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There is Nothing to Negotiate

October 22, 2015

There is Nothing to Negotiate, American Thinker, Dan Calic, October 21, 2015

(But shouldn’t Israel commit suicide to satisfy Abbas, the US, the EU, the UN and others? It would be the warm and fuzzy thing to do. — DM)

Some hard realities need to be faced about the Middle East “peace process.” The US, EU, UN and others have said the “settlements” are an obstacle to peace. The Arabs point to the “occupation.”

However, neither of these are the core issue…. and frankly, they never have been. Why? Keep in mind there was no “occupation” or “settlements” in 1948 when the surrounding Arab nations attacked the fledgling Jewish nation one day after declaring independence.

Moreover, where were settlements or occupation in 1967?

So if it isn’t the “occupation,” or “settlements,” what is the real issue? While many consider these to be legitimate issues, the Arabs are using them as a deliberate smokescreen.

The core issue is the Muslim’s rejection of Israel’s right to exist. It’s as simple as that. This is the main reason why the first attempt at a two-state solution (the 1947 UN partition plan) was not successful. The Muslims would not allow a Jewish state on land which they consider theirs. Its size or borders didn’t matter. It was, and remains, its mere existence.

Case in point: in 2000 when Yasser Arafat met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak under the auspicious of President Bill Clinton at Camp David ll, the real Muslim goal became evident.

During those discussions Barak made an unprecedented offer to Arafat. He was willing to turn over 95% of Judea/Samaria, commonly called the “West Bank.” He okayed the return of many of the so-called “refugees” and offered compensation for others. He was willing to split Israel in two by virtue of a contiguous road between Judea/Samaria and the Gaza Strip.

Plus, he offered to divide Jerusalem, which included handing most of the Old City over to the Muslims.

President Clinton felt Barak went above and beyond his expectations in an effort to achieve a breakthrough in the decades old conflict. Yet in the end, Arafat rejected it, without even making a counter offer. Why? An agreement would require compromise, which Muslims viewed as giving in to American demands. From their point of view this was (and remains) unacceptable, thus his rejection of the offer.

President Clinton was furious with Arafat, telling him “I am a failure and you have made me one.”

These days, with Arafat long gone, Mahmoud Abbas is in charge of the PA and considered by the U.S., EU, and others to be “sincere” and a “moderate.” However, very little has changed since the days of Arafat.

In some respect things have worsened. For example Abbas has repeatedly said he will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state. This in spite of Israel’s repeated willingness to recognize ‘Palestine’ as a state, side by side with Israel.

Abbas’s refusal to accept the Jewish state of Israel is reflective of some longstanding Muslim views.

For example-

  • Muslim thinking has always been once they have controlled someplace, it’s considered theirs forever. It doesn’t matter if they get defeated in war. They view anyone in control of “their” land as “occupiers,” who need to be driven out or destroyed. To back away from this position is seen as compromise, which is unacceptable in Muslim thinking for at least two reasons.
  • Compromise is seen as weakness. Weakness is intolerable in their culture. Keep in mind the Saudi flag contains the official credo of Islam (“there is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his messenger”) which includes the image of a sword. The clear inference being they prefer to die upholding their beliefs than live by compromise.
  • Plus, compromise, from a fundamentalist perspective is also viewed as breaking a foundational tenet of the faith. Breaking a tenet of the faith is considered blasphemy, which is punishable by death in Islam.

Mahmoud Abbas has acted in accordance with these views. When one understands how Muslim’s view anyone in control of land they consider theirs, you understand his actions. It also becomes clear the conflict is not about borders. The Jews are seen as “occupiers” of Muslim land. A Jewish state has no right to exist on “Muslim” land.

If there is any doubt of this take a look at the charters of the PLO, Hamas, or Fatah, which is the party Mahmoud Abbas is president of. Moreover, all three, the PLO, Hamas, and Fatah by virtue of their emblems leave no doubt their goal is not a two-state solution. Each emblem shows only one state — Palestine, covering all of Israel. The goal of each group is the complete elimination of Israel. Every inch of land which makes up Israel today is considered “occupied Palestine.”

Why aren’t the voices criticizing Israel for “settlement” activity also demanding the charter of Abbas’s party reflect peaceful co-existence with Israel, instead of its destruction?

In order for a two-state solution to be achieved negotiations are required. Negotiations by their very nature require compromise. How is Israel supposed to negotiate when its very existence is considered unacceptable?

There is nothing to negotiate.

 

Categories: Abbas, Arafat, Death to Israel, Foreign policy, Israel, Obama and Israel, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians and Jews, Two state solution
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PM Netanyahu at the 37th Zionist World Congress

October 20, 2015

PM Netanyahu at the 37th Zionist World Congress, PM Netanyahu, October 20, 2015

 

Categories: Abbas, Al-Quds, Antisemitism, Holy places, Islamic culture, Islamic jihad, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Israel, Lies, Netanyahu, Obama and Israel, Palestinian heroes, Peace process, Temple Mount
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The West has developed a dangerous concern for ‘proportionality.’

October 20, 2015

The West has developed a dangerous concern for ‘proportionality.’ National Review, Victor Davis Hanson, October 20, 2015

The question is not only whether the Obama administration, in private, favors the cause of the radical Palestinians over a Western ally like Israel, but also whether it is even intellectually and morally capable of distinguishing a democratic state that protects human rights from a non-democratic, authoritarian, and terrorist regime that historically has hated the West, and the United States in particular — and is currently engaged in clear-cut aggression.

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In the current epidemic of Palestinian violence, scores of Arab youths are attacking, supposedly spontaneously, Israeli citizens with knives. Apparently, edged weapons have more Koranic authority, and, in the sense of media spectacle, they provide greater splashes of blood. Thus the attacker is regularly described as “unarmed” and a victim when he is “disproportionately” stopped by bullets.

The Obama State Department has condemned the use of “excessive” Israeli force in response to Palestinian terrorism. John Kirby, the hapless State Department spokesman, blamed “both” sides for terrorism, and the president himself called on attackers and their victims to “tamp down the violence.”

In short, the present U.S. government — which is subsidizing the Palestinians to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year — is incapable of distinguishing those who employ terrorist violence from the victims against whom the terrorism is directed. But why is the Obama administration — which can apparently distinguish those who send out drones from those who are blown up by them on the suspicion of employing terrorist violence — morally incapable of calling out Palestinian violence? After all, in the American case, we blow away suspects whom we think are likely terrorists; in the Israeli instance, they shoot or arrest those who have clearly just committed a terrorist act.

