EGYPT’S “DISENGAGEMENT"

 JP Editorial 5/11/2014

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Egypts-disengagement-380908

Gaza’s Hamas warlords had enjoyed a honeymoon phase while the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is an offshoot) ruled Egypt.

Imagine the following: Israel declares its intention to create a buffer zone between itself and the Gaza Strip.

The rationale is trenchant. After the discovery of numerous attack tunnels leading from Gaza into Israeli communities – to say nothing of ambushes, attempted abductions, and mortar fire – Israel resolved to clear a swathe of territory from any habitation. This would deny the terrorists cover for their tunnel-digging, ambushes, etc.

It’s no stretch to suppose that, immediately upon Israel’s announcement of its intentions, the entire international community would explode into a deafening recriminatory uproar. Condemnations and threats would flow in from around the globe. The UN would censure, the US would threaten, and the EU would preach.

If Israel were to proceed with its plans despite the pandemonium, a horrific spate of terrorism would erupt, rockets would rain on Israeli civilians, Israel would be ostracized even further than it is already, sanctions would ensue, and a maelstrom of malevolence would engulf the Jewish state.

Footage of hapless families evicted with all their worldly belongings and of their homes being blown sky-high would seal Israel’s fate as the pariah of the civilized world.

Gaza’s sins would go unmentioned.

Not all of the above scenario is make-believe. A buffer is being created, families are evicted with all their worldly belongings, their homes are being blown sky-high and the rubble is bulldozed. A deep canal is mooted along the demarcation line, as is a tall concrete separation wall.

The only thing that keeps this from outraging world opinion is the identity of the side provoked into this action.

It is Egypt and not Israel. The border is between Gaza and Egypt rather than the Gaza-Israel border.

These distinctions alone suffice to make it all not much of a big deal. Apparently, if Israeli culprits can’t be fingered it’s apparently of no consequence to the world or the media.

That said, Egypt deserves no worldwide rebuke. It knows, as do foreign governments and the media, that Gaza is both a terrorist nerve center against Israel and its fanatic reach extends elsewhere. The gangs of jihadists who roam through Sinai often infiltrate via Gaza or are manipulated from there. The same goes for the military-grade weaponry which these Islamist extremists openly deploy.

Gaza’s hub of sedition and insurrection not only affects Israel. The many Egyptian casualties, the bombed oil pipelines, the rampant sabotage, the kidnapping of tourists, and much more have led Cairo to recognize that no modus vivendi with the current Gazan powers-that-be is feasible.

Gaza’s Hamas warlords had enjoyed a honeymoon phase while the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is an offshoot) ruled Egypt. But Cairo’s patience has ended with the recent slaying of more than 30 of its troops.

The Egyptian public appears to be giving its government wide latitude, the expelled residents of Rafah know not to tangle with Arab forces (which are hardly as soft-hearted as Israelis), journalists have been barred from the scenes of destruction, and the Arab world hasn’t yet resorted to the shrill hysteria that would doubtless be unleashed against Israel for far less.

But it would be naïve to suppose that Israel would escape with no flak.

In popular Arab commentary – even inside Egypt – Israel is described as somehow being behind the Egyptian operation, as having advised and even directed the Egyptians regarding the measures they should adopt. Israeli experts, according to the prevalent spin, have instructed Egypt on the minutiae of anti-terrorist tactics.

There’s no denying Egypt’s current offensive does benefit Israel. The Sinai could have been a dangerous new front that Israel cannot afford. It’s further a relief to Israel that gunrunning and bankrolling funnels via Sinai might be minimized.

Surely Egypt is doing what cannot be avoided. This is Gaza’s comeuppance. Nonetheless, none of this is undertaken for the love of Israel. Egypt has its own very compelling case against Gazan provocations and aggression.

In a way, this can be viewed as Egypt’s disengagement from Gaza. Ironically, however, in its own 2005 disengagement Israel harmed no Gazan interests and expelled its own population. This has since been repaid with violent ingratitude.

HOW HAMAS DELIBERATELY CREATED A HUMANITARIAN CRISIS IN GAZA

Commentary: Evelyn Gordon 

6.8.2014

http://tinyurl.com/pquocab

There has been a lot of talk lately about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. What has gone curiously unmentioned by all the great humanitarians from the UN and “human rights” groups, however, is the degree to which this crisis was deliberately fomented by Hamas: Aside from starting the war to begin with, Hamas has done its level best to deprive Gazans of everything from food to medical care to housing, despite Israel’s best efforts to provide them.

Take, for instance, the widely reported shortages of medicines and various other essentials. Many of these products are imported, and since Egypt has largely closed its border, Gaza has only one conduit for these vital imports: the Kerem Shalom crossing into Israel. Thus if Gaza’s Hamas government had any concern whatsoever for its citizens, ensuring that this crossing was kept open and could function at maximum efficiency would be a top priority.

Instead, Hamas and other terrorist groups subjected Kerem Shalom to relentless rocket and mortar fire throughout the 29-day conflict, thereby ensuring that the job of getting cargo through was constantly interrupted as crossing workers raced for cover. Hamas also launched at least three tunnel attacks near Kerem Shalom, each of which shut the crossing down for hours.

