Showing posts with label IDF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IDF. Show all posts

Sunday, October 22, 2023

By Forest Rain

Ours is the most moral army in the world. The people of Israel like that. We want to be moral and good. We don’t like the idea of fighting or killing.

The IDF is the Israel Defense Force (not the Israel Attack Force) for good reason. We have no desire to attack anyone. The mission of our military is to defend the Nation of Israel – our State and our People. To protect our homeland so that Jewish people everywhere know that, in a world that is dangerous for Jews, there is one place on earth where Jews can defend themselves and are not left to the mercy of others.

The IDF is supposed to fulfill the promise of “Never Again”.

The problem is that the world, including many Jews, have not learned the lessons of the Holocaust. Lessons, sharp and clear (though different for Jews and non-Jews) have been diluted and universalized to the point of being meaningless.

The Hamas massacre of October 7th, 2023 is a harsh reminder.

This isn’t a general issue. It’s a particular issue.
This is about me. My family. My friends. My home. And Never Again is NOW.

For Jews, the promise “Never Again” means that never again we put our safety in the hands of others, no matter how civilized they seem. Never Again will we wait for other people to rescue us. It is up to us to be powerful enough to defend ourselves.

For non-Jews, “Never Again” was supposed to be a promise to never again remain silent while Jews are being abused, tortured, and slaughtered. To not remain silent when they see evil occurring. To never again, turn away and pretend they don’t see what is happening – no matter how frightened they are of the people committing the atrocities.

Because there will always be someone eager to commit horrendous acts against Jews.

And what happened?

Jews built the State of Israel, powerful enough to defend herself from invading armies, prevent enemy states from building nuclear bombs, and even fly across the globe to rescue Jews, targeted for being Jewish. And then we allowed ourselves to be convinced to hand our security over to other people and let monsters live on our doorstep.

Over and over, we were attacked, innocent people brutally murdered, our country bombarded with missiles and the “civilized” nations of the world told us to stand down, that the “stronger side” can swallow abuse for peace. That the monsters on our doorstep were our chance to live in peace.  

And we, because we want peace and hate war, because we want to live in a kind world, decided to believe them.

The problem is that this decision was immoral.

It is one thing to be proud of succeeding in eliminating murderous terrorists without hurting bystanders because that is more moral than carpet bombing. It is another thing to know that the people on your border want to wipe you off the face of the earth and allow them to have hope that one day they will succeed.

We knew the problem existed. We watched it grow. We suffered the results of it when it was still small. Worst of all, we listened when we were told “The world is condemning you. Don’t retaliate. Lick your wounds and pretend it never happened.” We wanted to be loved.

The Hamas Charter states that it will eliminate the Jewish State through jihad. On October 7th, Hamas showed the world what that jihad looks like – they came with Go-Pro cameras and proudly filmed their actions for posterity.

Well-trained Hamas commando units broke through our borders under the cover of a missile bombardment. That opened the way for swarms of regular Gazans, eager to join in.

"Crimes against humanity" is too mild and technical a term to describe the atrocities they committed.

They slaughtered men, women, and children and chopped their heads off.
They entered homes, tortured the parents in front of their children, children in front of their parents, gouging out eyes and chopping off fingers – all while eating the family’s food and laughing.
They gang-raped girls and then ripped their limbs off.
They ripped open a pregnant woman’s stomach and stabbed the baby.
They tied children together and burned them alive.
They did more and worse. It is not possible to detail all the horrors.

And then they stole money from the wallets of the people they murdered, looted their homes, taking everything from TVs to tractors, identity cards, and passports.

And then they took as many hostages as they could get their hands on - including babies and elderly people, entire families, and dead bodies.

They came with maps and details about homes, how many people in each family, whether there was a dog or not - all spelled out by individual Gazans who Israelis had employed for years, doing construction work and odd jobs in their communities. 

They didn’t come as an army trying to conquer an enemy state, soldiers fighting against soldiers. They came as a tidal wave of death, to exterminate everything living in its path and before doing so  - humiliate and create as much suffering as possible.

They know that we love life and hold it sacred. They know that we honor the dead, putting supreme importance on respectful burial. This is why they hurt us where it would be most painful.  

