Hostage Families Demands is Music to Hamas

In a press conference on Sunday morning, the October Council—consisting of hostages’ families, bereaved relatives of Oct. 7 victims and mothers of reservists read statements aloud conveyed a uniform message to the powers-that-be in Jerusalem: End the war and bring home all the hostages. Their plea for a deal to return the captives held by Hamas for the past 22 months isn’t new.

On the contrary, accusing the government of pursuing its goals in Gaza at the expense of the hostages has become a protest-movement mantra that every Israeli knows by heart and it’s a narrative backed by the mainstream Israeli media and embraced by Hamas.

Former political/military officials whose hatred for Bibi outweighs any vestige of patriotism they once possessed go even further. They’re perpetuating the lie, spread by the Jewish state’s most virulent enemies, that Israel is guilty of war crimes also embraced by Hamas

Again, nothing novel about the noxious noise that’s music to Hamas’s ears. Ditto for the call to paralyze the economy via the revival of the general-strike idea.

But the current attempt to pressure the premier into meeting unreasonable demands came on the heels of the announcement that Israel would be taking over Gaza City. The Cabinet approved the plan after a 10-hour session, during which ministers debated among themselves and with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir about how to proceed in the face of a failed “negotiation” process with Hamas.  

The upshot was a diluted version of the original proposal to take military control of the entire Strip. Nevertheless, the protest movement went into high gear, hysterically citing a leaked statement attributed to Zamir—that the operation would result in the death of the hostages and hundreds of soldiers.

There’s no concrete evidence that Zamir actually expressed such a sentiment. In fact he publicly stated that the Israel Defense Forces under his command would implement with vigor the course of action agreed upon by the political echelon.

This isn’t the reason that the Histadrut labor federation, which represents some 800,000 Israeli trade unionists, isn't endorsing the strike, however. No, it supports the protest movement in principle. This also is music to Hamas’s ears.

But the general strike it staged last September to pressure the government to reach a ceasefire deal with Hamas did little more than disrupt the lives of Israelis in a way that wasn’t helpful to the cause.

Aside from that, it turns out that the bulk of the workforce under the Histadrut umbrella is on vacation until the end of August. As for the hi-tech sector, which has said it will join the strike: One employee in that sector quipped that Sundays are very light on the keyboard in any case, so techies staying home on Aug. 17 will hardly be affected.

In an interesting twist, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum hasn’t lent its support to the event—or at least not yet. Perhaps its leadership was waiting to hear what Netanyahu had to say to the foreign press on Sunday afternoon, and later that evening to the Hebrew-language media, before settling on a strategy.

Speaking to journalists, Netanhahu said was that he was done with the “drips and drabs”—that he was aiming for the release of all 20 of the hostages. This was a reference to the captives who are still alive.

Still, the fear that the intention to defeat rather than deal with Hamas could easily be sidetracked wasn’t baseless. It stemmed, among other reasons, from reports of a meeting on Saturday in Ibiza, Spain between U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani. Not a good sign.

To make matters more suspicious—or precarious—the Qatari news outlet Al Araby Al Jadeed, said that a delegation of Hamas leaders landed in Egypt on Monday to resume “ceasefire talks” where they left off. You know, with Hamas basking in the global campaign blaming Israel for a fake famine on Gaza, while refusing to release the hostages whose actual starvation it’s been filming for added torture. Just as it video-documented the atrocities it committed on Oct, 7, 2023—for the whole world to see. And conveniently forget.

When did cutting off one’s own nose ever succeed in spiting his foe’s face? The answer is that the protest movement considers Netanyahu a greater enemy than Hamas. Its prominent members have gone so far as to admit it, loudly and proudly and this is music to Hamas’s ears.

