tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90121047337688421082024-03-13T13:56:12.626-07:00PRIMERPromoting Responsibility in Middle East Reportingprimerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.comBlogger885125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-52393363358207280902024-02-24T09:53:00.000-08:002024-02-24T09:53:16.797-08:00October 7 provided a brief moment of clarity<p>An abridged version of the following appeared as an op-ed in the <a href="https://www.rep-am.com/opinion/columns-and-op-eds/2024/02/20/oct-7-provided-a-brief-moment-of-clarity/" target="_blank">Waterbury Republican-American</a> on February 21, 2024 </p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;">How soon we forget</div><div style="text-align: center;">October 7 provided a brief moment of clarity</div></h2><p style="text-align: center;"><i>By Alan Stein</i></p><p>The October 7 Massacre led by Hamas provided a fleeting moment of clarity.</p><p>Peace-loving Israelis were disabused of the misconception that it was possible to live next to a de facto terror state ruled by Hamas. They realized providing food, fuel, water and power and transferring massive amounts of goods and providing well-paying jobs for thousands of Gazans would never moderate Hamas.</p><p>Israelis realized there is no alternative to rendering Hamas incapable of keeping its leaders' pledge to repeat the October 7 massacre again and again.</p><p>Israelis recognized the need for good to prevail over evil.</p><p>Most leaders of democratic nations also understood their need for Israel to prevail.</p><p>President Biden quickly became the first president ever to travel to Israel during a war, asserted Hamas must be eliminated and pledged to stand with Israel forever.</p><p>We have since learned the barbarity of the Gaza terrorists was far worse than initially realized. Unfortunately, memories fade, support has waned and Israel is under increasing pressure to stop short of victory and let Hamas survive.</p><p>Early on, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby praised Israel for the lengths it was going to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza, doing more than even America would.</p><p>This is borne out by the historically low proportion of civilian casualties. The United Nations expects nine non-combatant deaths for every enemy combatant killed in urban warfare. The ratio in Gaza has been less than a quarter of that norm.</p><p>Hamas' network of tunnels is more extensive than the New York City subway system and cost Hamas a billion dollars. The underground labyrinth presents a challenge no other military in history has faced. Military academies will study and learn from the innovative methods Israel developed to deal with it.</p><p>Thousands of entrance shafts are deliberately located inside homes, schools, mosques and hospitals in order to make it impossible for Israel to defend against Hamas without Gaza's infrastructure being damaged and civilians getting killed. It's called Hamas' "dead baby strategy." </p><p>Here are two examples.</p><p>A woman pushing a baby carriage called out to Israeli soldiers for help. As a soldier came to help, she signaled a terrorist, who emerged from a nearby shaft, shot and killed the soldier, and escaped down the shaft.</p><p>A boy asked an Israeli soldier for water. As the soldier approached with the water, the boy detonated the suicide belt he was wearing. The soldier was fortunate. Although seriously injured, he survived. The boy who blew himself up is now counted among those children Hamas claims were killed by Israel.</p><p>John Spencer, the Chair of Urban Studies Warfare at the Modern War Institute at West Point and one of the world's leading experts on urban warfare, recently wrote "Israel has taken more measures to avoid needless civilian harm than virtually any other nation that's fought an urban war" and "Israel has taken precautionary measures even the United States did not do during its recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." (Israel Implemented More Measures to Prevent Civilian Casualties Than Any Other Nation in History, Newsweek, January 31, 2024)</p><p>Despite those facts, Hamas' "dead baby strategy" has been effective in subverting support for Israel. Secretary of State Antony Blinken now keeps repeating the mantra "far too many Palestinians have died and Israel must do a better job."</p><p>During his generally positive speech in Israel on October 18, Biden announced he had prevailed on Israel to agree to the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, even though Hamas has traditionally stolen much of the aid delivered to Gaza. Hamas used stolen aid to build its underground network of tunnels. Recognizing this, President Biden said "Let me be clear: If Hamas diverts or steals the assistance, they will have demonstrated once again that they have no concern for the welfare of the Palestinian people and it will end."</p><p>Sixty percent of that aid has been stolen by Hamas. Yet rather than ending the aid, as he said he would if Hamas stole it, President Biden keeps pressuring Israel to allow even more.</p><p>The world quickly loses interest in most wars.</p><p>Not so when Israel is attacked. The world is losing interest in the 134 innocent Israelis still being held. Many of those not already murdered are being brutalized by Hamas, but many obsesses over the plight of the people in Gaza even though 98% say they're more proud of being Palestinian after the October 7 Massacre!</p><p>Kfir Bibas was nine months old when he was kidnapped by Hamas, along with his four year old brother Ariel and their parents, Shiri and Yarden. Shiri's parents were murdered. Kfir is now thirteen months old and nobody has any idea of whether he and his brother and parents are dead or alive.</p><p>How many people who obsess about the suffering of Gazans ever think about the Bibas family?</p><p>That Israel is fighting against evil hasn't changed, even as memories have faded.</p><p>For good to prevail over evil, Israel must render render Hamas and the other terror groups in Gaza incapable of resurrecting themselves and repeating their barbaric slaughter.</p><p>This remains a necessity for America as well.</p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-91658179556746219502024-01-26T00:37:00.000-08:002024-01-26T00:37:45.584-08:00Everyone values some lives more than others<p><i>Published in the Waterbury Republican-American on January 24, 2024:</i></p><h1 style="text-align: left;">Everyone values some lives more than others</h1><p><i>BY ALAN STEIN</i></p><p>There's a question I've been pondering since Sky News reporter Kay Burley, referring to the impending hostage deal calling for Israel to release 150 terrorists in exchange for 50 of the innocent Israelis kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, asked a visibly stunned Eylon Levy "Does Israel not think that Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives."</p><p>It was clearly a trap, meant to elicit an answer that would be used to call Levy a bigot for valuing Palestinian lives less than Israeli lives. He avoided her trap, but in truth everyone values some lives more than others.</p><p>Like most Americans, I value American lives more than lives of people in other countries. Most of us pay more attention to a murder in London than one in N'Djamena. A shooting in Waterbury is far more likely to be on the front page of the Republican-American than one in London or even Hartford.</p><p>The way that question was posed to Eylon Levy is an example of the double standard routinely applied to Israel. Has anyone heard a similar question ever being asked of a representative of any other country?</p><p>It would be abnormal for Israelis to not value the lives of their brethren more than those of others, particularly others dedicated to Israel's destruction.</p><p>What's abnormal is how their own demands for that lopsided exchange indicate Palestinians themselves value Israeli lives more than their own.</p><p>Rabbi Shmuel Reichman reports hearing a Hamas leader saying "Hamas values death, while Israel value life; that is their greatest weakness."</p><p>CNN's Sam Kiley reported that Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, told him "Israelis love life" while "we celebrate the greatest gift of martyrdom for our children. Every mother wants that for her child."</p><p>In 2011, Israel released 1,027 terrorists to free a single Israeli, Gilad Shalit.</p><p>Israelis rejoiced in the release of Shalit, but many opposed the deal, correctly believing it would lead to more fatal terror attacks. One of the terrorists released in that deal, Yahya Sinwar, was the mastermind of the Oct. 7 massacre.</p><p>While he was in custody, Israeli doctors had saved Sinwar's life, curing him of an aggressive strain of brain cancer.</p><p>Israel saves the life of a Palestinian terrorist and he masterminds the slaughter of more than a thousand Israelis! Israel's humanity often gets repaid with terror.</p><p>The support Israel had on Oct. 7 predictably started ebbing even before Israel began defending its people. The unavoidable casualties in Gaza now get massive attention while the mass murders of Israelis and the plight of the Israelis held hostage are virtually ignored. That the proportion of civilian casualties in Gaza has been far below what the United Nations expects in modern warfare and what our American army considered acceptable in Iraq does nothing to protect Israel from constant criticism.</p><p>Mainstream American media rarely reports that Israeli forces find terrorists and weapons in every hospital, along with entrances to terror tunnels below, or that the IDF found weapons hidden behind MRI machines and RPGs in incubators for premature babies.</p><p>My wife and I had plane tickets leaving for Israel on Oct. 8. The Oct. 7 massacre changed our plans, but we finally arrived in Israel a few weeks ago.</p><p>Superficially, life for us in Netanya is almost normal, but no family in Israel has been unaffected. The hotels are filled with families displaced from their homes thanks to attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Almost everyone is worried about close friends and relatives fighting in Gaza. Almost everyone knows someone who was murdered in the Oct. 7 massacre, after being taken hostage or killed while serving in Gaza.</p><p>Nobody wants the war to end more than Israelis, but they also understand it must be ended in a way that ensures Hamas will not be able to carry out its pledge to repeat its Oct. 7 atrocities "again and again." They know each previous war ended with a ceasefire during which Hamas took aid meant to help civilians, used it to enrich its leaders, build its elaborate terror tunnel system and strengthen itself, then broke the ceasefire with more terror, war, death and destruction.</p><p>Israelis recognize they have no alternative to what they are doing. They will not be able to live in peace unless they win this war.</p><p>In contrast, the terrorists in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority controlled portions of Judea and Samaria do have a choice. They can continue the path of terror and mass murder of Israelis and catastrophe for Gazans. Or they can choose the path of peace, raising their children to grow up and live normal lives rather than die as shahids.</p><p>While the Israeli Defense Force is doing what it must, in Netanya we see people trying to live their lives as normally as possible. Every time they enjoy a walk, or sit in a cafe, or visit friends, or play tennis - I've done that a few times since getting to Israel - they deprive the terrorists of a victory and make a small contribution to the victory of good over evil.</p><p>Hamas thinks the Israeli love of life is Israel's weakness, and in a sense they're right, but it's also Israel's great strength.</p><p>Alan Stein, Ph.D., was formerly a long time resident of Waterbury. He and his wife Marsha currently split their time between Netanya in Israel and Natick, Mass. He is President Emeritus of PRIMERConnecticut (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting) and the founder of PRIMER-Massachusetts and PRIMER-Israel.</p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-26704238402229002842024-01-13T07:02:00.000-08:002024-01-13T07:02:28.304-08:00South Africa's genocide allegation against Israel by Yale Zussman<p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><i>Posted with the permission of the author.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Last evening's program on South Africa's allegation of genocide against Israel left out more issues than it addressed.</span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Palestinians have charged Israel with genocide for decades, whether there was a conflict or not. I am a retired math professor, and I hope you will agree that if party A is pursuing genocide against party B, the number of people in party B will go down over time. For example, during the Holocaust, the number of Jews in Europe was reduced by half. By contrast, there are about eight times as many Palestinians today as when they started claiming Israel was engaged in genocide against them. Maybe UNRWA-run schools just don't do a good job teaching basic mathematics, but for journalists to be unfamiliar with the difference between "increase" and "decrease" is inexcusable.</div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Second, the authors of the Genocide Convention never contemplated how the target of an intended genocide could defend itself against a people dedicated to its annihilation. Since its creation, that has been the sole purpose of the Palestinian movement; in the case of Hamas, genocide against the Jews is written into its Charter. Unless the option of totally destroying a genocidal movement is permitted, the Convention would enable groups committed to genocide to keep trying until they succeed. That would be self-defeating, and as a matter of policy, makes no sense. To prevent genocide, the Convention must permit targets of intended genocides to undertake the destruction of any group that pursues genocide.</div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">That begs the question of defining the membership of a genocidal entity, like Hamas, or more broadly the Palestinian movement. Polls show that Hamas's popularity rose after engaging in the October 7 genocidal atrocity. There's no evidence that Gazans have ever resisted Hamas's control of them or objected to Hamas turning the entire strip into one vast military base. Gazan civilians constructed Hamas's tunnels and allowed Hamas to use schools, mosques, hospitals, and homes as entry points and sites from which Hamas routinely fired rockets at Israeli civilians. Perhaps most telling is that Gazans who were trusted enough to get permits to work in Israel provided much of the intelligence Hamas used to plan the atrocity. While there are undoubtedly innocent Gazans, Hamas has made a point of obscuring who they are.</div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">That brings us to the question of civilian deaths. NPR, like much of the media, has been reporting for more than two months that starvation and disease are immanent, but even the Hamas, woops, Palestinian Health Ministry's official numbers don't reflect this. </div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Since early in the conflict, the percentage of combatant deaths to total claimed civilian deaths has remained fairly constant. Using recent numbers, when the Palestinian Health Ministry was reporting total "civilian" deaths as around 22000, the IDF was reporting combatant (Hams plus PIJ) of around 10000. If the 10000 are included in the 22000, the percentage is about 45%, if not, it is about 31%; these numbers have inched up over the last few weeks. </div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Two observations: 1) If there was starvation and or disease killing people in significant numbers, the percentages should go down, possibly precipitously. They haven't, so there is no basis for the starvation/disease claims. 2) In Afghanistan and Iraq both the United States and Britain considered a 10% combatant death ratio good. By this standard, the IDF's handling of Gaza should be considered remarkably good.</div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Considering that South Africa has had more murders in the past year than there have been deaths in the Gaza War, the only way to describe what it is doing is the Israeli word,"Chutzpa."</div>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-25191307188498380422023-12-04T17:12:00.000-08:002023-12-04T17:12:14.827-08:00In the midst of the Gaza nightmare, a light flickers, then dies<p>This was published as a <a href="https://ctmirror.org/2023/12/04/in-gaza-a-light-flickers-then-dies/" target="_blank">Viewpoint</a> in the <a href="https://ctmirror.org/2023/12/04/in-gaza-a-light-flickers-then-dies/" target="_blank">CT Mirror</a> on Monday, December 4, 2023. It is an updated version of an <a href="https://www.rep-am.com/opinion/2023/11/28/a-dim-flickering-light-in-the-middle-of-a-nightmare/" target="_blank">op-ed</a> published a week earlier in the <a href="https://www.rep-am.com/opinion/2023/11/28/a-dim-flickering-light-in-the-middle-of-a-nightmare/" target="_blank">Waterbury Republican-American</a>.</p><h2 style="text-align: center;">In the midst of the Gaza nightmare, a light flickers, then dies</h2><p style="text-align: center;"><i>by Alan Stein, Ph.D.</i></p><p>On Friday morning, Nov. 24, I watched live as 13 Israeli women and children held hostage in Gaza were released seven weeks after being kidnapped by Hamas terrorists.</p><p>They were the first of four groups to be released during a four-day pause in the war Hamas started on Oct. 7, with an agreement that it could be extended an additional day for every 10 hostages Hamas released, up to five more days. Ultimately it lasted just a week, punctuated each day by drama orchestrated by Hamas. It ended with Hamas crossing too many red lines, refusing to release a group of hostages as agreed and firing 45 rockets when the ceasefire was still in effect.</p><p>The deal was a double-edged sword.</p><p>On the plus side, a handful of hostages were freed each day.</p><p>On the minus side, three terrorists were released for each freed hostage, large amounts of "aid" was sent into Gaza knowing much would stolen by Hamas and used to rearm, lengthen the war and kill more people.</p><p>Israel also agreed to stop its aerial surveillance of southern Gaza, by aircraft, drones and balloons, and also stop its surveillance of northern Gaza for six hours each day. One does not need much imagination to figure out why Hamas made that demand: to give it the opportunity to move the hostages around, eliminating the value of any intelligence about their location Israel might have gained from the hostages who got released and making further rescue far more difficult. And, each day, the pressure increased on Israel to agree to another "permanent" ceasefire that would again let Hamas survive, rearm, and perform more atrocities.</p><p>Although efforts continue to be made to forge a new hostages-for-terrorists agreement, I think a new agreement is unlikely in the near future. Hamas will be trying for an even more one-sided deal, while Israel will be trying to make sure Hamas can't again violate it with impunity. Israel also can't keep stopping, restarting and dragging out a war while hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens remain displaced (Hamas doesn't care about its citizens) and its economy is stalled because so many workers are on reserve duty.