WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE OVER THE BOMBARDMENT OF CIVILIANS IN ISRAEL?

Hundreds of rockets have been fired and a million citizens are forced to run for cover. Imagine if London suffered this bombardment.

 The Telegraph 

By Arsen Ostrovsky 8^th July 2014

http://tinyurl.com/od6m9nh

You see, as most people in the UK were waking up this morning, and those in Europe, United States and elsewhere around the world were going about their daily routines, here in Israel over one million people were running for cover from a hail of rockets being rained down by Palestinian Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

In the last 24 hours alone, over 120 rockets have been fired on southern Israel. That’s approximately five rockets per hour. By the time I finish this article, odds are that count will have risen to 125 rockets.

To put things in context: one million Israelis is roughly 13 per cent of the population. Thirteen per cent of the UK population equates to about 8.4 million people, or the entire population of London.

A number of Israelis have already been injured, though thankfully without fatalities. The only reason more have not been hurt is because Israel has invested millions of dollars in bomb shelters and the Iron Dome defence system. Meanwhile, Hamas, whose very raison d'être is the destruction of Israel and which is recognised as a terrorist organisation both by the EU and UK, has invested millions of dollars in foreign aid into more rockets.

So, where is the outrage?

Since the beginning of this year, Gaza terrorists have fired more than 450 rockets on Israel, with about half of them coming since mid-June, when two Hamas terrorists kidnapped and brutally murdered three Israeli teenagers.

Why is it that a majority of the international community only notices when Israel undertakes its sovereign right, and obligation, to defend its citizens? Can you imagine if even one rocket was fired on London, Washington, Paris or Moscow? This is simply intolerable and no country can, or should, tolerate such attacks on its people.

Where is the outrage from the United Nations, which does not hesitate for a moment to call a "special emergency session" on the "Question of Palestine" or pass the umpteenth resolution blindly condemning Israel? But 24 hours after the rocket attacks on Israel started, I am still waiting for even one syllable of condemnation from the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly or the Human Rights Council.

Where is the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who repeatedly slams Israel over settlement building, but is yet to say a word about the Palestinians firing over 120 rockets on Israeli civilians in one day? Even 10 Downing and the Foreign Office are yet to comment.

Where are all those so-called enlightened liberals, who continue to call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against the Jewish State, but are silent in the face of Palestinian terror against Jews?

Where are all the human rights organisations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and Oxfam, who do not waste a single opportunity to condemn Israel for human rights violations against the Palestinians? Are the human rights of Israelis not equally important? Or is Jewish blood really that cheap?

Where is the outrage from the mainstream media? Instead, news organisations like the BBC, lead their stories about the rocket attacks headlines like ‘Israel launches new air strikes on Gaza Strip’ and not ‘Palestinian Terrorists in Gaza Rain Down Over 120 Rockets Against 1 million Israelis in 24 hours.’

Where is the outage that Iran, which the international community is currently negotiating with over their nuclear weapons program, and which has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, is the primary funder and supplier of arms to Hamas?

Where is the outage that civilians across southern Israel are being instructed not to send their kids to school and stay in bomb shelters, or that 24 prematurely born babies and 34 newborns had to be moved last night to a protected area in Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva, due to the rocket attacks from Gaza?

What sort of inhumane way is that for children to live?

Where is the outrage that the very same Hamas now responsible for the rocket fire against millions of Israelis, was only a month ago welcomed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, our so-called ‘partner for peace’ into his unity government, while the international community, including the EU, rushed to embrace it?

As I conclude, another two rockets were just fired from Gaza. So again, I ask: where is the outrage?

Arsen Ostrovsky is an international human rights activist and freelance journalist living in Israel.

Update of the situation in Israel

During Tuesday, 8 July, 146 rockets were launched from Gaza. Of these, 117 struck Israel and 29 were intercepted by the Iron Dome system.

In this 24-hour period, residents of the following cities, towns and regions were forced to seek shelter after the sirens sounded:

·       Jerusalem (3 rockets hit the Jerusalem Hills).

