long run perspective, the most humanitarian step Israel could take today would be to significantly reduce the security cost of dual use materials by decimating the armories, weapons factories, etc. in the Gaza Strip followed by a policy that any armories, weapons factories, etc.
discovered after the operation are also destroyed rather than recorded in a "target bank".
________________________________________

IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis: Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on Arab-Israeli relations
Website: www.imra.org.il

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Finally a real election issue - demilitarizing Gaza by force despite human shields - Dr. Aaron Lerner

There is no telling how long this window of opportunity to essentially demilitarize the Gaza Strip will remain open. I fervently hope that this idea gets traction in the remaining days of the campaign.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
28 March '19..
Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=73482

After weeks of a campaign focused on various aspects of the party heads, New Right leader Naftali Bennett has pitched a tangible actionable proposal for dealing with a pressing critical national security issue which challenges the current "quiet for quiet" policy - the kick-the-can-down-the-road policy which the leaders of Blue White also embrace.

Under the quiet for quiet policy, Hamas and other military forces in the Gaza Strip can prepare for war against the Jewish State without interference as long as they don't get too "noisy". And even in those instances that they are "noisy" and fire rockets at Israel, Israel's choice of targets in the target bank does not seek to wipe out the enemy's weapons producing capabilities or armories but instead only provide an Israeli "tat" for the enemy "tit" to complete the round of "noise" and return to quiet.

Speaking this week at Maariv's National Security Conference, Bennett described a plan to destroy the weapons factories and armories in the Gaza Strip and then follow up with a policy of destroying any new factories or armories the moment that they are discovered.

Frankly speaking, if that's all Bennett said I would not have been impressed.

That plan would be empty words if the issue of human shields is ignored.

But Bennett addressed the issue head on.

"Launch first step crushing from the air and clearing the rocket capability of Gaza.

And that means seeking and destroying every missile warehouse and factory.

I don't care if its under a residential building, it's a military base

A house that's a source of fire towards the State of Israel loses its right to be a house.

Surprise? BBC News glosses over repeated Palestinian violence at holy site - by Hadar Sela

Despite its public purpose obligation to provide audiences with “impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them” the BBC chooses to euphemistically frame regular breaches of that agreement as “friction” attributed to the site itself rather than to the Palestinians actually throwing firebombs, explosives or rocks.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
27 March '19..

Visitors to the BBC News website on March 20th found a report titled “Two Palestinians killed in clashes in Nablus” which opened as follows:

“Two Palestinian men have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli military said explosive devices were hurled from a car at troops guarding Jewish worshippers at Joseph’s Tomb in the city of Nablus.

The troops opened fire, killing two assailants, it added.”

The report later went on to inform readers that: [emphasis added]

“Joseph’s Tomb – which is revered by Jews and Muslims as the burial place of the son of the biblical patriarch Jacob – has been a source of friction in the past.

It is in an area under Palestinian civilian control, but Jewish pilgrims are permitted to visit several times a year under Israeli military protection.”

Also of significance to Christians, the site is in fact:

“…located inside Area A of the West Bank, under complete Palestinian Authority control. The IDF bars Israeli citizens from entering Area A without prior authorization.”

The BBC did not bother to explain to readers of this report the meaning of the phrase “a source of friction in the past”. The last time audiences saw any BBC reporting on such so-called “friction” was in October 2015 when Palestinian rioters set fire to the tomb. Since then repeated attacks on both the site itself and security forces guarding visiting worshippers have gone unreported. For example:

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Dear BBC, Hamas is not ‘seen’ as a terrorist group, it is a terrorist group. - by Karen Harradine

The BBC is out of step with what many know to be true – that Hamas is a terrorist organisation which is happy to sacrifice its own people in its genocidal attempts to destroy Israel. Should war happen, we can count on the BBC to blame Israel for any loss of life while making excuses for the jihadists who terrorise not only Israelis but their own people. Most of the Arab world, and indeed the Gazans, are furious with Hamas. Yet the BBC would have us believe they’re freedom fighters.

Karen Harradine..
Conservativewoman.co.uk..
27 March '19..

THE people of Gaza have had enough. They are tired of having their homes, schools and hospitals used as launch pads for Hamas’s endless war against Israel, and tired of subsisting in abject poverty while their leaders live in luxury.

Since seizing power from Fatah in 2007, Hamas has controlled the Gaza strip. It uses Gazans as human shields in its attempts to destroy Israel and turn it into another Islamist state. Hamas leaders are millionaires, grown rich on stealing from their own people billions of pounds in donations from the UN and Western governments.