</p><p>On that first day, I watched as some children were released with their mothers while their fathers were still being held hostage. Some are now orphans traumatized by seeing their parents slaughtered in front of them; some have just one parent because Hamas murdered their other parent on October 7. In several cases, in violation of the agreement, Hamas released children without their mother. Hila Rotem Shoshani, a 13-year-old girl, was released late that Saturday night - itself a violation of the agreement, since the hostages were supposed to be released around 4 p.m. - without her mother, Raaya. Hamas falsely claimed they did not know where her mother was, even though, as Hila told her relatives, they had been held together until two days earlier.</p><p>In a complicated procedure, Hamas gathered the hostages and brought them to International Red Cross ambulances on the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing into Egypt. The Red Cross brought them into Egypt and drove to the border with Israel, where they were transferred to the Israeli military and brought into Israel and then to Israeli hospitals.</p><p>That first transfer to the Rafah crossing into Egypt was delayed because the Red Cross needed to provide urgent care that couldn't wait for the short ambulance ride to the Rafah crossing. On November 24, 84-year-old Elma Avraham was hours from death when she was released. She'd been in good health when taken hostage, but needed medications that were withheld from her by Hamas. Upon her release, she had a weak pulse, low blood pressure, a body temperature in the 80's and had to be rushed by helicopter to Soroka Medical Center, where she fell into a coma.</p><p>The children were not immediately told whether their parents were alive or dead; that waited until they were in the care of trained professionals, and then only if it was known whether their parents were alive or dead.</p><p>Those traumatized children are the "lucky" ones.</p><p>They are not among those who were beheaded on Oct. 7, or burned alive, or had their limbs torn off so their Hamas torturers could enjoy watching them bleed to death.</p><p>Similar scenes, with cruel variations forced by Hamas, were repeated six more times. Each day relatives were still wondering whether their children, wives, sisters or mothers would be returned and in what condition. Hamas was required to provide a list each day of who would be released the next day. Each time, Hamas delayed providing the list, or provided one violating the agreed upon criteria. On the second day, hours after the transfer to the Red Cross was supposed to take place, Hamas still hadn't provided an acceptable list, at which point Israel announced that unless the hostages reached Israel by midnight - itself eight hours after they were supposed to be transferred to the Red Cross - it would resume the war. Hamas cruelly kept the suspense going for hours more, with the hostages reaching Israel just two minutes to midnight.</p><p>The only concession by Hamas in the agreement besides the release of some of the hostages it kidnapped in violation of international law was to permit the International Red Cross to visit the hostages, give them emergency medical care and give Israel a list of their names and conditions. This is all also required under international law. Not surprisingly, Hamas reneged on that commitment. When the pause was extended, Hamas again committed to allowing Red Cross access and again reneged.</p><p>The most problematic parts of the deal were the cease fire and its timing, coming when Israel was days away from clearing the terrorists from northern Gaza.</p><p>Pausing operations halted Israel's momentum and, as noted, predictably led to increased pressure on Israel to agree to a permanent cease fire, leaving Hamas intact and able to rebuild. The prime ministers of Belgium and Spain came to the Rafah crossing before any hostages crossed, bizarrely criticized Israel and called for a permanent cease fire while uttering neither a single word of criticism of Hamas nor welcome for the release of hostages.</p><p>The freed hostages have revealed some of the cruel treatment by their terrorist captors and accomplices.</p><p>When 12-year-old Eitan Yahalomi was dragged into Gaza, residents - often referred to as innocent civilians living in Gaza - beat him. Hamas forced him, at gunpoint, to watch videos of the atrocities they committed on 10/7.</p><p>Women were held in cages.</p><p>When 9-year-old Emily Hand was in captivity, she was conditioned to not speak above a whisper, so much so that upon her release her father could not hear what she said without putting his ear right next to her lips. Emily's mother had died from cancer when she was 2 years old and her stepmother was murdered on October 7.</p><p>Kfir Bibas was 9-months-old and in diapers when he was kidnapped, along with his 4-year-old brother Ariel, mother Shiri and father Yarden. At one time, Hamas has said it couldn't release him because it didn't know where he was. On November 28, Israeli officials revealed Hamas previously claimed it had given the entire family to another terror group. On November 29, Hamas claimed that Kfir, Ariel and Shiri had been killed by an Israeli airstrike. Three cruel assertions by Hamas, each contradicting the other two. If he's still alive, he's now 11 months old and has spent a fifth of his life underground without seeing a single ray of natural light.</p><p>Early on, Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed Hannah Katzi had been killed by an Israeli airstrike. She turned out to be alive, being among the first group of hostages released.</p><p>The cruelty extends to the ordinary, innocent "civilians" in Gaza for which so much "humanitarian aid" is being provided.</p><p>Roni Kriboy, released as a favor by Hamas to Vladimir Putin and the only adult male released, managed to escape when the building he was in collapsed. After spending four days trying to avoid recapture and find his way back to Israel, a group of ordinary Gaza civilians captured him and promptly brought him to Hamas.</p><p>One hostage was held for nearly 50 days by a teacher from UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, while another was held hostage by a physician!</p><p>When Hamas ended the ceasefire with its barrage of rockets on December 1, the terrorists were still holding nearly 140 hostages, underground, not knowing the fate of their children, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, parents, grandparents.</p><p>There can be no doubt but that we must stand with Israel and, for the good of Israel, for the good of America, for the good of the democratic world and for the good of the Gazans themselves, ensure Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah and allies can terrorize no more.</p><p><i>Alan Stein, Ph.D., is President Emeritus of PRIMER-Connecticut (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting) and the founder of PRIMER-Massachusetts and PRIMER-Israel. A version of this commentary was published in the Waterbury Republican-American on November 29, before Hamas ended the hostage-for-terrorists deal.</i></p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-15207341116104278492023-11-30T10:28:00.000-08:002023-11-30T10:28:46.478-08:00A flickering light in the middle of a nightmare<p> This was published in the <a href="https://www.rep-am.com/opinion/2023/11/28/a-dim-flickering-light-in-the-middle-of-a-nightmare/">Waterbury Republican-American</a> on November 29, 2023. I have updated it with a few comments placed in parentheses.</p><h2 style="text-align: center;">A flickering light in the middle of a nightmare</h2><p style="text-align: center;"><i>BY ALAN STEIN</i></p><p>I am writing this on Friday morning, Nov. 24, while watching live the apparent release of 13 Israeli women and children held hostage in Gaza for seven weeks after being kidnapped by Hamas terrorists. They are the first of four groups scheduled to be released during a four day pause in the war Hamas started on Oct. 7. (<i>There have now been seven groups released, each time with some drama orchestrated by Hamas, and efforts are being made to extend the pause even more. Each day it is extended is a double-edged sword, with more terrorists being released, more aid sent into Gaza to be stolen by Hamas and used to extend the war and kill more people, more pressure being exerted on Israel for a permanent ceasefire that would let Hamas survive, rearm, and perform more atrocities.</i>)</p><p>Some children are being released with their mothers while their fathers are still being held hostage. Some children are now orphans who saw their parents slaughtered in front of them; some still have one or both parents still held hostage by Hamas, perhaps one parent murdered and the other held hostage. (<i>In several cases, in violation of the agreement, Hamas has released children without their mother. In at least one case, they claimed they didn't know where the mother was, but it was determined the mother and daughter had been held together until they were separated two days before the daughter's release, meaning the mother had been separated AFTER the ceasefire agreement.</i>)</p><p>This first transfer to the Rafah crossing into Egypt was apparently delayed because when they were transferred to the Red Cross some were in such need of urgent care that it couldn’t wait for the short ambulance ride to the Rafah crossing. (<i>In a later release, one elderly woman was released in critical condition because she wasn't given medication she needed to stay alive and lapsed into a coma soon after being hospitalized in Israel.</i>)</p><p>At this moment, they have just passed the into Egypt and are receiving additional urgent care before being transferred Israel, where they will be evaluated and transferred to hospitals.</p><p>The children are not yet being told whether their parents are alive or dead; that will not happen until they are in the care of trained professionals, and then only if it is known whether their parents are alive or dead.</p><p>And they are the “lucky” ones.</p><p>They are not among those who were beheaded on Oct. 7, or burned alive, or had their limbs torn off so their Hamas torturers could enjoy watching them bleed to death.</p><p>They are in the first group, with the scene to be repeated on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, while their relatives are still living wondering whether their children will be returned and in what condition.</p><p>They are not among the nearly 200 innocents who will remain held hostage in Gaza, underground, not knowing the fate of their children, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, parents, grandparents.</p><p>If the lopsided deal doesn’t fall apart, 50 Israelis will be released over four days — along with a handful of Thai and Filipino citizens whose release was arranged separately through agreements between their governments and Hamas, but at a very heavy price even without the inevitable violations by Hamas, which started immediately. (<i>Hamas has at least once attacked Israeli troops during the ceasefire and exploded at least two IEDs.</i>)</p><p>All Israel was supposed to get according to the agreement was the release of 50 women and children and the International Red Cross being allowed to visit the remaining 190 or so hostages, give them emergency medical care and give Israel a list of their names and conditions. Not surprisingly, Hamas is not allowing that access to the International Red Cross. (<i>When the ceasefire was extended, Hamas again committed to allowing Red Cross access and again reneged.</i>)</p><p>Besides a temporary cease fire, which Hamas quickly violated with a volley of rocket fire for the first 15 minutes, Israel agreed to allow massive amounts of “humanitarian aid” into Gaza, including fuel. We can be sure much, if not most, of that “aid” will be stolen by Hamas and used to regroup, rearm and keep firing rockets at Israeli cities and towns, just as the massive terror tunnel complex used by Hamas was built using cement transferred to Gaza for humanitarian purposes.</p><p>Israel also agreed to stop its aerial surveillance, by aircraft, drones and balloons, of southern Gaza and also stop its surveillance of northern Gaza for six hours each day. One does not need much imagination to figure out why Hamas made that demand: it will give Hamas the opportunity to move the hostages around, eliminating the value of any intelligence about their location Israel might gain from the hostages who get released and making their rescue far more difficult.</p><p>Plus Israel will be releasing 150 terrorists, three terrorists for every innocent Israeli released. One of the terrorists to be released stabbed her next door neighbor; that Israeli woman survived but will now live in the fear that she try again, or go after her children. One must pray the Israeli security forces will keep a very close eye on all the released terrorists.</p><p>Perhaps the most problematic part of the deal is the cease fire and its timing, coming when Israel was days away from taking complete control of northern Gaza and being in a position to completely destroy the terror infrastructure there.</p><p>Pausing operations halts Israel’s momentum and will undoubtedly lead to pressure on Israel to agree to a permanent cease fire, leaving Hamas intact and able to rebuild. Already, the prime ministers of Belgium and Spain came to the Rafah crossing not to welcome today’s release of a handful of hostages but bizarrely to criticize Israel and call for a permanent cease fire.</p><p>There is also the provision that if Hamas releases more hostages, Israel will release 30 more terrorists and extend the cease fire another day for every ten additional hostages released by Hamas. As Yogi Berra observed, it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future, but it would be surprising if Hamas didn’t decide to drag out the release of more terrorists in order to extend the cease fire and attempt to make irresistible the pressure on Israel to not destroy Hamas. (<i>This has actually happened, with dramatics orchestrated by Hamas each time.</i>)</p><p>We must stand with Israel and, for the good of Israel, for the good of America, for the good of the democratic world and for the good of the Gazans themselves, make sure Israel resists that pressure and help it put an end to the rule of Gaza by terror groups.</p><p><i>Alan Stein, Ph.D., was formerly a long time resident of Waterbury. He and his wife Marsha currently split their time between Netanya in Israel and Natick, Massachusetts. He is President Emeritus of PRIMER-Connecticut (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting) and the founder of PRIMER-Massachusetts and PRIMER-Israel.</i></p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-9900589739016890832023-11-23T16:27:00.000-08:002023-11-23T16:27:42.947-08:00More Information from Yale Zussman on the Eve of Thanksgiving<p> <span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hi Folks,</span></p><div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-unicode"><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">With the announcement of a "pause" in the news this morning, it is becoming increasingly clear that the critical battlefield has moved from Gaza to global public opinion. I present several items that will help you if you choose to become engaged in this front:</div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><div>REVEALED: The U.S. Charitable Network That Subsidizes Hamas, and the Donors Behind It<br />by Sam Westrop<br />November 14, 2023<br /><a href="https://islamism.news/research/investigations/revealed-the-funding-behind-the-u-s-charitable-network-that-subsidizes-hamas/">https://islamism.news/research/investigations/revealed-the-funding-behind-the-u-s-charitable-network-that-subsidizes-hamas/</a></div><div> </div><div>Outlines how entities presented as charities are actually structures that raise money to finance Hamas and similar Islamist groups. <br />----------<br />Ten Myths to be Busted about Israel's War Against Hamas<br />David M. Weinberg<br />Oct. 27, 2023<br /><a href="https://davidmweinberg.com/2023/10/27/ten-myths-to-be-busted-about-israels-war-against-hamas/">https://davidmweinberg.com/2023/10/27/ten-myths-to-be-busted-about-israels-war-against-hamas/</a></div><div> </div><div>Guidance for addressing the Western domestic front of Hamas's, and generically the Islamist, war against Israel, and again generically, Western Civilization.<br />----------<br />Jihadi Journalism<br />Richard Landes<br />Nov., 20203<br /><a href="https://whiterosemagazine.com/jihadi-journalism/">https://whiterosemagazine.com/jihadi-journalism/</a></div><div> </div><div>Thoughtful and extensive assessment of the role Palestinian "journalists" play in promoting Hamas propaganda in the main-stream media.<br />----------<br />Jewish students unimpressed with universities’ response to rising antisemitism<br />LEXI LONAS<br />November 22, 2023 <br /><a href="https://www.aol.com/news/jewish-students-unimpressed-universities-response-110000564.html">https://www.aol.com/news/jewish-students-unimpressed-universities-response-110000564.html</a></div><div> </div><div>One of the principal fronts in the Islamist war against Western Civilization is on college campuses. Few university administrations have mustered the moral integrity to defend Jewish students against attacks, so, for now, the Islamists are winning. Please contact your college or university administration and tell them they have to get their act together on this.<br />----------<br />No Surrender: Lacking Other Options, Israel Needs to Finish the Job<br />Jeff Robbins<br />Nov 23, 2023<br /><a href="https://www.creators.com/read/jeff-robbins/11/23/no-surrender-lacking-other-options-israel-needs-to-finish-the-job">https://www.creators.com/read/jeff-robbins/11/23/no-surrender-lacking-other-options-israel-needs-to-finish-the-job</a></div><div> </div><div>Robbins rips apart the various "experts" who recognize that Hamas must be destroyed but insist that Israel not do what is necessary to achieve this end.</div><div> </div><div>Let me close with:</div><div>Hamas delenda est, and </div><div>Have a Happy Thanksgiving,</div><div> </div><div>--Yale</div><div> </div></div></div>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-2580306828083541482023-11-13T17:39:00.000-08:002023-11-13T17:39:13.351-08:00I have seen the faces of evil, and they’re smiling<h2 style="text-align: center;">I have seen the faces of evil, and they’re smiling</h2><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i>BY ALAN STEIN</i></p><p><br /></p><p><i>A version of this was published November 12, 2023 in the Waterbury Republican-American.</i></p><p><br /></p><p>I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse. I didn’t want to accept it; my wife asked whether I was sure I wanted to go and told me to try not to throw up if I went; my daughter bluntly said, “Don’t go.”</p><p><br /></p><p>The offer was to screen the footage compiled by Israel from GoPros worn by the terrorist perpetrators of the Oct. 7 Simchat Torah Massacre, videos from dashcams and cell phones of the terrorists, rescuers and victims and videos from drones.</p><p><br /></p><p>It wasn’t something I wanted to see, but I owed it to the memory of the victims, those who were murdered, those who were maimed, those who were dragged into Gaza and are being held hostage there by Hamas.