 (Based on article by Ruthie Blum at https://tinyurl.com/ynm3m637  )

The Gaza War and the West's Reckoning

Full article at https://x.com/Mr_Andrew_Fox/status/1947566906791100527

The Gaza war, while devastating in its own right, has revealed something more profound and more disturbing than the immediate tragedy in the Middle East. It has laid bare the West’s internal decline: the dominance of post-modern thinking, a failure of integration, a tolerance for imported hatreds, and a troubling vulnerability to foreign-funded disinformation. What started as a distant conflict has rapidly escalated into chaos on our streets, campuses, and institutions. Antisemitism surges. Extremism thrives. Underpinning it all is the exploitation of our freedoms by those seeking to destroy us from within.

The erosion of moral clarity within Western institutions, as revealed by the Gaza war, is deeply rooted in the intellectual decline caused by postmodern thinking..

The Gaza death toll is a perfect example. Rather than simply analysing the data we have, there is a whole academic sector dedicated to “proving” that the death toll is higher, simply because their feelings tell them it should be. Thus, we see a slew of methodologically unsound academic reports elevating the death toll, based on shaky research that seeks to reverse-engineer false conclusions, with outcomes predetermined long before the research began. The media report on these studies, and so false data floods the ecosystem of discussion.

This is symptomatic of the intellectual collapse in Western academia. Campuses steeped in post-modern ideology no longer teach students how to think, but what to feel. Critical thinking, once the very foundation of liberal education, has been replaced by critical theory, which sees every issue through the lens of race, power, and oppression. Truth is not determined by logic or evidence but by who can claim the greatest victimhood. In this paradigm, Jews are recast as oppressors simply because Israel exists and succeeds, despite their historic suffering and minority status.

This mindset has given rise to campus mobs who chant “intifada” and “globalise the resistance” without understanding (or perhaps not caring) what those slogans involve. It fuels the journalist who insists that “context” justifies atrocities, and the NGO that parrots Hamas death tolls without a shred of source criticism.

It has also corrupted our moral vocabulary. Terms like “genocide,” “colonialism,” and “apartheid” are now used not as serious legal or historical concepts, but as tools to attack the West and defend its enemies.

This is why facts no longer matter. Hamas can release a propaganda video, and it spreads faster than any IDF rebuttal. The rape and massacre of Israeli civilians is downplayed, while the mere accusation of disproportionate response becomes the dominant story. In a post-modern culture, emotion often trumps evidence. Narrative is everything, and if the narrative suits the ideological agenda, then it becomes sacred and untouchable.

The ultimate outcome is a culture that is disarmed in the face of evil. When morality is solely defined by power, victims who possess any form of power (Jews, Israel, the West) are recast as villains.

This is the crux of the matter: we are not seeing just an attack on Israel. This is an attack on the West.

Nowhere was this moral confusion more apparent than on American university campuses. Universities that once prided themselves on being centres of free thought have instead become breeding grounds for hatred. At Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell, students celebrated Hamas's atrocities, blaming Israel for the 7 October massacre. Administrators, terrified of offending activists, responded with cowardice. The line between protest and sympathising with terror blurred, and Jewish students were left abandoned.

This did not happen by chance; for decades, Soviet information operations pushed the post-modern line to left-leaning fellow travelers in academia. Russian propaganda continues to encourage, amplify and assault the fault lines in our societies. The corruption was also bought and paid for, in recent years. Qatari billions have flooded Western academia, creating ideological allies on campuses.

The result is academic departments that operate more like propaganda tools: a ruined intellectual critical paradigm, financially-compromised academics shaping civil servant and media narratives, and student groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) that can organise “Day of Rage” rallies within hours of Hamas atrocities. Our universities, and the state and media institutions they inform, have legitimised hatred under the banner of social justice.

The West’s openness has become its Achilles heel. Adversaries understand this. Iran, Hamas, Qatar, Russia and their fellow travelers exploit our freedoms with surgical precision. They flood our social media with lies, fund our institutions, radicalise our youth and our immigrant populations, divide the remainder, and then sit back as our societies unravel from within.

