Addressing Israel’s New Existential Challenge - by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen

The creation of an Iranian military/terrorist axis along Israel’s northern and southern borders, comprising Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, lays the groundwork for the long-term multi-frontal attrition of the Jewish state.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,277..
04 September '19..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-existential-challenge/

The Arab upheavals of the past decade, especially the Syrian civil war, have given Israel a much-needed strategic respite, leading many Israeli security experts to the conviction that the Jewish state no longer faces an existential threat. But as this war draws to a close, a new existential challenge is rapidly emerging along Israel’s northern and southern borders: a military-terrorist axis led by Iran and comprising its Syrian, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad proxies/allies. ​​

For the first time since the conclusion of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, Israel faces the realistic likelihood of a simultaneous multi-frontal conflagration – Lebanon, Syria, and the Gaza Strip (as well as the possibility of terror attacks originating from the West Bank). This old-new existential challenge includes three main operational components:

Full-scale threat of unprecedented proportions from advanced precision rockets and missiles. This massive arsenal is organized in offensive operational outlines that have already been set up to target strategic and infrastructure sites deep inside Israel, such as air force bases, military headquarters, power stations, airports, and population centers. This threat sees Israel flanked on all sides – from Lebanon, Syria, and the Gaza Strip, as well as, more recently, a Shiite militia base in Iraq.

A new terrorist front on the Golan Heights comprising Iran’s Quds Force, Hezbollah, and Shiite militias.

Clear and present danger to Israel’s towns and villages along the Lebanese and Gaza borders from commando forces well-trained for ground incursions into Israel.

Many in the Israeli military/security establishment downplay these threats. In the recent words of former PM Ehud Barak: “The external threats are many and evolving, and must not be underestimated; but I assert with all due responsibility – and not just as a political position… [that] none of them pose an existential threat to Israel’s future, power, and sovereignty.”

This depends of course on the meaning of “existential threat,” which is largely a context-related concept that is open to different interpretations. To be sure, Israel does not face the same existential threat of an all-Arab invasion it encountered upon its proclamation in May 1948. But Hezbollah, Hamas, and even Iran do not seek Israel’s destruction in one fell swoop (though Iran’s desire for such an outcome could change once it has attained nuclear weapons). Rather they seem to be following the graduated, attritional strategy used by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in the October 1973 war. In the words of his directive to the Egyptian armed forces:

The Alarming Israeli Public Apathy Regarding Palestinian Construction in Area C - by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen

While Israeli Jews continue to move into urban centers, the Palestinians have been assuming sovereignty in the open lands and leaving the Jews with personal sovereignty solely in their areas of residence. This trend is not restricted to the West Bank. It is also occurring in the Negev, the Galilee, and the Jezreel Valley, where Jews are moving into high-rise buildings while non-Jews are taking control of the open spaces. A contributing factor to this dangerous trend is the complete lack of interest in the subject displayed by most of the Israeli public.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,274..
02 September '19..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israeli-apathy-palestinian-construction-area-c/

Over the past decade, 28,650 illegal Arab structures have been built in Area C. Hundreds of kilometers of roads have been laid, and hundreds of thousands of agricultural dunams have been taken over in land that has never belonged to a Palestinian.

This invasion is being implemented with the involvement and guidance of the EU and with major financial support from abroad.

Meanwhile, PM Netanyahu has introduced a plan to build 700 housing units for Palestinians in Area C along with 6,000 housing units for Jews in the West Bank. Despite criticism from settler leadership, cabinet ministers, including Rafi Peretz and Bezalel Smotrich, have supported the plan out of a basic understanding that sovereignty in a territory entails not only setting restrictions on building but also issuing permits. In that regard, sovereignty in Area C is no different from sovereignty in other areas of the country.

The basis of a sovereign state – in Area C as in the Negev – is its ability to plan, which includes stipulating what and where it is forbidden to build and what and where it is permitted to build. These stipulations should apply to everyone, Jewish or Palestinian.

Apart from the threat Palestinian building in Area C poses to Israel’s national and security interests, one needs to ask why the issue has not gained traction among the Israeli public. It is this popular apathy that, among other things, allows the PM to keep ignoring this dangerous trend.

Netanyahu’s behavior on this matter is hard to understand. If it is fine with him to give the Palestinians open land for an eventual two-state solution, then presumably the land should be provided as a quid pro quo in an agreement – not simply taken over by the Palestinians in a unilateral process of attrition. If, on the other hand, Israel has an interest in retaining the land, why is Netanyahu allowing the invasion to proceed?

The Palestinians and Europeans understand something Israelis refuse to see. They grasp that while Maale Adumim is a fully-fledged city that will not be evacuated, it can be turned into a threatened and shrinking enclave by fast-tracking Palestinian building all around it and along the roads leading to it. Israeli disregard for the endgame of this tactic, including among most of the defense establishment, is amazing to the point of alarming.

The EU Is Actively Battling Israel in Area C - Prof. Hillel Frisch

Ever since a decision in January 2012, the EU has been expressly committed to the expansion of illegal Palestinian settlement in Area C in conjunction with the PA. This is in blatant disregard of the Oslo accords, which the EU purports to uphold. The object is to create continuous Palestinian settlement throughout the West Bank and thereby isolate and strangle Israeli communities.