</p><p><br /></p><p>So I went. Security was strict at the Israeli Consulate in Boston. We had to leave behind all electronics. We were to respect the privacy of the victims and not say or write anything that would reveal their identities or in any way compromise their privacy and dignity.</p><p><br /></p><p>I sat in a room with the only five journalists who had accepted their invitations. Maybe those who declined had other commitments they couldn’t change; maybe they were too squeamish; maybe they didn’t want to see atrocities that would force them to question their biases and prejudices.</p><p><br /></p><p>The others present were the executive director of Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council, and Israel’s Consul General and Assistant Consul General for New England.</p><p><br /></p><p>Meron Reuben, the consul general, gave a brief introduction, but his most important remarks came after we viewed the video, when he noted it’s “very difficult for someone who lives in a tranquil neighborhood in Greater Boston to understand what went on.”</p><p><br /></p><p>The 43-minute long video started. I saw. I cringed. I felt drops forming in my eyes.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here’s a snippet of what we saw and heard.</p><p><br /></p><p>Near the start, we saw evidence of the depravity and the cruelty of the terrorists, most apparently from Hamas but some from Palestinian Islamic Jihad and even from Fatah, the group led by Mahmoud Abbas, who’s supposed to be Israel’s “peace partner.”</p><p><br /></p><p>The terrorists see an empty, parked ambulance. They shoot out the tires, lest Israeli medics later use the ambulance to bring mortally injured civilians to a hospital.</p><p><br /></p><p>They see a lone dog in a field. No humans in sight. They shoot the dog. At least three times to make sure it’s dead.</p><p><br /></p><p>We hear a recording of conversation between one of the terrorists and his parents. The call is made using a phone taken from one of the Israelis he murdered. He tells his father to be proud, that he’d killed ten Israelis with his bare hands. And now he’s going to find more Israelis to murder.</p><p><br /></p><p>A phone call is made to a Hamas official in Gaza, who tells the terrorists to play with the heads on the ground. One of the terrorists then took a hoe and repeatedly struck a corpse on the ground in order to separate head from body while shouting Allahu Akbar. This was the one part where I looked away; I don’t know if he succeeded.</p><p><br /></p><p>We saw a trail of blood in a video that must have been taken by one of the rescuers, since the trail continues from one room to another, getting bloodier and bloodier, until it reaches the spot where the murder must have been executed. Where did the terrorists drag the body? Did they add it to a collection in the kibbutz? Did they drag it to Gaza?</p><p><br /></p><p>We saw hoards of burned and charred corpses. Some were without heads. We saw videos of bodies still aflame.</p><p><br /></p><p>We heard another call, with the Hamas official in Gaza giving the order to “bring him” and “hang him” and “let the people play with his body.”</p><p><br /></p><p>We see a body — maybe the same body, maybe a different body — being dragged out of a car in Gaza while a crowd, some terrorists, some ordinary civilians who are now being provided with “humanitarian aid,” joyously celebrates.</p><p><br /></p><p>Most chilling was the similarity between the joy on the faces of Israelis as they sung and danced at Nova music festival just before Hamas turned it into a killing field and the joy on the faces of the terrorists as they reveled in glorious atrocities.</p><p><br /></p><p>I have seen the faces of evil and, without the brutalized corpses of their victims scattered around them, I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart from ordinary teenagers.</p><p><br /></p><p>Which brings me back to the observation made by Meron Reuben, that it’s difficult for someone living a normal life in a country like the United States to understand the nature of many in the Middle East, including enemies of the West. Since in Western democracies we would never behave the way they do, some imagine the terrorists must have horrendous grievances and blame the United States for 9/11 and Israel for 10/7.</p><p><br /></p><p>This has led to decades of misguided policies that have strengthened the forces of evil and led to numerous wars, terror attacks and other disasters.</p><p><br /></p><p>These horrors will continue until we stop fooling ourselves and recognize terrorists’ values are not our values. We must stay united with Israel and others who are on the front line of the war, not only for their survival, but for the survival of our values and our civilization.</p><p><br /></p><p>Alan Stein, Ph.D., was formerly a long time resident of Waterbury. He and his wife Marsha currently split their time between Netanya in Israel and Natick, Massachusetts. He is President Emeritus of PRIMER-Connecticut (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting) and the founder of PRIMER-Massachusetts and PRIMER-Israel.</p><p><br /></p><p>Editors’ note: As a companion to this op-ed, we suggest readers view the 1956 film “Night and Fog,” available on several streaming services, which documents similar atrocities committed in Nazi Germany.</p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-81363114218405039932023-11-02T10:33:00.005-07:002023-11-02T17:10:00.633-07:00What is Genocide?<p style="text-align: center;"> <b style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 24px; text-align: center;">What is Genocide?</b></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i>By Daniel Hart</i></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">What is genocide? Are the actions of Hamas against Israeli Jews genocidal? Is Israel, in its war against Hamas, actually committing a genocide of the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza? This may seem like a confusing scenario and concept for many to understand but the answer should be very clear for any thoughtful person once they have been presented with the facts. </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">First, what is Genocide? Genocide is defined as the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group. Let’s review past and present actions of the parties to this longtime conflict. </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Part I - Is Hamas (as well as other Palestinian Arab groups) committing genocide of Israel’s Jews? The short answer is YES. There is indisputable proof that Hamas and other Palestinian Arab groups have been waging a decades long genocide of Israel’s Jews. It’s not merely the events of October 7th, Black Shabbat. There is a long history of these terror groups murdering Jewish Israelis because they are Jewish. Hamas’s charter literally calls for the genocide of all of Israel’s Jews. </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Article 8 of Hamas’ charter, originally published in 1988, following the year it was founded states “Allah is Hamas’s goal, the Prophet is the model, the Qur’an its constitution, jihad its path, and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” For those who aren’t aware, jihad is an Arabic word which literally means “striving” or “struggling” especially with a praiseworthy aim. It is most frequently associated with war and armed struggle against unbelievers (infidels, aka non-Muslims). </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Another article from its charter, Article 13, states that “one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders” and references a hadith (a statement or endorsement of Muhammad) which states that the Day of Judgment would not come until the Muslims fight and kill the Jews. And that “There is no negotiated settlement possible. Jihad is the only answer.” </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Hamas is obviously a sadistic genocidal antisemitic terror organization. The message in the Hamas charter comes from the leadership of the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza. This is not merely the individual words of Gazans. It is the stated national ambition of the government in power in Gaza. </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on innocent civilian Israeli women, men and children are also acts of genocide. You might think that because these triple war crime rockets haven’t resulted in high Israeli casualty rates therefore couldn’t constitute genocide, however, Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide states acts committed with INTENT to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as 1. Killing members of the group; 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, all constitute genocide. As the convention considers intention rather than success, the Palestinian Arabs are guilty of genocide against the people of Israel. </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">And don’t think it’s just Hamas. It’s also the Palestinian Authority and all the other incorrigible Palestinian terror groups. </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The PA, for example, spends $400,000,000 per year to directly incentivize the terror murder of Jews. The more Jews the terrorists kill, the more money they and/or their families receive for life. (Don’t believe me? Google “Palestinian Martyr Fund”.)</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">As I have already clarified, the international crime of genocide does not require that you be successful in mass killings. It merely requires that you have only the purpose and intention of wiping out the people you are targeting and that you carry out even a single killing in furtherance of that purpose. The PA violates this every time a Palestinian terrorist murders a Jew. And Hamas has obviously violated the genocide convention in the case of each of the 1400 plus Israelis killed on October 7th, Black Shabbat. That’s 1400 individual acts of genocide alone!</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Part II - Is Israel carrying out a genocide of the Palestinian Arabs? </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">It’s easy to see why some very moral people believe this is true. They see Palestinian suffering and thoughtlessly accuse Israel of genocide without taking into consideration the international rules of war and the nature of the purpose of Israel carrying out defensive strikes against Hamas terrorists. But when one carefully examines the facts of the conflict and the justification for Israel’s retaliatory actions, it is obvious that those accusations are not based on reasonable judgement about the facts of history and present day events. </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Israel literally invented moral warfare and uses well thought out moral-as-possible responses to Palestinian terrorism. Israel even requires a judge advocate general be present during military operations who oversees retaliations against Hamas and PIJ terrorists, making sure that they are proportionate and therefore legal under international law. The judge advocate general has the power and authority to override a decision to attack a terrorist made even by the Israeli prime minister.</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Israel’s precision strikes on Hamas and PIJ military targets in Gaza are a good example of Israel keeping civilian casualties to a minimum in carrying its mission to eliminate top Hamas and PIJ commanders and their terrorist network of Hamas and PIJ fighters and their support network. Those that are quick to criticize Israel for those strikes point to the high civilian casualty figures reported by the Gaza Health Ministry. But the Gaza Health Ministry is run by Hamas and clearly Hamas has a record of telling all-out lies about its casualty rates. It fails to point out casualties that result from Hamas and PIJ rockets falling short in Gaza (approximately 30% of all rockets they fire) and killing Palestinian Arab civilians. It also fails to properly discern between terrorist lives and civilian lives. It also fails to properly discern between adult and child casualties and consistently exaggerates the child casualty rates, as well as overall/total casualty figures. </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Also, Israel has no charter or laws that call for the deaths of any ethnic people. In fact, 20% of Israeli civilians are Arab. And under Israeli law, all Israeli civilians regardless of sex, religion, ethnicity have equal rights. Clearly Israel isn’t genociding 20% its own population. </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Some accuse Israel of genocide based on Israel’s strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza. But these accusations simply don’t hold water. For example, the recent bombings of the so-called refugee camp in Gaza are also where Hamas has tremendous support and contributors and where Hamas terrorists reside. Israel bombed this camp knowing the value of the Hamas targets at the camp and killed Gaza’s Hamas leader in doing to. </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The targeting rule in international law says that you CAN target enemy combatants and also those that contribute to and support Hamas even if they are civilians. The refugee camp in Gaza is filled with both. </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Also under international law, the collateral damage rule is referred to as "proportionality" and says that you can target your enemy, in this case Hamas, a sadistic, genocidal terror organization, under the targeting rule even if there is collateral damage, and even extensive collateral damage to civilians so long as the collateral damage is not clearly excessive in relation to the military necessity. Obviously, the military necessity in this circumstance is HIGH. The necessity of Israel in this war is to destroy the sadistic, genocidal terror organization of Hamas that committed the atrocities on October 7th. Because Hamas committed these atrocities and is still committing war crimes by attacking Israeli civilians and by holding Israeli hostages and is still attempting to invade Israeli territory to carry out more attacks, it is essential that Israel carry out a successful attack on Hamas as quickly as possible. Collateral damage is obviously warranted in this scenario. </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The only conclusion from this analysis of the accusation of genocide will be crystal clear to almost everyone. Some people, however, have a deep seated hatred of Israel and regardless of the facts will continue to accuse Israel of genocide when Israel is genuinely acting in its own self defense and waging a war against the government and military forces in Gaza. </p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-39668938788686057592023-10-30T09:24:00.003-07:002023-10-30T09:24:16.357-07:00Don't make the same mistake with Hamas yet again<h2 style="text-align: center;">Don't make the same mistake with Hamas yet again</h2><h4 style="text-align: center;">BY ALAN STEIN</h4><p><i>A version of this op-ed was published in the Waterbury Republican-American on October 29, 2023.</i></p><p><br /></p><p>There's plenty of blame to go around for the mistakes that enabled the Simchat Torah massacre by Hamas on Oct. 7. They were made by the United Nations, the European Union, a succession of American administrations, several Israeli governments, the Israeli military and Israeli intelligence.</p><p><br /></p><p>One would think those entities - except for the United Nations - would be busy trying to learn from their mistakes in order to prevent a repetition, but many, including European countries and the Biden administration, appear unwilling to reflect on how they contributed to the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust while rushing to double down on the fatal mistake of repeatedly rescuing Hamas and sending "humanitarian assistance" unsurprisingly used by Hamas to prepare for their next brutal terror war.</p><p><br /></p><p>Since Israel vacated Gaza in 2005, ending anything that could, justifiably or not, be called an "occupation," it has been bombarded by rockets and targeted by countless terror attacks, including mortar fire, cross-border incursions, cross-border terror tunnels planned to terminate under schools, and explosive-laden kites, balloons and condoms designed to be carried into Israel by the prevailing winds.</p><p><br /></p><p>In 2006, 2008-9, 2012, 2014, 2021 and 2022, the terror attacks from Gaza caused so much death and destruction Israel was forced to take significant action.</p><p><br /></p><p>Each time, Israel quickly came under heavy pressure from the international community to prematurely agree to a ceasefire before it could do to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad the sort of damage America worked to inflict on Al Qaeda and ISIS.</p><p><br /></p><p>Each time, the United States was among those pressuring Israel into agreeing to measures supposedly designed to help innocent people in Gaza, the same people who elected Hamas.</p><p><br /></p><p>Israel was always given assurance of ironclad safeguards to make sure the aid got to the people rather than Hamas, only to have an estimated 90% of the cement sent to Gaza for rebuilding homes, schools and hospitals taken by Hamas to build tunnels and murder schoolchildren. When Israel developed technology to discover the cross-border tunnels and destroy them, Hamas used the cement to build tunnels to protect its "fighters" within Gaza; undoubtedly, many of the hostages it took have been taken to those tunnels as human shields.</p><p><br /></p><p>Pipes sent to rebuild the water and sewer systems were instead cut up and used in the construction of rockets and rocket launchers.</p><p><br /></p><p>Israel allowed the entry of thousands of Palestinian workers so they could earn money to feed their families, strengthen the economy in Gaza, and improve the lives of the people there, but many took advantage of their work permits and instead murdered Israeli civilians.</p><p><br /></p><p>Hamas even attacked the crossings where goods were transferred into Gaza, killing the very workers bringing humanitarian assistance to Gaza!</p><p><br /></p><p>Israeli leaders share blame primarily for repeatedly giving in. Had they not succumbed to the pressure, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad would have been far weaker and incapable of successfully carrying out the Simchat Torah Massacre. It is ironic that while Israel is so often criticized for being hard-line right wing, its most serious mistakes have been in being too soft and too willing to agree to dangerous "confidence building measures" in hopes the Palestinian Arabs would reciprocate.</p><p><br /></p><p>There are many other ways in which Western democracies have unwittingly strengthened Hamas and other terror groups. At the top of the list is the way they have appeased and strengthened the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Much of the many billions of dollars released to the Iranian regime, against the advice of Israel, has gone to Iran's terror proxies and assisted Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. Our naïve errors have not only gotten Israelis killed, but also gotten Ukrainians killed. Repeating those mistakes would reinvigorate Hamas.