This is not just about Israel. It never is. As history shows, when antisemitism surges, democracy itself is under threat. The Jews are the canary in the coal mine. If we cannot protect them, we have failed to protect the moral integrity of our society.

I fear we are lost. Our governments cannot even recognise the problem, let alone conceive a solution. We are ignoring the canary’s warning, and the entire mine is collapsing around us.

What do you really know about the HAREDI Draft.

For full report see https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/israel-two-big-lies

Looking at the most explosive political issue threatening to derail the Israeli government mid-war: namely, the conscription of roughly 63,000 young Haredi men to the Israel Defense Forces. One would hardly know, listening to the hyperventilation in the Israeli media, that there are already 6,000 Haredi men serving in the army, that hundreds of them are combat soldiers, and that they volunteer in such solid and consistent numbers that the IDF saw fit, in 1999, to establish an independent battalion just for Haredi soldiers, called Netzah Yehuda.

How come Haredis don’t serve in the army? Why those Haredis who showed up rejected.

Haim Ramon, a longtime Labor Party politician who served as a minister in Yitzhak Rabin’s cabinet happened to browse a document released by the Knesset’s research and information center that provided statistics about various population groups and their representation in the IDF. One stat in particular left Ramon feeling confused: Since Oct. 7, the Knesset revealed, 4,000 young Haredi men showed up of their own volition and asked to volunteer to fight, an initiative that would’ve doubled the number of Haredi soldiers overnight and proven a potential way out of the political impasse.

Almost immediately, the IDF deemed 3,120 of these men unfitting to serve, mostly for being too physically weak to fight. Which, if you know anything about the IDF, is a shocking revelation. A non-Haredi Israeli would have to suffer from a truly debilitating health condition to be found unfit for service; otherwise, 18-year-olds struggling with all manner of maladies—asthma, say, or a bad back or a minor heart condition, even with Downs Syndrome —are happily recruited and assigned to support positions that do not require strenuous physical exertion. You can find these excellent and motivated men and women serving as intelligence officers or riflery instructors, drivers or parachute packers, performing services the army absolutely needs. And you’d think that with the national interest allegedly being the swift swelling of the IDF’s ranks, the army would’ve made an effort to accommodate these enthusiastic young Haredis in its ranks.

Instead, not only were they rejected, but also, of the 880 volunteers who were found fit, only 540, or 61 percent, were recruited. In total, then, of the throngs of proud and patriotic black-hatted Israelis who, when it mattered most, wished to join their brothers and sisters in fighting, the army accepted a mere 13.5 percent.

This heartbreaking account provides us with two urgent insights.

First, the entire debate about Haredis in the army is predicated on a bright, shiny untruth. The army doesn’t need Haredi recruits to meet its goals. If it did, it would’ve welcomed every one, or at least the ones physically fit to fight. The army further understands that fully integrating Haredim into its ranks would require a wide array of logistical challenges—providing strictly kosher food, for example, or addressing concerns rising from coed military service—it currently cannot and does not want to address.

Second, while liberal Israeli politicians are quick to refer to Haredis in derogatory terms like shirkers and parasites, the Haredi community has just shown that it is more committed than ever to seeing itself as part of Israel’s national narrative. If you’re looking for a bit of perspective there, a 2023 report from the State Comptroller’s office revealed that, in 2021, a whopping 32 percent of young military-age Tel Avivis chose not to join the IDF, a fact that generated precisely zero national outcry.

Put bluntly, anyone who is asking why Haredis don’t serve in the army should first ask why the army widely rejected those Haredis who showed up.

 

Quote of the day from Catherine Perez-Shakdam, executive director of We Believe in Israel:

“Israel, Mon Amour. You are my identity, my history, my future. You are the embodiment of a people’s unyielding spirit, the living proof that we will not be erased. I shall never cease to love you.”

 

9 children in 4 years

Nachum Fleischer is an ultra-Orthodox Jew who lives in Canada. He got married in 2020, and 9 months later, his wife gave birth to triplets. A year and a half later, they had triplets again. And now, just 4 years after getting married, they have had their 3^rd set of triplets. That’s 9 children in 4 years!

