COPING WITH BARBARIC, RELIGIOUSLY INSPIRED TERRORISM

By Isi Leibler 26/11/2014

http://tinyurl.com/l2konzq

The time has come to openly confront the international community and above all, Obama, for having mollycoddled Abbas and failing to exert pressure on him to bring an end to this murderous incitement.

The horror that engulfed the entire nation in the wake of the barbaric murder of Jews engaged in prayer in a Jerusalem synagogue remains palpable.

Although there have been other devastating acts of terror against innocent civilians, this time it was clearly religiously motivated. It was undoubtedly inspired by the incitement and despicable lies repeatedly broadcast by our purported peace partner, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who created frenzy among Muslims by alleging that Israelis would “contaminate” the Temple Mount by praying there and then invade and destroy Al Aksa mosque. Such outbursts are reminiscent of the Arab riots in the 1930s.

Abbas also sent his condolences to the family of a terrorist slain while attempting to murder a Jew the previous week, hailing him as a “martyr” who “rose to heaven while defending our people’s rights and holy places.” This was followed by false allegations that Israelis had murdered a Jerusalem Arab bus driver, even though a Palestinian coroner confirmed that it was a suicide. To top it off, the day following King Abdullah’s meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jordan in order to ease tensions, Abbas called on his people to launch “a day of rage” against Israelis.

This latest escalation of incitement is yet another extension of the traditional hatred against Jews inculcated among the Arabs but which accelerated after the Oslo accords. Yasser Arafat and then Abbas have effectively brainwashed generations of Arabs – from kindergarten age – into fanatically hating Jews and sanctifying as “martyrs” those willing to sacrifice their lives and gain paradise by killing them.

The Palestinians have, in fact, been molded into a criminal society adopting a culture of death comparable only to the Nazis who, once in power, also brainwashed Germans into committing barbaric crimes. And those, including Jews, who morally equate this monstrous society with Israel because the Jewish state like any country also includes deviants and degenerates, are making obscene analogies.

Every level of Israeli society, from the leadership to the media and down to the man in the street, reacts with shock, horror, disgust and condemnation against our deviants. Contrast this to the public display, not merely in Gaza but also in Ramallah, Bethlehem and Nablus, as Palestinians celebrated the most recent horror their “martyrs” had inflicted on Jews praying in a synagogue.

It is noteworthy that our “peace partner” Abbas had to be cajoled twice by US Secretary of State John Kerry (who subsequently thanked him profusely) for condemning this latest act of terror. Yet even when he did, he had the chutzpah to blame Israel for inciting Muslims, repeating his lies that Israel is attacking Al Aksa mosque. His Fatah spokesmen immediately stressed that he was forced to make the statement for “diplomatic” reasons.

Furthermore, Sultan Abu al-Einein, his senior adviser and member of the Fatah Central Committee, praised those who carried out the synagogue massacre, stating, “Blessed be your quality weapons, the wheels of your cars, your axes and kitchen knives because [they are being used] according to Allah’s will. We are the soldiers of Allah.”

These murders, some of which were committed by Arab Israelis who worked and interfaced with Israelis, have had a devastating impact on good relationships between Israeli Jews and Arabs. Understandably, many Jews now feel uncomfortable and suspicious of their Arab neighbors.

The majority of Israeli Arabs are law-abiding and wish to live in peace with us, but major efforts are required to convince Jews to regain their trust in those Arabs living and working among them.

This will require more than government and media appeals calling for tolerance. Much will depend on whether there are moderate, responsible Arabs willing to speak out, condemn the terrorists and take active steps to effectively excommunicate the minority of fanatics in their midst – including their Knesset representatives who currently openly identify with the terrorists and praise their vile acts.