</p><p><br /></p><p>The only real leverage we have over Hamas is the ability to prevent the transfer of food, fuel, water and electricity to Gaza so Hamas won't be able to continue to build and launch rockets. Hamas doesn't care about the welfare of the people they use as human shields, but they do care about (a) murdering others, especially Israeli Jews and (b) their personal bank accounts and welfare.</p><p><br /></p><p>I have little confidence that if Hamas was forced to decide between (a) releasing all the hostages without further harm in return for receiving humanitarian assistance or (b) not releasing the hostages and letting everyone in Gaza suffer, they would choose (a), but giving them that choice is the only realistic possibility for saving the lives of the hostages.</p><p><br /></p><p>Presently, most governments, including our own, are trying hard to avoid forcing Hamas to make that choice. During his solidarity visit to Israel, President Biden announced $100 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority and Gaza. Since then, at least one of the UNRWA warehouses storing "humanitarian assistance" slated to be distributed to "civilians" in Gaza was stormed and looted. Can anyone doubt a significant portion of those supplies aren't now in the tunnels under Gaza helping to sustain and strengthen Hamas terrorists?</p><p><br /></p><p>For the sake of the hostages, and for our own long term safety, we need to insist there will be no pause and no goods of any kind will be transferred to Gaza until all the hostages are released without further harm. Everyone needs to stand firmly with Israel and help it destroy Hamas, after which Gaza will have to be "de-Hamasified," the way the allies de-Nazified Germany after World War II, and prepare for the even more crucial battles with Hezbollah and the head of the snake in Tehran.</p><p><br /></p><p>May God provide our leaders with the wisdom needed to get us out of the situation which they helped create.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>Alan Stein, Ph.D., was formerly a long time resident of Waterbury. He and his wife Marsha currently split their time between Netanya in Israel and Natick, Massachusetts. He is President Emeritus of PRIMERConnecticut (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting) and the founder of PRIMER-Massachusetts and PRIMER-Israel.</i></p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-61456061834288145702023-10-17T13:16:00.000-07:002023-10-17T13:16:03.120-07:00Hamas' attack brings a moment of clarity<p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Hamas' attack brings a moment of clarity</span></b></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i>BY ALAN STEIN</i></p><p><i>A version was published in the Waterbury Republican-American (Connecticut) on October 15, 2023.</i></p><p>We have just experienced a watershed moment, a day when it became crystal clear to everyone who understands the difference between good and evil that Israel is in an unavoidable fight against forces of evil.</p><p>Since my retirement from the University of Connecticut after teaching there for 37 years, my wife and I have been living in Israel each winter.</p><p>This year, we had plane reservations to leave for Israel on Sunday, Oct. 8, the day of Simchat Torah, when Jews finish our annual reading of the Torah and start over again with Genesis, one of the most joyous days of the year.</p><p>In Israel, Simchat Torah is celebrated a day earlier, simultaneously with Shmini Atzeret. This year that fell on Shabbat, so it was a triple Holy Day and expected to be triply joyous.</p><p>Except. Palestinian Arabs traditionally plan terror attacks designed to ruin Jewish holidays.</p><p>This year, they outdid themselves with a massive terror attack instantly compared to 9/11. I remember exactly where I was when I heard about 9/11, driving home from the tennis courts at Chase Park in Waterbury, Connecticut. I remember exactly where I was when I heard President Kennedy was shot, browsing in the Paperbound Book Store on 164th Street in Flushing, Queens before immediately riding my bike back home. And I'll always remember where I was when I heard about Hamas' 10/7 attack, waking up in our condo in Natick, Massachusetts and realizing I wasn't going to be able to fly to Israel the next day.</p><p>As more details have emerged, and more bodies are found - as I write this the total passed 1,300 - the horror has only increased. The current fatality count, on an absolute basis, is not quite half of that inflicted on us by Al Qaeda on 9/11. But our population in the United States is roughly 37 times that of tiny Israel. Hamas also fired roughly 3,500 rockets at Israeli cities and towns and took an estimated 150 hostages, dragging them into Gaza where they have been tortured, raped and even paraded around the streets naked while the "ordinary" people in Gaza celebrated. These hostages are almost all ordinary civilians, including babies, children, and elderly women, even an ill 97-year-old woman with dementia who doesn't realize she's a hostage. Some are Americans, as are at least 25 of those murdered. Now many have been moved to the bases used by terrorists, being used as human shields.</p><p>To visualize the effect on Israeli society, imagine that on 9/11 Al Qaeda had murdered over 48,000 people, launched more than 125,000 rockets at American cities and towns, and taken more than 3,500 Americans hostage and brought them to Afghanistan. All in one day.</p><p>Imagine how much more traumatic 9/11 would have been for us if it had been on that scale!</p><p>Just as there were many heroes responding to 9/11, there have been many heroes in Israel. One of them happens to be a relative of mine. I'll call him Chaim. (Not his real name, to avoid possible security repercussions. Chaim is appropriate, since Chaim means life and he saved many lives.) I never knew about Chaim until being sent the following story about him by another, close cousin of mine living in southern Israel.</p><p>Chaim lives on a kibbutz in what's called the "Gaza envelope" and he is part of a 15-man "standby class." Early morning last Saturday, 30 terrorists attempted to infiltrate. Miraculously, despite the terrorists having attacked with the element of surprise and being twice the number of the standby squad, those heroes fought for five hours and managed to "neutralize" 10 of the terrorists before the rest fled and army finally arrived, saving the lives of every single member of the kibbutz. Three members of the squad were injured, with Chaim taking two bullets in his leg after about two hours but continuing to fight until the end. Tragically, the terrorists managed to murder 16 foreign workers, wounding 4 more and as I write this 4 more are missing, most likely being held hostage in Gaza.</p><p>No such miracle occurred at a nearby kibbutz, where Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 100 of their 1000 members!</p><p>My cousin's story was accompanied by a picture of his wife - once a child refugee forced to flee Tunisia - smiling together with Chaim in the hospital he was brought to be treated for his wounds, the very hospital where she worked as a physical therapist for decades and helped many other terror victims recover from injuries!</p><p>A moment of clarity. As a citizen of both, I am proud that America and Israel share more of the same values than any other countries in the world. They also share the same enemies.</p><p>As Israelis were shocked by 9/11, shared America's pain and even built the only 9/11 memorial outside the United States, Americans are sharing Israel's pain from the Simchat Torah massacre. As Palestinian Arabs danced on the roofs of Ramallah in celebration of 9/11. their children have been dancing in Ramallah in celebration of the Simchat Torah massacre.</p><p>Ronald Reagan provided clarity when he referred to the Soviet Union as the "evil empire."</p><p>After the fall of the Soviet Union, George Bush provided clarity when he dubbed Iran, Iraq and North Korea the "axis of evil."</p><p>This week, Hamas provided clarity by showing that it and Iran's other terror proxies are part of the axis of evil.</p><p>Ronald Reagan provided another moment of clarity when he revealed his strategy for the Cold War: "We win, they lose."</p><p>Our strategy today must again be "We win, they lose."</p><p>Israel is on the front line in this battle and we must stand strongly together as it battles to make sure good wins and evil loses.</p><p>In Hebrew, "Am Yisrael Chai" means the Israeli people live.</p><p>Together with Israel, we must make sure "Am Artzot HaBrit Chai," the American people live.</p><p>May God bless Israel and may God bless the United States of America.</p><p><i>Alan Stein, Ph.D., was formerly a long time resident of Waterbury. He and his wife Marsha currently split their time between Netanya in Israel and Natick, Massachusetts. He is President Emeritus of PRIMER-Connecticut (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting) and the founder of PRIMER-Massachusetts and PRIMER-Israel.</i></p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-12539736479407393982023-10-15T18:37:00.000-07:002023-10-15T18:37:04.056-07:00The Hamas Massacre<h1 style="text-align: center;"><b>The Hamas Massacre</b></h1><div dir="auto" style="text-align: center;"><i>By Roger B. Baskin</i></div><div dir="auto"><br />On Saturday October 7, 2023, the terrorist group Hamas engaged in one of the most sadistic atrocities in world history. The atrocities included: murdering babies and decapitating their heads; burning elderly people alive, raping women and parading them naked in the street with their crotch bleeding from the rape, raping and killing women and placing their bodies on the street celebrating their murder, beheading soldiers, killing parents in front of their children, killing children in front of their parents; taking babies and the elderly as hostages.<br /><br />One would think that the barbarism of Hamas would be met with universal condemnation. Sadly that was not the case. MSNBC in their coverage became the voice of terrorism. MSNBC referred to Hamas as fighters and refused to call them terrorists. MSNBC made every attempt to justify the actions of Hamas. Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL was so outraged, he went on MSNBC two days later and decried the MSNBC coverage and asked whether the MSNBC script had been written by Hamas. The New York Post accused MSNBC of running “interference for Hamas”. The MSNBC coverage was so egregious that MSNBC lost 33% of its prime time audience during and after the massacre. At the same time the CNN and Fox News audiences surged. <br /><br />MSNBC was not the only bad actor in the United States. Student groups at Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, Northwestern, NYU and other elite universities released statements blaming Israel for the barbaric attacks by Hamas. The reaction to these students was swift. Alumni demanded that the universities denounce these statements and reveal the names of the students who signed the public letters supporting the Hamas massacre. What employers would want to hire people with those values? A prominent law firm rescinded a job offer to Ryna Workman, a law student at Columbia who wrote “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life”. Other employers followed rescinding job offers to those who support wanton brutality. <br /><br />The tactics of MSNBC and the students who defended Hamas are well known to students of anti-Semitism. The tactics of dehumanization and blaming the Jews for extreme acts of anti-Semitism goes back to the ancient days in Greece and Rome. Extreme elements of the left and the right agree on only one thing: their hatred of Jews. The left wing Communists of the Soviet Union engaged in pogroms against Jews, which is exactly what the Hamas attack was. The right wing Nazis sent Jews to concentration camps. <br /><br />The Hamas charter is not of peaceful co-existence with Israel. The Hamas charter is to destroy Israel and kill all Jews on earth. The Hamas massacre had nothing to do with bringing peace to the Middle East. Hamas has opposed all peace efforts between Israel and Arab states. One motivation of this attack might be to stop a peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Anti-Semitism is often thought to be an extreme right wing phenomena. However extreme left wing anti-Semitism is just as pernicious as right wing anti-Semitism. Extreme left wing anti-Semitism was on full display on MSNBC and college campuses. </div>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-41144964523731384042023-09-07T18:11:00.000-07:002023-09-07T18:11:12.222-07:00Yale Zussman's Latest Recommendations<div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-unicode"><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hi Folks,</div><div class="userEdit" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><div> </div><div>It's been a while since my last package, but with the approach of the Jewish New Year, I thought this would be a good time to send my latest set of recommendations:</div><div> </div><div>The Biden Administration's Secret Capitulation to Iran's Regime<br />by Majid Rafizadeh <br />June 17, 2023<br /><a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19727/capitulation-to-iran">https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19727/capitulation-to-iran</a></div><div> </div><div>My comment: Biden is repeating the errors Obama made in 2015, which raises the question of what Obama's actual goal was: It matters a great deal whether Obama was pursuing a halt to Iran's nuclear weapons program -- we now know he didn't succeed on this -- and was willing to pay a financial price to get there, or whether providing money to Iran was the actual objective and nominal limitations on one of its weapons programs, however important, was just a smokescreen to protect him from a charge of treason.<br />---------<br />Ehud Barak agreed to give up part of Temple Mount, Old City<br />JNS<br />Jun 19, 2023<br /><a href="https://www.jns.org/jns/topic/23/6/19/296380/">https://www.jns.org/jns/topic/23/6/19/296380/</a></div><div><br />Details of the Camp David discussions in 2000.<br />----------<br />Palestinian state -- consistent with US interests?<br />Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger<br />July 5, 2023 <br />bit.ly/44cJNfV</div><div> </div><div>The dilemma faced by the Palestinians is that their "nation" was established to serve as a pawn in the Muslim war against the Jews. That war has failed, and with the onset of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Islamist wave among Sunnis, Muslim countries have re-evaluated the concept of a war against the Jews, leaving the Palestinians to "twist slowly in the wind." They could escape their fate by acknowledging that the war against the Jews has failed, but if they admit that, they lose whatever leverage they have had with the their Muslim brethren and acknowledge that their narrative is a lie. Ettinger addresses the consequences for the US of buying into that narrative.<br />----------<br />Iran's Mullahs Escalating Aggression in Latin America, Middle East<br />by Majid Rafizadeh<br />July 22, 2023 <br /><a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19820/iran-escalating-aggression">https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19820/iran-escalating-aggression</a></div><div> </div><div>Iran seeks to become a major arms exporter enabling "bad actors" everywhere to increase their aggression. Meanwhile, Biden threatens Israel for seeking to stop Iran's activities. See the first item, above.<br />----------<br />Iran’s Ayatollas poke the US in the eye<br />Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger<br />July 26, 2023<br /><a href="https://bit.ly/4752HXS">https://bit.ly/4752HXS</a></div><div> </div><div>Outlines the Iranian threat in Latin America, including a threat to close, or destroy (by rendering the locks inoperative), the Panama Canal by the end of 2023. Two questions: Does anyone in either Washington or Tehran recognizes that doing so is a casus belli; it's essentially what Egypt did in 1967 to set off the Six Day War? Will the Biden Administration respond, and if so, how? <br />----------<br />Refuse-to-serve: Biased Israeli media is not reporting the full story - opinion<br />By DAVID M. WEINBERG <br />The Jerusalem Post<br />JULY 21, 2023<br /><a href="https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-751860">https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-751860</a></div><div> </div><div>As Weinberg tells it, the real story of reservist refusal to serve due to the judicial reform is biased media coverage. Refusal announcements get wide coverage, denunciation of those refusals gets close to none. If this sounds familiar, it is because Americans have faced the same problem since Obama maneuvered our media into serving as a "Ministry of Truth" for him.<br />----------<br />The 1993 Oslo Accord dismissed the writing on the wall<br />Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger<br />September 6, 2023<br /><a href="https://bit.ly/3r1wJeY">https://bit.ly/3r1wJeY</a></div><div> </div><div>Ettinger itemizes the clues that the Oslo process would lead to disaster, and how Shimon Perez deluded himself into thinking that the basic issues in the conflict could be ignored.</div><div> </div><div>I note that the Oslo Accords were a triumph for an approach to foreign policy that ignores ideological and theological dimensions in favor of what are termed "real" factors. If the Palestinians were interested in resolving their "real" problems, like a bad economy, poor governance, and perpetual refugee status, they would seek to replace the permanent UNRWA with a short-term agency that undertook to resettle them and address their other "real" problems. In this effort, Israel would be an interested and important factor. Instead, the Palestinian cause remains dedicated to three theological concepts: Preserving the notion that no territory can be removed from the Muslim <em>waqf</em>, reinstating the <em>dhimma</em> so Muslims can continue to treat Jews and others as third-class "citizens," and validating Islamic supersessionism. Jewish success in winning a state for themselves by force of arms violates all three. Without addressing these beliefs, there is likely no progress to be made in the conflict.</div><div>---------</div><div>Let me close by wishing my Jewish readers a <em>Shanah Tovah U'Mtukah</em>, a Good and Sweet New Year.</div><div> </div></div></div><p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">--Yale</span> </p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-90829900687404361352023-08-24T17:28:00.009-07:002023-08-24T17:28:46.695-07:00An unprecedented look inside one of Jerusalem’s holiest—and most controversial—landmarks interchanges myths and facts<p><i>The following letter was sent to the Editor-in-Chief and Senior Features Editor of National Geographic after it published an article that presented known history as questionable and Palestinian Arab lies as truth.</i></p><p><i>This is not the first time National Geographic has dishonored its pages by publishing lies about Israel. Since National Geographic no longer publishes letters, it is being posted here and we encourage you to share it.