 

Direct from Gaza to donate bone marrow to 3-year-old

When Matan Amir registered with Hadassah’s bone marrow registry on the day he enlisted in the IDF, he provided a saliva sample and forgot about it - until Hadassah informed him, while he was fighting in Gaza, that he was a genetic match for a 3-year-old boy diagnosed with a rare blood disorder. Matan agreed to help. He was released from Gaza, and underwent a pelvic bone procedure. The recipient is doing well. After a regulatory 12-month delay, Matan hopes to meet the boy. Matan means gift. How appropriate!

 

Volunteer medic injured on Oct. 7 returns to service with ‘ambucycle’

Seriously wounded United Hatzalah emergency medic Rabbi Chaim Sassi is back on active duty after receiving a custom-made ambucycle that accommodates his lingering leg injury. Sassi, who also serves as the regional rabbi for United Hatzalah in Sderot, underwent a long rehabilitation, but was determined to get back to work. The ambucycle allows Sassi to ride safely despite balance issues caused by his leg injury. United Hatzalah CEO, Ehud Davidson: “Sassi is an inspiration to us all.”

 

Disabled rehab patients enjoy an exhilarating treat

ADI (Ability, Diversity, Inclusion) helps the rehabilitation of people with disability. More than a dozen war-wounded military and civilian rehab patients from ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran recently took to the southern Israel skies with pilots from “Ananim: Flights for the Community.” The exhilarating flights are a metaphor for unlocking potential beyond limitations.

 

Golders Green boy wrote Brian Epstein’s first UK #1

Martin Dover, who was a teacher at Carmel College when I was there, once shared with me that he was Brian Epstein’s barmitzvah teacher. Epstein – the subject of a new biopic, “Midas Man” – not only managed the Beatles, but also another popular Liverpool group, Gerry and the Pacemakers. In fact, Epstein’s first UK number one was Gerry and the Pacemakers’ “How Do You Do It?” The lyrics for this hit song were written in Golders Green by a good Jewish Golders Green boy, songwriter Mitch Murray.

 

Medical clowns shorten hospital stay for children with pneumonia

We already know that visits from a medical clown can help reduce stress and anxiety in hospitalised children. After studying the impact of medical clowns on children who are hospitalised with pneumonia, a team from Carmel Medical Center in Haifa has found that the children spend less time in hospital if they are visited by medical clowns, who sing and play music with the children, and encourage them to eat and drink independently.

 

Bigoted vandals smash bust of Chaim Weizmann at Manchester University

In Room 27 on Floor 2 at the London’s National Portrait Gallery is a bust of Chaim Weizmann that Sir Jacob Epstein completed in 1934. I recall a replica of this bust in Rabbi Kopul Rosen’s study in Carmel College. I thought of this bust when I learned that bigoted anti-Zionist vandals had destroyed a bust of Weizmann in Manchester University, where Israel’s first president worked for decades in his chemistry laboratory.

 

Upgraded training base in Jordan Valley for ultra-Orthodox soldiers

Despite current tensions surrounding the Haredi military service exemption law, the new ultra-Orthodox brigade of combat soldiers is set to move into its upgraded training base in the Jordan Valley in December. The base has 4 new synagogues and specialized infrastructure designed to accommodate religious requirements. The first ultra-Orthodox infantry battalion is expected to be combat-ready by November 2025.

 

Mazal tov to the winners of the Israel Defence Award

The Israel Defence Award is presented by the President of Israel to people and organisations who made significant contributions to the defence of the State of Israel. At the 2024 awards ceremony, the winners included the David’s Sling air defence system, the Namer armoured personnel carrier, and the IDF’s technology-enhanced target bank project. Because some of the recipients are still working on top secret projects, the group photos of the winners featured some winners standing with their back to the camera.

 

“You are my identity, my history, my future.”