·       Tel Aviv (targeted 3 times).

·       The southern cities of Be'er Sheva, Ashdod and Ashkelon

·       Communities in southern Israel, including the city of Sderot, Ofakim, Sha'ar HaNegev, Sdot Negev, etc.

·       Cities and towns in central Israel, including Rehovot, Herzliya, Gadera, Ramat Hasharon, Yavne, Rishon Lezion, Hadera, Givatiyim,

There has been property damage, including from fires caused by the rockets and shrapnel but thankfully no serious injuries

Forty percent of the Israeli population - approximately 3.5 million people - is currently in range of the rockets from Gaza.

There is no ‘cycle of violence’

Gerald M. Steinberg  July 1^st  2014

http://tinyurl.com/m8hu2zh

Three Israeli teenagers, Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-ad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach, were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood on their way home from school only because they were Israeli Jews. Their Palestinian Arab murderers, as identified by Israel, did not know their victims and they did not care. The objective was to attack some hated Israelis, and perhaps exchange them or their bodies for jailed murderers. Any random Jews would do.

So it has been for some 100 years in this long war against Jewish national sovereignty and equality among the nations. Long before the 1967 war and the “occupation” provided an excuse for hate and murder, such acts of inhuman violence were common. In 1929, when the Jewish community of Hebron was massacred (ethnically cleansed in modern parlance), there was no cycle of violence — this was an entirely unilateral act.

In November 1947, when all Arab leaders rejected the minimalist UN Partition Plan and launched a wave of mass terror against the Jewish community, there was no cycle. And the 1967 war, which led to the subsequent “occupation,” was triggered by Nasser’s renewed effort to destroy the Jewish state, and not part of an action-reaction cycle.

Similarly, today, there is no “cycle of revenge,” as many journalists, diplomats and self-proclaimed human rights activists often claim. A cycle means symmetry, automatic tit-for-tat, mindless action and reaction, in which all sides, and none, can be held morally responsible.

But attack and defense, terror and counter-terror, incitement and fear are not symmetric or morally equivalent. When diplomats and academics repeat the “cycle” analogy, and meekly issues calls “to both parties to exercise restraint,” as the European Union, the UN and even the US did after the kidnapping, they are endorsing a dangerous fiction. When journalists invent an artificial balance and an immoral equivalence between attacker and victim, or an NGO with European and US taxpayer funds equates the mother of a Palestinian terrorist with the mothers of Gilad, Naftali, and Eyal, this is fundamentally immoral.

For years, Palestinians and their supporters have been able to peddle the fiction that murderous terrorists in Israeli jails are political prisoners, guilty only of participating in the “cycle of violence,” including opposing the “occupation,” albeit with violent means. European human rights funds have also channeled government money to lobbying groups (non-governmental organizations) to promote this fiction and the public campaigns on their behalf.

ANTISEMITISM IN THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Whilst the BDS movement continues to claim successes, the truth is that  there are starting to be repercussions in those organisations who have voted for boycotts, divestment or sanctions.

RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) approved a motion in March calling on the International Architects Union (UIA) to suspend the Israeli Association of United Architects while building continues in the occupied territories. The UIA has refused to put the motion on the agenda of its annual congress in August.

However, RIBA’s vote to suspend the Israeli architects’ union was passed and this decision which split the institute’s membership has cost it £100,000 in lost bookings and donations. President Stephen Hodder told the institute’s latest Council meeting that the financial fallout from Angela Brady’s motion ran to six figures.

Another divestment campaign is looking likely running into trouble, see article below.

THE ROLE OF ANTISEMITISM IN THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (USA´S) DECISION TO SUPPORT DIVESTMENT

NGO Monitor- BDS in the Pews June 25, 2014

Click here to read the full report. 

KEY POINTS:

1. The Israel Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) of the Presbyterian Church (USA) (PCUSA) is a main advocate within the church on behalf of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign (BDS), whose goal is to delegitimize the State of Israel leading to that country’s dissolution. The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship is also an advocate for BDS. 