Two weeks ago Gaza residents took to the streets shouting the slogan ‘We want to live’. Their protests were ignited by Hamas’s planned tax increases which will increase hardship for most Palestinians already dealing with exorbitant living costs, poverty, high unemployment rates and poor infrastructure. The protesters put the blame for their plight solely on Hamas. In response, Hamas security forces beat and arrested dozens of demonstrators, including students and human right activists, and in some instances used live fire on them.

According to reports by the Fatah media, Hamas targeted 17 journalists during the protests and arrested seven. Several were beaten and had their phones confiscated. Hamas is also suspected of breaking the fingers of a Palestinian writer and beating him so badly that he had to be hospitalised.

Almost a week later (19 March) the BBC finally decided to report on the uprising against Hamas. Trying her best to blame Israel and downplay Hamas culpability, the reporter, at 20.30 minutes in, describes Hamas as ‘widely seen as a terrorist group’. But Hamas is not ‘seen’ as a terrorist group, it is a terrorist group.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Surprise? Israel-Bashing Season Re-Opens in Turkey - by Burak Bekdil

"What," asked a puzzled European diplomat, a newcomer to Ankara, "does Israel have to do with Turks' choice of metropolitan, small town or even village mayors?" A colleague answered with a smile: "A lot. Anti-Israel rhetoric is now an indispensable part of every Turkish election, including one to elect a village headman."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently threatened
his own citizens -- citizens who practice a different faith,
 of course -- Turkey's already dwindling Jewish community,
 now at around 16,000. "Do not provoke [us]," he said.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. (Photo by Elif Sogut/Getty Images)

Burak Bekdil..
Gatestone Institute..
27 March '19..
Link: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13962/turkey-israel-bashing

Another round of Turkish elections and another wave of Israel-bashing at election rallies. This has become a pattern since 2009 and Turks have not shown any sign of frustration: They simply love it.

Blaming the man who brought Israel to public rallies is the easier thing to do, a kind of intellectual laziness. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been correct in thinking that his diplomatic wars with Israel, his more than undiplomatic language and outright anti-Zionism would work like a ballot box cash machine. It did.

A deeper look, however, should investigate why in the 1970s and 80s, when Turkey did not have full diplomatic relations with Israel, the name of that country or any politician there was never mentioned at Turkish election rallies. Why would the average Turkish voter, three or four decades ago, find the State of Israel totally irrelevant but today show up and cheer at every possible Israel-bashing election rally? How did Turkish politicians who in the mid-1990s spearheaded efforts to build an alliance with Israel, keep winning votes despite their pro-Israel policies? What took place to move the Turkish mindset to its present, deeply anti-Israeli point?

What took place was the not-so-creeping Islamization of Turkish society since 2002, when Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power. A Turk who is now 27 years old was only 10 at that time, and has not seen any other leader of Turkey since. Erdoğan's political and social engineering has changed the way the average Turk identifies himself: Most Turks used to identify themselves as "Turks first." Now they identify themselves as "Muslims first" -- the way Erdoğan seemingly wanted them to.

It is not surprising then that passionate fans of the Justice and Development Party often hear the words Israel, terror state, tyrant, dictator and so on at public rallies as Turkey heads toward its local elections on March 31. "What," asked a puzzled European diplomat, a newcomer to Ankara, "does Israel have to do with Turks' choice of metropolitan, small town or even village mayors?" A colleague answered with a smile: "A lot. Anti-Israel rhetoric is now an indispensable part of every Turkish election, including one to elect a village headman."

America’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights versus the Gang of Six - by Stephen M. Flatow

Because they live in the safe and comfortable suburbs of New York City and Washington, D.C., Ross, Indyk, Makovsky et al have the luxury of pontificating about the need for Israel to give up territory without ever having to deal personally with the consequences of such withdrawals. But for the Israelis who now live within missile range of Gaza—and who could have been within missile range of the Syrians if they were on the Golan Heights—the consequences are very real.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
25 March '19..

America’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights is supported by a broad cross-section of the American Jewish community—with the glaring exception of six Jewish ex-State Department officials who always manage to find a way to criticize Israel.

Dennis Ross, Daniel Kurtzer, Richard Haas, Aaron Miller, Martin Indyk and Indyk’s assistant, David Makovsky, have all retired from the “peace-processing” business and are now busying themselves posing as Mideast “experts” on talk shows and op-ed pages.

This Gang of Six, who spent so many years trying to convince us that Yasser Arafat was moderate and that parts of Jerusalem should become the capital of “Palestine,” are now trotting out all the reasons why the United States should not recognize the legitimacy of Israel’s control of the Golan.