Catherine Perez-Shakdam is a French Jewish journalist, political analyst and commentator who converted to Islam. After divorcing her Muslim husband, she now identifies as a Zionist and as a Jew. In an op-ed in The Times of Israel headlined “Israel, Mon Amour,” she writes: “You are my identity, my history, my future. You are the embodiment of a people’s unyielding spirit, the living proof that we will not be erased. You are not just the land I inhabit, but the hope that inhabits me. You are the story we write anew, the promise we keep alive. I shall never cease to love you.”

 

 

Yanky Fachler

yankyfachler@gmail.com +353 86 8575162

Israel was Right about how Hamas Operates

Video - Miss Iraq Condemns the Hamas Agenda - https://tinyurl.com/ycxeyavu

  For the full article from the JP go to - https://tinyurl.com/fx7wjjdn

The evidence that Israel had been correct all along about Hamas’s nefarious mode of operation began to pile up soon after the IDF began its offensive.  For years Israel has said that Hamas conducts its ongoing campaign of terrorism against Israel from within civilian sites in Gaza: homes, businesses, schools, refugee facilities… and hospitals.  And it had always been dismissed by the international community as paranoia or disinformation.

The horrific October 7 massacre by Hamas that forced Israel to declare war against the terrorist government of Gaza was launched with the declaration that Israel, once and for all, was going to do something about it.  The evidence that Israel had been correct about Hamas began to pile up soon after the IDF began its offensive.

Early last week, IDF Spokesman R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari revealed an underground Hamas command center under Gaza’s Rantisi Hospital that contained not only suicide vests, rocket-propelled grenades, and a variety of weapons, but also signs, such as baby bottles, that Hamas had held Israeli hostages there. He also noted that an IDF robot found additional terror tunnels, which were powered by electricity being siphoned off from the hospital for use by the terrorists underground.  

That prompted US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to tell CNN, “You can see even from open source reporting that Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command-and-control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters. Without getting into this specific hospital or that specific claim, this is Hamas’ track record, both historically and in this conflict.”

We saw the evidence ourselves.  Later in the week, the IDF took control of Shifa Hospital, long asserted to be the location of a Hamas headquarters. On Wednesday, the IDF brought The Jerusalem Post and other selected media outlets to view Hamas’s terror infrastructure, including its several-hundred-meter-long tunnel network.

The Post’s Yonah Jeremy Bob reported on his eyewitness visit that next to the Qatar facility within the Shifa complex was a vast amount not only of Hamas guns and grenades – which the IDF found hidden throughout the hospital – but also rocket-propelled grenade launchers, large and small advanced drones for delivering explosives, and a variety of sophisticated intelligence platforms.

The vastness of the tunnels themselves, the variety of sophisticated rooms and the blast door the IDF had displayed earlier last week, was testimony to how important this location was to Hamas.  Adding to that irrefutable evidence that Shifa was being used as a terror base, the IDF last week also released information and video footage showing that Hamas brought some of the hostages it kidnapped in Israel to Shifa.  The footage shows Hamas terrorists inside the hospital on the morning of October 7 forcibly transporting a Nepalese and a Thai civilian, both kidnapped from Israeli territory.

On Thursday, the IDF said that Hamas “used the hospital as a refuge for its terrorist forces and even brought Israeli hostages there who were kidnapped during the day of slaughter. A pathology report confirmed that soldier Noa Marciano was murdered on the grounds of Shifa Hospital.”  The IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) announced on Thursday that they had arrested Dr. Muhammad Abu Salamiyah, the director of Shifa.

 According to a statement, he was being interrogated by the Shin Bet after significant testimony and video evidence that Shifa had been used as a command center for Hamas during his tenure.  There were reports on Thursday that Hamas was demanding the IDF withdraw from Shifa as part of the hostage deal this was rejected.