Despite this, Israeli staffers risked their lives to keep the crossing open and managed to send through 1,491 truckloads of food, 220 truckloads of other humanitarian supplies, and 106 truckloads of medical supplies. But the numbers would certainly have been higher had the nonstop attacks not kept disrupting operations. On August 1, for instance, a shipment comprising 91 truckloads of aid had to be aborted on when Hamas violated a humanitarian cease-fire by launching a massive attack near Kerem Shalom.

Then there’s the shortage of medical care, as Gaza’s hospitals were reportedly overwhelmed by the influx of Palestinian casualties. To relieve this pressure, Israel allowed some Palestinians into Israel for treatment and also set up a field hospital on the Gaza border. But throughout the war, the field hospital stood almost empty–which Israel says is because Hamas deliberately kept Palestinians from using it.

Many pundits dismiss this claim, insisting there were simply no Palestinians who wanted to go there. That, however, is highly implausible. Gazans routinely seek treatment in Israel because it offers better medical care than Gaza does; as one Gazan said in 2012, “It is obvious that people come to Israel for medical treatment, regardless of the political conflict.”

 Even Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh sends his family to Israel for treatment; over the past two years, Israel has treated both his granddaughter and his sister’s husband. So while some Palestinians undoubtedly objected to accepting help from the enemy, it’s hard to believe there weren’t also Palestinians who simply wanted the best possible care for their loved ones, and would gladly have accepted it from Israel had they not feared retaliation from a group with no qualms about shooting dissenters.

It’s also worth noting that “humanitarian” organizations in Gaza actively contributed to this particular problem. UNRWA and the Red Cross did refer a few patients to the Israeli field hospital. But you have to wonder why they opted to refer most patients to Gaza’s Shifa Hospital and then make videos about how difficult conditions there were instead of easing the burden on Shifa by referring more patients to the Israeli hospital.

Then, of course, there’s the dire electricity shortage–also courtesy in part of Hamas, which destroyed two power lines carrying electricity from Israel to Gaza and subsequently prevented their repair by shelling the area nonstop.

Finally, there’s the massive destruction of houses in Gaza, which has left thousands of families homeless. That, too, was largely courtesy of Hamas: It booby-trapped houses and other civilian buildings, like a UNRWA clinic, on a massive scale and also used such buildings to store rockets and explosives.

Sometimes, it blew up these buildings itself in an effort to kill Israeli soldiers. Other times, the buildings blew up when relatively light Israeli ammunition like mortar shells–which aren’t powerful enough to destroy a building on their own–caused the booby traps or stored rockets to detonate. As Prof. Gregory Rose aptly noted, Hamas effectively turned all of Gaza into one big suicide bomb. In one neighborhood, for instance, 19 out of 28 houses were either booby-trapped, storing rockets, or concealing a tunnel entrance, thereby ensuring their destruction.

Now, the organization is gleefully watching the world blame Israel for the humanitarian crisis Hamas itself created. And that gives it every incentive to repeat these tactics in the future.

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Click on picture HYPOCRISY OVER GAZA

       

Patrick "Pat" Condell   was born in Ireland^[ and raised in England as a Roman Catholic. His father was a compulsive gambler working in a betting shop until he was sent to prison for stealing money. The family was impoverished, moving repeatedly from home to home.

Pat is a writer, comedian and atheist internet personality. He performed alternative comedy shows during the 1980s and 1990s in the United Kingdom, and won a Time Out Comedy Award in 1991. He was also a regular panelist on BBC Radio 

Is the BBC really pro-Israel?

By Tom Gross, July 19, 2014

The National Post

http://tinyurl.com/ojrb2h6

Some 5,000 rowdy demonstrators chanting anti-Israeli (and, in some cases, blatantly anti-Semitic) slogans brought traffic to a virtual standstill outside the BBC’s central London headquarters in Portland Place last week. They were protesting what they claim to be the BBC’s “pro-Israel” bias.

The next day, the BBC flagship Today radio news program (a program which is near compulsory listening for the British political elite, including the prime minister), ran an item on the demonstration, examining the absurd proposition that the BBC – which for decades has been at the forefront of providing a worldwide platform for Palestinian extremists (one correspondent, Barbara Plett, even admitted on air that she cried in sorrow when Yasser Arafat died) – was in fact “pro-Israel.”

“Are the protesters right? Have we been biased at the BBC in favor of Israel?” BBC anchor Mishal Husain asked her guest Greg Philo, professor of Communications and Social Change at Glasgow University.

Philo responded: “I’ve had many senior journalists at the BBC saying they simply can’t get the Palestinian viewpoint across… the Palestinian perspective is just not there.”

Leaving aside Husain’s own bias against Israel, which was well documented by watchdog organizations at the time of the last major Hamas-Israel flare-up in November 2012, the claim by Philo, and the choice to use him as the studio guest, is bizarre.

Indeed, Gaza seems to dominate BBC foreign coverage — so much so that thousands of people killed last week in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya and various African conflicts have barely been mentioned.

“The BBC has had way more people in Gaza just this week than they had in Baghdad at the height of the Iraq war, more than they ever had in Basra and more than they have had in Afghanistan,” a friend of mine, a seasoned British war correspondent who has extensively covered the Afghan and Iraq wars, wrote to me this week. The British, American and other militaries have killed far more people in both Afghanistan and Iraq than Israel has ever killed in Gaza. And of course Afghans and Iraqis haven’t fired thousands of rockets indiscriminately into British and American cities.