The outrageous public celebrations by the Arab residents of the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber are an example of what must no longer be tolerated. This village was an incubator of dozens of terrorist attacks, including the recent synagogue massacre, the murder of the eight Merkaz Harav students in 2008 and many others. The family of the murderers publicly proclaimed: “We are proud of what they did ... They are heroic martyrs.” Paradoxically, the village pleaded with the High Court to remain on the Israeli side of the separation barrier.

We must adopt tough measures if we are to avoid a breakdown between Israeli Jews and the Arab minority. The first step must be for the government to reinforce security, including in Arab areas that had until now been unsupervised. This is an awesome challenge and requires punitive measures for those engaged in anti-state or antisocial activities such as stone throwing, destruction of private property and incitement against the state. The homes of the terrorists’ families should be destroyed and the residence status of convicted terrorists and their families revoked, as this will serve as a major deterrent even to those willing to die in order to kill Jews.

Should the international community condemn this as an infraction of human rights or the US again complain that such steps “harm the interests of peace,” we should remind them that it is our lives that are at stake and that they should not interfere.

Beyond that, we should now repudiate the misplaced displays of goodwill we have made over the years in order to placate the international community.

These have been counterproductive and only served to camouflage the Palestinians’ criminal society and culture of death. It is one thing to demonstrate our high moral standards to bleeding hearts abroad by providing the top medical facilities to relatives of Hamas leaders calling for our destruction and applauding barbaric acts. But while Hamas leaders continue to behave in this outrageous manner, we should cease providing electricity and services to Hamastan. The prime minister should state that if those in control of Gaza are going to continue publicly calling on their people to murder us, we will simply terminate all contact.

The situation with the PA is different, because unlike Hamas, it does not have total authority in the region under its jurisdiction. Abbas remains in office despite the absence of elections since 2006. But he is party to the violation of civil rights among his own people, the rampant corruption and the rabid incitement against Israel. Yet his PA maintains order in the West Bank, not merely in order to retain his “moderate” image with the US, but more so to prevent the upheavals that would eventuate if a full intifada broke out, which could enable Hamas to assume control. Thus Abbas directs his terror incitement to Jerusalem and creates religious hysteria about Israelis destroying Al Aksa mosque.

Abbas has been emboldened and encouraged in the knowledge that US President Barack Obama and his administration will continue to stand by him. The US criticisms against Israel, before, during and after the Gaza war, together with the repeated categorical whitewashing of Abbas and the PA , have paved the way for the current situation.

In contrast to previous occasions, Kerry unequivocally condemned the synagogue massacre, but Obama, appallingly, again felt impelled to employ moral equivalence by bracketing the attack in the context of “innocent” Palestinians who had also been killed.

The time has come to openly confront the international community and above all, Obama, for having mollycoddled Abbas and failing to exert pressure on him to bring an end to this murderous incitement.

The government must initiate a campaign in conjunction with friends of Israel throughout the world, to highlight the criminality of Palestinian society and explain why it would be an act of suicide under the prevailing circumstances to create a new terrorist rogue state.

We should appeal to our friends among the American people and Congress and, if necessary, challenge the president’s moral equivalence and betrayal of a loyal ally. The silent American Jewish establishment must now also speak out. They should take their cue from the Zionist Organization of America, which condemned Obama for linking his condemnation with the deaths of “innocent” Palestinians, and Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, who called on the US and EU to suspend PA funding until such time as they cease their incitement to murder Jews.

It is time for the US and the international community to recognize that Hamas and other Arab extremists are not nationalists but birds of a feather with Islamic State. We would have greater success conveying this message if our political leaders felt accountable to the public, which overwhelmingly yearns for a unity government during these difficult times. Alas, in our current dysfunctional political system, that is highly unlikely.

We must therefore gird ourselves to confront our adversaries, confident in the knowledge that we can and will defend ourselves and will not allow Jerusalem to be transformed into a Belfast or enable the international community to appease the extremists by offering us as a sacrificial lamb.