Dennis Ross said in an interview with Foreign Policy magazine that the U.S. action will “make it harder” for the Arab world to support peace with Israel. That’s dumb, but at least it’s not weird. His colleagues’ comments, by contrast, have been downright bizarre.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The State of Israel is at a fateful crossroads - by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen

The State of Israel is at a fateful crossroads. The unending necessity to safeguard the state’s secure existence ensures that its leaders will face complex and painful decisions. But there are other, no less critical considerations that must be factored into the decision-making equation...

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,121..
25 March '19..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-security-not-enough/

David Ben-Gurion was the only Israeli PM to make a point of stressing that the state of Israel has a higher purpose than providing a safe haven to persecuted Jews. During the first decade of statehood, he repeatedly emphasized:

“Security is but a condition for our existence and our independence. The state of Israel has a special mission. Every state must ensure the wellbeing, welfare, and progress of its residents. Our state, too, is obligated to do so, but it is not the cardinal concern. The supreme task of the state of Israel is the redemption of the People of Israel through the ingathering of the exiles.”

On the national level, the problem of security reflects the inextricable link between the spiritual and the physical aspects of the country’s existence. Yet the political-security conversation guiding Israel for years has been reduced to an excessive, if not exclusive, focus on physical security – a point well understood by Israel’s Palestinian “peace partners.” Prominent PLO leader Abbas Zaki explained the organization’s feigned endorsement of the two-state solution this way: “If we divest the Jews of Hebron and Jerusalem, from which they draw their inspiration for their national existence, what will remain for them? What bond do they have to Jaffa and to Haifa? They will then collapse of themselves.”

Ben-Gurion, recognizing the spiritual calling of the People of Israel in its ancestral homeland, asserted during the early critical phase of the War of Independence that the struggle over Jerusalem was the key endeavor:

Indy evokes ‘wag the dog’ conspiracy vs. the Ireland Israel Alliance. One of them gets it right.

UK Media Watch does an excellent job dismantling Bel Trew's ‘wag the dog’ conspiracy to explain Israeli wars with Hamas, however the concept does have an appropriate place, as the Ireland Israel Alliance twitted after this morning's rocket attack. If the shoe fits...

Love of the Land..
25 March '19..

From UK Media Watch

The Independent’s Mid-East correspondent Bel Trew makes the following claim in an article on recent US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights (“Golan Heights: How Donald Trump’s tweet saved Netanyahu’s re-election”, March 23).

Normally known for launching wars ahead of elections to ensure the security vote, Mr Netanyahu was also batting off stinging criticism from all sides for not ordering a full military operation in Gaza

This is actually the second time in a week that Trew made some variation of the allegation that Israel’s prime minister launches wars against Hamas in order to secure electoral victories. A March 18th article by Trew on fears that a (evidently accidental) Hamas rocket attack on Tel Aviv could lead to all out war argued that “Israeli incursions into Gaza have been launched ahead of the last three elections…often winning incumbent prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu additional votes on a security ticket.”

Trew’s narrative is completely counter-factual. (Continue to Full Post)

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On the other hand, not to abandon the concept of 'wag the dog', the following was posted by Ireland Israel Alliance

Air raid sirens sound north of #TelAviv this morning. Rocket from #Gaza demolished house injuring 7 inc. 2 infants. A cynical attempt by #Hamas to deflect outrage of their own people rioting against them in Gaza? @rtepolitics @rtenews @VirginMediaNews @IrishTimes @irishexaminer pic.twitter.com/jFXRvWxjBS

— Ireland Israel Alliance (@irlisrAlliance) March 25, 2019

*auto-correct? deflect outrage in place of deflect overage

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Forty years on, thoughts on the Sinai withdrawal's dangerous legacy - by Michael Freund

So when we look back on the peace treaty with Egypt, we need to do so with our eyes wide open, cognizant of the fact that since relations between states can be ephemeral, territory is not something Israel should ever consider abandoning.

Michael Freund..
Pundicity/Jerusalem Post..
22 March '19..
Link: http://www.michaelfreund.org/22492/sinai-withdrawal-dangerous-legacy  

If you open Google Earth and search for "Yamit, Sinai," the globe on your screen will slowly spin its way to the Middle East before zooming in on a small area in the northern Sinai Peninsula, just west of Gaza (though it comes up as "Yammit").

There, amid the sand dunes, one can still see the bare and bulldozed ground where the town of Yamit, a thriving Jewish community of 2,500 people, once stood, until it was uprooted and destroyed in 1982 as part of the peace treaty with Egypt.