Those BBC correspondents in Gaza (Jeremy Bowen, Lyse Doucet, Paul Adams, Yolande Knell, Quentin Sommerville, Rushdi Abualouf, Shahdi al Kashif, and several others reporting on Gaza from elsewhere including James Reynolds, Kevin Connolly and Jonathan Marcus) have this week, as they have for years, presented Palestinian claims against Israel in the most graphic detail.

And many of those Palestinian claims are misleading at best. On Friday, for example, a BBC reporter in Gaza, replying to the question about how ordinary Palestinians were coping “with Israeli actions,” informed us that “no one has any electricity.”

What he didn’t say, and what the BBC anchor didn’t point out, is that the reason that 70,000 Gazans (not “all Gazans”) have been left without electricity is because Hamas – not Israel – fired a rocket that hit a Gaza power line. (By contrast, NATO did “bomb Serbia into darkness” in 1999, and the U.S. did so in Iraq both in the Gulf War and in 2003.)

Indeed the BBC, along with most of the international media, have failed to tell us that quite a number of Palestinian deaths in Gaza were the result of misfired Palestinian rockets. Last week alone, at least 100 Hamas rockets accidently hit targets within Gaza.

The BBC (and other media) barely mentioned that on Friday – under pressure from Israel and the U.S. – the UN agency UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) admitted that 20 Hamas rockets have been stored at an UNRWA school in Gaza. This is, of course, not news to people who follow the region closely; Hamas has for years stored and fired its arsenals at Israel from or near hospitals, schools, ambulances and mosques, in multiple breaches of international law.

A report by BBC world affairs correspondent Paul Adams was one of several on the network in recent days to make use of a Nazi analogy. Israel, we were told, had made “a concentration camp of 1.8 million people.” Other BBC reports made the ridiculous claim that Palestinians were “starving for the past 8 years” (Click here to see photos of food of “Gazans preparing for Ramadan” last month)

To its credit, “BBC Trending” – one small part of the vast network of TV, radio and online channels that comprises the BBC – ran an item this month admitting that pictures of alleged victims of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza were inaccurate, some for example, actually showing scenes from Syria and Iraq. One photo circulated by Hamas last week purported to show a teenager in Gaza killed by an Israeli airstrike. It was, in fact, a still image from the Hollywood horror film Final Destination 4.

But what the “BBC Trending” item didn’t point out is that some of the most senior BBC correspondents in the Middle East, such as former Gaza correspondent Jon Donnison, have been responsible for sending out inaccurate photos on their BBC Twitter feeds.

Of course it is not only the BBC who are allowing their prejudices to get in the way of balanced reporting. On Friday, for example, one of CNN’s Gaza correspondents, Diana Magnay, sent out a tweet calling Israelis “scum” (CNN has since apologized and reassigned Magnay to Russia.) But can you imagine the outcry if she had called Palestinians, or Muslims, “scum”?

Jon Stewart, on the Daily Show, called Hamas “Freedom Fighters.” That’s not very funny for the five million Israelis – 80% of the population – who have had to cower in bomb shelters this past week. And it’s not funny for the Gazans who live under Hamas’s highly oppressive rule and risk their lives if they dare to criticize the regime. Also unfunny was the Washington Post’s Wednesday cartoon, which depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly punching a Palestinian baby.

Peter Beaumont, the correspondent for the influential British paper The Guardian has (as of July 17) run 20 articles on the current Gaza conflict, comprising 18,886 words butnot one report of his has properly explained Hamas’ use of human shields – even though this is crucial to understanding the situation and Hamas itself has repeatedly boasted of this policy as an effective way to deter Israel from attacking its rocket launchers. By contrast, the Arab media has been full of reports on the use of human shields (which is a war crime under international law).

Indeed people in the West might not realize it, but many Arab media are far more honest about the ills of Hamas than we might find in the West.

“Thank you Netanyahu and may God give us more [people] like you to destroy Hamas!” wrote Azza Sami in the leading Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. On Egyptian TV, several commentators said they were “sick and tired” of Hamas. There have been similar sentiments in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and even in the Fatah-controlled West Bank. So the next time 5,000 rowdy demonstrators take to the street to protest Western media’s supposed “pro-Israel” bias, they might want to keep in mind the history, the facts and what Arab media are saying about Hamas.

Why the Media Don't Cover Jihadist Attacks on Middle East Christians

(Liberals constantly and fanatically ignore Muslim atrocities against Israel and the West. If Israel can't be blamed, then nothing is happening. As a result, we never see "flotillas" or "flytillas" to anywhere that has nothing to do with Israel. No protests or demonstrations. Thundering silence in the UN and other international forums. Israel isn't involved, no one has any interest!

It is impossible to fathom this appalling Western apathy toward ongoing Muslim persecution of Christians and other "infidels" like the Baha'i, Hindus and gays. Liberals will tell us that we are "jaded" (if not worse) about Arabs and other Muslims. And the Muslim barbarism continues.- Editor’s comment.)

by Raymond Ibrahim - The Torch, http://tinyurl.com/o59xxbb (page28) Winter 2014

"To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace"—Hebrews 6:6

The United Nations, Western governments, media, universities and talking heads everywhere [i.e. the "enlightened international community" - DA] insist that the Palestinians are suffering tremendous abuses from the state of Israel. Conversely, the greatest human rights tragedy of our time—radical Muslim persecution of Christians, including in Palestinian controlled areas—is devotedly ignored.