</i></p><p>Dear Mr. Lump and Mr. Gwin:</p><p>Andrew Lawler's article "An unprecedented look inside one of Jerusalem’s holiest—and most controversial—landmarks" is far from unprecedented, especially in the way it treats Arab and Muslim myths as if they were truths and treats verified Jewish history as if they were myths</p><p>For example, there is no question that the two Jewish Temples were built on the Temple Mount, but there is no evidence that Muhammad ever visited Jerusalem; indeed, it is highly unlikely he ever came anywhere close to Jerusalem.</p><p>The Dome of the Rock is not "Islam's third most sacred site." It has importance to Sunni Muslims, but has no religious significance to Shiite Muslims. And even its importance to Sunni Muslims is built on the lie, created out of whole cloth when the Sunnis were not allowed in Mecca and Medina, that Muhammad made a night journey there on the back of Buraq.</p><p>Similar inversions of myths and facts, truths and lies, exist in almost every paragraph in the article, and every bit of Palestinian propaganda is treated as the gospel truth while the article questions documented truths coming from Israelis.</p><p>For example, Lawler writes police "stormed" the Al-Aqsa Mosque twice during Ramadan and then casts doubt on what he calls police claims rioters barricaded themselves in the Al-Aqsa Mosque and were armed with fireworks. Yet there is indisputable photographic and video evidence that the denigrated "claims" of the Israeli police were absolutely true.</p><p>Lawler wrote about seven gates providing access into the Temple Mount, which he incorrectly called the "Al Aqsa compound." Actually, there are ten gates. He incorrectly wrote "Israeli security tightly controls every entry point." I personally found that out in 1980 when I was wandering around the Old City and noticed an open gate to the Temple Mount and started walking through it. I was rudely stopped by a Jordanian guard - and note this was long before the peace treaty with Jordan - who told me the gate was closed and I couldn't enter. I quickly found out that was a lie, as several Arabs walked through the gate and weren't stopped.</p><p>Lawler fails to note that Arabs and Muslims have unfettered 24/7 access through all those gates, while Jews are only allowed to enter the Temple Mount through a single gate and only a few hours a day a few days a week. He also fails to mention this discrimination, along with the discrimination against Jewish prayer on their holiest site is a violation of the peace treaty with Jordan, which calls for free access for all to their religions sites.</p><p>It's not unusual these days to see articles about Israel or the Palestinian Arabs filled with errors and misrepresentations and this was far from the first time such an article appeared in National Geographic. So I can't say I was surprised by Lawler's article. But that doesn't make it any more acceptable.</p><p>National Geographic owes its readers a slew of corrections and a heartfelt apology.</p><p>Sincerely,</p><p>Alan Stein</p><div><br /></div>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-3793454004301488422023-08-16T16:29:00.000-07:002023-08-16T16:29:00.311-07:00Now that reasonableness has passed, let's get reasonable<div><i>I submitted this to the Jerusalem Post, but it hasn't been published, so I'm posting it in a few different places. I'm hoping to inject some sanity into the debate - I'm using that term loosely - over judicial reform in Israel. Please feel free to share it in whatever form you can.</i></div><div><h2 style="text-align: center;">Now that reasonableness has passed, let's get reasonable</h2><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Alan Stein</i></div></div><i><br /></i>Spoiler alert: The implementation of the new Basic Law limiting the use of the reasonableness standard needs to be delayed to give the next government, chosen after the next election (hopefully, we'll just need one election next time), a chance to have its say.<br /><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></blockquote>As a dual citizen living in both Israel and the United States, while not being an attorney I believe I have an understanding about the judicial reform controversy that escapes most Israelis and most Americans, including American Jews.<br />Had the initial protests actually been purely about the initial judicial reform proposals, I might have joined them. Although judicial reform is clearly needed, as has been recognized in the past by most of those now leading the increasingly hysterical opposition to the current efforts, the original proposals contained some provisions I felt unwise. However, it was clear from the beginning that the protests had more to do with trying to undo the results of the election than the proposals. The protests were and remain, in effect, Israel's version of the massive anti-Trump demonstrations in the United States in 2016 and 2017 surrounding Donald Trump's election and inauguration and the pro-Trump rally in the Capitol on January 6, 2021 trying to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. Unfortunately, the Israeli protests have been far more sustained, far more disruptive, have already done tremendous damage and threaten to do far more. They have already done far more damage than any provisions of the original proposals could have done.<br />Many have said that Netanyahu and only Netanyahu could have ended the unrest. Others have said that about Lapid, Saar, Barak and Olmert. They're all both right and wrong.<br />Netanyahu might have been able prevent the disaster at the start, had he not been constrained by the attorney general from getting involved. (This, itself, provides a good case for the need for reform!) Or if he had shown more courage and ignored the attorney general before things got totally out of hand.<br />The opposition could also have prevented the disaster by addressing their followers and speaking honestly, putting the good of the country ahead of their hatred of Netanyahu, who has been prime minister for so long and has such a talent for alienating people, including close associates, and ahead of their goal of forcing the collapse of the coalition.<br />They could have. Netanyahu could have. The coalition members really pushing the judicial overhaul could have.<br />None of them did. They all acted irresponsibly. They all acted unreasonably. They all share responsible for the damage that has been done.<br />Now, we have one small portion of the package enacted into law. From the reports I've read, it's not much different from what was almost agreed upon in the negotiations under the auspices of the president.<br />The protests have gotten more disruptive and more damaging and coalition members are saying they will be pushing ahead with more of the changes.<br />If either side wins a complete victory, it will be a total disaster for Israel.<br />I have some recommendations.<br />First and most important, immediately pass a slight modification to the legislation just enacted, specifying that it will not go into effect until month (or some other "reasonable" period) after the next election is held and a new government is formed. A similar provision should be included with any additional modifications of Basic Laws.<br />No longer could any claim they were fighting the reforms to preserve democracy. They would not affect either the current coalition or Netanyahu's legal cases and whatever government is elected next time could quickly put an end to any changes it opposed on principle rather than as part of a strategy to bring down the coalition.<br />With the atmosphere, if not the summer heat, hopefully cooler, resume the talks hosted by President Herzog, but this time participate in good faith, honestly try to reach agreement so that we can move forward, concentrate on healing the schisms that have been exacerbated the last few months and deal with the basic problems we all share.<br />And then, we need to deal with one of the basic (pun intended) problems that has emerged in both Israel and the United States: governments implementing fundamental changes opposed by large portions or even majorities of the population.<br />For example:<br />In the United States, a fundamental change in the system of health care was legislated using parliamentary tricks despite being opposed by the majority of the voters. A treaty (the JCPOA or Iran "deal") was implemented, despite the opposition of most of the people and most of Congress, using the subterfuge of pretending it wasn't a treaty. (And now a new treaty has apparently been negotiated and it's planned to completely bypass Congress by pretending it's not even a deal.) Supreme Court justices used to require a 2/3 approval of the Senate and approval was rarely controversial; recently, appointments and approvals have become highly partisan, some appointments have been prevented by the expedient of refusing to vote and the so-called "nuclear option" was implemented and controversial appointments have been approved with a bare majority.<br />In Israel, the Oslo Accords were approved over the opposition of roughly half the country, as was the Gaza disengagement. Basic Laws have been swiftly amended for purely political convenience and now a Basic Law has been enacted not just without a consensus, but over bitter opposition.<br />Many have said the current events demonstrate our need for an Israeli Constitution. I agree, but I doubt we'd be able to get an agreement now without further tearing the country apart. However, we can work towards one by making Basic Laws really basic in the following way:<br />Start with something like the following Basic Law: A Basic Law shall be enacted upon the approval of a 2/3 vote of the entire Knesset.<br />Given that we have a unicameral legislature, perhaps it would be better to require the approval of two consecutive Knessets, or a second vote a reasonable period, perhaps a year, after the first vote. But a Basic Law should require overwhelming approval and should not be able to be enacted without giving people time to consider it.<br />As for existing Basic Laws, let them retain that status for a reasonable (there's that word again) period, say five years. If they are reapproved using the new conditions during that period, they would retain the status of Basic Laws; if they are not reapproved, they could still be laws but not Basic Laws.<br />After another five years or so, we could compile those now meaningful Basic Laws together and approve them as a Constitution.<br /><div style="text-align: left;"><div>In the meantime, let's have some courage and statesmanship from our political leaders rather than cowardice and partisanship.</div></div><div><div><br /></div><div><i>Alan Stein is a dual citizen of Israel, living in Netanya, and the United States, living in Massachusetts. He is an active advocate for Israel, founder of PRIMER-Israel and PRIMER-Massachusetts and president emeritus of PRIMER-Connecticut and was CAMERA's Letter Writer of the Year in 2015. In 2009, his op-ed giving advice to Barack Obama was published on the day of Obama's inauguration. Upon making aliyah in 2014, his op-ed giving advice to Benjamin Netanyahu was published. Stein believes it is unfortunate that neither Obama nor Bibi was wise enough to take his advice. He hopes history does not repeat with the advice he's giving in this op-ed.</i></div></div>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-58244951880454202952023-04-08T23:28:00.001-07:002023-04-08T23:28:45.705-07:00This Year's Annual Ramadan Terror Spree<p>A variation of this was sent out as a PRIMER-Israel alert. There are three PRIMER groups, in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Israel. Check out their websites and consider getting on their alerts lists.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.primerct.org" target="_blank">PRIMER-Connecticut</a> <a href="https://www.primerma.org" target="_blank">PRIMER-Massachusetts</a> <a href="https://www.primerisrael.org" target="_blank">PRIMER-Israel</a></p><div class="mceText" style="font-size: 16px; width: 769px;"><p>While we mourn our victims, both murdered and injured, of this year’s Ramadan terror spree, and while our soldiers and police act to protect us all from the additional attacks we know are planned or will be planned, those of us who fight with our keyboards need to do our part to prevent Iran, the Palestinian Authority, the PLO, Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah and the other terror groups from also getting a propaganda victory.</p><p>Almost all the reporting has been typically biased, using loaded language, terminology defined by Israel’s enemies, misinformation, disinformation and outright false information while often omitting important context. It’s up to us to do our best to provide it.</p><p>We will include some of our own thoughts below, but urge you to read the emails you get from so many other sources with more resources and also check their websites and write letters and social media posts to give the facts and your unique perspective as an Israeli living here in Israel.</p><p>Among the resources we recommend (forgive us for leaving out so many; we’ll just list a handful of our favorites):</p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">For examples of media bias:</span></p><p><a href="https://primerisrael.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6214a98e0a18dca87d5cd3ec7&id=659e609619&e=8fc1c7ea9a" target="_blank">CAMERA</a> (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis)</p><p><a href="https://primerisrael.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6214a98e0a18dca87d5cd3ec7&id=a86c444b44&e=8fc1c7ea9a" target="_blank">HonestReporting</a></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">For fairly up-to-date information:</span></p><p><a href="https://primerisrael.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6214a98e0a18dca87d5cd3ec7&id=ffc89e9a0f&e=8fc1c7ea9a" target="_blank">JNS</a> (Jewish News Syndicate)</p><p><a href="https://primerisrael.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6214a98e0a18dca87d5cd3ec7&id=5c43f5d5c0&e=8fc1c7ea9a" target="_blank">JTA</a> (Jewish Telegraph Agency)</p><p><a href="https://primerisrael.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6214a98e0a18dca87d5cd3ec7&id=2df0689e60&e=8fc1c7ea9a" target="_blank">Jerusalem Post</a></p><p><a href="https://primerisrael.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6214a98e0a18dca87d5cd3ec7&id=912fb2a6e4&e=8fc1c7ea9a" target="_blank">Times of Israel</a></p><p><a href="https://primerisrael.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6214a98e0a18dca87d5cd3ec7&id=7d33c37899&e=8fc1c7ea9a" target="_blank">i24 News</a></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Thoughts and observations</span>:</p><p>• I heard this expressed on i24 News. I have not been able to find the video to watch again, so my recollection may not be exact.</p><p>The question came up regarding why the Muslim “worshippers” barricaded themselves in the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Tuesday night, arming themselves with the stones and fireworks, when they are generally allowed to stay overnight during the last ten days of Ramadan anyway.</p><p>The reason explained was that since the first Seder was Wednesday night, they knew many Jews would be visiting the Temple Mount on Wednesday, so it was a golden opportunity to attack a lot of Jews with the stones and fireworks.</p><p>It was also noted that the rockets started flying from Gaza as soon as videos of the confrontations with the Israeli police were posted on social media and this was not a coincidence. This was planned, almost certainly masterminded by Iran. The rockets were prepared in advance and people were ready in the mosque to take videos and post them as soon as the confrontations started, while the terrorists in Gaza were prepped and ready to launch the rockets as soon as those videos were posted.</p><p>My interpretation - this wasn’t clear from what I remember on i24 - was that Iran and its terrorists in the mosque were prepared for two possibilities:</p><p>The first: What happened. The police, knowing they were preparing to attack Jews on the Temple Mount with the stones and fireworks they had smuggled into the mosque, would enter the mosque to prevent the attacks, in which case they would start attacking the police, take videos, quickly edit them to make Israel look bad to the world, post them on social media and immediately launch rockets.</p><p>The second: The police wouldn’t enter the mosque, in which case they would attack Jews on the Temple Mount Wednesday morning, take videos, post them with the message they were protecting Al-Aqsa from the Jews, and immediately launch rockets.</p><p><br /></p><p>• The media almost always describes Al-Aqsa as the third holiest site for Muslims. However, it’s only holy for Sunni Muslims; it has no significance for Shiite Muslims. Moti Kedar has also explained (there are many sources, both articles and videos) how the source of its holiness was a fraud and that the “Al Aqsa” mentioned just once in the Koran was actually in what’s now Saudi Arabia, not far from Mecca and Medina. (See, for one example out of many, “<a href="https://primerisrael.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6214a98e0a18dca87d5cd3ec7&id=40809b0b83&e=8fc1c7ea9a" target="_blank">Why and When was the Myth of al-Aqsa Created?</a>”)</p><p><br /></p><p>• Media bias can be simultaneously blatant and subtle. Here’s one example taken from today’s Hartford Courant. (I used to live in Connecticut and keep an eye on that paper.)</p><p>The Hartford Courant published an Associated Press article on Friday’s murder of Maya and Rina Dee. (As I write this, their mother remains in critical condition.) The article was accompanied by a large photo of a seriously damaged automobile. But, although there are many photos available of the car ambushed by the terrorists, the photo accompanying the article wasn’t of that; rather, it was of a car in Gaza allegedly damaged by Israeli airstrikes. The text of the article similarly changed the focus from the fatal terror attack to Israel’s responses to all the terror attacks and was written in a way as to create sympathy for the terrorists.</p><p><br /></p><p>• How holy can “worshippers” believe Al-Aqsa is if they use it as a weapons arsenal (storing stones and fireworks) and use it as a base from which to attack Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount?</p><p><br /></p><p>• Although I personally think it’s rather meshuga to consider sacrificing a goat today, on the Temple Mount or anywhere else, there’s absolutely no reason for Arabs or Muslims to get upset about the possibility unless they’re animal activists and/or vegetarians. That they make an issue of the desire of some to do it on the Temple Mount - especially since they know the Israeli officials will not let them carry it out - is just another example of them looking for pretexts to launch attacks.</p><p><br /></p><p>• There is invariably an uptick in terror attacks during Ramadan. There are also almost always serious attempts to perpetuate bloody terror attacks during Jewish holidays. It would thus have been astounding if the Palestinian Arabs didn’t do everything in their power this year, with Pesach being celebrated during Ramadan, to make sure Ramadan did not pass quietly.</p><p><br /></p><p class="last-child"><em>Please check the newspapers you are familiar with, along with the examples provided by CAMERA, HonestReporting and other sources, and fight back with your keyboard.