Two reasons stand out.

One, Obama’s Middle East policies are in shambles. Phony red lines, faux deadlines, reset with Putin, surrendering all the original bargaining chips in the Iranian deal, snubbing Israel, cozying up to the Muslim Brotherhood, dismissing the threat of ISIS, allowing Iraq to collapse by abruptly pulling out all American troops, giving way to serial indecision in Afghanistan, ostracizing the moderate Sunni regimes, wrecking Libya, and setting the stage for Benghazi — all of these were the result of administration choices, not fated events. One of the results of this collapse of American power and presence in the Middle East is an emboldened Palestinian movement that has recently renounced the Oslo Accords and encouraged the offensive of edged weapons.

Mahmoud Abbas, the subsidized president of the self-proclaimed Palestinian State, and his subordinates have sanctioned the violence. Any time Palestinians sense distance between the U.S. and Israel, they seek to widen the breach. When the Obama team deliberately and often gratuitously signals its displeasure with Israel, then the Palestinians seek to harden that abstract pique into concrete estrangement.

Amid such a collapse of American power, Abbas has scanned the Middle East, surveyed the Obama pronouncements — from his initial Al Arabiya interview and Cairo speech to his current contextualizations and not-so private slapdowns of Netanyahu — and has wagered that Obama likes Israel even less than his public statements might suggest. Accordingly, Abbas assumes that there might be few consequences from America if he incites another “cycle of violence.”

The more chaos there is, the more CNN videos of Palestinian terrorists being killed by Israeli civilians or security forces, the more NBC clips of knife-wielding terrorists who are described as unarmed, and the more MSNBC faux maps of Israeli absorption of Palestine, so all the more the Abbas regime and Hamas expect the “international community” to force further Israeli concessions. The Palestinians hope that they are entering yet another stage in their endless war against Israel. But this time, given the American recessional, they have new hopes that the emerging Iran–Russia–Syria–Iraq–Hezbollah axis could offer ample power in support of the violence and could help to turn the current asymmetrical war more advantageously conventional. The Palestinians believe, whether accurately or not, that their renewed violence might be a more brutal method of aiding the administration’s own efforts to pressure the Israelis to become more socially just, without which there supposedly cannot be peace in the Middle East.

But there is a second, more general explanation for the moral equivalence and anemic response from the White House. The Obama “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” administration is the first postmodern government in American history, and it has adopted almost all the general culture’s flawed relativist assumptions about human nature.

Affluent and leisured Western culture in the 21st century assumes that it has reached a stage of psychological nirvana, in which the Westernized world is no longer threatened in any existential fashion as it often was in the past. That allows Westerners to believe that they no longer have limbic brains, and so are no longer bound by Neanderthal ideas like deterrence, balance of power, military alliances, and the use of force to settle disagreements. Their wealth and technology assure them that they are free, then, to enter a brave new world of zero culpability, zero competition, and zero hostility that will ensure perpetual tranquility and thus perpetual enjoyment of our present material bounty.

Our children today play tee-ball, where there are no winners and losers — and thus they are schooled that competition is not just detrimental but also can, by such training, be eliminated entirely. Our adolescents are treated according to the philosophy of “zero tolerance,” in which the hero who stops the punk from bullying a weaker victim is likewise suspended from school. Under the pretense of such smug moral superiority, our schools have abdicated the hard and ancient task of distinguishing bad behavior from good and then proceeding with the necessary rewards and punishments. Our universities have junked military history, which schooled generations on how wars start, proceed, and end. Instead, “conflict resolution and peace studies” programs proliferate, in which empathy and dialogue are supposed to contextualize the aggressor and thus persuade him to desist and seek help — as if aggression, greed, and the desire for intimidation were treatable syndromes rather than ancient evils that have remained dangerous throughout history.

Human nature is not so easily transcended, just because a new therapeutic generation has confused its iPhone apps and Priuses with commensurate moral and ethical advancement. Under the canons of the last 2,500 years of Western warfare, disproportionality was the method by which aggressors were either deterred or stopped. Deterrence — which alone prevented wars — was predicated on the shared assumption that starting a conflict would bring more violence down upon the aggressor than he could ever inflict on his victim. Once lost, deterrence was restored usually by disproportionate responses that led to victory over and humiliation of the aggressive party.

The wreckage of Berlin trumped anything inflicted by the Luftwaffe on London. The Japanese killed fewer than 3,000 Americans at Pearl Harbor; the Americans killed 30 times that number of Japanese in a single March 10, 1945, incendiary raid on Tokyo. “They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” was the standard philosophy by which aggressive powers were taught never again to start hostilities. Defeat and humiliation led to peace and reconciliation.

The tragic but necessary resort to disproportionate force by the attacked not only taught an aggressor that he could not win the fight he had started, but also reminded him that his targeted enemy might not be completely sane, and thus could be capable of any and all retaliation.

Unpredictability and the fear sown by the unknown also help to restore deterrence, and with it calm and peace. In contrast, predictable, proportionate responses can reassure the aggressor that he is in control of the tempo of the war that he in fact started. And worse still, the doctrine of proportionality suggests that the victim does not seek victory and resolution, but will do almost anything to return to the status quo antebellum — which, of course, was disadvantageous and shaped by the constant threat of unexpected attack by its enemies.

Applying this to the Middle East, the Palestinians believe that the new American indifference to the region and Washington’s slapdowns of Netanyahu have reshuffled relative power. They now hope that there is no deterrent to violence and that, if it should break out, there will be only a proportionate and modest response from predictable Westerners.

Under the related doctrine of moral equivalence, Westerners are either unwilling or unable to distinguish the more culpable from the more innocent. Instead, because the world more often divides by 55 to 45 percent rather than 99 to 1 percent certainty, Westerners lack the confidence to make moral judgments — afraid that too many critics might question their liberal sensitivities, a charge that in the absence of dearth, hunger, and disease is considered the worst catastrophe facing an affluent Western elite.