Prof. Hillel Frisch..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,275..
02 September '19..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/eu-battling-israel-area-c/

For the first time in the 100-year-old conflict between the Zionist movement (and later the State of Israel) and the Palestinian Arabs, the Palestinians are surpassing the Jews in strategic settlement, over which the Zionist movement had enjoyed a monopoly. The PA is achieving this under the auspices of the EU.

In July 2011, a report entitled “Area C and Palestinian State Building” was produced by the EU. It was then brought to the European Parliament in December and approved by the European Commission in early January 2012. (In the interim between the writing of the report and its approval, excerpts were leaked to The Independent, a British daily known for its strident anti-Israeli stance.)

In April 2012, the PA’s Ministry of Local Government (MoLG) published a strategic action plan entitled “Planning Support for Palestinian Communities in Area C.” The EU announced its support for this plan in an official document published in 2012 called “Land Development and Access to Basic Infrastructure in Area C.”

By 2016, the European Community had spent a total of 10.5 million euros to draw up and implement zoning plans for 90 Palestinian settlements and support land development projects in Area C in conjunction with the MoLG.

Such aid is explicitly envisioned not only as helping marginalized communities but as part of a blueprint to assist Palestinian state building. The plans for solitary communities, the report noted, “will be linked in a broader planning exercise that aims at clustering the communities and developing regional plans,” a project currently supported by the EU and the UK. This clustering process is itself linked to another arm of the PA, the Palestinian Ministry of Planning and Administrative Development (MoPAD), which is “engaged in the development of a National Spatial Plan, which will include the entire Area C.”

The joint PA-EU strategy to undermine Israeli jurisdiction in Area C focuses on two areas:

Why the Surprise That to European Leaders, Jewish Flesh Is Cheap? - by Guy Millière

The Oslo Accords were based on the illusion that the PLO could totally change and suddenly become a "partner for peace"... It soon became clear that the Palestinian Authority was still the PLO: terrorist attacks quickly multiplied. The money received by the Palestinian Authority was used to continue incitement to murder and payments to incentivize it.

Guy Millière..
Gatestone Institute..
30 August '19..

August 7th. Israel. When Dvir Sorek, an 18-year-old student returned from Jerusalem to his school after having bought some books for his rabbis as an end-of-year gift, he was stabbed to death by two Arab terrorists.

As his funeral took place, while his father was delivering the eulogy, the inhabitants of the Arab village of Silwad, two miles North, to celebrate the murder, were setting off fireworks.

Sorek was apparently a peaceful teenager who had never hurt anyone. Among the books he brought was one by an Israeli left-wing writer, David Grossman, supporting the need to create a Palestinian state.

Sorek's "fault" was to be a Jew.

His name extends the long list of Jews killed or wounded by Arab terrorists. Some murders are even more cruel. The man who raped and murdered Ori Ansbacher in February in Jerusalem said, "I wanted to kill a Jew and be a martyr." In 2011, five members of the Fogel family, including three young children, were slaughtered. In 2014, two murderers with axes, knives and a gun entered a synagogue in Jerusalem during morning prayers and massacred five worshipers and a policeman who tried to stop the attackers. On December 13, 2018, at a bus stop near Ofra, two young Jews were shot dead by terrorists. Four days before that, another gun attack injured seven Jews. A wounded young woman survived, but despite the efforts of doctors, the baby she was carrying died. Last week, in a terrorist bombing on a hiking trail near Dolev, north of Jerusalem, a teenage Jewish girl was murdered. Her father and brother were seriously wounded.

After each murder, celebrations like those in Silwad take place. Candies and sweets are passed out in the street. If the murderers are shot by the Israeli soldiers or the police, they are proclaimed martyrs, and are celebrated. Their portraits are displayed in Palestinian towns. Whether the terrorist murders are killed or whether they are arrested, tried and imprisoned in Israel, they or their families are awarded a generous monthly stipend from the Palestinian Authority -- an amount higher than the average Palestinian wage. Sometimes, the mothers of the murderers say how proud they are of the act their sons committed.

The depravity built-in to murdering civilians, the celebrations that follow, the prestige granted to racist murderers, the alluring payments granted as a reward, and the pride of the mothers all stem from an incitement to hate Jews that is injected into the minds of the Palestinian Arabs by the people and institutions that lead them.

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

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Clearly Israel can’t treat its own destruction as a legitimate aim - by Evelyn Gordon

Letting U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar enter would have sent the opposite message—that their desire to erase Israel isn’t beyond the pale, but merely a legitimate political disagreement. That’s why Israel had to bar them.

Evelyn Gordon..
JNS.org..
28 August '19..

When Israel barred two U.S. congresswomen from entering the country earlier this month, I initially thought it a stupid decision. But after hearing the reactions from both American politicians and American Jews, I’ve started to think it may have been necessary.

This isn’t to deny the substantial damage it has caused. Pro-Israel Democrats felt betrayed, and even some pro-Israel Republicans were outraged. Most of the organized Jewish community was horrified. And the BDS movement received media exposure it could never have gained on its own.

