THE DRUZE AND THE MIDDLE EAST'S MINORITY PACT

Dr. Mordechai Kedar; June 19, 2015

It is rare for a country to have to rethink its strategic roadmap. Nevertheless, Israel may be approaching the point in time when it will have to reboot and restart its geo-strategic thinking, if that has not yet been done. In fact, that point in time is staring us in the face and we simply must think out of the box to see and address it, before a head-on collision shatters that very same box without our having plans prepared for a changing reality.

The catalysts that brought Israel to realize that there is a turning point are the Syrian Druze. Israel must, and I repeat, must, do everything and even beyond everything, to help the Druze minority in Syria survive as it faces the Islamist forces who intend to destroy it.  

Whether it is Islamic state or Jabhat al Nusra who are preparing the "Final Solution" for the Druze in Syria is of no matter. When Islamic State overcomes Jabhat al Nusra, any understanding Israel has made with this organization will vaporize exactly like the ones Israel signed with the Syrian regime.

There are about 700,000 Druze in Syria, concentrated in three main areas: the Mountain of the Druze (Druze Mountain) in southern Syria adjoining the Jordanian border, the Khader enclave on the southeastern slopes of the Hermon east of Majdal Shams, and the Aleppo-Idlib region in northern Syria, near the Turkish border. No one expects Israel to reach northern Syria to help the Druze who live there, but many of those who live in Southern Syria – on Druze Mountain and in the Khader enclave – expect Israel to do something to prevent the ISIS butcher knives from reaching their necks.

Their brothers in Israel are citizens with equal rights and duties, serving in the IDF – in combat units for the most part. The proportion of Druze who volunteer for combat units is greater than that of Jewish youth. The silence of the military cemeteries in Druze villages shouts the oath of loyalty they have sworn, the pact of blood that this wonderful group has made with the Jewish people in its resurrected homeland. And they are the brothers, cousins and in-laws of the Druze in Syria.

The Druze in Israel are deeply anxious about the danger that threatens their brothers in Syria if Islamic State conquers the southern part of the country. They know for certain that the lot of the Druze will echo the lot of the Yazidi in Iraq; the men will be slaughtered and the women sold in the marketplace as slaves. The Druze in Israel fear that the world will view the suffering of their brothers with equanimity and will not act decisively and rapidly, the way it failed to do when ISIS came close to totally destroying the Yazidi on Mount Sinjar in Iraq. The reality of the past year makes every scenario – even the most horrendous ones imaginable – a real possibility.

The Druze in Israel say to themselves quite simply: "if the residents of Druze Mountain were Jews, the State of Israel would do everything to protect and rescue them. If there is a pact of blood between the Jews and the Druze, then it is being tested now on Druze Mountain and the Khader enclave."  Their reasoning is also simple: The pact of blood cannot be one-sided, where the Druze go out to battle, are killed and wounded for the Jewish State. Either it is a two way pact, in which the state goes out to save the Druze who are under a clear and present threat, the most immediate and severe ever, or it is no pact at all.

The situation in Syria forces Israel to take a stand, as President Rivlin said eloquently in his call to the Secretary General of the UN to protect the Druze in Syria. Except that words are not going to save the Druze, only actions can do that, and the more decisive these actions are, the more effect they will have.

Israel must view Druze Mountain as vital territory to all intents and purposes, and in the same vein, view those living on it as blood brothers. There were times when Israel did not come to the aid of those who had helped it (the Southern Lebanese Army - Tzadal - for example), but now, Israel must take every step necessary to prove to the Druze that it stands faithful to them no less than it is to Jews, in Israel and everywhere else. This is a moral stand with civilian, political and security implications.

There are people in Israel who say "Why get involved in saving the Druze in Syria, when they were loyal subjects of Assad for years, both Hafez and Bashar, and even acted against us more than once.The Druze in the Golan Heights refused Israeli citizenship so they never became Israelis." My answer: The Druze in the Golan were afraid, after the 1967 war, that Israel would return them along with the Golan one of these days. And then they would find themselves in the torture chambers of the Syrian secret service, so in order to protect themselves from those torture chambers they remained loyal to Syria. Who can blame them?