</em></p></div>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-44532741308725026452023-04-07T00:09:00.000-07:002023-04-07T00:09:09.262-07:00The U.S. must end its 'pay-to-slay' incentive in Israeli-Palestinian conflict<p><i>This commentary was published in the <a href="https://ctmirror.org" target="_blank">CT Mirror</a> on April 6, 2023.</i></p><h1 style="text-align: center;">The U.S. must end its 'pay-to-slay' incentive in Israeli-Palestinian conflict</h1><h4 style="text-align: center;">by Mark Fishman and Alan Stein, Ph.D.</h4><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHq1cyIa7ZaPgT-n4-QPDk7mAwnR3jD7e2hIIufT_2v_EQXNfXYguQfpNibiDs_SF7f99NZQgSC1yo68BLrXcxYKwuqdya0KAThqC5PZVKBi1eSSLKw05Oc9fk4bf8xQZFXSotfCWRIXJ5vfMUClpMkl9DLWnf3roR3_xo1AtVE_DQLOcFeHNx2U6w/s2048/06-ctmirror.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1362" data-original-width="2048" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHq1cyIa7ZaPgT-n4-QPDk7mAwnR3jD7e2hIIufT_2v_EQXNfXYguQfpNibiDs_SF7f99NZQgSC1yo68BLrXcxYKwuqdya0KAThqC5PZVKBi1eSSLKw05Oc9fk4bf8xQZFXSotfCWRIXJ5vfMUClpMkl9DLWnf3roR3_xo1AtVE_DQLOcFeHNx2U6w/w320-h213/06-ctmirror.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Israeli soldier on a Palestine street.<br />JUSTIN MCINTOSH,, CC BY 2.0 ,<br />VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Since a reversal of long-standing American policy around the turn of the century, several American administrations have been obsessed with achieving a so-called "two-state solution" between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs for a final peace, including division of the land outside Israel's 1949 armistice line with Jordan, sometimes incorrectly called the "West Bank."</p><p>There have been numerous offers, all rejected by Palestinian leaders, who prefer rejectionism, terrorism and maybe Western funds instead of an end to the conflict. Their main objective remains the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state and the removal of all Jews. Thus, the signs proclaiming "Free Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea" at Palestinian rallies. In light of conflicting goals and objectives, it is no surprise that there is no agreement.</p><p>What is a surprise, however, is that American administrations rush to reward and incentivize Palestinian intransigence and murderous violence.</p><p>President Clinton hosted a summit at Camp David in 2000 with Prime Minister Barak and PLO Chairman Arafat. Israel offered almost all of the land which it had recaptured from Jordan in 1967 plus Gaza to form a sovereign Palestinian state. Not only did Arafat reject the offer, sparking Clinton's ire, but he launched years of terrorism and terror throughout Israel, the so-called "second intifada," in which over a thousand Israelis were killed.</p><p>After Arafat rejected the 2000 offer, Israel made an even more generous offer in 2001. Then, in 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered then-President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority the equivalent of 100 percent of the disputed territories and even part of Jerusalem.</p><p>Since then, we have given large sums of money to the Palestinians, directly through the PA and indirectly through UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency), in a vain attempt at a solution the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected, while never abandoning terrorism or their goal of destroying Israel.</p><p>Each time, rather than pressuring the party which initiated and refuses to end the conflict, our government has pressured Israel instead to make more concessions, including releasing 78 murderers and freezing housing construction upon request of President Obama, effectively rewarding the Palestinians for their intransigence and deadly violence.</p><p>The fact that the PLO, which is affiliated with the PA, has never changed its charter provisions calling for the destruction of Israel and proclaiming there is no alternative to use of terrorism has not made a difference.</p><p>The fact that Abbas told President Obama that he would never accept the core concept of the two-state solution, two states for two peoples, has not made a difference.</p><p>The fact that in 2016 the foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority declared the PA would never again negotiate directly with Israel has not made a difference.</p><p>The fact that Palestinian terrorists have murdered countless Israeli and American civilians over the years and 13 already this year through February, including West Hartford native Elan Ganeles, has made no difference.</p><p>Palestinian towns grotesquely celebrate deadly terror attacks with candy. The PA lauds terrorists as heroes. It names schools, stadiums and public squares after mass murderers. It produces textbooks which demonize Israel and Jews, glorify terrorism and deny Israel's existence. These textbooks are also used by UNRWA, of which we are the largest supporter. We stopped funding UNRWA but resumed in 2021, making us again complicit in radicalizing Arab youth, especially since many UNRWA teachers are members of Palestinian terror groups.</p><p>The Palestinian Authority also spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on its infamous "pay-to-slay" program. When a terrorist murders Israelis, he is rewarded with a salary by the PA. If the terrorist is killed, the PA rewards his family. If the terrorist murders more Israelis, he or his family are paid more.</p><p>Our Taylor Force Act is named after a young American murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in Tel Aviv in 2016. It prohibits assistance to the PA until it ends pay-to-slay. Most funding was terminated when the Act was passed. However, like UNRWA funding, it resumed in 2021 and has increased several times despite greater Palestinian terrorism.</p><p>We need to resume compliance with the Act. Pay-to-slay doesn't only lead to more Israelis and Americans, including Connecticut natives, being murdered. Many terrorists themselves are killed while attacking Israeli civilians. They become martyrs, are glorified by the PA, and their example is followed by Palestinian youth.</p><p>If we want to save lives, both Palestinian and Israeli, and bring closer a Palestinian-Israeli peace, whether the so-called two-state solution or some other, perhaps more workable scenario, then ending the rewarding and incentivizing of Palestinian rejectionism and terrorism is a necessary first step.</p><p>Mark Fishman of New Haven is President and Alan Stein, a former long-time resident of Waterbury, is President Emeritus of PRIMER-Connecticut, Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting.</p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-79634542666379011672022-10-09T15:59:00.004-07:002022-10-09T15:59:52.513-07:00Response to The Wellesley News editorial supporting genocide against Jews in Eretz Yisrael<div><i>Following the publication of an editorial in The Wellesley News effectively supporting genocide against the indigenous people who have returned to their homeland, the Land of Israel, Fred Bauman wrote a thoughtful letter to Paula Johnson, president of Wellesley College.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>His letter is reproduced here with the permission of the author.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Dear President Johnson:</div><div><br /></div><div>The Wellesley News has published an editorial coming out foursquare against the "occupation of Palestine." This is not even a euphemism for the destruction of Israel, the Jewish state, and the oft-boasted and promised slaughter of its Jewish people at the hands of the two organizations that rule the Palestinians, Hamas and the PA. More than that, the editorial expresses support for the notorious "Mapping Project," which pinpoints every Jewish organization that has any ties to Israel and calls for them to be "dismantled and disrupted."</div><div><br /></div><div>It should be obvious even to those who, like you, have a huge interest in not seeing the elephant in the room, that this is where "anti-Zionism" loses every trace of its "who us? We're not against Jews," mask. Even you and your Trustees surely see that "dismantling and disrupting" means intimidation, threats, bullying, and if those don't work, vandalism and further violence of the kind that is already too commonly directed against American synagogues, campus Hillels and other Jewish institutions and individual Jews.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, I am well aware that The Wellesley News is an independent organization and not under your control. But that doesn't get you off the hook in the slightest. That is because campus newspapers do not publish editorials of this kind unless they are quite sure that there is considerable campus support for them. That editorial tells everyone that Wellesley has become a pretty reliably anti-Jewish campus with a student body that is just fine with calls for what would amount to a second genocide of the Jews. That is something you are in part responsible for, if only because you have done nothing serious to oppose it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Half a century ago or so, my good friend, the late Victor Baras, taught at Wellesley. He was born in a DP (displaced persons in case you aren't familiar with the acronym) camp in Bamberg, Germany. His parents had survived the Holocaust in Galicia, hidden in the potato cellar of a local farmer, and had headed west with the Red Army and, wisely, past it. He was a specialist in 20th century European and especially Russian history and politics. I recall that he used to tell me that he taught his Wellesley students, who at the time were of course horrified that anyone could have become a Nazi, that in fact, in that time and place they would have been enthusiastic Nazis as well. Their privilege, their idealism, their sense that things were in a bad state, would have led them, he explained, to embrace causes that promised drastic, simple solutions and that focused on one or a few wicked enemies who merely had to be destroyed for all to be well. And of course the archetype of such an enemy in Christian culture has been the Jew. So if Vic had been told that in a half century Wellesley students would in fact have, though with a slightly altered rationale, become passionate, idealistic and utterly vicious Jew-haters, I don't think he would have been in the least surprised.</div><div><br /></div><div>But I do think that, like me, he would have been saddened. He too would have expected that people like you would have been in denial until it was almost or even wholly too late. Who wants to reopen that can of worms? Who wants to admit that the high-sounding rationales for Jew-hate, all the talk about "anti-colonialism" and the like, is dishonest and merely masks the same old murderous evil? And who, above all, dares to be called "racist" or "neo-colonialist" for having the guts to call haters what they are? Not you, no more than the respectable leaders of the German universities in the late 1920's and 1930's, who feared being called "socialists" or "Jewish catspaws." He would even have understood, I believe, that many respectable Jews in high positions in American universities would also have been in denial. The "Herr Wendriner" syndrome (look it up if you are interested enough) that Kurt Tucholsky mercilessly savaged, is with us today, leading Jewish figures who are desperate not to be singled out and attacked and who hope that the new Jew-hate is just a passing phenomenon that will mercifully disappear or at least not affect them.</div><div><br /></div><div>In any case, however slim the chance is that you and your administration and Trustees will ever go past vague and formulaic disavowals of "anti-Semitism." you need to do it. Perhaps thinking of how contemptible you will look to those who come later, to those Wellesley students in another half century who will look back on you with horror and incomprehension, might help. Look at yourselves in the mirror and ask yourself who you are, who you still want to be. I have few hopes for you and those like you. But you still have a chance not to fit the old, ugly, vile pattern of those who avert their eyes when the Nazis ride high.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sincerely,</div><div>Fred Bauman</div>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-34506857626642561202022-09-07T10:53:00.000-07:002022-09-07T10:53:13.253-07:00Censored by Facebook Again<p> When the Associated Press wrote about the announcement by the Israeli army about its investigation of the death of the Al Jazeera propagandist - er, "reporter" - Shireen Abu Akleh, an announcement that its conclusion was that there was a high probability that she was killed accidentally by fire from an Israeli soldier rather than from all those wild shots from Palestinian Arab terrorists, rather than straight reporting or, if it was going to insert opinion and/or analysis, noting there really was no evidence to back that up and it seemed far more likely the fatal bullet was shot by one of the terrorists, the AP article was written as if it was a propaganda piece coming from the organization whose initials are the transposition of those of the Associated Press.</p><p>I wrote a letter to the AP and posted it to the AP monitor Facebook group <<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/apmonitor">https://www.facebook.com/groups/apmonitor</a>>. Within minutes, Facebook's AI (Artificially Idiotic) bot had absurdly deleted it as spam.</p><p>I have, of course, appealed that decision, but not only don't expect anything to come of that appeal, but don't expect it to even be acknowledged.</p><p>In any case, since Facebook censored it, I'm posting the letter here.</p><p>I'm also including, after the letter itself, screenshots of the messages from Facebook informing me of their bot's idiocy.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>The letter sent to the Associated Press with the subject September 6 Article "Israeli army: ‘High probability’ soldier killed reporter":</i></p><p>Dear Editor, Mr. Daniszewski, Mr. Federman, Ms. Goldenberg and Mr. Krauss:</p><p><br /></p><p>The September 6 article ""Israeli army: ‘High probability’ soldier killed reporter" (<a href="https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-israel-journalists-veterans-al-jazeera-0e33ab0025cf06ee498ab83445e39733">https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-israel-journalists-veterans-al-jazeera-0e33ab0025cf06ee498ab83445e39733</a>) takes the results of an Israeli investigation which, if reported on honestly and objectively, would make clear the stark contrast between the morality and integrity shown by the Israeli government and its military and the mendaciousness of the Palestinian Authority and its leadership.</p><p>The essence of what happened was that after a rash of terror attacks by Palestinian Arabs who killed at least 19 civilians, including several Americans (something that is downplayed by the Associated Press, as is always the case when Arab terrorists murder Americans), Israel was forced to go into the Palestinian Authority-governed areas, particularly Jenin, to capture perpetrators and to stop additional attacks.</p><p>This context was missing from the AP story, but that's just the beginning.</p><p>During the course of one operation trying to arrest terrorists in Jenin, the Israeli forces came under constant fire and, during those firefights, a reporter got hit by a bullet and died.</p><p>What happened was analogous to a not-terribly-uncommon situation where crimes are committed, police come under fire when they try to arrest the criminals and bystanders get caught in the crossfire. Under those circumstances, it is understood and accepted that, regardless of the source of the bullet, ultimate blame lies with the criminals, not the police.</p><p>Analogously, regardless of the source of the bullet, ultimate blame for the death of Shireen Abu Akleh lies with the terrorists, not the Israeli forces trying to arrest them. Yet not once in the myriad articles written by the Associated Press about this incident, has that basic fact been even hinted at!</p><p>Immediately after her death, clearly without even a scintilla of evidence, the Palestinian Authority insisted not only that Abu Akleh was hit by an Israeli bullet, but against all reason that she was deliberately targeted. This nonsensical insistence was repeated by the media, including by the AP, which repeatedly treated the unreliable testimony of alleged witnesses as if it was trustworthy while using loaded language to cast aspersions against the very reasoned statements coming from Israelis, who did not jump to baseless conclusions.</p><p>The AP repeated that irresponsible "reporting" in this article, for example opining that "the military revealed no new evidence to back its claim that the Palestinian-American journalist might have been killed by Palestinian fire." That "claim" is rather obviously true, while the AP has never pointed out the Palestinian Arab sources have never revealed any evidence to back their insistence that she was hit by an Israeli bullet.</p><p>What a double standard!</p><p>The article reports "Both Palestinian officials and Abu Akleh’s family accused the army of evading responsibility for her killing," but fails to mention that Palestinian Arab officials repeatedly deliberately make blatantly false accusations or that Jenin is famous for being the site of the massacre that never was, with Saeb Erekat telling CNN that Israel "massacred" 500 people in a refugee camp there.</p><p>In the Abu Akleh incident, rather than making irresponsible and baseless accusations, the Israeli army acted extremely responsibly, investigating what happened for four months, handicapped by the very suspicious way the Palestinian Authority hid all the forensic evidence, and did something that the Palestinian Authority would never do: announce that it appeared she was probably hit by a bullet fired by an Israeli.</p><p>Given the lack of any forensic evidence and the explanations included in the AP article, it would appear the main basis for that conclusion was that a soldier reported he had shot in that direction at the time she was apparently hit, while - not very surprisingly - none of the terrorists reported firing in that direction at that time. Of course, none of the terrorists would report doing that, even if they deliberately killed her.</p><p>Perhaps, in straight reporting, it might be assumed that latter reality would be understood by the reader and omitted. However, given all the gratuitous commentary that infuses AP reporting about Israel, to leave out any reference to that reality compounds the irresponsibility.</p><p>Later, the article again casts doubt on clearly responsibility statements from Israeli sources and gives undeserved credibility to unreliable sources, the article pretends "the military provided no evidence to support its claim that a fierce gunbattle was under way at the time that Abu Akleh was shot" while writing "amateur videos as well as witness accounts have shown no evidence of militants in the vicinity and the area appeared to be quiet for several minutes before she was shot." Of course, if anyone in Jenin produced a video showing what the AP euphemistically calls "militants" (being afraid to accurately referring to Palestinian terrorists) in the vicinity or gave testimony to that effect, that person would almost certainly find his or her life suddenly became very difficult, to put it euphemistically.