The longer Israel stays in Gaza, the more it is discovering about Hamas’s web of evil and its cynical use of civilians, especially the infirm, to provide a cover for their murderous actions.  The world should be coming together to back Israel’s actions and encourage it to continue its efforts to uproot the terror that has held Gaza captive for close to two decades.

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IDF Creates Unit for Special Needs Youngsters

Video Of The Week - Special Needs Youngsters Absorbed in the IDF - https://tinyurl.com/y276fpnu                                      

 For the full Article from JNS go to - https://tinyurl.com/mup84s58 

Most Israeli bands and performers would be happy to land a few gigs a month, but how many have clocked 500 performances in the past 14 months? Earlier this week, the Special in Uniform (SIU) Band of the Israel Defense Forces rocked the popular Zappa Club in Tel Aviv with their 500th performance in less than two years.  

The band, whose members are IDF soldiers with special needs, took to the stage of the prestigious entertainment venue had the audience on its feet.

Backstage, Adi Yehuda, 21, one of the lead SIU band singers, told how the rigorous schedule of rehearsals and performances enhances her life. “Being part of the band has made me the best version of myself,“ she said. 

“I feel comfortable on the stage, it feels like home to me. I love the music, the stage, the friends in the band,” she added. “I’m so grateful to be in uniform and to have performed for the president, the prime minister, the chief of staff, and to represent Israel to audiences abroad,” she added.  But the main motivator for Adi when she gets up to perform is to demonstrate that “we are not shy about our disabilities. This is us and we want to be in the army.”

That’s one of the major goals of the SIU program that has been supported by JNF-USA since 2014. The band is one component of a wide program to integrate young adults with disabilities into the IDF and into Israeli society.  Today the program has 950 participants serving in units all over Israel.

While the average Israeli 16-year-old gets a call-up notice and goes through a process of being assessed and assigned to an army unit, students in special needs programs are automatically refused.  

“SIU works with individual kids to find their strengths and together with social workers and psychologists, we make sure they have a place in the army,” Attia explained.  

High-functioning students with Asperger’s syndrome may find themselves analyzing maps or becoming experts in counting the multitude of components that make up the Iron Dome Defense system, while those with lesser abilities will be assigned to necessary work on the base in maintenance or in the kitchen.  Attia maintains that the greatest barrier to the integration of people with disabilities is awareness on the part of regular soldiers. “The goal of this band is to increase awareness,” he said. 

All young people love music, and when the band gets up and performs at a professional level, the regular soldiers admire them and see them as people they can respect and bring into their social circles, Attia explained.  Attia’s dedication to the integration of people with disabilities stems from a profound personal experience.  After an illustrious IDF career, Attia suffered a serious injury in 2006 and was hospitalized for a lengthy period, becoming despondent. The only person who was able to relate to him and pull him out of the depths was a young woman with Down syndrome.  “In the hospital, I vowed to dedicate myself to people with special needs,” he said. 

Eliyahu Natan is the father of Liya, 20, who has Williams syndrome, which is often marked by some physical deficiencies and learning problems, but also high sociability and outgoing personality traits.  “She’s a natural performer because of her syndrome,” Natan told JNS, “so now her whole life is music.”

Yoram Porat, another parent of a band member, shares Natan’s sentiments. Porat’s goal is to “show everyone that special needs people are different but able.” His daughter, Noa, has been exposed to people, places and experiences that have made her more independent and given her self-confidence, he said.

Jewish National Fund-USA’s Disabilities Task Force chair Gary Kushner praised the band for their tenacity. “Reaching their 500th performance is a remarkable achievement for our Special in Uniform band,” he said.  “Their musical journey serves as an inspiration to us all as they continue to break barriers and challenge preconceived notions about what is possible. Through their passion, talent and unwavering dedication, they have proven that disability is never a limitation when given the opportunity to shine.”  

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3,600-plus Palestinian Terror Attacks in first half of 2023

Video Of The Week- Palestinian Refugee Camp Violence - https://tinyurl.com/3st98975

The number of shootings has already surpassed last year's total.