Israel can take several steps, all or some of them, depending on developments on the ground:

1. Israel can create a military unit, made up of minorities, whose soldiers are Druze, and who will go to help on Druze Mountain if and when the need arises. Druze fighters doing compulsory service, career officers and reservists who normally belong to other units can be moved into this unit. It is important to form the unit and begin to train its fighters right away, so that if the need arises they can be sent to the battlefield as soon as the decision to do so is reached. A Druze project manager, preferably high-ranking, should push for the wherewithal to establish the unit, man it, and receive equipment, weapons and training.

2. Israel should be making plans for attacking concentrations of ISIS fighters near Druze Mountain from the air.

3. In the event that the Syrian regime collapses and the country falls apart, Israel must immediately take over the area tangent to the Jordan-Syrian border in order to create a dry land corridor between the Golan and the Druze Mountain. This corridor will make it possible to transfer armed forces as needed to protect Druze Mountain.

4. Israel must set up a field hospital in the Golan to offer medical care for the Druze, in order to keep them separate from hostile forces.

5. Israel must organize transfer of civil and military aid (arms, medicine, food and funds) to the Druze fighters on Druze Mountain, as needed.

Israel cannot stay on the sidelines when the Druze of Syria are facing extermination. This would be immoral, inhuman and self-destructive. We will pay the price for doing nothing when we look in the mirror and search for the moral person reflected there.

The Minority Pact

The Druze are not the last of these problems, because in Syria, Iraq and every other place the Jihadists have conquered, each minority lives in fear of being the next on line. This is a perfectly justified fear, and encompasses the Druze, Yazidi, Christians, Alawites, Zoroastrians, Bahais, Sabians, Mandeans - all of them non-Muslim, but also the Shiites, the Hezbollah and their people, all of them living in fear of the Sunni Jihadists as well. 

Israel must work to establish the "Middle East Minorities Pact" which will place all these minorities under one umbrella, even if they once fought each other, as the Shiite Hezbollah and Jews do.  The logic behind this is the fact that they are all facing the same enemy and must work together to defeat it. If they don't, they will weaken themselves by constant infighting and bring about their own end.

This may seem delusional, but as times goes by, it becomes clear that this most large and expanding enemy will force all the minorities to join forces against it.

Israel must find a secret channel for talking to Hezbollah, the most problematic of the minorities because of its blood soaked past and its hatred for the Lebanese Shiites.

We are left with only one question; what will Iran's stand be vis a vis a coalition of minorities which has Israel on the same bench as Hezbollah? In my opinion, Iran will not prevent the coalition from forming because it is going to be the only way to ensure the continued existence of the Shiites in Lebanon, a group whose continued existence is more important to the Iranians than the destruction of Israel.

Unmasking BDS: Radical Roots, Extremist Ends

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By Dan Diker

Introduction

In the summer of 2014, Hamas fired more than four thousand rockets, and assaulted Israel using a vast underground network of attack tunnels that reached well into Israeli territory. 

The Israel Defense Forces responded by targeting the terrorist infrastructure of Gaza, triggering scores of pro-Hamas demonstrations in European and North American cities in which protesters held placards reading “Free Palestine,” “End the siege on Gaza,” “End Israeli Apartheid,” and “Stop Israeli state terror.”   

These public protests demonizing, criminalizing, and delegitimizing Israel also characterize the ongoing boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. Global BDS activists exploited the 2014 Gaza conflict to reinvigorate their political and economic warfare campaign against Israel. 

On August 20, 2014, at the height of the war, hundreds of pro-Hamas protesters in New York City carrying placards that read “Israel=Racism and Genocide” and “Palestine from the river to the sea” – a public call for Israel’s destruction – also dropped a massive flag from the Manhattan Bridge that read “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions”

More generally, BDS represents a continuation of an ongoing campaign promoting political subversion and economic warfare against the State of Israel irrespective of the territories in dispute between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors.

In Western circles, BDS is commonly misunderstood. It is generally viewed as a progressive, nonviolent campaign led by Palestinian grassroots organizations and propelled by Western human rights groups, who call for boycotting Israeli goods produced in the “occupied” or “disputed” Golan Heights and West Bank territories captured from Syria and Jordan respectively in the 1967 war.

It is also widely assumed that the global BDS movement is further limited to boycott and divestment aimed at Israel’s presence over the 1967 Green Line, resulting in international actions led frequently by the Palestinian Authority at the United Nations, at the UN-affiliated International Court of Justice, as well as petitions made to the International Criminal Court.