The facts speak for themselves. Reliable estimates indicate that anywhere from 100-200 million Christians are persecuted every year; one Christian is martyred every five minutes. Approximately 85% of this persecution occurs in Muslim majority nations. In 1900, 20% of the Middle East was Christian. Today, less than 2% is.

In one week in Egypt alone, where my Christian family emigrated, the Muslim Brotherhood launched a kristallnacht—attacking, destroying and/or torching some 82 Christian churches (some of which were built in the 5^th century, when Egypt was still a Christian-majority nation before the Islamic conquests). Al-Qaeda's black flag has been raised atop churches. Christians—including priests, women and children—have been attacked, beheaded and killed.

Nor is such persecution of Christians limited to Egypt.

 From Morocco in the west to Indonesia in the east and from Central Asia to the north to sub-Saharan Africa to the south; across thousands of miles of lands inhabited by peoples who do not share the same races, languages, cultures, and/or socio-economic conditions, millions of Christians are being persecuted in the same pattern.

Muslim converts to Christianity and Christian evangelists are attacked, imprisoned and sometimes beheaded; countless churches across the Islamic world are being banned or bombed; Christian women and children are being abducted, enslaved, raped and/or forced to renounce their faith.

Far from helping these Christian victims, U.S. policies are actually exacerbating their sufferings. Whether in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt or Syria, and under the guise of the U.S.-supported "Arab Spring," things have gotten dramatically worse for Christians. Indeed, during a recent U.S. congressional hearing, it was revealed that thousands of traumatized Syrian Christians—who, like Iraqi Christians before them are undergoing a mass exodus from their homeland—were asking "Why is America at war with us?"

The answer is that very few Americans have any clue concerning what is happening to their coreligionists.

Few mainstream media speak about the horrific persecution millions of people are experiencing simply because they wish to worship Christ in peace.

There is of course a very important reason why the mainstream media ignores radical Muslim persecution of Christians: If the full magnitude of this phenomenon was ever known, many cornerstones of the mainstream media—most prominent among them, that Israel is oppressive to Palestinians—would immediately crumble.

Why? Because radical Muslim persecution of Christians throws a wrench in the media's otherwise well-oiled narrative that "radical-Muslim-violence-is-a-product-of-Muslim-grievance"—chief among them Israel.

Consider it this way: because the Jewish state is stronger than its Muslim neighbors, the media can easily portray Islamic terrorists as frustrated "underdogs" doing whatever they can to achieve "justice." No matter how many rockets are shot into Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah, and no matter how anti-Israeli bloodlust is articulated in radical Islamic terms, the media will present such hostility as ironclad proof that Palestinians under Israel are so oppressed that they have no choice but to resort to terrorism.

However, if radical Muslims get a free pass when their violence is directed against those stronger than them, how does one rationalize away their violence when it is directed against those weaker than them—in this case, millions of indigenous Christians?

The media simply cannot portray radical Muslim persecution of Christians—which in essence and form amount to unprovoked pogroms—as a "land dispute" or a product of "grievance" (if anything, it is the ostracized and persecuted Christian minorities who should have grievances). 

And because the media cannot articulate radical Islamic attacks on Christians through the "grievance" paradigm that works so well in explaining the Arab-Israeli conflict, their main recourse is not to report on them at all.

In short, Christian persecution is the clearest reflection of radical Islamic supremacism. Vastly outnumbered and politically marginalized Christians simply wish to worship in peace, and yet still are they hounded and attacked, their churches burned and destroyed, their women and children enslaved and raped. These Christians are often identical to their Muslim co-citizens, in race, ethnicity, national identity, culture and language; there is no political dispute, no land dispute.

The only problem is that they are Christian and so, Islamists believe according to their scriptural exegesis, must be subjugated.

If mainstream media were to report honestly on Christian persecution at the hands of radical Islamists so many bedrocks of the leftist narrative currently dominating political discourse would crumble, first and foremost, the idea that radical Islamic intolerance is a product of "grievances," and that Israel is responsible for all Jihadist terrorism against it.

Removing IDF from the Jordan Valley Would Destabilize Jordan

Evelyn Gordon 2.1.2014

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/01/02/removing-idf-from-the-jordan-valley-would-destabilize-jordan/

In the run-up to John Kerry’s arrival in Jerusalem today for yet another round of Israeli-Palestinian talks, media attention naturally focused less on real obstacles to peace than on an Israeli bill to annex the Jordan Valley that supporters and opponents agree hasn’t a prayer of becoming law. Yet despite this coverage, the most interesting fact about the bill has been largely overlooked: One of the biggest behind-the-scenes fans of Israel retaining control of this strategic location is none other than the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Last month, the Israeli daily Maariv reported that Jordan has been urging Kerry to support Israel’s demand for a permanent IDF presence in the valley under any deal with the Palestinians. Three months earlier, the Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh quoted a senior Jordanian official’s response when asked in a closed briefing how Amman viewed the possibility of Palestinians replacing Israel along the Jordan border:

“May God forbid!” the official retorted. “We have repeatedly made it clear to the Israeli side that we will not agree to the presence of a third party at our border.”