But nobody would have felt outraged or betrayed had Israel barred, say, white-supremacist politicians. Thus the underlying message of these reactions was that unlike white supremacism, advocating Israel’s destruction is a legitimate opinion, entitled to the same respectful treatment as the view that Israel should continue to exist. Yet no country can or should treat its own erasure as a legitimate option.

To understand why this was the issue at stake, a brief review of the facts is needed.

(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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Palestinian Media and Terrorism: Why Allow Facts to Get in the Way? - by Bassam Tawil

The rhetoric and fabrications of the Palestinian media are simply part of a longstanding Palestinian campaign of incitement against Israel and Jews. For this media ensemble, truth is just another word for nothing left to lie about.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
28 August '19..

Rina Shnerb, the 17-year-old teenager who was killed in a Palestinian terror attack in the West Bank on August 23, was born and raised in the Israeli city of Lod. She had never lived in a settlement in the West Bank. Moreover, she never served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) or any security agency, as she was too young to be recruited for service.

Rina was killed in a bomb explosion when she and her family were visiting the popular Ein Buvin spring near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Her father, Eitan, and brother, Dvir, were injured when an explosive device planted near the spring went off.

Why are the details about Rina's hometown and her age worth mentioning? Because the Palestinian media has again engaged in a campaign of fabrications and lies to justify the terror attack and the murder of an innocent Jewish teenager.

Lod is not a settlement. It is a city located in the Central District of Israel, and even has an Arab population of 30%.

The Palestinian media, however, does not feel comfortable reporting the facts about the terror attack. In the eyes of Palestinian new editors and journalists, Rina was a "settler" and a "soldier." By using such terms, the Palestinians are trying to create the impression that she was not an innocent teenager, but a Jew who lived in a settlement and was even serving in the IDF.

This type of misinformation is aimed at sending a message that Rina was a legitimate target because she was one of hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers living in the West Bank and an active member of the IDF. The Palestinian public, for its part, is often quick to endorse such lies to justify terror attacks against Jews.

What is particularly disturbing is that even the media controlled by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas chose to spread the lie that the murdered teenager was a "settler" and "soldier."

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

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Hebron: The rightness of return - by Nadav Shragai

For 52 years, the Jews of Hebron have been trying to get back the land that was stolen from them in the riots of 1929, but the government is doing so only incrementally, usually after terrorist attacks. Now the attorney general has approved a plan to clear and rebuild the city's market area in an attempt to bring Jews back.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
27 August '19..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/08/27/the-right-of-return/

A yellowing 212-year-old document, dating from 1807, in which the Shariah court deeds 4.5 dunams (1.1 acres) of land currently known as the "Hebron wholesale market" to "the Jew Haim Mitzri, who is responsible for the Jewish population" for the sum of 120,000 grushim, is an important starting point for the story of the struggle that the Jewish population of Hebron is now waging. Jews were evicted from that land during the riots of 1929, which happened 90 years ago this week. The Arabs of Hebron built their market on the land only three years before the 1967 Six-Day War and were evicted themselves in 1994. The Jews returned to the "market" seven years later, in 2006, a day before the major clashes in Amona. They were once again evicted, this time with understandings of the political and military apparatuses in place.

Shortly thereafter, the Jewish residents of Hebron were told that the market would be rented to the Jewish community in Hebron and used for family residences. That promise has yet to be fulfilled. Now, 13 years later, a legal opinion has been issued – on paper, at least – that allows the Jews to return to their own land. Now Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has to make a decision that most of the MKs in the outgoing government coalition support, but he is still hesitant.

There are two other figures in the story of the Hebron market land. The first, who is doing everything he can to return Jews to their land, is Rabbi Amram Yifrach (the grandfather of the late Eyal Yifrach, one of the three teens kidnapped and murdered by Hamas terrorists in 2014).

Yifrach currently serves as head of the board of directors of the Sephardi community's Magen Avot organization, which inherited a large part of the Sephardi Jewish property in Hebron, including the market area. Yifrach succeeded Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu and granted the Jewish population of Hebron the legal authority to hold onto the market area and settle Jewish residents there.

"90 years after the slaughter and five years after the murder of my grandson and his friends, there is no reason not to right a historical wrong and return the people of Israel to their borders and close the circle," Yifrach told Israel Hayom last week.

Yifrach, who joined the movement to renew the Jewish population in Kiryat Arba 52 years ago, would be happy if one of the homes that were to be built in the market would be named after his grandson, who often visited him in Kiryat Arba and even studied at Shavei Hebron Yeshiva, near the market. He is calling on Netanyahu to stop dawdling: "Now is the time to act. Later, it could be too late."

Unlike Yifrach, Hebron Mayor Tayseer Abu Sneineh is doing everything in his power to keep Jews from returning to their land. Abu Sneineh was convicted of murdering six yeshiva students in a terrorist attack at Beit Hadassah in 1980. Abu Sneineh was released in a prisoner exchange deal after serving only two years behind bars. In his mayoral election campaign, he bragged about the murder.