The question is not only whether the Obama administration, in private, favors the cause of the radical Palestinians over a Western ally like Israel, but also whether it is even intellectually and morally capable of distinguishing a democratic state that protects human rights from a non-democratic, authoritarian, and terrorist regime that historically has hated the West, and the United States in particular — and is currently engaged in clear-cut aggression.

Categories: Abbas, Foreign policy, Human rights, Islamic jihad, Islamic supremacy, Israel, Jews, Multiculturalism, Netanyahu, Obama - rogue president, Obama and Israel, Obama's America, Palestinian heroes, Progressives, Proportionality
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The ‘Jerusalem Awakening’

October 19, 2015

The ‘Jerusalem Awakening’ Front Page Magazine, Richard L. Cravatts, October 19, 2015

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The carnage in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel continued this week with an increased ferocity and barbarity, with stabbings, shooting, bombings, car ramming, rocket attacks, and other assaults on Israeli citizens claiming the lives of five Israelis and twenty-five Palestinians in the past two weeks alone. While the violence intensifies and seems to be spiraling out of control, not only touching Jerusalem but also the West Bank, Gaza, and other Israeli towns, officials are intent on identifying the inspiration for the latest escalation of jihad against Jews.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was quick to assign blame, not to the perpetrators of the deadly attacks—psychotic young men acting in the name of Allah to purge the land of Jews—but to the victims themselves, Israelis. Speaking at the Belfer Center at Harvard University, Kerry disingenuously observed in a question and answer session after his talk that, “There’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years and there’s an increase in the violence because there’s this frustration that’s growing.” Blaming the settlements for being an obstacle to peace is a favorite refrain for this administration, of course, and it puts the responsibility for the outbreak of violence squarely on Israel, and Netanyahu, instead of where it more justifiably belongs: namely, with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority, and a culture of death where “resistance” and martyrdom are promoted as virtuous rather than inhumanly counterproductive.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was more accurate in identifying the inspiration of the current uprising, this so-called “Jerusalem Awakening,” that has increased the tension of everyday life for Israelis and Arabs alike. At a weekly cabinet meeting Netanyahu correctly observed that Israel is “. . . in the midst of a wave of terrorism originating from systematic and mendacious incitement regarding the Temple Mount – incitement by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and the Islamic Movement in Israel.”

Secretary Kerry may well wish that it is the dreaded settlements that have motivated young Arab men to begin indiscriminately slashing and shooting Jews, but the prime minister’s view is clearly more accurate, and more believable, given PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s own words of warning when he spoke at the UN at the end of September. He was, he said before the morally-challenged audience, “. . . compelled to sound the alarm about the grave dangers of what is happening in Jerusalem, where extremist Israeli groups are committing repeated, systematic incursions upon Al-Aqsa Mosque . . , while preventing Muslim worshipers from accessing and entering the Mosque at those times and freely exercising their religious rights.”

These actions, Abbas claimed, are “in direct violation of the status quo since before 1967 and thereafter, [and are] aggravating the sensitivities of Palestinians and Muslims everywhere. I call on the Israeli government, before it is too late, to cease its use of brutal force to impose its plans to undermine the Islamic and Christian sanctuaries in Jerusalem, particularly its actions at Al-Aqsa Mosque, for such actions will convert the conflict from a political to religious one[emphasis added], creating an explosive in Jerusalem and in the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory.”

Putting aside the laughable contention that Muslims care even the slightest bit about the sanctity and protection of Christian holy places, the claim that Israel is trying to destroy or undermine mosques on the Temple Mount is an oft-repeated charge, used by Arabs against Israel as a way of inciting hatred toward Jews for their alleged perfidiousness and guile. Israeli columnist Nadav Shragrai has referred to this tactic as the “Protect the Al Aqsa Mosque” blood libel—a propaganda tool that has been employed since the 1920s to cause mistrust of Jews when the then-Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, Hitler’s Middle East ally, exhorted Muslims everywhere to defend Islamic holy places in Jerusalem from the pernicious Jews, causing riots, bloodshed, and 133 Jewish deaths.

Abbas was surprisingly candid in admitting that the incursion onto the Temple Mount, where Jews and Christians have traditionally been barred from worshiping, changed the nature of the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis from a political debate to a religious war. Of course, a holy war against Israelis specifically, and Jews in general, has been a core tenet of Islam since Jews rejected Mohammed in the seventh century, and animates the foundational charters of the PA and Hamas as part of a theological responsibility devout Muslims feel to purify the world through the extirpation of the rapacious, thieving Jews.

The perceived assault by Israel on the Al Aqsa Mosque, and the Temple Mount in general, then, is yet another affirmation to the Muslim world that the scheming Jews seek to weaken and eventually destroy the House of Islam—here in Jerusalem at Islam’s third holiest spot—and replace it with a Third Temple. What seem like random, “lone wolf” attacks on Israeli civilians at bus stops and on streets are actually thought of as part of a religiously-inspired war in the defense of Islam, a holy war in the form of jihad.

The Hamas Charter, for instance, proclaims that the circumstances through which the “Zionist regime” was established through the perfidy of the Jews is, in the honor/shame culture of the Middle East, an open wound on the Islamic world, a situation which demands jihad to restore the sanctity of Islamic land and rid the world of the festering sore that is Israel. “[T]he land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Islamic religious endowment] consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day,” the Charter states. “The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem,” stipulating that jihad is not only a tactical choice for ridding Palestine of the Zionist interloper, it is seen as a religious duty; in fact, it is demanded of true believers.

The Charter’s Article 7 also contains the oft-cited hadith which exhorts Muslims to seek out and murder Jews specifically as a sacred obligation. Islamic teaching depicts Jews as the descendants of “monkeys and pigs,” treacherous deceivers, manipulative barbarians and thieves who attempted to murder the prophets, and who are satanic, murderous, unlawful occupiers of holy Muslim land whose elimination is sacralized in Koranic and hadithic precepts.  “. . . The Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to realize the promise of Allah, no matter how long it takes,” Article 7 reads. “The Prophet, Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, says: ‘The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: “Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,” except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.’”