The Jordanian official claimed this has been Jordan’s position ever since 1967. But it was undoubtedly reinforced by watching the deleterious effects on Egypt’s security of Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

With the IDF no longer there to impede the flow, radical ideology, terrorists, and weaponry began pouring from into Sinai, providing local terrorists not only with enhanced resources (as I explain in more detail here and here), but also with valuable training. As a result, Sinai quickly became a terrorist hotbed that poses a major threat not only to Israel–whose Shin Bet security service now devotes the same resources to monitoring Sinai that it does to the northern West Bank–but also to Egypt itself. A Sinai terrorist group, for instance, claimed responsibility for last week’s deadly bombing in Mansoura.

The last thing Jordan needs is a similar influx of arms, radicalism, and veteran Palestinian terrorists pouring over its border, especially given its large Palestinian population. Already destabilized by a massive influx of Syrian refugees and rumblings of homegrown discontent, such an influx would surely send it over the edge. And unless Israel remains in the Jordan Valley permanently (or at least for many decades to come), that’s exactly what will happen. Allowing the IDF to stay there merely for another few years, as Kerry is reportedly proposing, does nothing but temporarily postpone the inevitable.

Western leaders repeatedly say they want Israel out of the territories because its presence there is “a major source of instability” in the region, as President Obama put it his UN address in September. Yet experience shows that Israeli withdrawals may well be a far greater source of instability. The Gaza pullout certainly turned out that way for Egypt (as well as for Israel), and Amman clearly fears a Jordan Valley pullout would have a similarly negative impact on Jordan.

If the West truly cares about stability, pushing for an Israeli withdrawal that would destabilize Jordan, one of the region’s last remaining islands of stability, seems highly counterproductive. Indeed, given how often Israeli pullouts have had negative results, the West might do better to abandon this paradigm altogether and start searching for a new one. Supporting a permanent Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley would be a good place to start. 

Egypt: Christians Killed for Ransom

Raymond Ibrahim September 2, 2013

http://www.meforum.org/3601/egypt-christians-killed-for-ransom

Not only are the churches, monasteries, and institutions of Egypt's Christians under attack by the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters—nearly 100 now have been torched, destroyed, ransacked, etc.—but Christians themselves are under attack all throughout Egypt, with practically zero coverage in Western media.

Days ago, for example, Copts held a funeral for Wahid Jacob, a young Christian deacon who used to serve in St. John the Baptist Church, part of the Qusiya diocese in Asyut, Egypt. He was kidnapped on August 21 by "unknown persons" who demanded an exorbitant ransom from his impoverished family—1,200,000 Egyptian pounds (equivalent to $171,000 USD). Because his family could not raise the sum, he was executed—his body dumped in a field where it was later found. The priest who conducted his funeral service said that the youth's body bore signs of severe torture.

In fact, kidnapping young Christians and holding them for ransom has become increasingly common in Egypt. Last April, 10-year-old Sameh George, another deacon, or altar boy, at St. Abdul Masih ("Servant of Christ") Church in Minya, Egypt, was also abducted by "unknown persons" while on his way to church to participate in Holy Pascha prayers leading up to Orthodox Easter. His parents said that it was his custom to go to church and worship in the evening, but when he failed to return, and they began to panic, they received an anonymous phone call from the kidnappers, informing them that they had the Christian child in their possession, and would execute him unless they received 250,000 Egyptian pounds in ransom money.

If those in Egypt being kidnapped and sometimes killed for ransom money are not all deacons, they are almost always church-attending Christians. Last April, for example, another Coptic Christian boy, 12-year-old Abanoub Ashraf, was also kidnapped right in front of his church, St. Paul Church in Shubra al-Khayma district. His abductors, four men, put a knife to his throat, dragged him to their car, opened fire on the church, and then sped away. Later they called the boy's family demanding a large amount of money to ransom child's life.

The hate for these Christians—who are seen as no better than dogs—is such that sometimes after being paid their ransom, the Muslim abductors still slaughter them anyway. This was the fate of 6-year-old Cyril Joseph, who was kidnapped last May. In the words of the Arabic report, the boy's "family is in tatters after paying 30,000 pounds to the abductor, who still killed the innocent child and threw his body into the toilet of his home, where the body, swollen and moldy, was exhumed."

As for Christian girls, they are even more vulnerable than Christian boys and disappear with great frequency. As an International Christian Concern report puts it, "hundreds of Christian girls … have been abducted, forced to convert to Islam, and forced into marriage in Egypt. These incidents are often accompanied by acts of violence, including rape, beatings, and other forms of physical and mental abuse."

Thus, while it is good that the nonstop attacks on Egypt's churches have received some media attention, let us not forget the many, often young, Christian lives quietly being destroyed in Egypt, by those who would have the Muslim Brotherhood return to power.

Footnote – News You will not see in the international media

Since late March, almost 100 Syrians have arrived at two hospitals in Galilee. Forty-one severely wounded Syrians have been treated here at the Western Galilee Hospital, which has a new neurosurgical unit as well as pediatric intensive care facilities. Two of them have died, 28 have recovered and been transferred back to Syria, and 11 remain here.

An additional 52 Syrians have been taken to the Rebecca Sieff Hospital in the Galilee town of Safed. The latest, a 21-year-old man with gunshot and shrapnel wounds, arrived there on Saturday. A woman, 50, arrived Friday with a piece of shrapnel lodged in her heart and was sent to the Rambam hospital in the northern port city of Haifa for surgery.