2. This report produces clear evidence of a strong undercurrent of overt anti-Jewish bigotry within the IPMN as expressed on the group’s Facebook page. 

3. Numerous postings uploaded to this site by IPMN members over a period of two years demonstrate an ongoing pattern of expressions of anti-Semitism, including:

a. a “Zionist controlled America [has a] desperate lust” for war with Iran

b. “Jewish interests” are “corrupting” the US government, and the media is “owned” and “operated” by these same “Jewish interests.”

c. the “Christian Holy Land” is “occupied” by the “zionist (sic) instigator”

d. Racial theories of Jewish origins claiming Ashkenazi Jews are not racially “Semitic,” are actually “Khazars,” and therefore should not be in the Middle East.

e. Israeli Jews should be ethnically cleansed: “Helen Thomas was right, ‘Go back to Russia, Germany…’ Just leave.”

f. “IRAN! Thank God for them! The only Zionist-free land left on earth.”

4. The site is administered by five IPMN leaders. Members include senior staff of the PCUSA, theologians, clergy, laity, and non-Presbyterian anti-Israel non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

5. At no point did any of these site administrators or any of the PCUSA staff take any overt action such as speaking out against the blatant anti-Semitism, rebuking members for their intolerant statements, or removing them from the site’s membership.

6. At no point did any of the members from non-Presbyterian NGOs speak out against this antisemitism, including members of the fringe group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

7. This overt anti-Semitism is the backdrop to the IPMN’s advocacy campaign within the PCUSA for divestment and boycotts against Israel, culminating in votes at the June 2014 PCUSA’s General Assembly in support of divestment and other anti-Israel resolutions.

8. In 2013 both IPMN and JVP were recipients of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship’s “top award” the “Peace seeker Award.”

9. The bigotry expressed by IPMN members and tolerated by IPMN leaders and PCUSA staff is a moral failing of the church. Serious steps must be taken by the church to remedy this situation, including an apology to the Jewish community, for the church to be able to claim any moral standing on the Middle East. 

Racheli Frenkel at the UN (Bring Back Our Boys)

Published on Jun 24, 2014

  

Racheli Frankel, mother of Naftali, one of the three Israeli boys who were kidnapped by terrorists, speaking at the UN Human Rights Council:

"It is wrong to take children, innocent boys and girls, and use them as instruments of ANY struggle. 
Doesn't every child have a right to come home safely from school?"

Dealing with sadists is impossible.

Making peace with your enemies is one thing, but dealing with sadists is impossible.

By Gil Troy 06/17/2014 Jerusalem Post http://tinyurl.com/mr5wsma

Once again, Palestinian terrorists have shown a perverse genius for hurting Israelis yet uniting them – even as the international media mostly ignores the Palestinian crime. When two 16-year-olds and a 19-year-old are abducted hitchhiking – they are no longer “yeshiva students” or “settlers” but simply “our kids.” Israel becomes one intimate kibbutz as we all see our own children, friends or neighbors in the smiling photos repeatedly broadcast of Naftali Frankel, Gilad Sha’ar and Eyal Yifrach.

I have had a sick feeling in my stomach since hearing the news – terrified by what those kids must be enduring, while heartbroken in feeling their parents’ anguish, too.

Conversations with other terror victims have taught me that if Naftali, Gilad, and Eyal are still alive, they are replaying their mental tape of Thursday night repeatedly, imprisoned in the “if only” regret game, blaming themselves for doing something that is quite routine. If they survive – and we desperately hope they do – they will struggle with the Israeli terror victim’s vertigo-inducing life lesson: although targeted deliberately as members of a despised group, their particular victimization was random.

Similarly, the parents are playing “what if” scenarios over as they feel paralyzed by fear, bargaining with God, hoping that somehow, their kids will “only” be traumatized by being kidnapped, rather than brutalized or killed. The cost too many have paid to live in this land is too high – losing so many precious gems. But the traditional cliché remains true: “ein breira,” we have no choice, we cannot run away back to statelessness and impotence.