</p><p>Although I've never served in the military myself, it seems pretty obvious that it would be very possible for a soldier under fire to not notice a potential threat suddenly coming into view was "wearing a helmet and vest marked 'press.'" It would also have been responsible for the Associated Press to note that Palestinian Arab terrorists are known to disguise themselves as members of the press and thus it can be dangerous for an Israeli soldier, in a violent situation, to assume someone "wearing a helmet and vest marked 'press'" is not going to attack.</p><p>In contrast to casting doubt on just about anything from an Israeli source, the AP repeatedly quotes unreliable sources, such as a spokesperson for Holocaust denier Manhoud Abbas dismissing Israel's report as "another Israeli attempt to evade responsibility" and saying "all evidence process that 'Israel is the culprit, that it killed'" Abu Akleh, despite the fact no such evidence has ever been produced or the obvious fact that the Palestinian Authority has kept all the forensic evidence to itself (except for the bullet it claimed was responsible but which, curiously, was too damaged to prove anything) if that evidence backed up his accusation the PA certainly would have shared it.</p><p>The article repeats something the AP has included in many earlier articles, a statement that investigations by the AP and other organizations have found that "Israeli troops most likely fired the fatal bullet," but again failed to mention that all those conclusions were based on testimony from highly unreliable sources. In contrast, it unreasonably casts doubt on the obvious conclusion by the United States that if she was hit by an Israeli bullet, there was no evidence that it was anything other than a mistake. The AP does that by adding a statement that "it did not explain how it reached that conclusion."</p><p>The article continued in that irresponsible vein and then finished by stating Israeli police "beat mourners and pallbearers" at Abu Akleh's funeral without pointing out the supposed mourners both hijacked the casket and attacked the Israeli police trying to restore order.</p><p>It then concludes by opining "the Palestinians want the territory [Judea and Samaria] to form the main part of a future state."</p><p>Curiously, to use the AP's own language, the article "did not explain how it reached that conclusion," despite the fact that, given their repeated rejection of proposals that would have given them just that and that it conflicts with the content of the charters of the main Palestinian Arab groups, including the PLO, Fatah and Hamas, the evidence strongly indicates that statement is grossly incorrect.</p><p>One should be able to expect better of the Associated Press.</p><p><br /></p><p>Sincerely,</p><p>Alan Stein</p><p><i>The screenshots from Facebook's censorship and threat:</i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggIBofT-_g9yMpgWW_beWsMqUQNRvNtWIfKOHTytf_WZP__pq-4xeDYrhoDIuzRFoHodJRHZGI6Z-TD9XO5q88WbY9BQpPhNypeNPyKFZsPKzcWoP7rPBbO4RaEe0gKFSQccgWJPqALdspoA2a2WwmEsCY7v15xV-TL8gby-SMK5838kZaBqF_5_Dq/s1358/fb5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1022" data-original-width="1358" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggIBofT-_g9yMpgWW_beWsMqUQNRvNtWIfKOHTytf_WZP__pq-4xeDYrhoDIuzRFoHodJRHZGI6Z-TD9XO5q88WbY9BQpPhNypeNPyKFZsPKzcWoP7rPBbO4RaEe0gKFSQccgWJPqALdspoA2a2WwmEsCY7v15xV-TL8gby-SMK5838kZaBqF_5_Dq/s320/fb5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-7118203247164042792022-08-30T19:37:00.000-07:002022-08-30T19:37:01.937-07:00Facebook Deleted This ... and threatened to cancel me<p>I sent the letter below to the Associated Press with the subject August 29 article "Palestinian toll mounts as Israel steps up West Bank raids" and posted it to the AP Monitor Facebook group (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/apmonitor">https://www.facebook.com/groups/apmonitor</a>) with the introduction consisting of what I wrote in this paragraph up until the word "and."</p><p>Within a few minutes, while checking for a friend's post on Facebook, I saw a warning that my post had been censored for either violating community standards or being spam (neither made any sense to me) and threatening me with exile if I repeated such offensive behavior.</p><p>And then, as soon as I clicked on a box to appeal, expecting to then get a way of explaining why, everything vanished.</p><p>(Plug: Check out the AP Monitor group. Join it. Participate it. Spread the word. Fight the pervasive anti-Israel bias.)</p><p><i>This is the letter I sent to the (systemically anti-Israel) Associated Press:</i></p><p>Dear Editor, Mr. Daniszewski and Mr. Krauss:</p><p>The absurdities in the August 29 article "Palestinian toll mounts as Israel steps up West Bank raids" (https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-israel-west-bank-ac683a6fbb4f2893ecdf1b1bbe1362ef) begins with the very first sentence, which misleadingly implies that Israel killed at least 85 Palestinian Arabs in its counterterrorism actions in the Palestinian Authority, an implication contradicted by the very next paragraph, which notes (a) the figure comes from the Palestinian Authority, a notoriously unreliable source and, more importantly, (b) it includes terrorists who were killed inside Israel in the course of carrying out terror attacks.</p><p>The third paragraph refers to Abu Akleh (without using her name), an unnamed lawyer, and local youths getting killed and implies they were killed by Israeli actions, although that's far from certain and, if one actually analyzes what was written, the youths who were killed were probably engaged in violence at the time.</p><p>The fourth paragraph repeats the lie that the nearly three million Palestinian Arabs who have self-government "live under a decades-long occupation." I somehow doubt the Associated Press would write that Canadians live under an occupation were the following to occur, something clearly almost impossible to conceive since, unlike the Palestinian Arabs, Canadians are relatively peaceful: The Canadian government harbors terror groups and rewards terrorists for murdering American citizens. This forces the American government to repeatedly enter Canadian territory to capture terrorists who have murdered Americans and also to prevent additional terror attacks. This is analogous to what Israel has been forced to do in the Palestinian Authority governed territories, but, as I wrote, I doubt that in such a case the Associated Press would repeatedly refer to Canada as being occupied by the United States.</p><p>Later in the article, referring to Abu Akleh and an unnamed 58-year-old-man, states "The Israeli military says both might have been hit by Palestinian gunfire but has not provided evidence to substantiate its claims." This is clearly biased, deliberately casting doubt on the information from the Israeli military and cleverly omitting the fact that there is no evidence to contradict those very reasonable and sober Israeli statements.</p><p>Abu Akleh is referred to a third time a few paragraphs later, and refers to supposedly but hardly "independent" investigations concluding that her death was likely caused by Israeli fire, without mentioning that those investigations all relied on highly unreliable sources who would be in danger if they said anything to suggest the bullet that hit her came from one of the Arab terrorists in Jenin.</p><p>The article later refers to so-called "rights groups," and quotes Ori Givati of Breaking the Silence, but fails to mention the heavy financing of those groups by anti-Israel NGOs and governments which implicitly and sometimes explicitly condition funding on creating reports demonizing Israel.</p><p>The section regarding the death of Salah Sawafta was effectively self-contradictory. On the one hand referring to her being killed as Israeli counter-terror forces (of course, the AP never refers to them that way) being engaged in a firefight with Palestinian Arab terrorists, euphemistically referred to as "gunmen." On the other hand, it quotes an alleged witness saying there were no Arab "gunmen" or "stone-throwers" in the area.</p><p>The article also contained the following boilerplate Associated Press use of biased and loaded language, false or incorrect information, misleading terminology and statements to the same effect:</p><p>Militant. The Associated Press almost always uses euphemisms whenever reporting on terrorism related to terrorism against Israel. Palestinian and other Arab terror groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Fatah and the PLO are referred to as "militant" and terrorists are referred to by terms such as "militants" or "assailants."</p><p>Occupation. The Associated Press incorrectly refers to disputed territories as "occupied." Legally, there has never been an Israeli "occupation," since under international law all the disputed territories fell within Israel's legal borders upon its declaration of independence in 1948. In practical terms, even what had incorrectly been called "occupation" after 1967 ended with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the early 1990s.</p><p>Palestinians. The Associated Press fails to mention that Palestinian is an identity assumed only relatively recently, in the 1960s, by the Arabs living in Palestine. It fails to mention that prior to the creation of the modern state of Israel, it was the Jews who were referred to as Palestinians.</p><p>Peace Talks. The Associated Press frequently refers to peace talks being stalled, or being stalled since 2014, but by leaving out context falsely implies Israel and the Palestinian Arabs share blame. It does not mention that Mahmoud Abbas walked out after being offered the equivalent of all the disputed territories - as he himself has acknowledged - back in 2008 and, for all practical purposes, has refused to negotiate seriously ever since. Nor does the Associated Press ever mention that Abbas' foreign minister announced in February, 2016, that the Palestinian Authority would never again negotiate directly with Israel.</p><p>"The Palestinians seek the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, for a future state." The Associated Press routinely includes statements along these lines. This is an expression of an opinion, making it inappropriate for a news article. It also flies in the face of the fact that the Palestinian Arabs have repeatedly been offered virtually all of that, including 2000, 2001, 2008 and reportedly 2014, and chose not establish their own state in that territory. It also fails to mention that the PLO itself proclaims, in its own charter, that it has no claim to any of those areas! It ignores the fact that almost all of Gaza was turned over to the Palestinian Arabs in 1995 and turned over the rest of Gaza in 2005. It refers to the portion of Israel's capital that had been occupied by Jordan from 1948-1967 as if it were a separate city.</p><p>West Bank. The Associated Press invariably refers to the heartland of the Jewish homeland by the name given to it by Jordan when that state invaded Israel in 1948 and militarily captured Judea, Samaria and portions of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and the rest of the Old City. It never refers to it by its historical names, never mentions that "West Bank" implicitly refers to a portion of Palestine to the west of the Jordan River in contrast to the portion on the east bank, that is, Jordan, which comprises 77-78% of Palestine.</p><p>It remains curious that the Associated Press repeatedly writes sympathetically about Palestinian Arabs who got killed during Israeli counter-terror operations, but not about the innocent Israeli civilians who get murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists.</p><p>Sincerely,</p><p>Alan Stein</p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-28700016813793380452022-05-28T16:35:00.002-07:002022-05-28T16:35:20.724-07:00My Second Ode to the New York Times (by Elinor Weiss)<p><i>Elinor Weiss wrote this second ode to The New York Times. It's posted here with her permission.</i></p><p style="text-align: center;"> <b><span style="font-size: medium;">My Second Ode to the New York Times</span></b></p><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">(My second apology to John Keats)</span></b></div><br />The NYTimes <br />Is in a tizzy,<br />Over a fashion queen <br />Named Hoda Katebi.<br /><br />She loves to hate<br />The Jewish State<br />Using BDS<br />To annihilate.<br /><br />Ms. Katebi promotes <br />Iranian fashion<br />The Ayatollah’s laws<br />Have her positive reaction.<br /><br />Terrorist theocracy<br />Is a big win<br />But democratic Israel<br />A terrible sin.<br /><br />No questions, no follow ups<br />To the law student’s views,<br />Her pro BDS stance<br />Is a plus for the paper’s news.<br /><br />Yet the Times does shows fairness <br />In its Israel reports<br />Because the bias is shared<br />Among all the cohorts.<br /><br />From food, to movies<br />Business and fashion<br />The pieces have a common<br />Hate Israel passion.<br /><br />Consistency is there<br />For all to see<br />Israel is covered<br />Without accuracy.<br /><br />So Hoda Katebi,<br />Writer and speaker<br />A future lawyer<br />Whose goal <br />Is to make Israel weaker.<br /><br />Is the kind of person<br />The paper admires<br />That its journalists promotes<br />That its editors aspires.primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-41676796905318377392022-05-20T19:15:00.004-07:002022-05-20T19:15:46.117-07:00Ode to The New York Times<p>(<i>Posted here with the permission of the poet.</i>)</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Ode to The New York Times</b></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>By Elinor Weiss</i></b></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>(with apologies to John Keats)</i></b></span></p><p><br /></p><p>The New York Times</p><p>Seems to hate the Jews</p><p>But for many of us</p><p>That’s really not news.</p><p><br /></p><p>Take the Holocaust</p><p>The terrible genocide</p><p>When Jews were slaughtered</p><p>Simply a paragraph inside.</p><p><br /></p><p>But now it’s not correct</p><p>To be an anti Semite</p><p>So the grey old lady</p><p>Tries to make it look right.</p><p><br /></p><p>It turns its words</p><p>Against the Jewish nation</p><p>Israel is demonized</p><p>As a repulsive sensation.</p><p><br /></p><p>Reporters like Yazbek</p><p>Filled with hate</p><p>Write lies about</p><p>The Jewish State.</p><p><br /></p><p>Yazbek loves Hamas</p><p>Terrorists supreme</p><p>Yazbek’s views of Jews</p><p>Are quite extreme.</p><p><br /></p><p>She justifies violence</p><p>Against Israelis</p><p>The pay to slay ethics</p><p>Is never reported in the daily.</p><p><br /></p><p>Terrorist attacks</p><p>Against Israelis in the cities</p><p>Don’t merit the Times’ journalists</p><p>Sympathies or pities.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Times is clueless,</p><p>It doesn’t seem to know</p><p>That Hamas wants all of Israel</p><p>To go.</p><p><br /></p><p>Any evil,</p><p>Anything bad,</p><p>Is blamed on Israel,</p><p>Just sad, sad, sad!</p><p><br /></p><p>Misleading subheadings,</p><p>Misuse of words</p><p>So that its readers will think</p><p>Israel as a turd.</p><p><br /></p><p>But to be fair</p><p>When holidays come around</p><p>Jews hating being Jewish</p><p>Are the ones Times has found.</p><p><br /></p><p>You can be sure to read</p><p>Why Hanukkah is overrated</p><p>Or a put down on Passover</p><p>Jews against God are celebrated.</p><p><br /></p><p>Defaming Jewish holidays</p><p>Encouraging Israel’s demise</p><p>Anti semites at the New York Times?</p><p>Definitely not a surprise!</p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-30075747721342345702022-05-20T14:27:00.001-07:002022-05-20T14:27:13.674-07:00Israel Updates: 3 People Reported Killed in Attack-headline and article in The New York Times<p>Daniel Trigoboff submitted the following letter to The New York Times on May 6, 2022. Not surprisingly, given their heavy anti-Israel bias, they chose not to publish it. It's posted here with the permission of Dr. Trigoboff.</p><p>The article itself is on The New York Times website at <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/05/05/world/israel-attack">https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/05/05/world/israel-attack</a>, with the headline "At Least 3 People Reported Killed in Israel Attack" and subhead "The attack follows a wave of violence by Arab assailants that has already killed 14 people in Israel since mid-March."</p><p>Dear Editor,</p><p>There’s so much wrong with the headline and content of this NY Times article that the question of a deliberate anti-Israel cant is strongly raised. To begin with, the 3 people referenced in the headline were not “reported” killed; they were in fact murdered, there is no doubt about their unfortunate deaths, reported as such by multiple media sources. For a constructive comparison, did The NY Times headline about the 9/11 attacks state that “Almost 3,000 People Reported Killed in Attack?” Of course not.</p><p>And, who killed the three people in Israel? Why did this headline omit the widely known and publicized identifications of the murderers as Palestinian Arab terrorists? Why the passive voice? Why not use an accurate headline like “Israel Updates: Palestinian Arab Terrorists Murder Three Israeli Civilians, Wound Six?”</p><p>In the body of the article is the heinous misrepresentation of the Temple Mount as “the Aqsa Mosque compound”, supposedly revered by Muslims and Jews alike, and then a statement that Jews refer to it as the Temple Mount, as though the Muslim Arab nomenclature is universally accepted except by Jews. Absolute balderdash on steroids. In fact there is the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, and the flat plaza which surrounds them which was the site of the First and Second Temples. This elevated plaza which sits on the Temple Mount is Judaism’s holiest site, whereas the Al-Aqsa Mosque is only the third holiest site to Sunni Muslims, not to Shia Muslims. In no sense is Judaism’s holiest site, this plaza, a part of any “Aqsa Mosque compound” which does not exist.</p><p>In fact it can be argued that by terming it this way, The NY Times is using discriminatory settler colonialist language since Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock were built on top of the site of the First and Second Temples by Arab invaders, who arrived and displaced indigenous Jews many centuries after the Temples were built and then destroyed. </p><p>In considering these faults in this article’s headline and content, I am reminded of the famous Ian Fleming quote: “Once is happenstance, twice is circumstance, three times is enemy action.” What is cause of the obvious enmity borne towards Israel by The NY Times?</p><p>Daniel H. Trigoboff, Ph.D.