Abu Sneineh and the Palestinian Authority are openly working together to "strangle" the Jewish community in Hebron by building hundreds of housing units around the small Jewish neighborhoods and offering benefits to Arab residents who move there. The mayor is even waging a bitter battle over a construction permit that was issued two years ago to build the Hezekiah neighborhood. By filing appeal after appeal, he has so far managed to block the construction of the 31 apartments planned for the area. The land for the new neighborhood, which is slated to be named after Rabbi Chaim Hezekiah Medini, author of the halachic encyclopedia "Sdei Chemed," who lived and studied there, was purchased by the fifth Chabad rebbe some 120 years ago. The plot lies next to Beit Romano, which is home to the Shavei Hebron Yeshiva.

The Likud, the Yamina list (formerly the New Right), and Shas are pressing Netanyahu to make a decision about the construction before the Sept. 17 election. Interior Minister Aryeh Deri has promised to help, and Likud ministers Zeev Elkin, Yariv Levin, Moshe Kahlon, and Likud MK Gideon Sa'ar are all busy with the issue. In Yamina, Ayelet Shaked is leading the fight for construction. As justice minister, Shaked made a herculean effort to end the ongoing construction freeze that the Hebron Jewish community has suffered under for about 20 years.

But Netanyahu is hesitant. In January 1997, the first Netanyahu government adopted the Hebron Protocol, which put 80% of the city under full Palestinian control. At the same time, Netanyahu made a commitment under the same agreement "to work to protect all the conditions and requirements needed to ensure the existence, security, and solidity of the Hebron Jewish community." But moments before the Trump administration's "deal of the century" is due to be announced, it doesn't look like Netanyahu will do anything without prior agreement from the Americans – which he hasn't yet received.

Israel, Iran and Trump: Behind the rhetoric - by Ruthie Blum

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has had faith that Washington would be his key ally in any confrontation with the Islamic Republic. It was Trump, after all, who withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Ruthie Blum..
JNS.org..
27 August '19..

Referring to a Talmudic dictum relating to self-defense, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video clip on Sunday morning, explaining the preemptive strike launched by the Israel Defense Forces in Syria on Saturday night.

“If someone rises up to kill you, kill him first,” he began, before uncharacteristically acknowledging that the IDF was behind the airstrikes, which were carried out after the Israeli defense establishment discovered that a special Quds Force unit was dispatched by Iran to Syria to murder Israelis on the Golan Heights with explosives-laded drones.

Standing next to a somber-looking IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Netanyahu stressed that the “complex” military operation was undertaken to thwart a “very imminent” Iranian threat, and declared that Israel would continue to uncover and prevent further such plans by the regime in Tehran.

In a veiled reference to Lebanon—home base of the Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah—Netanyahu then warned, “Any country that enables the use of its territory for attacks on Israel will suffer the consequences.”

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

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Why are Lutherans Asking the US to Subsidize Terror-Supporting Palestinian Authority? - by Dexter Van Zile

For all their talking about promoting peace in the Holy Land, mainline Protestants keep doing two things: They make it harder for Israel to defend itself from murderous attacks like the one that killed Rina Shnerb on August 23, and they keep making it easier for Palestinians to get away with perpetrating these attacks. That’s what the ELCA is supporting.

Dexter Van Zile..
Algemeiner..
26 August '19..

Earlier this month, the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) passed a resolution that calls on the US government to subsidize the Palestinian Authority (PA) as it pays salaries to murderers and terrorists serving time in Israeli jails.

Proponents of the resolution, which was passed by the assembly “en banc” (without any debate, along with a number of other resolutions), would likely say that it does not ask the US government to directly subsidize the Palestinian Authority — but instead, calls on Congress to send millions of dollars to Augusta Victoria Hospital (AVH) in East Jerusalem.

Only a grinch could say no to such a thing. Giving money to a hospital is a good thing, right?

The problem is that AVH needs US money because the PA hasn’t been able to pay its bills to the facility.

According to ELCA documents, the Palestinian Authority owes a total of $95 million to a network of six hospitals in East Jerusalem, of which Augusta Victoria is a part. It’s a big deal, because many Palestinians rely on AVH for treatment of chronic illnesses.

A fact-sheet produced by the ELCA states that the hospital “offers specialized care not available in other hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza, including radiation therapy for cancer patients and pediatric hemodialysis” and that “approximately 30 percent of the cancer patients treated at AVH are from Gaza.”

Despite being unable to fund this hospital, however, the PA has managed to find money to fund its”pay-to-slay” program, which pays salaries to terrorists and the families of terrorists serving time in Israeli jails for killing Israeli civilians (among other things).

The worse the crime is, the more money the killers and families get.

The PA’s pay-to-slay program monetizes dead Jews in a manner akin to how the US government paid bounties for the scalps of Native Americans in the early 1860s. It incentivizes murders like that of 17-year-old Rina Shnerb, who was recently killed while hiking with her father and brother. If her killers are caught and sent to prison (we pray that they are), they will receive a salary for their crimes.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas made it perfectly clear that he is more interested in paying terrorists than in taking care of his people, when he declared in July 2018: “Even if we have only a penny left, it will only be spent on the families of the martyrs and the prisoners, and only afterwards will it be spent on the rest of the people.”

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Dexter Van Zile is the Christian Media Analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA).