It is no surprise that in a culture marinated in Jew-hatred, where Jews are debased, portrayed as a subhuman species, bacteria, a disease, fomenters of wars and strife—in fact, are portrayed as the enemies of Allah and mankind—the extermination of Jews, especially in defense of Islam and its holy places, would therefore become not only a reasonable goal but a desired outcome. Who would not murder Jews if they pose such threats to mankind and Islam specifically? Who would ever make peace with the eternal enemies of Allah, let alone negotiate a peace and borders for a new Arab state with them? And would not those jihadis who willingly sacrifice themselves to murder Jews in the name of Allah be celebrated as shahids, martyrs, and have town squares and summer camps named for them and their bravery, exactly as they are by Palestinian leadership now?

If Jews are the most wretched of humans, and the “liberation” of all of Palestine—including the Temple Mount, including Jerusalem, including all of Israel—is considered a sacred duty and religious obligation, then the murder of Jews must, and will, continue in this millennial apocalyptic struggle in which devote Muslims see themselves playing a central role.

Abbas’s disingenuous and lethal tactics in inciting rage against Jewish “interlopers” and “defilers” of Muslim holy ground on the Temple Mount are not new. Scholars and archeologists remember, for instance, the howls of outrage that arose from the Arab world in February 2007, when Israeli authorities initiated a project to rebuild a ramp to the Mugrabi Gate, an entrance to the Temple Mount plaza and the Al Aqsa Mosque platform that had been damaged in an earlier storm.  Riots and protests began immediately, with accusations against Israel coming from throughout the Arab world for its “scheme” and treachery in digging under and threatening to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque itself. The committee of Muslim scholars in Jordan’s Islamic Action Front, for one, “urge[d] … jihad to liberate Al Aqsa and save it from destruction and sabotage from Jewish usurpers”—a spurious claim, since construction was taking place well outside the Mount platform, some 100 meters from the mosque, and clearly posed no possible threat.

But false irredentist claims, Islamic supremacism which compels Jews and Christians to live in dhimmitude under Muslim control, and an evident cultural and theological disregard for other faiths— while troubling in the battle over sovereignty in Jerusalem—are not, according to Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, the most dangerous aspects of a diplomatic capitulation which would allow the Palestinians control holy places and to claim a shared Jerusalem. In his engaging book, The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City, Gold pointed to a far more troubling aspect: in their desire to accede to Arab requests for a presence and religious sovereignty in Jerusalem, the State Department, EU, UN member states, and Islamic apologists in the Middle East and worldwide may actually ignite jihadist impulses they seek to dampen with their well-intentioned, but defective, diplomacy.

Why? Because, as Gold explained, “In the world of apocalyptic speculation, Jerusalem has many other associations—it is the place where the messianic Mahdi [the redeemer of Islam] is to establish his capital. For that reason, some argue that it also should become the seat of the new caliphate that most Islamic groups—from the Muslim Brotherhood to al-Qaeda—seek to establish.”

In September, Abbas announced in Ramallah that “We will not forsake our country and we will keep every inch of our land,” reaffirming his belief that all of Jerusalem would, and should, be retained by the Palestinians as the capital of their new state. “Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure, every shahid [martyr] will reach paradise, and every injured person will be rewarded by God.” In facgt, the establishment of the Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem is the first important step in the long-term strategy to rid the Levant of Jews and reestablish the House of Islam in all of historic Palestine. “Jerusalem’s recapture is seen by some as one of the signs that ‘the Hour’ and the end of times are about to occur,” Gold suggested. “And most importantly, because of these associations, it is the launching pad for a new global jihad powered by the conviction that this time the war will unfold according to a pre-planned religious script, and hence must succeed.”

So far from creating a political situation in which both parties—Israelis and the Palestinians—feel they have sought and received equal benefits, such negotiations and final agreements would have precisely the opposite effect: destabilizing the region and creating, not the oft-hoped for Israel and Palestine “living side by side in peace,” but an incendiary cauldron about to explode into an annihilatory, jihadist rage. Those in the West who are urging Israel “to redivide Jerusalem by relinquishing its holy sites,” Dore cautioned, “may well believe that they are lowering the flames of radical Islamic rage, but in fact they will only be turning up those flames to heights that have not been seen before.” If Kerry’s State Department and other Western diplomats are intent on mollifying the Arab street by pressuring Israel to divide Jerusalem as a peace offering to the Palestinians, it may well be setting into motion the exact opposite result—a jihadist, apocalyptic movement invigorated by the misguided diplomacy of the West that, once more, asks Israel to sacrifice its security and nationhood so that Islamists can realize their own imperial and theological ambitions at the Jewish state’s expense.

Categories: Abbas, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Death to Israel, Fatah, Foreign policy, Hamas, Islam's war on Jews, Israel, Jerusalem, Kerry, Netanyahu, Obama and Israel, Temple Mount
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An Islamist Intifada

October 18, 2015

An Islamist Intifada, American Thinker, Jonathan F. Keiler, October 18, 2015

The history of phony Palestinian Arab nationalism inevitably has led back to this point, revealing the violence for what it is: a war against Jews, and ultimately against anybody else who refuses to submit.

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The current Palestinian Arab “uprising” against Israel appears to be a mostly Islamist offensive, not different in any significant ideological way from radical Islamist movements like ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Hezb’allah.  The idea that it is motivated by Israeli policies, the stalled “peace process,” or Palestinian Arab nationalism is nothing but propaganda, and the laziness and bias of the international press and political classes.

The violence is motivated by the Palestinian Authority’s deliberate agitation, which knowingly taps into the Arab masses deep-seated hatred of Jews and other infidels.  The Authority has a parochial interest in diverting the attention of the masses from its own corruption and incompetence.  It also wants to insulate itself against its Hamas rival in Gaza, which correctly sees the Authority for the hapless and rotten organization it is and would replace it with an incompetent and corrupt Islamist entity in the West Bank.

What neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas wants is independence, having rejected every opportunity to create a viable Palestinian Arab state.  The Authority, like all Palestinian Arab leadership since the 1930s, has rejected every opportunity to create a Palestinian state, despite claiming that purpose.  Correspondingly, Gaza is already a wholly independent Palestinian territory, but Hamas also laughably still claims it is “occupied” by Israel.  This patently idiotic assertion is nonetheless accepted as truth by the international left, many governments, and most likely the current occupant of the White House.

Still, Palestinian Arabs in the recent past have consistently played the nationalist card.  The first and second Palestinian intifadas could be characterized as nationalist uprisings, at least to the extent that the stated motivations of Arab leadership and the masses was to end Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  The name of the uprisings, “intifada,” or “shaking off” in Arabic, suggested as much.  Predictably, though the Palestinian Arabs succeeded in ending the occupations of Gaza and most of the West Bank, they rejected the fruits of victory.