They violated the sanctity of our homes, showing that Jews are not safe anywhere.

They violated our past, terrorizing Holocaust survivors and bringing the Holocaust into the present with fire and sending Jews into hiding where they had to hold their hands over the mouths of babies, praying that they wouldn’t make a sound so the monsters wouldn’t find them. 

They committed mass rapes of women, grandmothers, and children as more than a by-product of vicious bloodlust – in the context of people who come from an “honor culture”, this is the deepest violation, the theft of our honor, a display of utter disgust and domination, “dirtying” our beloved, grinding them into the earth – and mocking our men who were not able to save them. 

Dismembering bodies, scattering them, and burning people is not just a matter of gruesome cruelty. The terrorists were given deliberate instructions to commit these acts by people who understand how serious Jews are about respecting our dead and bringing them to a proper burial.

They know us well and they deliberately used everything we care about most to hurt us.

And after all this, around the world, we are seeing people marching in the streets, chanting their support for the Hamas Massacre. Jews are being marked in “civilized” countries. Homes marked with Stars of David, businesses smashed, and students humiliated and abused because they are Jews.

Never Again is NOW.

For years we have said that had Israel existed, the Holocaust would never have happened. Now it is time to make sure that is true. That is what the IDF is for.

The IDF must fulfill the promise of Never Again. This is not about revenge (though well warranted). This is about the survival of Jews everywhere.

It is necessary to crush Hamas so thoroughly and completely that all enemies of Israel will learn that there is no impunity and no safe haven for those who dream of our extermination.

And that, unfortunately, is just the beginning because they are just one of the monsters on our doorstep. We are surrounded (and some are within our borders) and they are watching us. Without utterly crushing them, Israel will not survive.

Without Israel, no Jew, anywhere on earth, will ever be safe again.

Fulfilling the promise of “Never Again” doesn’t look nice on TV. Already the “civilized” nations are telling us to wait, delay, and consider the humanitarian needs of Gazans. It is crucial to retain our morality and fulfill our obligations.

Being merciful to the cruel ultimately makes you cruel to the merciful.

Allowing our enemies to have hope that they can succeed in wiping us off the face of the earth is immoral. We allowed this evil to grow too large. It must be stopped now, no matter how bad the process looks, no matter what our “friends” say.

“Never Again” is the moral obligation of the IDF.

The obligation of decent individuals everywhere is to make sure everyone else knows this.




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, September 04, 2023



From Times of Israel:

The Israeli military arrested three members of the Hamas terror group during a raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank on Monday morning, marking the first overt entry of forces to the camp since a major operation was carried out in the area two months ago.

In a joint statement, the Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet security agency, and Border Police said troops entered the camp and nabbed Abdullah Hassan Mohammed Sobeh, Ward Sharim, and Mus’ab Ja’aydah.

The IDF said troops opened fire at the wanted gunmen as they attempted to flee a building when the forces arrived. One of the armed Palestinians shot in the leg and seriously wounded, and was taken by helicopter to Rambam Hospital in Haifa.

An assault rifle belonging to one of the wanted Palestinians was seized, the IDF said.

The IDF said troops also responded with live fire against Palestinian gunmen who opened fire at forces in the area, and Palestinian rioters hurling stones.

A local wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group said its gunmen opened fire at Israeli forces on the outskirts of the camp.

The Palestinian Authority health ministry said four people were lightly wounded by Israeli fire in the area and taken to nearby hospitals.

No Israeli soldiers were wounded in the operation.

The IDF did injured the captured terrorists, and transported them by helicopter to a hospital. 

Imagine the difficulty of such an operation.

The goal, as always, is to arrest terrorists - not to kill them. The IDF knows that it will be attacked from all directions in a crowded camp that is filled with booby-traps, IEDs and angry youth with stones, firebombs and automatic weapons. 

And in the end, no one was killed on either side. The terrorists were captured alive. 

This must have involved many, many hours of planning, intelligence and practice. 

But this result is always what the IDF wants to see. It doesn't want to kill people, but when under fire, soldiers must return fire towards the source. Nearly every person killed in the past two years were involved in fighting or members of terror groups. For urban warfare, this is incredible, and military experts know this.