Surprise? ‘The Squad’ Co-Sponsors Bill Claiming Israel Tortures Children, And Parrots Other Terrorist Propaganda - by Warren Henry

The claims made in the bill originate mostly from a group that could be described as the propaganda arm of a terrorist organization.

Warren Henry..
The Federalist..
26 August '19..

Many Americans now know that Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar—two members of “the squad” of far-left congresswomen so much in the news—were recently barred from traveling to Israel to agitate for the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Fewer know all four members of “the squad,” including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, have co-sponsored a bill that accuses the Jewish state of torturing children. Fewer still know the claims made in the bill originate mostly from a group that could be described as the propaganda arm of a terrorist organization.

The so-called “Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act“ was re-introduced in the House by Rep. Betty McCollum, whose congressional district neighbors Omar’s in Minnesota. Until recently, McCollum was considered a supporter of Israel, but a critic of its government.

In February, however, she condemned “[t]he right-wing, extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu and its apartheid-like policies,” adding “there are now members of Congress who are not willing to ignore the Israeli government’s destructive actions because they are afraid of losing an election.”

McCollum’s invective prompted Mark Mellman of the Democratic Majority for Israel to respond that Netanyahu “came to office in a fair and democratic election in which every Arab citizen of Israel had the same right to vote as any Jewish citizen.” Mellman added that “by suggesting that Jews have disproportionate influence on U.S. elections, the Congresswoman exploits an anti-Semitic trope widely used by far right forces from Czarism to fascism.”

McCollum’s bill, while not directly exploiting the anti-Semitic trope of blood libel, trades on the accusation that Israel treats non-Jewish children cruelly and inhumanely.

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

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The much-needed and vital battle for Israel’s open spaces - by Gershon Hacohen

The purpose of our struggle also used to be clear and we'd be wise to embrace it again: We aspire to an existence in the land of our forefathers in all its fields and open spaces, not just behind our gated "villas in the jungle."

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen..
Israel Hayom..
25 August '19..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-fight-for-the-open-space/

The murderous terrorist attack at Danny Spring near Ein Buvin is a reflection of the ancient struggle over territorial control.

The story is about far more than mere unbridled evil striking down a father and his children on a Friday afternoon summer hike. It's a simple matter: Jews and Arabs aren't only fighting over freedom of movement in the open space, but over who controls it. This struggle assumes many different forms, spanning all corners of the land, from the Galilee to the Negev. From the Palestinian perspective, Jews can perhaps exist in their city high-rises and engage in their white-collar occupations, high-tech, and commerce – this is their place as Jews. The open space, on the other hand – the fields, springs, and pastures – these the Arab must control. We should examine the significance of the "villa in the jungle" metaphor, posited by Ehud Barak to describe Israel's existential experience. In their fervor for security, the Jews deem to only exist in spaces surrounded by fences, a type of upscale, safe ghetto whose boundaries they dare not exit.

At the Risk of Further Upsetting Ms. Rashida Tlaib - by Shoshana Bryen

Israelis live not only with checkpoints, but with intrusive security in airports, schools, shopping centers, concert halls, and other places because all have been attacked by people — Palestinians, not Costa Ricans or Laotians or Nepalese — intent on killing them. And yet Israel is here, strong, vibrant, growing, democratic, and tolerant of everyone except those openly dedicated to its destruction. If that further upsets Ms. Tlaib, so be it.

Shoshana Bryen..
Jewish Policy Center..
21 August '19..

Rashida Tlaib was in tears over the conditions in which her grandmother lives in the West Bank, and furious that her mother, an American citizen, was forced to go through a “checkpoint” from Israel once in order to visit her. “As a young girl, visiting Palestine to see my grandparents, I watched as my mother had to go through dehumanizing checkpoints — even though she was a United States citizen and proud American.” She was so sad. Teary. Emotional. Distraught.

In light of that …

Is it insensitive to point out that international Arab wars in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, terror wars (so-called intifadas) in 1989 and 2001, and rocket wars in 2006, 2009, and 2014 have all been started by Arab states or Palestinian leaders against the state of Israel with the intention of destroying it?

It is, perhaps, rude to point out that in the 1949 war of annihilation he declared on Israel, the King of Jordan scooped up the territory that had been allocated for a Palestinian-Arab state. It’s probably uncharitable to mention that he annexed the Palestinian-allotted territory in a move recognized only by Great Britain and Pakistan, but no one was moved to do anything about it. And pitiless to mention that Tlaib’s grandmother was thus illegally occupied from 1949 – 1967. By Jordan. And thick-skinned, perhaps, to point out that Israel only entered the Palestinian picture when the Jordanian king — in a mind-bogglingly stupid moment — entered 1967’s Six-Day War on the fourth day and managed to lose all of his illegally held possessions.

And given what Ms. Tlaib considers to be her grandmother’s suffering, it seems hardhearted to point out that there were no checkpoints during the Jordanian occupation because no Israeli person — no Jewish person — ever passed from Israel into Jordanian-held Jerusalem at all between 1949 and 1967. No Jewish person could pray at the holiest of Jewish sites and 58 synagogues on the eastern side of the city were dynamited and destroyed. And no Jordanian or Palestinian person was permitted by Jordan to pass from Jordan into Israel during that period for work, medical care, or school.