MAHMOUD ABBAS, ENEMY OF ISRAEL

By Michael Freund 22/10/2014

 http://tinyurl.com/n4k4csv

For the past decade, ever since Mahmoud Abbas took the reins of the Palestinian Authority in January 2005, the international community has gone out of its way to portray him as a moderate.
Ignoring his long record of anti-Israel incitement and Holocaust denial, American presidents, European prime ministers and even various Israeli leaders often spoke of Abbas in glowing terms, describing him as a man of peace and a visionary.

Indeed, earlier this year, when Abbas visited the White House on March 17, US President Barack Obama told reporters, “I have to commend President Abbas. He has been somebody who has consistently renounced violence, has consistently sought a diplomatic and peaceful solution that allows for two states, side by side, in peace and security.”

More recently, at the Gaza donor conference held in Cairo on October 12, US Secretary of State John Kerry went out of his way to heap praise on the Palestinian leader, saying, “President Abbas, thank you for your perseverance and your partnership.”

But the jig is up. Abbas’ behavior, along with his recent anti-Israel remarks, clearly demonstrates that his ostensible moderation is nothing more than a hoax.

Calling Abbas a moderate is the diplomatic equivalent of asserting that Elvis isn’t dead, the Boogeyman is hiding under your bed, and Keeping up with the Kardashians is quality entertainment.

Take for example Abbas’ decidedly immoderate remarks last Friday to a Fatah Party gathering.

Referring to Jews who wish to visit Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, Abbas denounced them as “herds of cattle” and “settlers,” and called on Palestinians to use “any means” to stop them.

“It is not enough to say the settlers came, but they must be barred from entering the compound by any means,” he said, adding, “This is our Aqsa... and they have no right to enter it and desecrate it” – as if the very presence of Jewish visitors in the area constituted an abomination.

If that’s not a call to violence, what is? Needless to say, Abbas’ scandalous outburst did not fall on deaf ears. Less than 48 hours later, Palestinian hoodlums defaced the Temple Mount, spray-painting swastikas and other offensive anti-Semitic imagery at the site whose sanctity they claim they wish to protect.

In response to the Palestinian chairman’s remarks, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman rightly pointed out that Abbas was “trying to inflame the situation by using the most sensitive place, the Temple Mount.”

“Behind his [Abbas’] suit and the pleasantries aimed at the international community,” Liberman said, “he ramps up incitement against Israel and the Jews and calls for a religious war.”

“Abbas,” he added, “has effectively joined the front lines of extremist Islamist organizations such as Islamic State and the al-Nusra front which sanctify religious war.”

Before you start rolling your eyes at the comparison, bear in mind that Abbas forged a unity government earlier this year with Hamas, a jihadist terrorist organization that is no less extreme in its ideology and methods.

The Palestinian leader continues to head a government that incorporates the same organization that fired thousands of rockets at Israel over the summer and built tunnels with which to murder innocent civilians.

And then of course there was Abbas’ performance at the UN last month, where he delivered a hateful diatribe against Israel in the hall of General Assembly.

The purportedly reasonable Abbas decried the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 as an act of “historic injustice,” referred to Israel as “the racist occupying state” and accused it of committing “war crimes,” “genocide” and “terrorism” against Palestinians.

All this from a man who has repeatedly insisted that if a Palestinian state were ever to arise, no Jews would be allowed to live in it.

It is time for Israel and the West to stop deluding themselves regarding the true nature of Mahmoud Abbas.

Calling him a moderate is simply dishonest and deceptive. Abbas is not a friend of peace, he is an enemy of Israel, one who has refused to end the conflict and has incited to violence against the Jewish state.

He may not don the keffiyeh that was worn by Yasser Arafat, nor wave a gun in the halls of the United Nations. But even if the packaging is slightly different, the contents remain the same.

Abbas, like his predecessor, stands in the way of peace and aims to do Israel harm.

The time has come to treat him accordingly.