The uprisings demonstrated the disingenuous nature of Palestinian nationalism.  They furthered supposed Palestinian Arab national aspirations by intensifying international support of Palestinian goals and winning Israeli territorial concessions, but because of Palestinian disinterest in an actual state, these gains have led nowhere.

The result of the first intifada was the Oslo Accords, the withdrawal of the Israeli military from most populated parts of the West Bank, and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.  If the Palestinian Arabs had any real interest in ending the conflict with Israel and establishing a real national polity, this could have led to a state in the West Bank and Gaza.  However, when Israel offered Yasser Arafat just that, accompanied by further Israeli territorial concessions, he rejected the offer and instead launched another intifada.

The second intifada was manufactured by Arafat, and also erupted over false claims of an Israeli violation of Arab sensitivities on the Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.  But with Arafat’s guidance, it quickly adopted the rhetoric of nationalist occupation.  The extreme violence of the second intifada, which cost Israel almost ten times the losses of the first intifada, also resulted in a tangible gain for the Palestinian Arabs: the abandonment of Israeli communities in Gaza and the Israeli military’s full retreat from that enclave.  When the Israelis departed, they intentionally left behind valuable infrastructure that the Palestinians could have used to build their nation.  In addition, the international community lavished aid and investment on the newly independent territory, which might have tried to transform itself into an Arab Singapore.

But again, the Palestinian Arabs rejected the opportunity.   They destroyed the abandoned Israeli infrastructure in typical self-destructive fits of “rage,” embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of international aid, and launched a series of pathetic military offensives against Israel, designed to make their own people suffer.

Under Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas (who remains in charge of the Palestinian Authority in the tenth year of a four-year term), and later under Hamas (after they kicked Abbas and his Fatah Party out), the Palestinians have ludicrously continued to claim that Gaza is occupied.

What is most interesting about the current uprising is that the Palestinians appear to have mostly abandoned any pretense of fighting for a state, and instead have now fully joined the Islamist wave sweeping the Middle East.  Other than Abbas’s posturing, the violence is relatively leaderless, at least in terms of traditional Palestinian Arab political organizations, and driven by Islamist youth.  This uprising, like the second intifada, was instigated by Abbas’s repeated lies about Israeli actions and intentions regarding holy sites in Jerusalem.  But it is persisting in that vein, as radicalized Palestinian Islamists attack Jews in the name of protecting Islam.

Thus, the current violence is less of a piece with the first and second intifadas as it is with the Arab revolts in Mandated Palestine during the 1930s.  Those uprisings were religious, based also on supposed threats posed to Islamic holy sites, with little nationalist motivation.  That’s because in the 1930s there was no Palestinian national movement, there being no such thing as a Palestinian historically, ethnically, or culturally.  To the extent there was any national element to the revolts, it was of the pan-Arab variety – a movement that has proven to be as chimeric as Palestinian nationalism.

In theory, the religious nature of this revolt should put “Palestine’s” many supporters in the West in a more difficult position.  The basis of Western support of Palestine, from the BDS movement to formal recognition to the “peace process,” has been the idea that the conflict between Israel and the Arabs is nationalist, not religious.  As a national conflict, the left and liberal Western governments take the side of the “indigenous” people (Palestinian Arabs), as opposed to the colonial occupiers (Israelis).  But with Palestinians adopting the ideas of the most radical Islamists, this ought to challenge that narrative.  And it reflects reality, because from the 1930s until today, there never has been an authentic Palestinian national movement, as opposed to a basically Islamist desire to rid the Middle East of its only non-Islamic polity.

Hamas has always been an assertively an Islamist organization, openly embracing terror; hostage-taking; public executions of infidels and heretics; and tyranny, both political and religious.  But it also claims to want to vindicate Palestinian national aspirations, which allows some governments and leftists in general to ignore Hamas’s Islamist nature and accept its partial self-depiction as a “resistance movement” to (nonexistent) Israeli occupation.   Likewise, Hezb’allah, the Shia-Islamist terror organization, also self-depicts as a resistance movement to nonexistent Israel occupation (Israel having totally quit Lebanon over 15 years ago).  This nationalist cover allows Western leftist politicians like Jeremy Corbyn (Britain’s new Labor leader) to embrace these groups .

It has also allowed Western leaders like President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry to divorce the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict from the larger war on terror.  They prefer to depict it as a local nationalist phenomenon, in which Israeli occupation – rather than Jews simply trying to live as Jews – drives Arab terror.  So far, true to form, the White House and State Department are sticking with that story with the current violence, blaming Israel and the Palestinian Arabs equally, and willfully ignoring the facts of Abbas’s incitement and the Islamist motivations of Arab murderers.

The history of phony Palestinian Arab nationalism inevitably has led back to this point, revealing the violence for what it is: a war against Jews, and ultimately against anybody else who refuses to submit.

 

Categories: Abbas, Arafat, Foreign policy, Gaza, Hamas, Islam's war on Jews, Islamic jihad, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Obama and Israel, Palestinians
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The Obama Intifada

October 16, 2015

The Obama Intifada, Washington Free Beacon

Palestinians improvise a barricade during clashes with Israeli troops near Ramallah, West Bank, Saturday, Oct. 10 / AP

Obama won’t hold the Palestinians accountable because that might jeopardize his policy of daylight between America and Israel. A policy that was intended to improve U.S. credibility in the Muslim world and thereby denuclearize Iran, disarm and remove Bashar al-Assad, and establish a peaceful Palestinian state. A policy that has instead destabilized the region, formalized the Russian-Iranian-Syrian axis, enriched and empowered the Shiite theocracy, rattled our allies, and done nothing to curtail Palestinian intransigence.

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More than 30 dead in Israel as Palestinians armed with knives attack innocents. What’s responsible? A campaign of incitement, which slanderously accuses Jews of intruding on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and murdering Arab children in cold blood.

And who is legitimizing this campaign? None other than Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, whom President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have long held up as a peacemaker. “I think nobody would dispute that whatever disagreements you may have with him, he has proven himself to be somebody who has committed to nonviolence and diplomatic efforts to resolve this issue,” Obama told writer Jeffrey Goldberg in 2014.