It really is harsh to point out that after Israel acquired the West Bank territory and, in the course, defending itself from the king’s weak-mindedness, Palestinian workers were permitted to travel to and work in Israel — and still are. Some 100,000 – 110,000 Palestinians currently work in Israel and another 30,000 work in West Bank communities. Is it callous to note that those checkpoints were the result of Palestinian terrorism that ended any hope of free or casual passage?

No. It is not.

Amidst the Tlaib/Omar Uproar — Terror Victims Risk Being Forgotten - by Karen Harradine

Malki Roth is a real victim, not Omar or Tlaib. Those who wish to show that they care about justice must not stand shoulder to shoulder with those who hate Israel. Instead, they should pressure Jordan into extraditing Tamimi to account for her crimes in a US court. These wise words from Deuteronomy — “justice, justice shall you pursue” -– have never been more relevant than this week.

Karen Harradine..
Algemeiner..
22 August '19..
Link: https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/08/22/amid-tlaib-omar-uproar-terror-victims-risk-being-forgotten/

August 20 was no ordinary day. It marked the 18th Hebrew memorial date of the murder of Malki Roth and 15 other innocents at the hands of the terrorist Ahlam Tamimi and her collaborators.

Malki’s parents, Arnold and Frimet Roth, have yet to see justice done. As I previously wrote, Tamimi remains free in Jordan, living a life of comfort and privilege.

Malki’s story is being lost amid the roar of misguided support for Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar after they were banned from Israel.

During her response to the ban, Tlaib wasted no time in spreading lies and smears about Israel. She tearfully recounted her “memories” of a visit to her family there as a “young girl,” and watching her mother go through “dehumanizing checkpoints.” Tlaib is 43 years old. This means she must have visited Israel either in the 1980s or the 1990s — when the security checkpoints did not exist.

Tlaib’s insistence that Israel dismantle the security checkpoints, which protect Israelis from Islamist terrorism, could easily lead to more Jewish blood being spilled.

In response to Tlaib and Omar, Frimet Roth said that if the security checkpoints had been built much earlier, the life of her daughter Malki, and thousands of others, could have been saved.

This should have been the real story, not the false heroics of Tlaib and Omar. Their anti-Israel and antisemitic agenda to vilify Jews is there for all to witness.

Who would've thought? To Tlaib trip organizer, murderers are 'heroes' - by Moshe Phillips

...Shooting an American Jewish nature photographer in the head was a “military operation” and the shooter was a “hero.” That’s the group that Tlaib put in charge of her proposed trip to Israel. The House Ethics Committee should immediately investigate this sordid episode. It should insist that Tlaib explain the nature of her relationship with Miftah and the reasons behind her decision to embrace those who praise the murderer of a member of a US senator’s family.

On, March 11, 1978, Rubin was
photographing birds at the Maagan
Michael kibbutz in northern Israel. She
was approached by a group of men who
killed her and stole her car. She was
 the first of 33 people to die in the attack.
(Wikipedia)

Moshe Phillips..
Israel Hayom..
21 August '19..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/to-tlaib-trip-organizer-murderers-are-heroes/

First, they praised the terrorist who murdered a US senator’s niece. Then they were chosen by Rep. Rashida Tlaib to organize her now-canceled trip to Israel.

Tlaib’s outrageous choice of the pro-terrorist group Miftah to run her trip is a slap in the face of the United States Congress and deserves to be investigated by the House Ethics Committee.

The fact that Tlaib chose Miftah to organizer her trip is no secret; it was widely reported by major news media. The problem is that nobody is explaining what Miftah really is. The New York Times, for example, reported only that Miftah is a group “that promotes ‘global awareness and knowledge of Palestinian realities.’”

Ironically, one the “Palestinian realities” of which Miftah reminds us is that the Palestinian Authority and its American supporters regard Palestinian Arab murderers of American citizens as heroes.

The official Miftah website features an essay by one of the group’s leaders, Johara Baker, profusely praising Dalal Mughrabi, the murderer of Gail Rubin, the niece of the late US Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn.).

PM Netanyahu’s carrot-and-stick policy on Gaza - by Ruthi Blum

What’s clear at this moment, though, is that anyone accusing Netanyahu of “having no policy” is either in denial or just dead wrong.

Ruthi Blum..
JNS.org..
20 August '19..

Of all the criticism lobbed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu these days, the claim that he has been exercising restraint towards the terrorists in Gaza to distract from his legal battles and guarantee victory in the fast-approaching Sept. 17 Knesset elections is the most ridiculous. As any member of the Israeli public and political echelon is keenly aware, the one thing that should worry Netanyahu’s opponents is a war.

This is particularly true today, when Israeli residents of the Gaza-border communities—the “envelope” around the Hamas-ruled enclave—are suffering from an understandable mixture of fatigue and fury. Traumatized by living under daily threat of death and destruction with only minimal respite between rockets, riots and incendiary balloons will do that. Especially considering the fact that while Palestinian children in Gaza attend summer camps where they learn how to kill Jews, the Israeli kids on the other side of the fence spend their vacation listening for Red Alert sirens telling them to take cover in the nearest bomb shelter.