The escalation in Palestinian terrorism that started over a year ago shows no signs of abating, data from Rescuers Without Borders (Hatzalah Judea and Samaria) published on Tuesday indicates.

In the first six months of 2023, the emergency service recorded 3,640 acts of terror throughout Israel, including 2,118 cases of rock-throwing, 799 attacks with Molotov cocktails, 18 attempted stabbings and six car- rammings.

The number of shootings has already surpassed last year’s total, with 101 instances of gunfire directed at Israelis reported. Hatzalah’s figures do not include the hundreds of attacks on security personnel during counterterrorism operations in Palestinian villages.

Palestinian terrorists have killed 28 people and wounded 362 others since January, the organization said.

In addition, two Israelis died from wounded sustained in previous years. Shimon Maatuf died in February after suffering severe head wounds in an attack by two Palestinians armed with axes in 2022, and New York-born Chana Nachenberg died last month after a Palestinian suicide bombing put her in a coma 22 years ago.

Rescuers Without Borders was founded in 2000, at the beginning of the Second Intifada, with the goal of establishing a civilian emergency response infrastructure in Judea and Samaria. Eventually, the organization expanded the scope of its work to include all of Israel.

Hatzalah released its biannual report on terrorism amid yet another uptick in Arab attacks throughout Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

Earlier on Tuesday, security forces thwarted a possible terrorist attack at the Shuafat checkpoint in northeastern Jerusalem, arresting a 14-year-old Palestinian suspect who behaved suspiciously. Officers found a knife in his possession.

On Monday, Palestinian terrorists threw rocks at vehicles in northern Samaria, wounding at least four Israeli civilians, including a woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy. At least three cars were targeted in the attack, which took place on Route 55 near Ma’ale Shomron, medical officials said.

A day earlier, an Israeli man was shot and seriously wounded, and his two daughters lightly injured, in a Palestinian drive-by shooting near the Tekoa Junction in Gush Etzion. According to the IDF, the terrorist opened fire from a passing vehicle at the victims’ car on a highway about 15 kilometers (9 miles) south of Jerusalem.

Following an hours-long manhunt, security forces apprehended the suspected shooter in nearby Bethlehem, where he had barricaded himself inside a mosque.

 

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Israel Bashing by the Media Unabated

Video Of The Week - Gazans Receiving Work Permits in Israel https://tinyurl.com/58w7yvkh

 written by Melanie https://tinyurl.com/44sj4aw8

Much of the West believes the antisemitic lie that the Jews are responsible for their own destruction.

(JNS) Among the media’s customary Israel-bashers, reporting on Israel’s military operation this week against terrorist enclaves in the city of Jenin was predictably atrocious.

Jenin had become a hub of deadly terrorism, responsible for the murder of 31 Israelis in 2022 and 24 so far this year.

Almost half the inhabitants of Jenin belong to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). In 2023, more than 50 shooting attacks emanated from Jenin. Recently, two rockets were launched from there towards Israel.

During the two-day operation, the IDF uncovered bomb-making laboratories, a homemade rocket launcher, explosives, weapons and military gear.

Yet The New York Times saluted Palestinian terrorism as “an ethos of defiance” and described Jenin admiringly as having “a long legacy as a bastion of armed struggle.”

Other media outlets misrepresented Israel’s response to murderous terrorism as wanton aggression. They did so through systematic decontextualization, having largely ignored the growing toll of Israeli terrorist victims and the attacks that Israeli security forces thwart almost daily.

The day after the launch of the IDF operation, a car-ramming and stabbing attack took place in Tel Aviv in which at least nine people were injured and a pregnant woman lost her baby.

The usual suspects in the media instantly misrepresented this as an all-too predictable “revenge” attack in a dismal cycle of violence. But there is no “cycle of violence.” There are unending attempts to murder Israelis and there is the Israeli attempt to deter further attacks.