Little has been revealed about how they get here, other than that the Israeli military runs the technical side of the operation. The doctors say all they know is that Syrian patients arrive by military ambulance and that the hospital calls the army to come pick them up when they are ready to go back to Syria.

The Israeli military, which also operates a field hospital and mobile medical teams along the Syrian frontier, has been reluctant to advertise these facilities, partly for fear of being inundated by more wounded Syrians than they could cope with.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said that “a number of Syrians have come to the fence along the border in the Golan Heights with various levels of injuries.” He added that the military has, “on a purely humanitarian basis, facilitated immediate medical assistance on the ground and in some cases has evacuated them for further treatment in Israeli hospitals.”

Now, efforts are under way to bring over relatives to help calm the unaccompanied children. When the 13-year-old arrived, she was in a state of fear and high anxiety, according to Dr. Zeev Zonis, the head of the pediatric intensive care unit here. “A large part of our treatment was to try to embrace her in a kind of virtual hug,” he said.

Days later, the girl’s aunt arrived from Syria. She began to care for the Syrian children here, living and sleeping with them in the intensive care unit. The staff and volunteers donated clothes and gifts. The aunt, her face framed by a tight hijab, said a shell had struck the supermarket in their village suddenly, after a week of quiet. A few days later, she said, an Arab man she did not know came to the village.

“He told us they had the girl,” she said. “They took me and on the way told me that she was in Israel. We got to the border. I saw soldiers. I was a little afraid.”

But she added that the hospital care had been good and that “the fear has passed totally.” She was reluctant to speak about the war back home, saying only, “I pray for peace and quiet.” Sitting up in bed in a pink Pooh Bear T-shirt, the niece, who was smiling, said she missed home. She and her aunt were expected to return to Syria later this week.

Asked what she will say when she goes back home, the aunt replied: “I won’t say that I was in Israel. It is forbidden to be here, and I am afraid of the reactions.” 

Egypt’s U.S.-Subsidized Politics of Hate

Jonathan S. Tobin
01.15.2013

http://tinyurl.com/ajjwn75

Better late than never is the only way one can describe the New York Times’s decision to run an article about Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s history of anti-Semitic slanders. As we wrote here on Contentions two weeks ago, a video of an Egyptian TV interview with the Muslim Brotherhood leader from 2010 has surfaced in which he describes Israelis as “the descendants of apes and pigs” and called for a boycott of the United States. As I noted at the time, revelations about the nature of what passes for rhetoric about Israel and the Jews might come as a shock to readers of the Times–since much of their news coverage, as well as the work of op-ed columnists like Nicholas Kristof, had sought to portray the Brotherhood as moderate and friendly people who just happen to be Muslims–but not to those who have been following these developments without the rose-colored glasses that liberals seem to require to discuss the Arab world. The conceit of the piece about Morsi’s comment is, however, to call attention to the difficult position the Egyptian president has been placed in by reports about his despicable language.

Egyptian figures quoted by the Times get the last word here, as they seem to argue that it isn’t reasonable to expect Morsi to apologize since to do so leaves him vulnerable to criticism from his Islamist supporters and their allies who like that kind of talk. The conclusion seems to be that Americans should judge Morsi only by his recent behavior that has been aimed at least partly at ensuring that the flow of billions of dollars of U.S. aid should continue.

The problem is that Morsi’s use of a phrase that is commonly employed throughout the Muslim world to describe Jews as well as other comments that are straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is so common in Egypt as to make it almost unexceptionable. That is no small measure the result of Brotherhood propaganda and mainstream Islamist thought in which demonization of Israelis, Jews and Americans is commonplace. Try as writers like Kristof might to paint the Brotherhood as a responsible political movement, Jew-hatred is one of its core beliefs. The question here is not so much whether Morsi will publicly disavow these slurs but whether the Obama administration will continue to buy into the myth that Morsi is some kind of a moderate whose government deserves to continue to be treated as an ally.

The administration has tread carefully with Morsi over the last several months, even as he moved quickly to consolidate power in Egypt. With the apparent approval of Washington, Morsi has sought to eliminate any possible check on his ability to govern more or less in the same fashion as deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak. Though the Timesmore or less admits that Morsi’s rhetoric provides us a window as to how he would govern were he not restrained by his need for U.S. cash and Egypt’s relative military weakness, the underlying assumption seems to be that it is America’s interest to prefer him to any possible alternative. It also assumes that Morsi’s influence on events in the region, such as Hamas’s missile offensive against Israel last November, has been entirely benevolent.

In fact, Hamas’s aggressive attitude and risk taking as well as its attempt to increase its influence in the Fatah-controlled West Bank is directly related to the rise of the Brotherhood in Cairo. It is true that President Obama cannot be entirely blamed for the creation of this mess since Mubarak would have fallen no matter what the U.S. did. But his subsequent coddling of Morsi and the Brotherhood as well as the rebukes issued to the Egyptian military set the stage for a situation in which the most populous country in the Arab world is run by a raging anti-Semite who is working to undermine U.S. influence in the region and to strengthen radical forces while being subsidized by American taxpayers.