HOW ISRAEL WAS GIVAT HAMATOASTED BY “PEACE GROUPS”

Seth J. Frantzman 5-10-2014

Full Article: http://tinyurl.com/mou44x6

The truth behind the Givat Hamatos scandal is that it was produced by the left-wing group Peace Now.

The breeze was hot as we made our way through a parched field. Over the hill was what looked like a mechanic’s shop with a small field in the back that had some sheep in it. A young man working at the shop gestured toward us and shouted in Arabic. We continued on, past several caravans. A woman peered at us through a window. That was in 2010, the last time I visited Givat Hamatos. The severely impoverished Jewish community, and the Arab community of Beit Safafa that adjoined it, gave no impression of being of great political importance at the time. Yet today the place is at the heart of an international controversy.

On Friday the European Union claimed that new plans to build 2,610 housing units there threatened the bloc’s relations with the Jewish state. “This represents a further highly detrimental step that undermines prospects for a two-state solution and calls into question Israel’s commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement with the Palestinians,” the EU claimed.

The US State Department said Wednesday that the plans called into question Israel’s commitment to peace and would “poison the atmosphere” between Israel, the Palestinians and US. In what commentators called a “striking rebuke,” a State Department spokesman claimed that it would distance Israel from “even its closest allies.” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius joined the outraged chorus, demanding Israel to “urgently reverse this decision.” He also claimed the plans “threaten the two-state solution...One cannot claim to support a solution and at the same time do things against without consequences being drawn, including at the European Union level.”

The issue is supposedly to do with geography. One report at Middle East Monitor claimed these housing units were “near Bethlehem.” Al-Jazeera’s Gregg Carlstrom claimed that the plans “could make it impossible to ever divide Jerusalem.” According to Carlstrom’s article the building would “cut the direct route between Bethlehem and Ramallah.” The new housing would also supposedly “close off the eastern approach” to Beit Safafa, an Arab neighborhood, meaning it “could not realistically become part of a future Palestinian state.”

The truth behind the Givat Hamatos scandal is that it was produced by the left-wing group Peace Now.

Not a single one of the “breaking news” stories about this plan were real breaking news reports about a new neighborhood; rather the reports were manipulated from the beginning with the aim of generating maximum press coverage while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington.

Let's take a step back and review what we now know. Givat Hamatos is the name of a small hill adjacent to the Green Line and close to Kibbutz Ramat Rahel, just across Hebron Road, which goes to Bethlehem, from the Mar Elias monastery. After Israel annexed this area and it became part of the municipality of Jerusalem after the 1967 war, the neighborhood of Gilo was constructed next to it in the 1980s.

In the 1990s another neighborhood, Har Homa, was built in the valley to the east. In the 1990s Har Homa, too, was said to be the “doomsday” obstacle to peace that would “cut off” Bethlehem from Ramallah and Jerusalem.

When several hundred immigrants from Russia and Ethiopia were settled in caravans at Givat Hamatos in the 1990s, it was not considered an obstacle to peace. In short, the very same neighborhood now supposedly “cutting off” Beit Safafa and Bethelhem was built 20 years ago, and no one cared. It isn’t a new settlement, or even a new neighborhood.

But pro-Palestinian organizations needed a news story. It was important – just as when Joe Biden visited Israel in 2010 and when Shimon Peres was in Washington in 2011 – for “peace” organizations to announce “new settlements” to create controversy and put pressure on Israel. These conveniently timed reports always claim that Israel has “announced” new plans. But even the left-leaning Haaretz admitted that, “The plan was already approved in early December 2012 by a planning committee.”

And there you have it: It wasn’t recently “announced,” it wasn’t “new” – and it wasn’t news.

The media outlets are the customers of organizations like Peace Now, and some reporters are sympathetic to repackaging statements and helping these groups drive the narrative of “new settlements.”

Foreign diplomats are also receptive. The two work in concert to create “controversy.” If the US State Department can be coddled into condemning the “new settlements” then the story “has legs” and becomes larger and larger, with more pressure building on the EU and others to condemn the “obstacle to peace” and note that Israel is “making decisions that undermine peace.”