However, a closer investigation of the BDS movement reveals a starkly different picture. BDS is more accurately described as a political-warfare campaign conducted by rejectionist Palestinian groups in cooperation with radical left-wing groups in the West. BDS leaders and organizations are also linked to the Palestinian Authority leadership, the radical Muslim Brotherhood, other radical groups, terror-supporting organizations, and in some cases even terror groups themselves such as Hamas.

BDS boycott campaigns have effectively misled trade unions, academic institutions, and even leading international artists and cultural icons, with seemingly earnest calls for “justice” entailing the establishment of a Palestinian state living beside a Jewish state. 

These BDS supporters have been led to believe that the combined pressure of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions will force Israel to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines, otherwise known as the 1967 Green Line, enabling a resolution of the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict. However, as some commentators – including the New York Times’ Roger Cohen and Professor Norman Finkelstein – have pointed out, the BDS movement seeks to eliminate Israel even before addressing the Palestinian issue.

As explained below, the publicized “demands” of the BDS movement state clearly that the endgame of this punitive global campaign is to cause Israel’s implosion as the nation-state of the Jewish people and enable the creation of another Arab-majority state in its place.

Understanding the maximalist goals of BDS presents a challenge to policymakers, shapers of public opinion, and Middle East observers alike. The movement has exercised tactical sophistication in “dressing up” its radical linkages and extremist ends in a language of peace, justice, and human rights that appeals to Western audiences.

What Is BDS?

BDS stands for boycott, divestment, and sanctions, and refers to three distinct yet related forms of punitive action against the State of Israel. All of these actions promote isolating, breaking off relationships with, denormalizing, delegitimizing, and punishing the Jewish state.

·       Boycott refers to the breaking of relationships with Israel as a means of protest, punishment, intimidation, or coercion. These actions include consumer and trade boycotts, cultural and sporting boycotts, and academic boycotts.

·       Divestment is the opposite of investment: the withdrawal of investments in Israel by banks, pension funds, and other large investors or from companies operating in Israel.

·       Sanctions refer to punitive actions taken by governments and international organizations, including trade penalties or bans, arms embargoes, and cutting off diplomatic relations.

The term “BDS” is not used in any other conflict or boycott campaign. It is nomenclature that refers exclusively to imposing these punishments on Israel.

The Radical Roots of BDS

The term “BDS” is relatively new, having been popularized following the 2005 “Palestinian Civil Society Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.” However, the roots of boycotts against Israel and the Jewish people extend back centuries.

Since the Middle Ages, Jews were the targets of boycotts and formal legal exclusion continuing hundreds of years. Jews were banned from owning property, attending universities, or practicing a trade. Even after the European Enlightenment removed many of the formal barriers to Jews, informal, grassroots boycotts and exclusion still persisted.

 A mass popular boycott of Jews was organized in France in the late 1890s, and the Jews of Limerick, Ireland, were the victims of a boycott campaign in 1904. Universities in Europe and the Unite States

 maintained official and unofficial quotas of the number of Jews they would admit, which continued well into the 20th century.

- See more at: http://jcpa.org/unmasking-bds/#sthash.glIcInxz.dpuf

UNHEALTHY RESOLUTION

Jerusalem Post editorial 27.05.15

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Unhealthy-resolution-404201

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Little attention was paid in Israel to the latest UN anti-Israel extravaganza. Presumably we’ve grown inured to the hatred spouted at the Jewish state.

While the Arab Spring’s carnage boggles the civilized mind, the World Health Organization, the UN’s public health agency, has identified the true transgressor – Israel.

WHO’s annual assembly last week condemned Israel for “violating the health rights of Syrians in the Golan.”

This is a travesty in every conceivable aspect. While the bloodbath in the region continues unabated, the international forum has found nothing else worth focusing upon but Israel. Only Israel was singled out by the WHO assembly.

This comes despite the fact that Israeli medics and hospitals provide indisputably altruistic treatment to spiraling numbers of civilians and enemy combatants from Syria, fleeing that country’s killing fields. The most cutting- edge medical care is given critically wounded victims who reach the Golan border.

But most disheartening of all is the fact that this disgraceful resolution was adopted in Geneva by a whopping majority of 104 to 4, with 6 abstentions and 65 no-shows. Israel, unjustly accused and unjustly convicted in another UN kangaroo court, was condemned even by European delegations, which purport to occupy the high moral ground – although they ought to know all about blood libel.