Moreover, there is a fundamental difference between the Palestinians’ deliberate attempts to murder Israeli civilians and the enormous care the IDF takes to avoid civilian deaths.

The IDF reported that all 12 of the Palestinians killed in the Jenin operation were combatants. In such a densely populated area, where terrorist caches and operation rooms are deliberately situated next to schools and hospitals, causing no civilian deaths in such an intense raid was an extraordinary achievement. 

Not only was this given no credit by the media, but the entire event was framed in the most distorted and malevolent way. The leading offender in this—and the most important on account of its unique global reach and reputation for trustworthiness—was the BBC.

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Hezbollah Provocations Raise Israel-Lebanon Tensions

Video Of The Week -Tense Quiet Takes Hold Along Israel-Lebanon Border -  https://tinyurl.com/4jyu2ej2

For the full Article from BICOM go to https://tinyurl.com/56d9wmtj

 

What happened: Two incidents on the Israel-Lebanon border on Wednesday raised the tension between Israel and Hezbollah.

·        In the first incident several men approached the border fence in the area close to Zarit. According to the IDF, Israel deployed “non-lethal” measures to prevent them from damaging the fence.

·        According to the IDF, “a number of suspects approached the border fence with Lebanon and attempted to tamper with the barrier. IDF forces immediately identified them and employed measures to push them back.”

·        The IDF released surveillance footage showing four people approaching the border fence, and running away after an explosion.

·        According to Lebanese reports, three men thought to be Hezbollah operatives were taken to a nearby hospital in Tyre.

·        In the second incident, a number of suspects approached the security fence in the area near Metulla. They threw rocks and started a fire adjacent (on the Lebanese side) close to the security fence. IDF soldiers fired warning shots into the air, and the suspects withdrew.

Context: Tension has been growing for the last month, since Hezbollah placed two tents south of the Blue Line (inside Israel) in the Mount Dov / Sheba farms area.

·        Israel has so far used diplomatic channels (with the US, UN and France) which led to one of the tents being dismantled.

·        Later on Wednesday, Hezbollah leader Nasrallah made a speech, marking the 17^th anniversary of the start of the second Lebanon war. Nasrallah warned Israel that Hezbollah would retaliate if the IDF were to remove the tent that remains. According to Nasrallah, the tent is inside Lebanon and he is demanding the removal of the fence Israel built around the northern part of Ghajar.

·        Ghajar is an Alawite village, on the Lebanese, Syrian, Israeli border, captured by Israel in 1967. In 1981 it was annexed by Israel and its residents offered full Israeli citizenship. The village’s northern neighbourhood has since expanded into Lebanon. The UN recognises the Blue Line runs through the village, but Israel has built the fence around the northern perimeter to ensure security.

·        Earlier in the week, US envoy Amos Hochstein met with Prime Minister Netanyahu to update on US efforts to deescalate the tension.  It was Hochstein that brokered the Israel-Lebanon maritime agreement last year.

·        Hochstein’s visit has been interpreted as a sign of a dual US approach to Israel. Whilst the Biden administration in unhappy about Israeli government’s domestic and West Bank policies, they have shared concerns when it comes to regional security.

·        As well as the erection of the tents, last week an anti-tank missile was fired close to Ghajar border area.

·        In recent months Hezbollah has set up numerous observation posts, permanent and semi-permanent structures along the border.

·        There is concern that Israel’s enemies interpret the country’s current internal divisions as a moment of weakness and will seek to exploit the security situation.

Looking ahead: US envoy Hochstein is expected to meet Lebanese political leaders in the days ahead, as part of his shuttle diplomacy to reduce tension and avoid a military conflagration.

·        Following the incidents on the border, Defence Minister Gallant said, “Anyone who tests us will get a response. We have a lot to do, and we will know how to do what is needed at the right time.”

·        The IDF believes that Nasrallah will not instigate an all-out war but may be willing to risk several days of fighting, the consequences of which are unknown, but include fears of a wider conflict.                                                                                           

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