Israel didn’t make any decisions. The Jerusalem municipality didn’t make any decisions. Nothing changed in Jerusalem between October 1 and October 4, and yet a massive story emerged as a “new settlement” was supposedly being built – atop an existing “settlement.” Most of the information published about Givat Hamatos was inaccurate; It isn’t “near Bethlehem” anymore than Beit Safafa, Ramat Rahel, Har Homa and Gilo are near Bethlehem. It doesn’t “cut Bethlehem off” from anything. Beit Safafa is partly inside pre-1967 Jerusalem’s borders, and many of its residents are Israeli citizens; they were not waiting to become part of the “future Palestinian capital.”

Of the 200,000 Jewish residents living beyond the Green Line in Jerusalem, from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City to Pisgat Ze’ev, Ramot and Gilo, Givat Hamatos is the least “obstacle” to peace of any of them. It adjoins Talpiot, a Jewish neighborhood inside the Green Line, and also Kibbutz Ramat Rahel. But the kibbutz isn’t an “obstacle,” of course; isn’t cutting anything off. How does building new homes atop old ones in Givat Hamatos “block a Palestinian capital” anymore than Ramat Rahel which is across the road? The question that has to be asked is why the Israeli government’s officials and spokesmen are so slow to comment on “scandals” like this, and don’t see them coming. Every year the “peace” organizations try to embarrass Israeli officials or visiting US officials by announcing “new construction” in east Jerusalem, and each time the charade plays out the same way.

Pro-Israel groups condemn the media or Peace Now, or point out “the facts,” such as “Ramot is not a settlement,” or note that the “approval” of the plan is one step in a dozen-step process, so that it seems these plans are “announced” a dozen times by the media, each with a round of condemnations. But knowing that this is how the charade works, and knowing the media always takes the bait, why doesn’t Israel’s government plan better for these manufactured scandals? If the government doesn’t start thinking ahead it will keep getting Givat Hamatoasted whenever “peace” organizations want to provoke condemnations of Israel.

A lesson on Jerusalem

David Ha'ivri Published: 04.27.12,

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4221402,00.html

During my recent visit to the British Parliament, I heard concern from a number of members that Jerusalem's new light rail system was built as a "tool of Israel's apartheid.” This type of claim can leave one baffled - where do you start explaining, when an intelligent elected official hits you with a claim that is so totally off base? Aside from the issue of priorities, since people are being killed by Assad daily in Syria, it is so hypocritical for world leaders to ignore that massacre and waste their time and effort in seeking out something to pin on Israel.

In Israel's War of Independence in 1948, part of Jerusalem was captured by the British-trained Arab Legion of Trans-Jordan, who held the city for 19 years, until it was again united in the miraculous Six Day War of June, 1967. During the 19 years of Jordan's illegal occupation of Jerusalem, Jews were barred from access to holy places in the city. Jewish doctors and nurses were massacred while trying to reach the Hadassah Hospital, located on then-isolated Mount Scopus.

Only after Israel's Defense Forces reunited the holy city were members of all religions again allowed access to places holy to them (aside from the Temple Mount, which maintains limited access for non-Muslims.)

Jerusalem today is a city with total population of about 760,000 people - about 65% Jewish, 35% Muslims, Christians and others. Anyone who visits the city will see a mix of people from all ethnic backgrounds and all religions taking part in all aspects of the city's culture and commerce. Like it or not, apartheid is not a fitting description for the reality of Jerusalem today.

Hebrew and Arabic

The city of Jerusalem incorporated its light rail public transportation system this year. The light rail is intended to relieve traffic congestion, and to save the city from some of the air pollution of exhaust fumes from the cars and buses that it will replace.