Gallingly, the Syrian government – which has been mass-murdering its own citizens – submitted a document that urged WHO to “intervene immediately and take effective measures to end inhuman Israeli practices that target the health of Syrian citizens.”

The Israeli “occupation authorities” were accused of “continuing to experiment on Syrian and Arab prisoners with medicines and drugs and to inject them with pathogenic viruses.” This charge aroused no revulsion apparently among the participants. Not one representative of any country of the European Union was outraged, protested, or walked out of the deliberations.

This could be perceived as farcical, were it not in fact tragic.

The Palestinian Authority, Israel’s purported peace partner, blasted Israel for supposed sins against Gazans and West Bank Arabs, cynically omitting mention of the fact that Israeli hospitals are where the seriously ill Palestinians choose to head to when in need, including PA higher-ups. Gaza’s Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh sent his granddaughter here and Mahmoud Abbas’s wife was recently operated on in an Israeli hospital.

We Israelis serially impress ourselves and pat ourselves on the back for our good deeds – and these are prodigious indeed, even under challenging circumstances.

Our knee-jerk reaction is to dispatch our rescue and medical crews to any disaster site anywhere in the world. We helped during Turkey’s last major earthquake, although all we received in return was invective and hostility. We sent our medics to Haiti after its earthquake, only to be berated in medieval libel-style for organ-theft. We aided the Nepalese victims of the latest Himalayan earthquake, only again to be maligned for a variety of supposed nefarious ulterior motives.

There seemingly is nothing the Jewish state can do to convince its defamers of its true nature, no more than individual Jews could before Israel’s independence.

This is hardly the first bizarre anti-Israel resolution to be produced by UN forums for whom Israel remains an unparalleled atrocious ogre. But this resolution stands out for its utterly outlandish misrepresentation and boundless wickedness. It must be judged the most abhorrent since the UN equated Zionism with racism in 1975 (an equivalence the UN itself later rued and retracted).

Time and again the most brutal dictators dispatch to the UN their mouthpieces, who in deadpan fashion declaim the obligatory human rights catchphrases, while promoting Israel’s denunciation for any and every imaginable trumped-up crime against humankind. 

All the while, representatives of self-righteous democracies smugly vote for the vilification of a fellow democracy, as if thereby vindicating their own virtue. Foreign ministries – which demand existential risks of Israel – don’t raise a semi-quizzical eyebrow, but go with the Israel- bashing flow and countenance the new Judeophobic zeitgeist.

Their stock pretext is that this isn’t anti-Semitism, but a legitimate critique of Israeli policies. Yet only Israel is thus pilloried. Moreover, Israel is wrongfully and falsely damned in a grotesque spectacle of hate.

UK MONEY IS 'STILL GOING TO CONVICTED PALESTINIAN TERRORISTS'

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by Anil Dawar, May 22, 2015

TAXPAYERS' cash given to help rebuild Palestine is being used to "reward and incentivise" terrorists, it has been claimed.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has taken around £130million in foreign aid from the Department for International Development over the past five years.

The public cash is being used to help it fund its estimated £84million annual wage bill for convicted terrorists locked up in Israel, according to campaigners.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) claims that Britain may have been "intentionally misled" by the PA which last year claimed to have stopped the controversial payments but was later discovered to be 

channelling the cash through another political group.

MPs today called for the Government to suspend all aid to the PA until payments to convicted terrorists cease.

In a joint statement, Tory MPs Guto Bebb, James Morris and Andrew Percy said: "British taxpayers will be appalled to discover that the Palestinian Authority is handing their hard-earned money to convicted Palestinian terrorists.

"The PA should be strongly condemned for deceiving well-intentioned donor countries into thinking that it had ended this shocking practice.

"The British Government must seriously reconsider its provision of aid to the PA's general budget until it ceases this abhorrent practice of financially rewarding and incentivising terrorism."

The PA's practice of paying huge salaries to jailed terrorists was exposed by PMW in 2011.

The money is reserved for those "resisting the occupation" of lands Palestinians regard as theirs but which are part of the Israeli state.

Around 5,500 Palestinian terrorists could be drawing salaries and bonuses.

Among those now eligible are Abdullah Barghouti, Hassan Salameh and Jamal Abu Al-Hijja who are serving 122 life sentences between them for planning suicide bombings.

The number of those being paid could rise to 200,000 when the families of suicide bombers and the wounded are added.