While every life is precious, kidnapping teenagers is particularly cruel. It shows these terrorists have no ethics, no limits to their hatred – and to their rejection of any chance at peace. What kind of a person kidnaps a teenager – and what kind of a people celebrates such evil? The Palestinians distributing candy to celebrate this empty “victory” disgust me. Cartoons celebrating catching these three teenagers, showing mice with Jewish stars dangling on a fishing rod (that the vigilant Palestinian Media Watch translated), enrage me – and this from Fatah, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s “moderate” movement if we swallow the naïve Obama-Kerry peace-processing Kool-Aid.

Making peace with your enemies is one thing, but dealing with sadists is impossible.

When will the world pressure the Palestinians to change their thuggish totalitarian political culture rather than always blaming democratic Israel? In this nasty neighborhood, Israel must restore the balance of dread, whereby our enemies fear us more than we fear them. The Israeli government should shut down the West Bank until Naftali, Gilad and Eyal are freed.

I desperately hope for peace but unhappily must prepare for war. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu can find encouragement in Machiavelli’s insight that it can be “a very wise thing to simulate madness.” Palestinians must fear Israel’s response when they target us – terrorists themselves can be terrorized if their own people turn on them and say “stop” – a word most Palestinians have failed to use with the murderers they idolize.

If Hamas is truly moderating as America and the rest of the world have decided it is, here is an opportunity for statesmanship.Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh could free the kids as thanks for earlier Israeli medical treatment of his mother-in-law and his late granddaughter.

A Palestinian leader saving these Israeli teens could make an epoch-changing gesture comparable to Egyptian president Anwar Sadat visiting Jerusalem. He would earn Israelis’ gratitude, demonstrate his power in the territories and demonstrate that he truly wants peace. There has to be some Palestinian leader brave enough to challenge his people to seek a different path. Do they really want the word “Palestinian” to be most freely associated in the civilized world with the word “terrorism?” Is that who they are? Is that who they wish to be? In a world whose one constant is change, leaders – and followers – can make things better or worse. Fifteen years ago, Palestinian leaders were pitching Gaza as a tourist destination, as millennial Oslo hopes soared, even amid tensions. Then the Palestinians turned from peace talks back to terrorism; yes I blame them, as Bill Clinton and other experts do. Israeli counterattacks finally produced today’s relative quiet – which the kidnappers now threaten. We need Palestinians courageous enough to end their people’s addiction to violence – and Israelis brave enough to respond warmly if such moves occur.

Willingness to compromise can telegraph strength, not weakness. President John Kennedy cleverly distinguished between compromises of “issues, not of principles,” explaining, “we can compromise our political positions but not ourselves.” Israel’s borders can be debated and adjusted – but we will not compromise our existence or our children’s safety. Fury at Palestinian crimes will not blind me to our own shortcomings – or stop me from trying to lure the dove of peace, even when the weather turns stormy.

This duality has shaped Israeli success since 1948: ever vigilant in both defending and building the state; seeking peace while preparing for war; sheathing the sword whenever possible but keeping it sharp and ready, because “ein breira,” we have no choice. We must defend our children and ourselves.

FROM SCHOOLGIRLS IN NIGERIA, TO SCHOOLBOYS IN ISRAEL

The perverse thinking of the Palestinian terrorists who have kidnapped 3 Israeli school kids is just another result of the continuous hate indoctrination of Palestinian society sanctioned by the PA and Hamas. 

Let’s be clear :- 

FROM SCHOOLGIRLS IN NIGERIA, TO SCHOOLBOYS IN ISRAEL,

CHILDREN ARE TODAY’S PREY FOR ISLAMIC PREDATORS

 If you have access to facebook, twitter or other social media please go to https://www.facebook.com/BringBackIL , click on “like” and leave a message of support. Also available on twitter https://twitter.com/BringBackIL

These messages should be brought to the attention of as many people as possible, not forgetting government representatives and local media.