Morsi’s talk about “apes and pigs” is not a side issue to be ignored in the name of stability or preserving an American ally. It goes straight to the heart of whether Egypt should be treated as a nation ruled by a radical and hostile government that is confident that nothing it does will cause it to lose its American subsidy.
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We think it appropriate to bring to the attention of our readers in the UK an event on the 29th January in Hackney, London ” The Other Side of the Wall”, at which there will be an opportunity to meet a Palestinian from the West Bank who now stands with Israel.

Details can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/baaw3qn

Christian churches risk poisoning relations with Jews

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/op-ed/Christian+churches+risk+poisoning+relations+with+Jews/7079317/story.html

By Abraham Cooper and Yitzchok Adlerstein, The Ottawa Citizen August 12, 2012
Protestant denominations have been gathering to set the moral compass for the future of their churches. They have been grappling with theological, ecological, social and geo-political challenges at their major conclaves.

And then there is the Holy Land.

While their co-religionists bleed in Syria and Nigeria and cower in fear in Egypt, Pakistan and Iran, some find solace in zeroing in only on the misdeeds — real and imaginary — of the Jewish state.

In York, The Church of England’s General Synod recently voted to endorse the World Council of Churches’ “Ecumenical Accompaniment Program.” This program, in partnership with anti-Israel groups that reject a two-state solution, issued a publication titled Chain Reaction, calling for sit-ins at Israeli embassies, hacking Israeli government websites, and supporting for the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign whose goal is eliminating the Jewish State.

The rhetoric showed raw contempt for Jews. Speakers complained of powerful Jewish lobbies, of too much Jewish influence. They criticized Jewish organizations for having the chutzpah to protest against their proposals, even as they trotted out marginal anti-Zionist Jews parroting the extreme anti-Israel agenda.

Dr. John Dinnen waxed biblical, invoking the Jew who did not cross the road to help another human being in the story of the Good Samaritan. Today, he charged, “the Palestinians are being pushed over, while the Jews are quite powerful,” before correcting himself and saying “Israelis” instead of “Jews.”

The Church of England co-mingled classic European anti-Semitism with a theologically wrapped extreme political anti-Israel campaign.

But there were a few sane voices who would not be cowed. One church member revoked her monthly donation of 150 pounds that she had been remitting for two decades. “It is shameful that at a time when there are beheadings, forced female circumcision, intolerance, persecution and killing of Christians, destruction of churches and Christian graves, torture and murder throughout the vast majority of the remainder of the Middle East … what exercises the mind of Dr. Dinnen and the Synod is … Israel, the only democracy in the area,” wrote Janet Brook in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Meanwhile across The Pond, American churches chose a different path. Calls to divest from companies doing business with Israel — Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola Solutions — were rejected. The rank and file saw through these measures as punitive and one-sided. Significantly, Presbyterians and Episcopalians voted to invest in Palestinian and Israeli ventures. They decided that improving the lot of people on the ground, not wallowing in harsh rhetoric, is the way to help foster Middle East peace.

Still extremists had their say. Their pro-BDS resolutions outraged the Jewish community and Christian supporters of Israel. Some demanded that Israel be labelled an “apartheid state.” Other resolutions called for the embrace of the Kairos Palestine Document, which denigrates Jewish history in the Holy Land, coddles terrorism, promotes economic warfare against the Jewish state and blames Middle East woes exclusively on Israel. All these resolutions failed, although Presbyterian Church U.S.A. passed a “pro-peace” resolution to boycott dates and cosmetics originating in Israeli settlements.

One can argue that events in the region from the installation of a Muslim Brotherhood president in Egypt, to the brutal bloodletting in Syria, to Iran’s double threat of terrorism by proxy and nuclearization, will supersede any measures by Protestant denominations.

So are these Christian debates and resolutions irrelevant? Hardly.

The exclusive focus on Israel/Palestine has rendered mute the World Council of Churches and many of its affiliates — mute to the suffering, denigration and murder of their coreligionists in the Middle East. Forced conversions in Hamas-ruled Gaza, the targeting of Coptic Christians by Muslim extremists in Egypt, the ethnic cleansing of Iraqi Christians in the historic Assyrian Triangle, elicit barely a whisper of protest.

Nothing will change for the threatened millions of Christians, unless and until these churches begin to pass resolutions, cajole politicians and petition the international community on their behalf.

While white-hot anti-Israel invective and bare-knuckled economic warfare may salve some consciences, they will surely corrode decades of positive developments in Christian-Jewish relations.

Next up is the United Church of Canada’s August conclave, underway this week. While the Middle East roils in the name of peace, church members will consider a report on Israel/Palestine that calls for a boycott of goods from settlements. It will also apologize to Palestinians for previously having asked them to recognize the Jewish State.

Perhaps the Palestinians should agree to a two-state solution, the report argues, but it is insulting to ask them to recognize that their neighbour is a Jewish state, the sole democracy in a region of more than 20 Muslim states.

Should the UCC embrace the resolution, it is unclear how it would help to advance peace.

What is clear is that it won’t help a single Palestinian, it will poison relations with Canadian Jewry and it will signal to Muslim extremists everywhere that they have nothing to fear from those followers of Christ who are prepared to fight evil only if it involves the people of Israel.