That’s a strange view of commitment. This is the same Abbas, remember, who rejected then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s absurdly generous 2008 peace offer. The same Abbas who resisted negotiations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the 10-month settlement freeze in 2010, which Obama demanded explicitly on the grounds that it would give Abbas the cover he needed to begin talks. Abbas finally relented to Saudi pressure, and attended a few meetings with Netanyahu that September. But under no definition of what the word “negotiation” actually means were these meetings for real: The freeze was about to expire, the get togethers were perfunctory, and nothing of significance was discussed. The farce ended soon after.

It is a lie to say that Mahmoud Abbas is committed to a diplomatic resolution. Just as it was a lie when, the other day at Harvard, Secretary Kerry attributed the bloodshed to “a frustration that is growing” because of the “massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years.” As Elliott Abrams points out, there has been an increase in the population of the settlements, but not in their size. As if the settlements have any connection to what’s happening in the first place: The terror gripping Israel is the result of a Palestinian leadership so adrift and corrupt, so aggrieved and conspiratorial, that it encourages the radicalization of its youth and promotes an atmosphere of hatred and murder.

David Horovitz of the Times of Israel recounts the history. Not only did Abbas reject Olmert and Obama. He insisted in 2013 that the Palestinian “right of return,” which would irrevocably transform Israel into a bi-national state, be part of any deal. Declared in 2014 that Israel was committing “genocide” in Gaza. Announced in 2015 that the Palestinian Authority would no longer uphold previous agreements. Charged Israel, falsely, with infiltrating and violating Muslim sites. Encouraged Palestinians to lionize the knife-wielding assailants as martyrs, victims of Israeli “execution.” Spread the myth that 13-year-old Ahmad Mansara, recovering in an Israeli hospital from wounds he incurred in a botched terrorist attack—in which he critically wounded a Jewish teen—had been killed by an Israeli vigilante.

Concludes Horovitz: “The fact is that Abbas has quite deliberately fueled the flames of this latest Al-Aqsa-centered terror wave.”

And what has the United States done to stop him? Nothing. Not during this presidency. Obama’s focus has been laser-like when it comes to Israel’s missteps, Israel’s weaknesses, Israel’s moral code, and what he sees as Israel’s true interests. Abbas, on the other hand, is someone Obama has been content to puff up, placate, excuse, humor, ignore.

“I have to commend President Abbas,” Obama said during a bilateral meeting at the White House last year. “He has been somebody who has consistently renounced violence, has consistently sought a diplomatic and peaceful solution that allows for two states, side by side, in peace and security.”

In his interview with Goldberg, conducted around the same time, Obama added, “I believe that President Abbas is sincere about his willingness to recognize Israel and its right to exist, to recognize Israel’s legitimate security needs, to shun violence, to resolve these issues in a diplomatic fashion that meets the concerns of the people of Israel.”

But at that White House meeting, according to reports, Abbas explicitly rejected three key elements of any agreement: recognition of Israel as a Jewish State; renunciation of the right of return; and commitment to “end of conflict” language that would foreclose future Palestinian demands. As he has done with so many dictators, theocrats, and goons, the president offered an open hand—and was rebuked with a closed fist.

This rebuke was not met with forceful rhetoric, countermeasures, or a shift in policy to strengthen Palestinian institutions, develop Palestinian civil society, broaden and liberalize the Palestinian leadership. It was met with silence. The White House just looked the other way.

“My concern about Obama is that he never asks anything about the Palestinians. He gives them a complete pass,”says Ambassador Dennis Ross, a former Obama official whose new book Doomed to Succeed tells the story of the beleaguered U.S.-Israel alliance. “It makes it worse for the Palestinians. For the Palestinians, you have a political culture that is driven so much by this profound sense of victimhood and grievance—the idea that they should do anything towards the Israelis, they should make any accommodation towards the Israelis, is completely illegitimate.”

Why the pass? Jeffrey Goldberg says it’s because the Palestinians “have less power.” That’s no excuse. Another possibility: The president is occupied with Cuba, ISIS, Syria, Ukraine, and Iran. He doesn’t have the bandwidth to hold Mahmoud Abbas to the same standard as Benjamin Netanyahu.

But we know that’s not the case, either. The president has been more than happy to castigate Netanyahu all along. Can’t he say a few tough things about Abbas?

Obama won’t hold the Palestinians accountable because that might jeopardize his policy of daylight between America and Israel. A policy that was intended to improve U.S. credibility in the Muslim world and thereby denuclearize Iran, disarm and remove Bashar al-Assad, and establish a peaceful Palestinian state. A policy that has instead destabilized the region, formalized the Russian-Iranian-Syrian axis, enriched and empowered the Shiite theocracy, rattled our allies, and done nothing to curtail Palestinian intransigence.

Even the carrot Obama offered Israel as part of the Iran deal—interdiction of Iranian weapons to Hezbollah—has been exposed as an illusion. Russia has a no-fly zone in Syria and is arming Syrian regulars and presumably Hezbollah, too. How else to explain Netanyahu’s sudden visit to Moscow last month? Hezbollah with a nuclear umbrella was something the Iran deal was supposed to prevent. Now Hassan Nasrallah benefits from the Russian nuclear umbrella, in addition to the Iranian one that will be unfurled a decade hence. Great job Obama.

So here we are: Palestinians no closer to statehood, Israel terrorized, Jewish and Arab lives being lost, and an atmosphere so rife with revisionism and paranoia that the New York Times is questioning the history of Jews on the Temple Mount. All because President Obama forgot that daylight ends in darkness.

Categories: Abbas, Israel, Obama - Middle East, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes
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Never Again’ means standing with Israel

October 14, 2015

Never Again’ means standing with Israel, Jerusalem Post, Dr. Ben Carson, October 14, 2015

ShowImage (13)Ben Carson . (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)

While Israel must be able to go it alone, it should never have to stand alone.  In recent years, personalities and politics have been permitted to negatively affect America’s relationship with Israel despite the fact that the bonds between our two nations are so unique and vital.  When the enemies of Israel and the United States sense rifts between us, they are emboldened and grow even more dangerous.

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Sometimes it is hard to find the right words to talk about the kind of evil that defies reason and destroys lives.  We saw that evil on full display during the Holocaust perpetuated by the fanatical and tyrannical Nazi regime under Adolph Hitler.  The lessons to be drawn from those darkest of days in world history are plentiful, and as relevant today as they were nearly 80 years ago.