The Prime Minister said tonight “The IDF, ISA and all the security services are currently engaged in intensive operations in order to locate the missing youths. I thank them for this activity; they are working 'round the clock. Naturally, I cannot share everything we know, not at this time; however, I can say this: Our young people have been abducted by a terrorist organization. This is absolutely clear; there is no doubt about this. They were abducted by a terrorist organization.”

American Taxpayers Now Paying the Salaries of Palestinian Terrorists

What a unity government bringing together Hamas with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party means

Lee Smith  June 3, 2014

Some major turning points in the lives of nations announce their importance in plain sight, in front of TV cameras, while the whole world is watching, for example: Sept. 11 or the fall of the Berlin Wall come to mind. Others happen in secret. And still others try to slink away from the lights while clothed in the drab, everyday disguise of bureaucratic double-speak, as happened at a State Department press conference in Washington on Monday, at which a reporter wondered how America, once the leader of a global war on terrorism, would respond to the announcement of a Palestinian unity government that would include Hamas, which the State Department has clearly and repeatedly designated as a global terrorist organization.  

“Based on what we know now,” State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki told the press, “we intend to work with this government,” adding that “if needed” the United States might “recalibrate our approach.” Hidden beneath this deliberately boring verbiage was a shocking change in American foreign policy: Instead of making war on terrorists, America would henceforth be directly funding one of the largest and most deadly terrorist armies in the world.

Israel denounced the United States for accepting Abbas’ government, but many of the reporters in the room found nothing all that shocking in Psaki’s announcement. That’s not entirely their fault. Generations of American diplomats working on the Arab-Israeli conflict have been motivated by the conviction that there’s nothing to be lost—and plenty to be gained—by trying to make peace between the two sides.

 What harm could there be in getting the two sides in the same room to feel each other out, to explore possibilities and find common ground? Certainly that was the idea that inspired Secretary of State John Kerry, compelling him to make dozens of trips to Jerusalem and Ramallah over the past two years.

Yet Psaki’s announcement is, in fact, shocking. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ move on Monday to bring Hamas into a unity government with his own Fatah party means that U.S. taxpayers will be paying the salaries of men and women who belong to an organization sworn to the destruction of an American ally—and who repeatedly endorse and employ the murder of innocent civilians through the grim arsenal of terror as a means of achieving their goals. It is hard to imagine any significant number of Americans who would endorse blowing up women and children on buses, or sending shrapnel-laden suicide bombers into pizza parlors and discos, or sending volleys of rockets against kindergartens—let alone would want their tax money to wind up in the pockets of people who dream up and carry out such atrocities.

How did this happen? After all, it was Washington that invented the Palestinian Authority, The purpose of the PA was to placate America’s Arab partners, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, while ensuring that the remaining regional troublemakers—from Saddam Hussein to the Islamic Republic of Iran—would be unable to use the Palestinian cause to their advantage. Moreover, it was believed that the easiest way to neutralize Yasser Arafat and the PLO was to suffocate him in a warm American embrace that would reward the scruffy old terrorist for good behavior, and hold out the promise of a late-life transformation into the Palestinian Nelson Mandela.

 It came as a shock to American policymakers that Arafat didn’t want to be Mandela; he wanted to be Saladdin, and if he couldn’t free Jerusalem with fire and blood he would rather die trying than go down in history as the traitor who relinquished the dream of a Palestinian homeland, the way that the Palestinians—not the Americans—imagined it.

Arafat was a hard case. But now the United States has been outfoxed by Mahmoud Abbas, a dull 79-year-old bureaucrat who is also regularly proclaimed to be “a man of peace” but who displays little interest in any aspect of governance besides collecting tribute from Western powers and daring them to call his bluff. In Abbas’ view, the Americans and the Israelis are not in control; he is. Without him, the White House loses control of the peace process, which is a key part of the American diplomatic patrimony in the region—an asset that the Obama Administration can ill afford to lose, especially now.

Abbas is therefore gambling that the Obama Administration will continue to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars to whatever he proclaims to be the new Palestinian government. The White House is desperate, and so it doesn’t matter that including Hamas in a government is against the letter of U.S. law—indeed, a number of U.S. laws.