But the media ignores all of that. "Human rights groups" insist on perfection in a war zone and that the IDF use peacetime, law enforcement standards when the enemy is often a heavily armed military group. As much as they can, Israel tries to live up to those standards, and it showed that today, even if it is not at all clear that the more flexible laws of armed conflict wouldn't apply to Jenin today.  

The world is so obsessed with demonizing Israel that it ignores how unique it is for an army to have so few civilian casualties in urban war zones. 

Try to find stories where US or British troops entered a crowded town and extracted wanted men under constant fire without killing anyone. If it has ever happened, it is incredibly rare. Yet the IDF strives to do that each and every time - and its success today proves that. 




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Sunday, June 25, 2023




Times of Israel reports:

Israel Defense Forces chief Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Shin Bet head Ronen Bar, and Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai in a joint statement on Saturday strongly condemned an ongoing series of settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, branding them as “nationalist terrorism in the full sense of the term.”

In the wake of a deadly terror attack carried out by Hamas-affiliated gunmen in the West Bank on Tuesday, in which four Israelis were killed, the past five days have seen hundreds of settlers rampage inside Palestinian towns and villages, setting fire to homes, cars, and even opening fire in some cases.

“In recent days, violent attacks by Israeli citizens against innocent Palestinians have been carried out in the Judea and Samaria area,” the security chiefs’ statement read, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name. “These attacks are against every moral and Jewish value and are also nationalist terrorism in the full sense of the term, and we are obliged to fight them.”
It then later reported in a headline, "Far-right ministers reject criticism of settler attacks on Palestinians as ‘terror’" - but I couldn't find in the text of the article where they said that. They complained about placing an equivalence between the settler attacks and Palestinian attacks, which is not how I interpret the joint statement.

Whether they said it or not, it is important that the Israeli side not engage in what the Israel haters do all the time - redefine terms for political purposes. Israel-haters do it with "apartheid" and "ethnic cleansing" and many other accusations against Israel, ignoring the real meaning of the terms, and the Zionist side must not do the same.

While there is no single agreed upon definition of terrorism, here are some.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2005 said that "terrorism is any action intended to cause death or serious harm to civilians with the purpose of intimidation."

A 2018 UN report on terrorism included in its definition, “any action...that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a Government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.”

The US Department of Defense says it is "The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological."

While one might argue whether the rioters intend to cause death to the members of the Arab villages they rioted in, there is no doubt they intend to use violence to intimidate them. The violence is targeting people who are not known to be involved in attacks.

Israel is subjected to double standards all the time. If we are against such double standards, we must enforce a single standard ourselves, no matter what. 

The riots are illegal, immoral, and collective punishment. They are indeed terror. Beyond that, they are counterproductive and hurt the State of Israel, especially among its newest peace partners in the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco, not to mention its relations with Europe and the US.  The anger might be understandable but the actions are not justifiable. 

The IDF, Shin Bet and Israel Police are correct in their statement, and the rioters are hurting the State of Israel they claim to support. Unlike what Smotrich said, clearly condemning the rioters' crimes in no way lessens the horror and depravity of Palestinian terrorism.

 



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Wednesday, June 21, 2023




Israel's Kan News reports:

During a discussion held last week in the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee of the Knesset, it was revealed that a Hezbollah force invaded the sovereign territory of the State of Israel, in the Mount Dov sector, and established an armed military position there. This was announced today (Wednesday) for the first time in the program "Hatze Hayom".

These facts were discovered and discussed by several members of the Knesset in a meeting held last Tuesday in the committee, with the participation of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Members of the Knesset drew the Prime Minister's attention to an unusual and serious incident that is taking place on the northern border.

According to what was said in the discussion, in recent weeks a Hezbollah force crossed the Blue Line on Mount Dov and set up two tents inside Israeli territory. The position is manned by Hezbollah with several armed men on its side (between three and eight) who are stationed in front of the IDF soldiers within the sovereign territory of the State of Israel.