In recent days I suggested that things might have unfolded in a very different manner in Europe had the Jewish people been armed and better able to defend themselves. What would have been the impact on Hitler’s war machine if his victims had had more access to guns? It is something that we will never know for sure.

What I do know however, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is that I never intended for my words to diminish the enormity of the tragedy or in any way to cause any pain for Holocaust survivors or their families.

Both those who perished and those who survived the Nazi camps deserve our deepest reverence, as do the partisan fighters who rose in armed opposition.

It is truly incomprehensive to imagine what these men, women and children endured, and it is impossible for us to put ourselves in their shoes.  This I know, since I have seen some of those actual shoes first-hand at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and at Yad Vashem in Israel. Those shoes, stripped from just some of the millions of Holocaust victims, are a jarring symbol that humanizes the loss.

They are poignant and painful reminders. I have learned about the Holocaust and studied the history.  So should every American, as well as others all around the world.

When I was in Israel last year, stepping from the dimmed lights of their Holocaust Museum into the bright Jerusalem sunshine underscored for me in a literal and figurative manner that often out of darkness comes light.  And upon reflection, I concluded that there are vital lessons that can be drawn from the Holocaust’s senselessness and savagery.  One is that going back centuries the Jewish people have somehow managed to find a way to overcome every oppressor who sought to destroy them.

Another is that the Jewish people need a state and that they must have the ability to defend themselves in order to ensure that “never again” remains a reality. That state, Israel, has been re-established in their historic homeland.

The founding of the State of Israel in 1948 was an accomplishment that almost never fully came to pass. Just hours after declaring its independence, Arab armies descended on the fledgling state in a war of annihilation only to be overcome by spirited Israeli forces who fought with the conviction and valor of those with nowhere else to go and no other option for survival.

Sadly for Israel, serious threats remain and its people must still live in a perpetual state of readiness to confront those who seek her destruction.  Israel’s armed forces and the country’s qualitative military edge over other nations in the Middle East are essential elements that ensure that the Jewish people continue to have a state of their own and that Israel can thrive.

The Middle East is a region awash with dictatorships, ruthless violence, turmoil and political instability where Israel is the only Western-style democracy.

As Americans we stand with Israel because the Jewish state embodies many of the same aspects that make the United States the greatest nation in the world: commitment to human rights, religious liberty for all citizens, the rule of law, equal rights for women, a free press, a robust judicial system.

America’s relationship with Israel is one with deep benefits for both nations. This proves invaluable every day in term of strategic cooperation and in specific arenas of homeland security and counterterrorism.

In the years to come, America’s ability to defend herself against all enemies, foreign and domestic, will be critical.  Our determination to secure our homeland and to safeguard our citizens against adversaries and radical Islamist terrorist groups must be stronger than ever.

Looking to the future, while remaining mindful of the past, I believe that it is in America’s national security interests to deepen our commitment to Israel.  If elected president in November 2016, I will explore every opportunity to strengthen ties between our two nations and to ensure that Israel always has the tools it needs to protect herself and our shared interests.

While Israel must be able to go it alone, it should never have to stand alone.  In recent years, personalities and politics have been permitted to negatively affect America’s relationship with Israel despite the fact that the bonds between our two nations are so unique and vital.  When the enemies of Israel and the United States sense rifts between us, they are emboldened and grow even more dangerous.

The strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship can and must be strengthened.

That is precisely why I look forward to my first conversation as President of the United States with the Prime Minister of Israel. On that phone call I will utter four important words that reflect the future direction we will take together: “Our relationship is restored.”

Categories: Defense of Israel, Dr. Ben Carson, Foreign policy, Holocaust, Islamic jihad, Obama and Israel
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Under Obama, Another Betrayal of Israel

October 14, 2015

Under Obama, Another Betrayal of Israel, Algemeiner, Eliana Rudee, October 14, 2015

netanyahu_obama-300x200President Obama and Prime Minister Netanayhu. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

As an American citizen living in Jerusalem, I recently received two notifications from the U.S. State Department warning of “potential for violence in the Old City,” restricting U.S. government employees from entering the Old City from Sunday, Oct. 4 through Tuesday, Oct. 13 “without prior approval from the U.S. Consulate,” and recommending that “private U.S. citizens take into consideration these restrictions and the additional guidance contained in the Department of State’s travel warning for Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank when making decisions regarding their travel in the Old City and in Jerusalem.”

My initial reaction was laughter. The messages were casually sent as if we don’t know there is “potential for violence in the Old City.” Dozens of Jews have been attacked in the last week, many in the Old City. The tension is obvious to anyone here — we go to sleep listening to the helicopters explore the skies and we wake up to a climbing death toll at the hands of Arab terrorists in Jerusalem.

But then, I realized how truly sad this message is that I received. We are all painfully aware of what’s happening here; but up until now, we weren’t actually sure that the U.S. government knew what was happening. There have been at best tepid public condemnations of the attacks and murders, with barely a mention of the victims being Jews. But now that the United States is indeed aware that terrorists are targeting Jews in Israel like myself, the sad fact is that there is nothing being done about it. Moreover, when we defend ourselves, media outlets and the U.S. government are touting the terrorists as the victims.

On Oct. 1, President Obama pulled John Kerry and Samantha Power from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s U.N. speech to the General Assembly. As reported by Reuters, “During Netanyahu’s speech, Washington was represented by U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power’s deputy, David Pressman, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro.” Hard to read this as not a slap in the face of the Jewish State.

In addition to signing a nuclear deal with Iran and boycotting the Israeli prime minister’s speech, the Palestinian flag was raised in New York City at the U.N. just the day before. This is the same flag being raised in the streets of Ramallah when Palestinians murdered two Jewish parents in front of their four children. Evan Cohen, in the Jerusalem Post, points out this fact: “The kind of celebration one might have expected earlier this week [was] the kind of celebration they reserve only for the happiest of events — dead Jews.”

Why is the Palestinian flag being raised in New York City at the U.N. headquarters, while on the other side of the world, Palestinians are raising the same flag in celebration of the slaughter of innocent people? The America that I know would not support this. Aren’t we supposed to stand for justice, religious freedom, and the simple right to life? As a Jewish American, I am choosing to live in the Jewish State, not in Nazi Germany where we needed to fear being attacked on the basis of our peoplehood. Even still, the U.S. government seems silent instead of supporting the Jewish people and even their own citizens in Israel.