</p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-49973623611841650962021-09-04T16:01:00.000-07:002021-09-04T16:01:15.651-07:00A Jewish Perspective: The Short Version - By Larry Shapiro<h2 style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;">A Jewish perspective</div><div style="text-align: center;">The short version</div></h2><h4 style="text-align: center;">By Larry Shapiro</h4><p>From a Jew's standpoint, a good part of our history is how people blamed us for natural and manmade disasters. In 1095, Pope Urban called for Christians to go to the Middle East to reoccupy Jerusalem. On the way, crusaders who thought of Jews as infidels went into Jewish areas and tried to convert them. Those who refused were killed, So great was the cruelty, Jews unwilling to abandon their beliefs killed their own families to keep them from falling into the hands of the Crusaders. </p><p>This was not the first time that Jews committed mass suicide. In 74 Ad, Jews holed up in the hillside fort called Masada committed mass suicide rather than fall into the hands of the Roman invaders. </p><p>The first suicide in Jewish history was committed by King Saul who impaled himself on is sword rather than be seized by the Philistine army that defeated him in battle on Mount Gilboa. It was not the last suicide as many times throughout history Jews chose to do away with themselves rather than be tortured and killed by the powers of the day. </p><p>In the 12th Century, Jews were accused of poisoning water wells causing the black death that was decimating Europe. Under torture, a handful of Jews confessed to creating the plague leading cities all over Europe particularly in Germany to burn Jews in a rehearsal for what their descendants did to the Jews in the 20th Century. </p><p>In the case of Christianity, the prevailing reason to hate Jews was because Jews were blamed for deicide, i.e. killing Christ. In some fundamentalist circles, this belief exists to this day. Some suggest that it is more widespread than just a few fundamentalist voices. </p><p>Islam's hatred of Jews started around the time of Muhammad. Muslims accused Jews of believing in the wrong deities and have hated Jews ever since. </p><p>In the 21st Century, when religion is on the wane, a secular world understands that Jews shouldn't be punished for killing Christ or for worshiping the wrong Gods, but many among the where there's smoke there's fire folks think Jews have too much power and are basically untrustworthy, prejudices that are vestiges of the religious beliefs they abandoned. </p><p>During times of peace and achievement, Jews live in what is called a golden Age in which they are free to live their lives and pursue their aspirations. When many calamities confront mankind such as these days when a growing pandemic, demolition of the political order, messy war endings, climate change leading to the burning of the world and mass deaths from opioid addictions, make life more uncertain, people carrying the anti-Jew virus start sucker punching Jews in the streets. </p><p>Jews aware of their history understand that they will be blamed for calamities. Jews who are in denial about their own history (we should never have irritated the crusaders) support the blamers, encouraging elected officials like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar to freely perform their Jew scapegoat dance. Many millions swallow the Palestinian victimhood narrative which is text book scapegoating of the Jews. </p><p>I guess there comes a point where some Jews worn out from the unfairness stop resisting making them and their offspring more vulnerable to their pariah status. While they may not convert, they internalize the hatred of Jews even going as far as creating organizations that they hope will set them apart, like Jews for the Restoration of Jewish Ethics. As far as I know it's not a real organization but maybe it's on the way. </p><p>Of course nothing is black and white. Israel has been reborn and for the first time in 2000 years Jews have an army. Jews are tough and resilient and are still healing the world. Jewish names are all over hospitals and on letterheads of charitable organizations. It may be that we will never be the world's most favorite people, but we're truckin on. </p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-45526763013738011832021-07-13T10:52:00.000-07:002021-07-13T10:52:04.997-07:00It's time to stop demonizing Israel<p style="text-align: left;">This was published in the Connecticut Mirror on July 13, 2021. It may be found on the Connecticut Mirror website at <a href="https://ctmirror.org/category/ct-viewpoints/its-time-to-stop-demonizing-israel/" target="_blank">https://ctmirror.org/category/ct-viewpoints/its-time-to-stop-demonizing-israel/</a>.</p><p style="text-align: center;"> <span style="font-size: large;">Connecticut Mirror</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">CT VIEWPOINTS -- opinions from around Connecticut</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It's time to stop demonizing Israel</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i>by MARK FISHMAN AND ALAN STEIN, PH.D.</i></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRaGJ2-7OmiBPVazG1fDDsZiEut4P7y9QuuxkNwcACNhRILANitWFjObssaTKQ0BybPYCbyiFarm0a-ZZzkljd-HZrU6K3AxSG8QJo3AvQ5ojyZ2mMY8p0ufEW5xzCJkWKmo6fGJbGmvk/s2048/IMG_6181.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRaGJ2-7OmiBPVazG1fDDsZiEut4P7y9QuuxkNwcACNhRILANitWFjObssaTKQ0BybPYCbyiFarm0a-ZZzkljd-HZrU6K3AxSG8QJo3AvQ5ojyZ2mMY8p0ufEW5xzCJkWKmo6fGJbGmvk/w507-h240/IMG_6181.JPG" width="507" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Debris from a Hamas rocket fell in Winter Pond Park in Netanya where Stein, one of the writers of this piece, was prevented by the Israel Defense Forces from riding his bike around the pond because it was deemed too dangerous.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA1d9M_VSmDwDolkOMGvAfx5p4pTcjNJar6cpTQ9PcI_TOvNI6YZnUVRu4Zka4vceSsLHaN1gJe2I3ioYWwapRl-q3_1Zh1pm8l14snoJB5-YLos4zCODiv4ugH6p40_o06lt5TxNrIr4/s768/13-ctmirror2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="591" data-original-width="768" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA1d9M_VSmDwDolkOMGvAfx5p4pTcjNJar6cpTQ9PcI_TOvNI6YZnUVRu4Zka4vceSsLHaN1gJe2I3ioYWwapRl-q3_1Zh1pm8l14snoJB5-YLos4zCODiv4ugH6p40_o06lt5TxNrIr4/s320/13-ctmirror2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Alan Stein and Mark Fishman</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>The immoral drumbeats of the BDS movement keep getting shriller. A highly misleading screed by Haddiyyah Ali appeared in CT Viewpoints July 2. Readers deserve the truth, so we will respond to Ali and shed light on the true nature and aims of the BDS movement as well as the Arab-Israeli conflict. We will also take some of what Ali wrote and provide an honest, truthful version.</p><p>BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. It claims it seeks justice for the Palestinian Arabs, but its true goal, as made clear by the founders and leaders of the movement, is quite different and quite unjust.</p><p>Omar Barghouti, the most prominent of the founders and leaders of the BDS movement, said the following: "Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell out Palestinian, would ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine."</p><p>In other words, as admitted in a rare moment of honesty by Norman Finkelstein, who goes around America maligning Israel, "There's no Israel. That's what it's [BDS] really about."</p><p>That is the true, evil goal for which the BDS movement was created; its strategy is to abuse the language of justice to demonize and delegitimize Israel and perversely tar Israel with the label of apartheid. The misuse of that term is an insult to those who actually suffered from apartheid in South Africa.</p><p>While Ali writes "It is time for State Treasurer Shawn Wooden to divest from Israel once and for all," she knows that's not going to happen, since Wooden is a responsible public servant, but that's not what she's after. Her purpose is to make use of that core BDS strategy of demonization and delegitimization.</p><p>A handful of inconvenient (for the BDSers) truths about Israel:</p><p>Israel is a liberal democracy, the only real democracy in the Middle East. This is a truly amazing achievement given that it was recreated predominately by people who fled from countries with no history of democracy and has not been able to enjoy a single day of peace since being invaded by regular armies from five established Arab states the day after declaring its independence.</p><p>Today, the majority of Israeli Jews would be called people of color if they lived in the United States. Their families were forced from homes in Arab countries.</p><p>Israel is the only country in the world which ever brought Blacks from Africa to freedom rather than chains. They were welcomed with singing and dancing and many of those Ethiopian Jews kissed the soil when they were brought home to Zion.</p><p>Ali uses the words "On May 10, Israel began an 11-day assault on the Gaza strip after Palestinians protested Israeli settlers attempting to seize their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan" to begin her misrepresentations regarding the recent war Hamas started. During that war, Hamas targeted Israeli civilians with 4,300 rockets in just 11 days; nothing can justify such an onslaught on a civilian population.</p><p>Prior to 1948, Shimon HaTzadik/Sheikh Jarrah was a Jewish neighborhood. It was captured by Jordan in the 1948 war and, as was the case with all the territory captured by Jordan, all its Jewish residents were expelled. In some cases Jordan transferred ownership in its records when it took over the homes of Jews; this was not done in Shimon HaTzadik/Sheikh Jarrah.</p><p>In 1967, when Israel recaptured territory Jordan had captured in 1948, it made a decision to accept Jordan's land records, even regarding property that had been taken from Jews without compensation. The Jordanian records for Shimon HaTzadik/Sheikh Jarrah still recorded the property as owned by Jews. Still, Israel compassionately decided to confer "protected tenant" status on the Arabs living on that Jewish-owned property, while stipulating that the owners were entitled to receive some rent from those tenants. Many of those Arab tenants agreed to pay the rent, which was below market because of their status as protected tenants.</p><p>The current case involves tenants who have refused to pay rent. It is now in the courts. Only in Jerusalem does it become an international incident when property owners go to court over tenants who have refused to pay rent for 50 years, but both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have been using this as a vehicle for increasing their popularity by trying to show they are more radical than the other.</p><p>They encouraged violent demonstrations in Shimon HaTzadik/Sheikh Jarrah. Next came the stockpiling of rocks and firebombs in the Al Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount, attacking Israeli police with them and then falsely accusing the police of "storming" the mosque they themselves had desecrated.</p><p>This was followed by rockets fired on Jerusalem from Gaza as Israelis were celebrating the 1967 reunification of their capital, at which point Israel finally targeted some of the rockets, rocket launchers and other terror facilities in Gaza.</p><p>During an 11-day period, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah and other terror groups launched 4,300 rockets targeting Israeli civilians. Roughly 15% of those either misfired or fell short, killing and wounding a significant number of people in Gaza.</p><p>Unlike Hamas, Israel puts tremendous resources into defensive measures, particularly the very expensive Iron Dome missile defense system and the bomb shelters in every residential building and, since the SCUD attacks during the first Gulf War, in every new apartment and house. This has saved many lives. Those 4,300 rockets probably killed far more Arabs in Gaza than Jews in Israel!</p><p>Of course, not a single person, Arab or Jew, civilian or soldier or terrorist, would have been killed if the Gaza terrorists had not started their onslaught of rockets and kept them going for 11 days.</p><p>Ali closes with the mantra "there is no justice without a free Palestine."</p><p>The injustice of more than seven decades of Arab war, terrorism and attempted genocide can never be rectified, but we can see from Hamas-governed Gaza and the PA-governed Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria what a "free Palestine" would look like. There are no Jews living in either place and one demand of the "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas is that any additional territory handed over to the Palestinian Arabs be ethnically cleansed of their Jews.</p><p>Horrendous as was the discrimination practiced in Apartheid South Africa, even that rogue country didn't force out the Blacks living there!</p><p>Ali's mantra really should be "Free the Palestinian Arabs from Hamas and Fatah."</p><p><i>Mark Fishman is President and Alan Stein is President Emeritus of PRIMER-Connecticut. (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting)</i></p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9012104733768842108.post-47110680683093787612021-07-01T18:14:00.001-07:002021-07-01T18:14:24.046-07:00Bruins must voice opposition to human rights violations targeting Israelis<p><i>This was submitted to the Daily Bruin (opinion@dailybruin.com) after reading a piece of anti-Israel propaganda they published. That piece may be found at <a href="https://dailybruin.com/2021/06/28/op-ed-bruins-must-voice-opposition-to-israeli-human-rights-violations">https://dailybruin.com/2021/06/28/op-ed-bruins-must-voice-opposition-to-israeli-human-rights-violations</a>.</i></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Bruins must voice opposition to human rights violations targeting Israelis</span></p><p style="text-align: center;">Alan Stein</p><p>It's ironic that Farhana El Taha's op-ed, absurdly entitled "Bruins must voice opposition to Israeli human rights violations," asserts "it is also very important to note that when false narratives which can reach millions are propagated on social media platforms, it is something that not just negatively affects anyone who is pro-Palestine, but also anyone who stands against any kinds of injustice across the world" and asks "where does this misinformation stop?"</p><p>After all, her op-ed is predominately a compendium of false narratives which negatively affect not only her targets, the only true democracy in the Middle East and its supporters, but also anyone who honestly stands against injustice in this imperfect world. And, as is typical for those who hate that tiny bastion of liberal values and freedom in the Middle East, most of the false accusations she makes against Israel would be justified if she made them against the multitude of terror groups dedicated to its destruction.</p><p>Rather than directly point out and analyze even a small portion of her lies, distortions and misrepresentations - an endeavor that would take an enormous amount of space - I'll simply reword some of what she wrote so that the result is accurate.</p><p>Every day, Israeli civilians face persecution, including death, at the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists dedicated to the destruction of their country. These crimes against humanity generally go unnoticed except when the Israeli government takes defensive action against them. For example, since the end of the recent mini-war, during which Gaza-based terrorists launched approximately 4,300 rockets at Israeli cities and towns in just eleven days, dozens of explosive-laden balloons have been launched, including at least four on the day I am writing this, burning significant amounts of land in Israel and killing an unknown number of animals, and several attempts have been made to infiltrate into Israel to directly perpetrate terror attacks, but they have generally gone unreported in the American media except for the time Israel responded by bombing some terror facilities.</p><p>For Hamas, a cease fire really means Israel ceases to defend itself while Hamas itself keeps launching attacks.</p><p>Mahmoud Abbas, who is now enjoying the 17th year of his four year term as president of the Palestinian Authority and also heads the Fatah and PLO terror groups, has repeatedly rejected the core concept behind the so-called "two-state solution," i.e. two states for two peoples. He rules over almost all the Arabs living in the disputed portions of Judea and Samaria - the area renamed "the West Bank" by Jordan when it captured and subsequently occupied it for nineteen years - but not a single Jew, since one of the first pieces of legislation passed by the Palestinian Authority made it a capital crime to sell property to a Jew.</p><p>One of his demands, if he ever again negotiates with Israel - it's been more than five years since his hand-picked foreign minister announced that would never happen - is that all Jews be ethnically cleansed from any territory handed over to the Palestinian Arabs. Technically, that would not constitute Apartheid, but only because at least in South Africa Blacks, although subject to inhumane discrimination, at least were allowed to live in certain areas.</p><p>As human beings, we must persistently and firmly resist the current, worse than Apartheid Palestinian Authority and the discriminatory, worse than Apartheid demand that any future Palestinian Arab state be made Judenrein.</p><p>With the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in what has been the Jewish homeland since Biblical times, the Jews in the Land of Israel traded in their identity as Palestinians for their new identity as Israelis. Decades later, that identity of Palestinian was adopted by the Arabs who had left Israel, mostly of their own volition as part of the effort by their leaders and brethren to destroy the reconstituted Jewish state, along with their descendants. Sadly, those hundreds of thousands who left and their descendants, now numbering in the millions, have been used - or should one say abused - as pawns in the continuing drive to destroy Israel and many continue to live as if they were refugees. Their own brethren in neighboring Arab countries have generally refused to allow them to integrate into their societies and become citizens.</p><p>An equal or greater number of Jews living in Arab countries were forced from their homes but otherwise were much more fortunate, since they were welcomed to their reconstituted homeland. Their days of living in tents in improvised refugee camps in a poor, besieged country quickly ended, while even many Palestinian Arabs living under their own governments, the Palestinian Authority in Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria and Hamas in Gaza, are still living in refugee camps seven decades after their grandparents and great-grandparents made the mistake of listening to their leaders.</p><p>What I've written above corresponds slightly more than the first two paragraphs of El Taha's "narrative," but differs in that it is accurate and truthful. To save space, I won't rewrite any more of El Taha's op-ed but will finish with her own words, with just one critical difference: I mean what she ended with: "But in the end, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more to learn and to do. We must all take action for truth."</p><p><i>Alan Stein is Professor Emeritus at The University of Connecticut, founder of PRIMER-Massachusetts and PRIMER-Israel and president emeritus of PRIMER-Connecticut (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting). During his retirement, he splits his time between Massachusetts and Israel, where a month and a half ago he was barred from riding his bike in his favorite park when it was deemed unsafe by the Israeli army after being the landing spot for debris from a Hamas rocket.</i></p>primerprezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873590176866303291noreply@blogger.com0