The IDF spokesman's response: "The issue is recognized and being dealt with in front of all the relevant parties."
This IDF response does not fill one with confidence. 

After Israel withdrew behind the Blue Line in 2000, certified by the UN, Hezbollah created the fiction that the Shebaa Farms/Mount Dov area that was under Israeli control was still Lebanese and uses that as a pretext to continue building its massive arsenal, to "defend" Lebanon from "Zionist aggression." 

Israel captured the area from Syria in 1967. Interestingly, Syria's president has said that that the Shebaa Farms is Syrian, not Lebanese. 

Hezbollah has been aggressive in recent years in shoring up its forces on the Blue Line while providing pretexts to UNIFIL that it wasn't changing anything. It seems unlikely that either the UN forces or the Lebanese Armed Forces would do anything to force Hezbollah out of the area; after all, Hezbollah as an armed group is not allowed to exist in the entire southern Lebanon under UNSC resolution 1701. 

Israeli territory is being stolen by a terrorist group. It seems unbelievable that Israel would outsource the solution to the impotent UN.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Haaretz reported about the clashes in Jenin yesterday, and fully accepted the idea that unseen snipers shooting towards the journalists were Israeli and not Palestinian. 

Abu Ahmed, a long-time camp resident, said he had the impression that the army was planning to undertake a large-scale operation in the city and its environs. Residents say that when the presence of Israeli forces was detected, calls went out from muezzins for armed militias to come out and confront them, which ultimately led to the heavy fire that followed
“I was in Al-Awdah Square on the edge of the Jenin refugee camp,” said Hafez, a journalist who was covering the raid. “I was in my car. They shot at random while I was photographing the clashes and the Palestinian fighters.” At a certain point, he said, three bullets were fired at his car. “Two of them I heard flying past me, but the third hit the car door on the driver’s side.”

He claims that the shots were not fired at him accidentally. “Our car is a marked journalist’s car and I was wearing a vest identifying me as press.”

Hafez said he was shot at a second time even though he was wearing clothing indicating he was a journalist. “We were about a kilometer away, on Haifa Street, on the road that leads to the Salam army checkpoint. We were eight journalists from the international and Arab media and we came under direct fire from a sniper in one of the buildings,” he recalled. “We were trapped there for 20 minutes and could only leave when it was all over.”

Jasmin – another journalist who was with a colleague of hers who was shot – confirmed the account. “We’re journalists and we were wearing clothing that identified us as such, [even donning] helmets,” she said. “They started shooting at us. We hadn’t done anything, we were only taking pictures. We fled but they kept shooting at us.”

She said that in the area the raid occurred there were no armed Palestinians, “just civilians, children and journalists.” Like Hafez, she said she and her colleagues were fired on “more than once on the same day.”
The journalists are implying that the snipers were Israeli and the story is being reported that way in Arab media. 

The Telegraph has video of journalists taking cover on a rooftop, although some are crouching opposite others, so there is no way to know from which direction the fire is coming. 


There appears to be some play-acting in this video - some journalists taking cover behind a wall while others stand around where they'd be seen by snipers, apparently unconcerned. But the gunfire is real, and the journalists certainly are not in a position to identify the source. 

While they are careful when speaking to The Telegraph not to claim they know the identity of the snipers, being that they are all Palestinian journalists, they of course will blame Israel when speaking to friendlier media. 

What is certain is that trained, professional soldiers do not fire wildly and randomly. They might mistake a target but they fire at targets. The random fire described in the Haaretz article is far more likely from Jenin terrorists, whom we know will fire without even looking at their target.





Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, April 24, 2023

This morning there was a terror attack near Jerusalem's famed Mahane Yehuda market, where a car rammed into a crowd. An elderly man and a woman were among the injured.

For most terror attacks, the Israeli victims roughly match the demographics of Israeli society - children, women, the elderly are all represented in about the same proportions that one would find them walking around on the street.

Things are a lot different with Palestinians killed.


Here is the population pyramid of the Palestinian territories as of 2019.

About 40% of the population is under 15 years old, and (as one would expect) about half are male and half female.

Now, here is the population pyramid of the people Israeli forces killed in the West Bank in 2022:



Well over 90% of those killed were men of fighting age. (And at least one of the women were involved in attacks when they were neutralized.)