Some of the longest serving prisoners will be getting up to £2,000 a month plus bonuses for their wives and children.

PMW said grants on release can be as much as £50,000, which dwarfs the £300 average monthly wage in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Authority has said the money is not salaries but welfare payments.

Itamar Marcus, director of PMW, this week presented a report on the issue to the British, Dutch and German parliaments.

He told MPs at Westminster that Palestinian political leaders last year ordered the payments be halted after an outcry from Western donors which give around £640million a year to help rebuild the state.

Although President Mahmoud Abbas publicly ordered the Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs to halt the payments, he then passed on the duty to the specially created Commission of Prisoners' Affairs run by the Palestine Liberation Organisation, meaning the money is still being paid out.

Mr Marcus said: "The PA's creation of a PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs to fulfil the same services previously supplied by the PA Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs, was done solely to satisfy Western donors' demands that the PA cease paying salaries to terrorist prisoners.

"The existence of the PLO Commission has not changed the PA practice of paying salaries to terrorists.

"The PA continues to reward and pay salaries to terrorists in prison in spite of European and US demands that donor money to the PA not be used to reward terrorists."

Last night, a DFID spokesman said: "UK aid to the Palestinian Authority is used for the sole purpose of paying the salaries of civil servants, who are responsible for providing health, education and other essential services."

ISRAEL’S HUMANITY IN NEPAL

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By GIORA WEISER  16^th May 2015

‘Grant me the physical and mental strength to be forever prepared to help the poor and the rich, the good and the bad, my love and my enemy, and may I always see the human in the infirm,” instructs the Jewish Physician’s Prayer, attributed to the great sage Maimonides.

Instinctively, when I heard that there had been a series of massive earthquakes in Nepal just over two weeks ago, I knew that I would soon receive the call. Just as we did two years ago after Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines and after the massive earthquakes in Haiti three years prior to that, Israel would not hesitate to outstretch its arm to those in need. Even when natural disasters ravage nations like Turkey and Iran, as Jews and Israelis we are morally commanded to offer our assistance.

I joined hundreds of other Israelis, who each left their worried families without a moment’s hesitation to board the plane to Nepal, where we would set up a field hospital in Kathmandu.

The scenes in Nepal were horrific.

Scores of badly injured people lay untreated in hospitals and medical facilities, the local doctors completely overwhelmed by their numbers. We worked around the clock to treat as many as we could. As well as treating people who made it to the Israeli field hospital, we were treating many Nepalese who were flown in by our search and rescue team.

One girl was brought to us by the Israeli rescue team from a small village five days after the earthquakes.

She was found unconscious alone in a wooded area and no one knew who she was or how she got there. At first she was in a life-threatening condition – she had suffered a major brain hemorrhage and had to undergo emergency surgery. However, on the last day of our mission, we witnessed her get out of bed and try to stand up.

Nevertheless, the devastation and trauma were such that there were very few silver linings during the mission.

A further example summed this up.

Another girl was brought to our hospital with relatively minor injuries and after a short while we wanted to release her. However, she had no relatives or family that we could find. She had no idea what happened to her father and mother and it was heart wrenching to see that even when we successfully treated our patients there would be mental, emotional and psychological scars and anguish for many years to come. Whole families and communities were ripped apart and devastated.

It is on occasions like these when one’s humanity is sorely tested. Every day at work in the pediatric emergency room at Shaare Tzedek Hospital I see trauma and injuries, but not on the scale that we witnessed in Nepal.

The experience affects all of us who were there and remains long after we return to our families and loved ones.

Nevertheless, I know I speak for every one of my colleagues when I say that we would willingly return without question if we are asked.

It is our job as physicians and healers to help the sick, the ill and the infirm.

However, as Jews, it our duty and moral imperative.

I saw and read the inflammatory reports and statements leveled against Israel for sending medical delegations to Nepal, especially the inhumane questioning of Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW). There we were, covered in blood, drenched in sweat, and sometimes tears, and exhausted, both mentally and physically after ending another 12-hour shift during which we saved multiple lives and mended broken bodies as best we could.

It is ironic that Roth can pontificate from the safety of a nice warm home thousands of miles away from the grief and devastation on his computer or smartphone about a nation he constantly maligns as non-caring and heartless.

Here in the depths of despair, when the Nepalese cried out for assistance, Israel sent its sons and daughters to their aid. This is how someone who is serious about human rights acts.