Sadly, the media is even worse than silent, it is hilariously biased. On Oct. 3, a 19-year-old Palestinian terrorist stabbed and killed two Jewish men and wounded several others (including a toddler) in the Old City, as they were on their way to the Western Wall. Police shot the terrorist during the stabbing, and Al Jazeera reported the terrorist attack as “Palestinian shot dead after fatal stabbing in Jerusalem; 2 Israeli victims also killed.” Likewise, Students for Justice in Palestine, an anti-Israel student group on campuses across North America, said that the Palestinian was “brutally murdered while heading to work.” Little did they mention his work was killing Jews and he was killed as he murdered the so-called “Jewish colonialists”.

Unfortunately it is quite common for noise to be made only when Israel is the one to strike someone dead, even if it is a terrorist caught in the act. Such is true for the media, and perhaps now even for the U.S. government.

Categories: Islamic jihad, Israel, Jews, Netanyahu, Obama administration, Obama and Israel, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians
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Jack Abramoff – Jihad in Israel!

October 14, 2015

Jack Abramoff – Jihad in Israel! The United West via You Tube, October 14, 2015

 

Categories: Abbas, Christians, Defense of Israel, Islamic jihad, Israel, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians, Putin
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Terror in Israel — why’s the world media yawning?

October 12, 2015

Terror in Israel — why’s the world media yawning? Front Page Magazine, P. David Hornik, October 12, 2015

knife-stabbing

 

That fear of making Israel look “good.”

There’s been a terror onslaught here in Israel for the last week and a half. Those of us who bother checking foreign media outlets have noticed that there’s relatively little coverage. This is mainly good, since, of course, coverage of Israel’s conflicts with Palestinians and neighbors tends to be quite hostile to Israel.

Still, it raises the question of why interest isn’t greater this time. Those hallowed principles of “If it bleeds, it leads” and “Jews are news” would seem to apply.

True, they don’t apply on the scale of last year’s Gaza war, which drew huge coverage. But that may give a clue as to the explanation.

In that war much larger numbers died than in the current terror onslaught—and given Israel’s superior military capabilities and Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields, they were predominantly on the Palestinian side. A lot of scenes were broadcast from Gaza hospitals. The “text” was: see what the Israelis have done now!

In this current campaign so far, four Israelis have been killed and many more wounded. The number of Palestinians killed is, again, larger—but they were primarily killed by security forces fending off attacks, with few cases of collateral killing of civilians.

Still, a lot of what is happening would seem to be “newsworthy.” Even in Israel, with its long history of aggressions by surrounding populations, terror organizations, and countries, what’s happening has been almost unique.

Along with the usual rock-throwing and gun ambushes, they’ve been lunging at us—on streets and sidewalks, in malls and bus stations—with knives and screwdrivers. These “lone-wolf” attackers aren’t terrorists per se. Many have been teenage boys—or teenage girls, or young women.

They mostly come from the territories—but some also from within Israel—looking for Jews, any Jews, to kill. They’re crazed with hate and not seeking a “two-state” solution and definitely not “peace.” The hate largely takes the form of a religious frenzy—after months of the Islamist organizations and the Palestinian Authority drumming the libelous message into their heads that Israel is scheming to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Even for the media with its anti-Israeli bias, it may hard to finagle these hate-crazed, religiously motivated attacks into its “Israel victimizes Palestinians” frame. It gets even harder when one looks at individual cases.

On October 3, for instance, Aharon Banita, his wife Adele, and their two young children were attacked by a Palestinian stabber in the Old City of Jerusalem. Seeing her husband fatally wounded and having been stabbed herself, The Times of Israel reported that Adele

“…yelled ‘please help me!’ and [the surrounding Palestinian shopkeepers] just spat at me.…”

Banita said Palestinian youths who saw the attack laughed and cursed at her as she yelled for help.

She said that one of them slapped her and another laughed in her face and told her to “drop dead” when she told him she’d give him a million shekels if he helped her get away with her two babies.

“They saw that we were with two baby carriages,” she said.

Are there some Palestinians whom even the “elite” media can’t love?

And on October 7, in the town of Kiryat Gat in southern Israel, there was this incident:

A Palestinian man stabbed an IDF soldier and grabbed his gun…. He then fled to a fourth floor apartment….

The soldier was lightly injured in the attack, with wounds to his head, apparently inflicted with a pair of scissors….

Liat Ohana said she encountered the terrorist in the kitchen of her apartment, and that “he had murder in his eyes.” She said she pushed him into her kitchen, where she heard him rooting around in the cutlery, apparently looking for a knife. The gun he had seized had no magazine.

She and her mother fled, screaming, she said, and later heard gunfire. “I didn’t think I’d get out alive, but I was determined to fight,” Ohana said later. The security forces “shot him in my kitchen,” she told Army Radio.

Liat Ohana, in other words, is a heroine. And there have been other cases of heroism by Israeli civilians, like the ones whopinned down a stabber in a shopping mall on October 7, and the female soldier in Tel Aviv on October 8 who, though stabbed with a screwdriver, fell on her gun and stopped the attacker from getting it.

Heroic Israelis fending off Palestinian killers? Seems “dramatic” and—with Israelis not the only ones under Islamic attack—even inspirational. But it’s not the stuff mainstream-media stories are made of, and only those following Israeli outlets are likely to know about these cases at all.

Of course, to the extent that the media has covered the events, it’s been up to its usual antics. The BBC’s headline for the abovementioned attack involving the Banitas, in which Aharon Banita and another man were killed before security forces killed the attacker, was: “Palestinian shot dead after Jerusalem attack kills two.” HonestReporting gives a spate of similar examples gleaned from a single day.

At this point it’s not yet clear if this terror wave will die down or intensify. If the latter, it can be safely assumed that the Western media will increase its coverage on the side of the assault.

We know that the Palestinian attackers are driven by a systematically inculcated religious and nationalistic rage. What drives the Western media’s dehumanization of Israelis and identification with their killers?

Categories: Al-Aqsa Mosque, Defense of Israel, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Jews, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians, Two state solution, Western media
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