Unlike Israeli victims of directed attacks, there were no Palestinians killed under 10. No one over 60. 

Clearly the IDF is not engaged in indiscriminate firing, which is the entire point of Palestinian terror attacks.

There is no comparison between those killed because they are Israeli to those killed to save Israeli lives. 

 



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Sunday, March 12, 2023



As he did last year, Adin Haykin is documenting every single Palestinian killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank this year, and explaining the circumstances.

I put his current thread on a Twitter Thread Reader post.

Out of 80 killed this year, I count six who were uninvolved civilians. (I'm counting a father who was shot while trying to stop his son's arrest as a civilian.) 

That means that 92.5% of those killed were actively part of hostilities, or members of armed groups. And that includes every single minor who was killed this year. 

It is also entirely possible that some of the civilians listed were killed by Palestinian fire, which as we've seen has been quite wild.




A far as I can tell, never in the history of urban fighting has the percentage of innocent civilians killed been this low. 

In contrast, over 50% of those killed in Operation Banner in Northern Ireland by the British Army were uninvolved civilians. 

Western troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria have never achieved anything close to this record. 

The mainstream media emphasizes the uninvolved, as they should. But they do not contextualize their deaths with these facts that the IDF is far exceeding what is considered acceptable by any other army in history, especially when it often operates in an extremely challenging environment when there stone throwers and firebombs coming from attackers on all sides.  

If any other army went under the same microscope that the IDF does, they would look horrible by comparison. 

For example, the New York Times reported in 2021 about an attack by US forces five years earlier that no one knew about:
Shortly before 3 a.m. on July 19, 2016, American Special Operations forces bombed what they believed were three ISIS “staging areas” on the outskirts of Tokhar, a riverside hamlet in northern Syria. They reported 85 fighters killed. In fact, they hit houses far from the front line, where farmers, their families and other local people sought nighttime sanctuary from bombing and gunfire. More than 120 villagers were killed.

Do you remember reading about this incident, or the dozens of others that were uncovered in that story using Pentagon records?  No, the story disappeared from the news media radar in no time. 

Now, imagine the tsunami of coverage from multiple news outlets, the UN resolutions and condemnations from every nation on the planet, that would result if Israel killed 120 civilians in an air strike and claimed it was a successful strike on dozens of fighters. 

That is not just a double standard. That is treating Israel as uniquely evil and ignoring far, far worse things done by "the good guys." 

And that is the entire point. Israel's critics do not want you to know this context when they accuse Israel of war crimes. They do not want you to see how Israel compares to other armies. They never make 3D models of US bombing of wedding parties.

There is only one possible explanation for putting Israel under an electron microscope for doing an amazing job targeting terrorists while virtually ignoring the horrible mistakes that every other professional western army does. It isn't "concern over taxpayer dollars" or "humanitarian concerns" or any of the dozens of other excuses used to justify this obsession with how Israel fights terror. None of the Western armies who wantonly bombed dozens of innocents had to worry about an immediate threat of someone slipping through a porous border and attacking their own citizens who live only a few kilometers away. 

The only explanation is antisemitism. 

Maybe not the explicit, neo-Nazi kind, but this crazed obsession with finding everything wrong with Israel defending itself from real, imminent threats while ignoring everyday Palestinian terror cannot be logically explained any other way except to say that a Jewish state is assumed to be automatically criminal the way Jews have lived under that assumption for thousands of years.

The truly remarkable thing is that the IDF, like the Jews throughout history, don't respond by saying that they might as well act the way they are being accused of acting. Instead, they continue to improve their methods and work towards a 100% record of only killing those who are actively trying to kill them first. (In attacks on Iranian targets in Syria, they are very close to that 100%.) 

The IDF is truly the most moral army in the world. It isn't even close. 




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Wednesday, March 08, 2023

From Ian:

Overhaul protesters gear up for ‘day of resistance’ throughout the country Thursday
The protest movement against the government’s judicial overhaul plans was set to conduct a second major campaign to disrupt daily life in Israel on Thursday, in what activists are calling a “day of resistance.”