From Israeli Soldier on Egyptian border

From Israeli Soldier on Egyptian border

I am 25 years old, was born in Brooklyn NY, and raised in Efrat Israel. Though very busy, I don’t view my life as unusual. Most of the time, I am just another Israeli citizen. During the day I work as a paramedic in Magen David Adom, Israel’s national EMS service. At night, I’m in my first year of law school. I got married this October and am starting a new chapter of life together with my wonderful wife Shulamit.

15-20 days out of every year, I’m called up to the Israeli army to do my reserve duty. I serve as a paramedic in an IDF paratrooper unit. My squad is made up of others like me; people living normal lives who step up to serve whenever responsibility calls. The oldest in my squad is 58, a father of four girls and grandfather of two; there are two bankers, one engineer, a holistic healer, and my 24 year old commander who is still trying to figure out what to do with his life. Most of the year we are just normal people living our lives, but for 15-20 days each year we are soldiers on the front lines preparing for a war that we hope we never have to fight.

This year, our reserve unit was stationed on the border between Israel, Egypt and the Gaza Strip in an area called “Kerem Shalom.” Above and beyond the “typical” things for which we train – war, terrorism, border infiltration, etc., – this year we were confronted by a new challenge. Several years ago, a trend started of African refugees crossing the Egyptian border from Sinai into Israel to seek asylum from the atrocities in Darfur.

What started out as a small number of men, women and children fleeing from the machetes of the Janjaweed and violent fundamentalists to seek a better life elsewhere, turned into an organized industry of human trafficking. In return for huge sums of money, sometimes entire life savings paid to Bedouin “guides,” these refugees are promised to be transported from Sudan, Eritrea, and other African countries through Egypt and the Sinai desert, into the safe haven of Israel.We increasingly hear horror stories of the atrocities these refugees suffer on their way to freedom. They are subject to, and victims of extortion, rape, murder, and even organ theft, their bodies left to rot in the desert. Then, if lucky, after surviving this gruesome experience whose prize is freedom, when only a barbed wire fence separates them from Israel and their goal, they must go through the final death run and try to evade the bullets of the Egyptian soldiers stationed along the border. Egypt’s soldiers are ordered to shoot to kill anyone trying to cross the border OUT of Egypt and into Israel. It’s an almost nightly event.

For those who finally get across the border, the first people they encounter are Israeli soldiers, people like me and those in my unit, who are tasked with a primary mission of defending the lives of the Israeli people. On one side of the border soldiers shoot to kill. On the other side, they know they will be treated with more respect than in any of the countries they crossed to get to this point.

The region where it all happens is highly sensitive and risky from a security point of view, an area stricken with terror at every turn. It’s just a few miles south of the place where Gilad Shalit was kidnapped. And yet the Israeli soldiers who are confronted with these refugees do it not with rifles aimed at them, but with a helping hand and an open heart. The refugees are taken to a nearby IDF base, given clean clothes, a hot drink, food and medical attention. They are finally safe.Even though I live Israel and am aware through media reports of the events that take place on the Egyptian border, I never understood the intensity and complexity of the scenario until I experienced it myself.

In the course of the past few nights, I have witnessed much. At 9:00 PM last night, the first reports came in of gunfire heard from the Egyptian border. Minutes later, IDF scouts spotted small groups of people trying to get across the fence. In the period of about one hour, we picked up 13 men – cold, barefoot, dehydrated – some wearing nothing except underpants. Their bodies were covered with lacerations and other wounds. We gathered them in a room, gave them blankets, tea and treated their wounds. I don’t speak a word of their language, but the look on their faces said it all and reminded me once again why I am so proud to be a Jew and an Israeli. Sadly, it was later determined that the gunshots we heard were deadly, killing three others fleeing for their lives.

During the 350 days a year when I am not on active duty, when I am just another man trying to get by, the people tasked with doing this amazing job, this amazing deed, the people witnessing these events, are mostly young Israeli soldiers just out of high school, serving their compulsory time in the IDF, some only 18 years old.
The refugees flooding into Israel are a heavy burden on our small country. More than 100,000 refugees have fled this way, and hundreds more cross the border every month. The social, economic, and humanitarian issues created by this influx of refugees are immense. There are serious security consequences for Israel as well. This influx of African refugees poses a crisis for Israel. Israel has yet to come up with the solutions required to deal with this crisis effectively, balancing its’ sensitive social, economic, and security issues, at the same time striving to care for the refugees.

I don’t have the answers to these complex problems which desperately need to be resolved. I’m not writing these words with the intention of taking a political position or a tactical stand on the issue.

I am writing to tell you and the entire world what’s really happening down here on the Egyptian/Israeli border. And to tell you that despite all the serious problems created by this national crisis, these refugees have no reason to fear us. Because they know, as the entire world needs to know, that Israel has not shut its eyes to their suffering and pain. Israel has not looked the other way. The State of Israel has put politics aside to take the ethical and humane path as it has so often done before, in every instance of human suffering and natural disasters around the globe. We Jews know only too well about suffering and pain. The Jewish people have been there. We have been the refugees and the persecuted so many times, over thousands of years, all over the world.

Today, when African refugees flood our borders in search of freedom and better lives, and some for fear of their lives, it is particularly noteworthy how Israel deals with them, despite the enormous strain it puts on our country on so many levels. Our young and thriving Jewish people and country, built from the ashes of the Holocaust, do not turn their backs on humanity. Though I already knew that, this week I once again experienced it firsthand. I am overwhelmed with emotion and immensely proud to be a member of this nation.