Less than a year ago I joined my Nachal Brigade as they entered Gaza to end the rocket barrages on our population centers. There too my task was to heal the sick and treat the wounded.

It mattered little whether it was my fellow soldier or a Gazan youth that required attention.

Regardless of headline-grabbing reports and anonymous sources pounced on by the international media like those from Breaking the Silence, we who serve in war and in peace know the truth.

We don’t seek acclaim or thanks, our sense of collective solidarity even with strangers across the world impels us to assist, to treat and heal.

This is Israel, Mr. Roth.

Perhaps if you came out and saw us from behind your computer screens you would understand what motivates us and what binds us to one of our founding doctrines of Tikkun Olam, fixing the world.

I am deeply proud to be part of a nation which does not hesitate for a moment to assist those in need wherever they may be.

Being part of the Jewish state is not just about self-governance, freedom and liberation for our people, it is also an opportunity for us as Jews to connect collectively with our ethical and moral foundations as a people which, among other things, instruct us to “always see the human in the infirm,” as Maimonides wrote around a millennium ago.

The writer is a doctor in the Pediatric Emergency Department at Shaare Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem and was part of the Israeli medical delegation and field hospital in Nepal.

PUBLICATION OF ISRAELI SOLDIERS' ACCOUNTS CLOUDED BY POLITICAL AGENDA

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Gerald Steinberg, 9-5-2015

Breaking the Silence failed to to provide basic details necessary for corroborating its claims.

On May 4, 2015, Breaking the Silence, a small Israeli non-governmental organisation, published anonymous allegations from Israel Defence Forces soldiers who are said to have fought in Gaza during summer 2014, purporting to "close the yawning gaps between what the IDF and government spokespersons told the public about the combat scenarios, and the reality described by the soldiers …" While there are many problems with the claims, many journalists, including from Australia, repeated the accusation of a few disgruntled Israelis, without any verification. This, despite the failure of this organisation to provide basic details necessary for corroborating claims made in this publication.

Naming sources is a basic prerequisite for making legal claims, allowing accounts to be verified and witnesses to be questioned. Dates must be provided and locations cited to understand the broader context in which events were alleged to have taken place. Without this information, we are left with a radical political agenda that exploits the language of international law.

In the 200-plus pages of "testimony", mostly from low-ranking soldiers, the names and the units in which they served are left unidentified. Similarly absent are dates of the alleged events, making verification by competent authorities impossible. In the very difficult war between Israelis soldiers and Hamas-led terror cells in Gaza firing missiles from houses, mosques, schools (as recently documented in a rare UN report), and hospitals, context is indispensable.

The lack of details prevents any understanding of these alleged incidents. There is no way to verify the accuracy of the testimonies nor is it possible to view these events in the broader context of the extreme difficulty of defending Israeli citizens from thousands of Palestinian rocket and terror attacks – each one a war crime.

Breaking the Silence's "methodology" to obtain the "testimonies" is also highly problematic. Many of the statements include very leading questions asked by interviewers, often constructed so as to elicit answers that falsely magnify the appearance of wrongdoing. In contrast, the absence of questions that would provide greater context, clarification or justification for certain actions, is striking. 

Moreover, much of the framing of these "testimonies" enhances their politicised nature such as the use of misleading titling. In one instance, a soldier's statement carried the sensationalist header: "I really, really wanted to shoot her in the knees," but the text, for those who read it, describes the young Israeli's fear that an approaching woman was sent by Hamas and could potentially be carrying explosives that would kill him and his friends. IDF soldiers in Gaza have been targeted by suicide bombers, including women, making the fear of such an attack credible.

The deceiving headline also hides the essential fact that the soldiers fired near her feet, scaring her off and successfully resolving the situation in a non-lethal manner.

By not publishing key information, the organisation is expecting readers – in Israel, but primarily abroad, including Australia, to blindly trust it and to suspect no agenda other than the documentation of valid complaints by soldiers. However, as shown by NGO Monitor's systematic research, there are also important financial dimensions. Breaking the Silence receives substantial funding from radical Europeans, who link their donations to the number of statements that are collected. The Dutch church organisation ICCO demanded at least 90 incriminating interviews, while Oxfam (which claims to promote a humanitarian agenda) linked funding directly with the provision of "as many interviews as possible" regarding "immoral activities". These arrangements highlight the clear financial interest in presenting as many negative testimonies as possible.