The day notably includes plans to block roads around Ben Gurion Airport in an attempt to make it difficult for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to get there for his flight on an official visit to Italy. This in addition to marches, temporary workplace strikes, the blocking of main thoroughfares, disruption of train services and rallies outside the homes of top government officials.

The protest events were laid out in detail on a dedicated website and map (Hebrew), with organizers promising “many surprises,” indicating there were more planned actions that had not been announced publicly.

“It is a civic duty to resist the dictatorship and this is the only way to return Israel to the path of democracy. This is a great battle for the independence of Israeli citizens against the tyranny that will destroy what we have built here for over 70 years. We call on the entire public to participate in protests,” the organizers said in a statement.

Protest heads have specifically called for demonstrators to block roads around Ben Gurion Airport when Netanyahu and his wife are scheduled to depart on their flight to Italy. The trip previously faced setbacks when national carrier El Al was unable to find a crew to man the prime minister’s flight — an issue blamed on crew shortages but which may have also been affected by growing public anger at the government as it pushed forward with efforts to weaken the justice system.

Some media reports indicated Netanyahu was looking at possibly taking a helicopter to the airport to avoid the expected road disruptions.

A major rally in Tel Aviv was to set off from the city’s Habima Square. In addition, protests by workers from the tech sector were planned at 15 locations around the country.

Police said they too were preparing for the demonstrations, with 3,000 cops set to be deployed across the country.
Ruthie Blum: IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi should call his troops to order
Those who defended Bar’s remarks (delivered several weeks before the Knesset election) did so on the grounds that terrorists apprehended by the Shin Bet told their interrogators that internecine strife in the Jewish state was bolstering their confidence and resolve. In other words, since perception influences enemy actions, security bigwigs have a responsibility to monitor and caution about pitfalls in this realm.

It’s a logical position, particularly in view of the gleeful way in which the international Arab and Iranian media outlets are depicting the present crisis in the country. That they’re being given a serious boost by the Israeli press may be extremely disconcerting, but it’s the price—and privilege—of free speech.

Soldiers don’t enjoy this luxury, however. On the contrary, their individual ideologies are irrelevant to the assignments they are charged to execute. Halevi has the duty to remind them of this in no uncertain terms. His failure on this score only encourages the very foes that the IDF, thankfully, is still fighting on more than one front.

“When we are on the battlefield, we don’t look to the right and left to discern the political views of our brothers and sisters,” said Netanyahu on Monday, after attending a Purim megillah reading at a Border Police base in the Jewish community of Beit Horon. “We [do it] with the knowledge that together, shoulder-to-shoulder, we are storming our enemies, in order to safeguard our security and future.”

This, he stressed, “is the first and most important foundation of our existence in our land. It rests on the deep understanding that whatever the controversies among us, we are always united against those out to kill us. This is how it was during all of Israel’s wars.”

He went on: “Refusal to serve threatens this existential foundation, and thus has no place in our ranks. Israeli society always condemned the refusal to serve.… We never allowed it a foothold—neither in the regular army nor in the reserves; neither in the security forces nor anywhere else. It had no place in the War of Independence, the Oslo Accords or in the disengagement [from Gaza]. There is no room for it now, nor should there be in the future…. because the minute that we give this illness legitimacy, it will spread and become systemic…in controversies to come.”

Netanyahu concluded with a Purim analogy.

“When Haman sought to find the Jews’ weak spot, he said, ‘There is one people that is scattered and divided.’ But…we rose as one; we banded together and achieved victory for generations. We will do it again this time, as well.”

It’s a message that Halevi would do well to hear, heed and repeat.
Ben-Dror Yemini: Leave the IDF out of the protest
This is one of the most legitimate protests in Israel's history.

Some have tried to quash it by pointing out a handful of Palestinian flags flown at rallies, but for every such flag, a thousand Israeli flags were raised, so that fell flat.

Others claimed the protest wasn't about the judicial overhaul at all but rather an attempt to overrule the will of the voter, but that too missed the mark. This protest's success lies in its expansion to more and more audiences, it's not merely a left-wing protest. Prominent religious and right-wing figures have also joined in, and while most of them don't take the streets, they make their voices heard by appealing for dialogue and broad consensus.