That the politicians to the right of Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party have been shouting about a lack of Israeli deterrence makes perfect sense. Though only a handful of such candidates believes in reoccupying Gaza—and the rest don’t really have a viable plan other than applying even more Israeli firepower in the ongoing battle of attrition—all of those running on right-wing tickets are telling the electorate that Netanyahu, whose re-election is the only shot they have at being players in the next government, needs a fierce hawkish push.

But those to the left of Netanyahu also are accusing him of being weak in the face of Palestinian violence. This is not merely hypocritical. It is evidence that even much of the so-called “peace camp” is trying to attract voters who see no chance for peace in the foreseeable future, with or without the soon-to-be-unveiled White House plan.

(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 Critical Debate Over What Should Be Learned from the Gaza Disengagement - by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen

The debate over the interpretation of the clear and present danger emanating from Gaza in the wake of the 2005 unilateral disengagement holds the key to saving Israel from the dangers attending the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,257..
16 August '19..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/gaza-disengagement-lessons/

In the summer of 2005, as Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza drew near, the self-styled “Council for Peace and Security” issued a declaration – signed by hundreds of former senior officers and security officials – that promised that “the disengagement will improve Israel’s security situation.” Fourteen years later, many of these “security experts” – including newly retired general turned leftwing politician Yair Golan – continue to maintain that the disengagement from the Gaza Strip altered Israel’s security situation for the better. They base their claim mainly on comparisons between the number of wounded and killed in the period preceding the disengagement and in the years since.

They do not take into account, however, the massive disruption of the normal life of the country – from the ongoing suffering caused to many Israelis, to the huge investments poured into protecting communities and building another barrier with a price tag far exceeding 4 billion shekels, to the heavy cost of the three large-scale operations (2008-9, 2012, 2014) and the numerous rounds of fighting. The costs of Operation Protective Edge (2014) alone – including total military and civilian outlays and calculations for lost productivity – came out to over 10 billion shekels. The “experts” also ignore the balance of terror, and consequent loss of Israeli freedom of action, that Hamas has established with its rockets and that enables it to upset routines on the Israeli home front at will.

Above all, by making the number of casualties the main criterion by which to assess the security situation, as US generals did in Vietnam to cover up their abysmal failures, the “experts” ignore the fact that a national-security equation does not by any means depend primarily on the number of wounded and killed. If that were indeed the key criterion, most struggles for national liberation would not have happened.

It is no coincidence that those claiming that the unilateral disengagement improved Israel’s security situation are also those who favor further withdrawals in the West Bank. The inevitable linkage between what has transpired in Gaza since the IDF’s departure and the uprooting of the communities in the summer of 2005, and what is likely to occur if a similar step is carried out in the West Bank, calls for comprehensive and critical reassessment of all that has happened in Gaza over the past 14 years.

Palestineism, the Very Embodiment of Toxic Racism - by FirstOneThrough

Palestinian Arabs could achieve sovereignty and statehood in Gaza and Areas A and B tomorrow, but Palestineism has more malicious demands: that Israel not be a Jewish State; that Jews be forbidden from living anywhere in Palestine; and that Jews be denied access and rights to their holy sites. It is Palestineism that is the roadblock to creating a state of Palestine and an enduring peace in the region, nothing else.

FirstOneThrough..
18 August '19..

Racism is a form of hatred which believes that all members of a particular group are inferior and/or evil. In itself, it is ugly but not dangerous, a localized noxious belief system based on bigotry. Racism becomes toxic when it spreads and obtains power.

Such is the state of Palestineism, the effort to weaken, shrink and destroy Israel because it is a Jewish State, as well as to vilify Jews and deny their rights, history and dignity in the Jewish holy land.

The Arab World

Palestineism has been present in the Arab and Muslim world for a hundred years.

Denying Jews and the Jewish State has been at the forefront of the Palestineism. Even before Jews reestablished Jewish sovereignty in their holy land in 1948, Arabs rioted and killed Jews throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s, and petitioned the British who oversaw the Palestine Mandate to bar and limit the entry of Jews during the Holocaust in Europe. When Israel declared itself a Jewish state, the armies of five neighboring Arab Muslim countries invaded with the stated desire to destroy it completely. The Arabs evicted Jews from all lands they seized and specifically forbade Jews from obtaining citizenship (Article 3). Fellow Arab and Muslim nations followed suit, with ten Arab and Muslim countries expelling one million Jews after Israel was founded, irrespective of whether their fellow Jewish countrymen were Zionists.

(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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Paul Findley, the Congressman Who Hated Israel - by Jonathan Schanzer

...As a result of the changes in American culture and attitudes, what used to be considered beyond the pale is slowly becoming mainstream. For Omar and her fellow travelers, this means that displaying overt animosity toward Israel comes at little to no cost. I never asked him personally, but Paul Findley would almost certainly have approved.

Jonathan Schanzer..
Pundicity/Commentary..
September '19..
Link: http://schanzer.pundicity.com/23084/the-congressman-who-hated-israel

Consider this scenario: A legislator from the Midwest targets Israel with a passion and vitriol that smacks of anti-Semitism. The legislator alleges that Israel's supporters in Washington are bought off with Jewish money and that they have too much influence over our politics. When many Americans express their outrage at such comments, the legislator invokes the right to free speech and insists that the sentiments expressed were all for the just cause of getting American policy on a more reasonable and moral path.