The contours of various structures are still visible, paying silent testimony to the traumatic removal of Jews from their homes that was carried out by a Jewish government.

As Israel marks 40 years since the signing of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty on the White House Lawn, it is worth recalling the expulsion that was wrought in its wake, as more than a dozen Jewish communities in Sinai, numbering a total of 7,000 people, were compelled to disband and depart.

While forgoing Sinai might have brought us four decades of a cold peace with Egypt, it also elicited a heavy price from the Jewish state, one that continues to haunt us until the present day.

After a century in which the values of Zionism and settling the land had prevailed, Israel suddenly took a sharp U-turn, conferring legitimacy on the illegitimate idea that peace must necessarily entail withdrawal and retreat.

In the miraculous victory of the 1967 war, the Jewish people were granted a Divine gift. Over the course of just six days, we were reunited with the Temple Mount, the hills of Samaria and the streets of Hebron.

And in reclaiming Sinai, where our ancestors wandered for decades after the Exodus from Egypt, Israel was blessed with priceless strategic depth, along with military installations, oil fields, and an untamed desert waiting to be developed.

But just 12 years later, acting as though it was in a rush to unload the peninsula, the Jewish state gave in to Egyptian demands and turned over the Sinai's 61,000 sq.km. (23,550 sq.mi.) to foreign control.

In one fell swoop, Israel had given away more than 90% of the territory it had liberated during the 1967 Six Day War.

SIMPLY PUT, the withdrawal from Sinai laid the groundwork for later expulsions, heralding decades of further Israeli territorial concessions.

Wow! J Street uncovers a secret about Netanyahu and Trump - by Victor Rosenthal

...J Street’s primary goal, like that of the numerous other anti-Israel organizations in the US, including the nominally “Jewish” If Not Now and Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as explicitly antisemitic ones like If America Knew, is to create antipathy and distrust for Israel, so that Americans will oppose pro-Israel actions by the US government – for example, the recognition of Israel’s possession of the Golan Heights...

Victor Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
22 March '19..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2019/03/j-street-uncovers-a-secret-about-netanyahu-and-trump/  (If you would like to repost this article to Facebook, please use this link as LOTL's url is currently blocked from FB)

I think my interest in J Street could once have been called “obsessive.” I wrote numerous blog posts a few years ago, pointing out that the supposedly “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization received financing from George Soros, mysterious billionaires in Hong Kong, and people associated with Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab-American Institute. I noted – along with then Ambassador Michael Oren – that it consistently (one could say always) took positions opposed to almost any reasonable interpretation of Israel’s interests. I objected to its guiding principle, which seemed to be that it knew what was good for Israel far better than Israelis did, especially since following its recommendations would negatively impact Israel’s security. I wondered at the close coordination between J Street and the Obama Administration, which tried to anoint it as the voice of American Jewry toward Israel. And more.

Since I moved back to Israel in 2014, I’ve been less concerned with J Street, which is, after all, an American phenomenon. We have plenty of “interesting” politics right here. But recently I became aware of a new J Street initiative, targeting PM Netanyahu, just before the election:

WASHINGTON, DC — The pro-Israel, pro-peace group J Street launched a new series of videos today highlighting the dangerously similar rhetoric and ideology shared by President Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu. Released as targeted digital ads just a week before the two leaders are expected to meet in Washington, DC on the sidelines of the AIPAC conference, the videos urge pro-Israel Americans who are opposed to Trump to also speak out against Netanyahu’s similar bigotry and anti-democratic tendencies.

“By attacking democratic institutions and targeting vulnerable minorities, Trump and Netanyahu are borrowing from the same far-right playbook — undermining the core values and interests of both the US and Israel,” said J Street’s president Jeremy Ben-Ami. “Patriotic Americans have mobilized impressively against Trump here at home. Those of us who care about Israel’s future need to speak out against Netanyahu’s destructive leadership as well.”

Over the past two years, both the president and the prime minister have incited against vulnerable minorities, attacked the free press and de-legitimized the judiciary and the rule of law. Both face serious investigations into alleged criminal conduct. …

There’s no doubt that liberal and progressive American Jews hate Trump passionately, and there’s no better way to attack Netanyahu among that group than by associating him with their bête noire. The first J Street video is here. It’s very professional and probably didn’t come cheap. The question is, why did J Street spend a considerable sum of money on such a campaign? Americans don’t vote in Israeli elections (although J Street probably wishes they did). Why attack Netanyahu in the USA?

It’s not a simple question and I don’t have a simple answer. Unfortunately, the position papers of J Street’s psychological warfare experts aren’t public. But I have some ideas.