Indeed, the failure to examine the motivations and history of the donors to this tiny group is of major importance. These funders are involved in anti-Israel activities from Ireland, Britain and the Netherlands and have actively supported, funded and partnered with organisations promoting boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) targeting the Jewish state. The funders are clearly interested in portraying the actions of IDF soldiers as criminal and callous, thereby hoping to pave the way for prosecutions targeting Israel at the International Criminal Court. This is an extension of the long Arab-Israeli wars by other means.

Of course no army is perfect, and some soldiers may have legitimate complaints. But as in any democratic society, this must be done through legal and administrative processes, and not by garnering headlines in the foreign media. Given the obsession with Israel, the deep hostility, and the large sums that are available, particularly to NGOs that join in this form of modern warfare, consumers of such publications, including journalists and government officials, should exercise caution and a healthy degree of skepticism.

UK TAXPAYERS FUND 'PRO-TERRORIST' PLAY

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by Nick Craven for The Mail on Sunday 3^rd  May 2015

For the full article go to: http://tinyurl.com/pso2kte

£15,000 of public money given to show based on the words of Hamas killers.

·       •Arts Council England is funding a UK tour of their play, called 'The Siege'

·       •Tells of 2002 stand-off when Israeli troops cornered gunmen in Church of the    Nativity, Bethlehem

·       •Play is based on accounts of Hamas and Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade militants

·       •Jewish leaders fear taxpayers might be funding play promoting ‘terrorism as legitimate’

British taxpayers are to fund a play sympathising with Palestinian terrorist groups who have murdered civilians and carried out suicide bombings on crowded commuter buses.

Arts Council England is handing over £15,000 to producers of a unashamedly one-sided drama based on accounts from the gunmen and bombers of Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade.

The money will fund a UK tour of their play The Siege, telling of a 2002 stand-off when Israeli troops cornered militants in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, worshipped as Christ’s birthplace.

Arts Council England is handing over £15,000 to producers of a unashamedly one-sided drama based on accounts from the gunmen and bombers of Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ BrigadeThe production has already received cash from the British Council and the EU for performances in the Palestinian territories, and the new handout will fund a ten-city UK tour starting in Manchester on May 13.

Jewish leaders last night raised ‘extreme concern’ that the British taxpayer might be funding a play promoting ‘terrorism as legitimate’

In publicity for the play, Hamas and Al Aqsa Brigade terrorists are merely referred to as ‘fighters’ with no acknowledgement of their cold-blooded murder of civilians.

The siege lasted 39 days and only ended when 13 of the ring-leaders were allowed safe passage and deported to various European countries. It is from these men’s accounts that the play’s script has been woven together.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry insists that all the men have blood on their hands, but two in particular have admitted as much.

Their leader, Ibrahim Abayat, exiled to Zaragoza in Spain, told the New York Times that he and his men shot and killed a female Israeli settler near Jerusalem in 2002. The Israelis say he was also involved in countless other atrocities.

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The money will fund a UK tour of their play The Siege, telling of a 2002 stand-off when Israeli troops cornered militants in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (pictured), worshipped as Christ’s birthplace.

Another of the exiles, Jihad Jaara – who went to Ireland – also told journalists that he kidnapped and murdered 71-year-old Avi Boaz, a Jewish US citizen living in Israel.

Among the other atrocities linked to some of the 13 is a suicide bombing in a Jerusalem suburb in March 2002 which killed 11 Israelis.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews said: ‘We would be extremely concerned if British taxpayers were funding a play that promoted terrorism as positive and legitimate.’

The play’s British co-director, Zoe Lafferty, left no doubt where her sympathies lay, saying Palestinians pick up arms ‘not because they’re crazy religious fanatics [but] to defend their families’.

We're extremely concerned she said last night: ‘This production is pro-human rights, pro-justice and pro-equality. Our work is trying to talk about the truth of what’s happening on the ground and counter the propaganda that’s constantly being directed at the Palestinians.’

Asked if the play was pro-terrorists, she said: ‘That’s just insulting and comes from a very biased misunderstanding of what we’re doing. To have to engage in whether Hamas and the Al Aqsa Brigade are terrorists is the wrong question to ask.’

Arts Council England confirmed the grant but said it was ‘not our role to censor the artists’ message.’

The British Council confirmed they had given £14,000 for the West Bank tour, adding: ‘We also support projects in Israel.’ The EU did not reply to a request for comment.