The 2006 Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, for instance, prohibits any U.S. funds from going to Hamas, Hamas-controlled entities, or a power-sharing PA government that includes Hamas as a member, or results from an agreement with Hamas. Most recently, the 2014 Consolidated Appropriations Act prohibits “assistance to Hamas or any entity effectively controlled by Hamas, any power-sharing government of which Hamas is member, or that results from an agreement with Hamas and over which Hamas exercises undue influence.”

That last clause regarding “undue influence,” say some analysts, represents a loophole the administration may try to crawl through. “The White House may argue that since Abbas is still president of the PA, and since there aren’t really that many new Hamas members in the cabinet, Hamas does not have ‘undue influence,’ ” says a senior official at a Washington-based pro-Israel organization. “But if that’s true, then why won’t the new PA cabinet disarm Hamas?”

That’s not going to happen, of course. One purpose of the deal is for Fatah to protect Hamas’ arsenal, which, so long as it’s pointed at Israel, will enhance the prestige of a PA president whose term in office was over five years ago, and who has failed at both the small-bore work of ending corruption, fixing roads, and providing real jobs for his people, as well as big-picture tasks like winning his people a state. Protecting the weapons of his rival, in other words, is all that Abbas has left to offer the Palestinians and that suits Hamas fine.

“If anyone expects Hamas to hand over its missile network to the PA, he’s making a big mistake,” said one Hamas official. The reality is that Fatah has embraced Hamas.

Hamas has plenty to gain from the deal. Without the Iranian assistance that Hamas once enjoyed, what Gaza’s Islamic resistance needs most is some relief on the Egyptian side of the border. Cairo’s new ruler, Sisi, can afford to be magnanimous with Hamas, especially if it means he will inherit the Palestinian file in toto. Indeed, some Palestinians hope that Sisi will choose to confront Israel. In short, Palestinian reconciliation is good for everyone—except the United States and Israel.

The results for Israel are likely to be particularly unpleasant. Both Bush and Obama White Houses boasted that the security cooperation between Israel and the PA was excellent. But that seems over now since there is reportedly a clause in the Palestinian unity agreement that “criminalizes” security coordination with Israel. Perhaps, as many have feared over the last decade, those U.S.-trained Palestinian security forces will now turn their American weapons on an American ally, as they did during the second intifada. More such attacks will certainly follow, and some of them will be more successful—whether perpetrated directly by Hamas, or by Fatah, or some new terror entity in which both parties cooperate together.

Meanwhile, as crazy as it sounds, U.S. diplomats will continue searching for loopholes that allow us to fund officially designated terrorist organizations with taxpayer dollars. As Jonathan Schanzer, director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, explains “there are waivers embedded in the legislation, with which the president can override stipulations for reasons of national security or national interest. The assumption,” says Schanzer, “is that Obama is going to override everything.”

The administration will also be able to cite a regional precedent for its likely next step of embracing the new Palestinian “unity government” as a “partner for peace” while claiming that America is not funding terrorism. Hamas officials boast that they are now employing the “Hezbollah model”—i.e., becoming a political party that avoids responsibility for governance, while also maintaining an independent military organization that engages in terrorism. In other words, the PA will serve as legitimate cover while the Islamic resistance continues to wage its war of liberation against Israel.

The Palestinian Authority is an entity created by the United States, and it cannot exist without massive U.S. financial, political, military, and diplomatic support. Rather than finding ways around American law, the Obama Administration should be looking for ways to snap Abbas’ spine.

 If Kerry’s assiduous and careless peace processing was evidence of the administration’s incompetence, the decision to work with Hamas is evidence of the White House’s cravenness. The bill for this moral rot will be paid by Israelis—and by American taxpayers who will now be directly covering the salaries of thousands of card-carrying members of a terrorist organization. It’s not just Obama who will be crossing a red line by funding Hamas—he’s dragging the rest of us along with him into a political and moral swamp, in which America will combat terrorism with one hand, while paying for terror with the other.