This has been the dynamic surrounding Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar's disturbing comments about Israel and America's relationship with the Jewish state. But Omar's false accusations and the outrage they've generated are not without precedent. She is not the first U.S. representative to give public voice to vicious anti-Israel (and anti-American) bigotry and claim the mantle of righteousness. Before Omar, there was the Republican congressman Paul Findley, who died August 9 at the age of 98.

Findley represented Illinois's 20th district from 1961 to 1983. For many years of his congressional career, his foreign-policy ideas were relatively anodyne. As he put it, "I just plain had no interest in the Middle East." This made sense, as his constituents were not much interested in the Middle East, either. But in the late 1970s, after a trip to South Yemen to secure the release of a detained constituent, he had a chance interaction with representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). He soon claimed to have gotten PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat to "put down on paper" an agreement to "establish peace [and] avoid controversy with Israel, if an independent Palestine were established on the West Bank and Gaza, with a connecting corridor." (In an interview Findley granted in 2013, he admitted that Arafat "approved, but declined to sign" this piece of paper.)

The following year, Findley took his ties with Arafat a step further and invited the infamous PLO terror leader for talks in New York City. Findley even called himself "Arafat's best friend in Congress."

At the time, Findley may not have understood why his diplomatic freelancing and his legitimizing of the PLO prompted alarm. He claimed he was merely eminently diplomatic. A former Hill staffer says that Findley "saw himself as a kind of secretary of state for Congress." The staffer recalls that concerned professionals from the pro-Israel community paid several personal visits to Findley's Capitol Hill offices to address the congressman's PLO outreach. But the more they engaged, the more Findley strengthened his pro-PLO positions.

Findley was clearly chafed by them, and was also angry at his congressional colleagues for not following his lead. Looking back, he wrote, "scores of times over the years, I have sat in committee and in the chamber of the House of Representatives as my colleagues behaved, as an undersecretary of state once described them, like 'trained poodles' jumping through hoops held for them." The "them" referred to pro-Israel organizations.

Question. Who’s funding illegal Palestinian settlements in Area C? Nearly 10,000 cases - by Edwin Black

To create a de facto Palestinian state without further negotiation or even diplomatic consultation with the Israelis, European countries—individually and through the European Union—have pumped hundreds of millions of euros annually into scores of illegal building.

Edwin Black..
JNS.org..
15 August '19..

“Area C,” which comprises some 60 percent of the West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria, has become highly volatile again. In the past, debate has centered on Jewish settlements. Now, “illegal Palestinian settlements” sprouting across the region are under the spotlight.

According to Israeli activist watchdog groups such as Regavim, during the last five years, illegal Palestinian settlements and infrastructure have sprawled across more than 9,000 dunams in more than 250 Area C locations, supported by more than 600 kilometers of illegally constructed access roads and more than 112,000 meters of retaining walls and terracing. This massive works project is being conducted in broad daylight, often heralded by tall announcement placards and press releases.

Israeli government officials contacted did not dispute the Regavim numbers. In exasperation, one military spokesman close to the Area C files estimated “close to 10,000” illegal construction efforts are now underway, adding they feel “powerless to stop them.”

(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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Actually, all narratives are not equal. Some are just antisemitic lies. - by Elder of Ziyon

To those on the Palestinian side, the narrative has nothing to do with truth. The narrative itself is meant to delegitimize the undeniable Jewish connection to the land. This is why their "narrative" includes the Khazar theory, the idea that the Jewish kingdoms only existed for a short time, that the Temples were not in Jerusalem if they ever existed at all, that archaelogy has not supported the existence of a Jewish people on the land, that history really begins in 1917 and Zionists are European colonialists. No, it is not competing narratives. It is the truth versus antisemitic lies.

Elder of Ziyon..
14 August '19..

Palestinian Authority prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh met with members of Congress yesterday, and told them, "Israel is waging the war of the narrative, and are pushing the Jewish narrative to control Jerusalem and Palestine, denying the Islamic and Christian narrative, but we are proud of our narrative. The conflict is not a religious conflict, but a political conflict."

There are narratives - and there are lies. The last sentence proves that the Palestinian narrative is the lie, because the only reason he brought up the idea of it not being a religious conflict is because he wants to deny the Jewish religious and historical connection to Israel.

Palestinians make this into a religious conflict every day, by invoking the Al Aqsa Mosque as being under attack, for example. But they know that to a largely Christian audience, the Bible supports the Jewish view, so they want to downplay their own hijacking of Islam to inflate the importance of Al Aqsa and Jerusalem, which were roundly ignored by the Muslim world before Zionism.

There was an interesting article in Gulf newspaper Al Khaleej by Hafez Barghouti where he attacks the ideas that Palestine is not written in the Quran or Bible and that Mohammed's night journey to the "farthest mosque" - "Al-Aqsa" - was not a miraculous flight on a winged steed to Jerusalem but an ordinary journey to a mosque in Arabia, to Taif or the Al-Ja'aranah Mosque near Mecca.

(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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