The light rail is now 14 kilometers long with 23 stops. It starts in the Pisgat Zev neighborhood in the north and runs though Beit Hannia and Shuafat, passes by the Old City through the center of town, runs along Jaffa Street past the central bus station and ends at Mount Herzl.

The track passes through and stops in both Jewish and Arab neighborhoods. I have taken the train and noticed that both Jews and Arabs are regular commuters. All of the train’s signs, tickets, ticket machines, and public announcements are made very clearly in both Hebrew and Arabic. Signs of station names are posted in both Hebrew and Arabic.

Knowing the facts firsthand, it is strange for me to hear discussions in British Parliament about the light rail being segregated and a “tool of apartheid.” Why, I ask, do people buy into such baseless libel and propaganda?

PA launches diplomatic intifada

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH AND HERB KEINON
05/21/2010

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=176054

A furious Jerusalem on Thursday denounced a declared Palestinian Authority effort to isolate Israel and eventually have it expelled from the UN as both outrageous and risible.

“Israel is not going to be kicked out of the UN,” said a senior Israeli official. “This is ridiculous.”

He was speaking after the PA announced that it was stepping up its diplomatic and economic “intifada” against Israel.

The idea of intensifying a campaign of delegitimization, leading ultimately to Israel’s UN expulsion, was unveiled on Wednesday night by Nabil Shaath, a member of the Fatah Central Committee and one of the chief architects of the Oslo Accords.

Speaking at a conference in Ramallah, Shaath said: “There is a need to create and endorse new struggling tools, such as the popular resistance, and to increase our efforts in the international arena to isolate and punish Israel, prevent it from deepening its relations with the European Union and attempt to expel it from the United Nations.”

The “nature of the Jews and the Holocaust in Germany helped Jewish communities establish strong strategic ties with countries that have influence in the international arena,” added Shaath, a former PA foreign minister who is closely associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Israeli official said such a campaign stood “in complete contrast to the peace process.”

He added: “You can’t on one hand say you want peace with Israel, and on the other hand act to delegitimize us. This is unacceptable and raises questions as to the Palestinian commitment to peace and reconciliation.”

The official said that Israel would raise these issues in the proximity talks, as it already did on Thursday during the talks between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US envoy George Mitchell, when Netanyahu protested against the Palestinians failed effort to block Israel’s admittance into the OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development).

“We will put these issues front and center in our talks,” the official said. “This is totally contradictory to a successful peace process and demonstrates that parts of the Palestinian leadership are stuck in a conflict mindset and are incapable of moving toward peace and reconciliation.”

The official pointed to the PA’s OECD campaign as evidence that there was no chance of Israel losing its seat on the world body.

“At the OECD they only needed to win one vote out of 31 to block our entrance, and were unable to get it,” he said.

The problem was not that the Palestinians might succeed, he added. The problem was the negative mindset that these attempts represented.

Orchestrated by the PA government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the new Palestinian “uprising” also calls for “peaceful demonstrations” in the West Bank against settlements and the security barrier and waging a total boycott of all products manufactured in the settlements.

At the Ramallah conference, which was also broadcast to the Gaza Strip, Shaath called on Palestinians to intensify pressure on Israel through nonviolent means.

“We need to continue and step up the pressure on Israel, regardless of whether the peace talks are resumed or not,” he said. “We need to rally international support for our cause and impose sanctions on Israel. We must pursue Israel in all international bodies and institutions.”

Shaath said Fatah’s declared strategy was “to endorse a growing nonviolent popular struggle” against Israel, in light of the fact that the “armed struggle” had become impossible and undesirable at this phase.

He said that during a recent visit to Gaza he told Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh that “Arab, regional and international circumstances don’t allow us to launch an armed struggle against Israel.”

Therefore, he added, the Palestinians should mobilize their energies to wage a “peaceful resistance” against Israel by isolating it and stepping up the pressure on it.
The nonviolent struggle was “not less honorable than the armed struggle and does not mean surrender to Israeli conditions,” Shaath said.