Are they too anarchists? Who are you trying to fool?

As for those screeching voices on the margins flying the BDS flag, let them, they clearly do not represent anything.

But the protest also brings the pain. The fissure is here. And 37 out of 40 pilots of the Israeli Air Force's elite 69 Squadron declaring they won't report for training is the closest thing to mutiny.

We must not allow this terrible scourge to become the face of the protest for there is a fine line where a protest shifts from an opposition to the government to an opposition to the state. There are too many elements on the left that had done so, there's no need for the protest to tread the same line.

Crossing that red line would only harm the protest since it draws its success from the fact that it has become a consensus in and of itself, and public opinion polls show as much.

As soon as the protest crosses these red lines, it will become a sectoral protest of the extreme left. This was not the intention of the pilots who declared that they won't report for reserve duty, but this may be the result. So yes, we must apply pressure to prevent harm to democracy. But there is no need for the protest to exacerbate that harm.


The Caroline Glick Show: Politics is poisoning the IDF
Mob violence against Sara Netanyahu; 37 out of 40 elite Air Force reservist pilots refusing to show up to duty. These are, but two of the most recent examples of the protests against the judicial reform proposed by the Netanyahu government.

To discuss the shocking turn of events and the leading role that retired leftist generals are playing in the left’s efforts to coerce the government to shelve its efforts to restore Israeli democracy, the guest on this week’s show is Brig. Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi.

Avivi is the founder and CEO of the Israel Security and Defense Forum (Habithonistim), a social movement and think tank comprised of retired senior officers, soldiers and concerned citizens working to reinstate the Zionist ethos in the IDF. Glick and Avivi also discuss at length the issue of Iran, which the United States now acknowledges had become a threshold nuclear state..

In addition, Glick devotes her opening remarks to an analysis of the central (hostile) role the Biden administration is playing in the events on the ground in Israel.

Friday, February 03, 2023

The Forward has an op-ed by David Enoch, a professor of philosophy and law at Hebrew University:
If you want to support Israel, boycott its new government

....Even if the justification of boycotts has in the past been questionable, I think that American Jews owe it to Israel, and to Israelis like myself, to promote such measures now. After the disproportionate Israeli military incursion into Jenin, and the predictably tragic cycle of violence it engendered the next day in Jerusalem, Israel’s far-right government is using this as an opportunity to further their own political goals. We cannot allow this kind of illiberalism to continue.
Yes, boycott Israel out of love!

As you can tell from this paragraph, Enoch has no love of Israel. 

And Enoch's desire to boycott Israel includes an academic boycott.

Im Tirtzu summarizes David Enoch's supposed love of Israel:

Signed a petition calling on EU member states to boycott “organizations and companies if they are active, directly or indirectly, in the occupied territories.”[1]
Draft-dodger.[2]
Compared the IDF’s activities during Operation Protective Edge to that of Hamas.[3]
Signed a petition in support of the Islamic Movement.[4]
Participated in a protest against the drafting of Christians to the IDF.[5]
Signed a petition in “support and appreciation” of students and lecturers who illegally refused to do IDF service in Judea and Samaria.[6]
Signed a petition advocating for the release of terrorist supporter Dareen Tatour, who was arrested and convicted for inciting violence and supporting a terrorist organization.[7]
Signed a petition in support of the anti-Zionist organization “Breaking the Silence.”[8]
Threatened to take legal measures against students who came in army uniform in support of an IDF officer who was reprimanded by a lecturer for arriving to class in uniform.[9]
Somehow, all these things happened before the current government was (democratically) elected. 

Enoch wants, along with many others, to use the excuse of the current Israeli government to push their hate that existed beforehand. 




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Monday, January 30, 2023

From Iraqi News:

Media outlets reported that a fleet of container trucks was bombarded on Sunday after crossing the Iraqi border towards Syria.

Iraqi security sources mentioned that 25 container trucks coming from Iran crossed the Iraqi border towards Syria through an unofficial border crossing.

The sources explained that the unidentified warplanes that bombed the trucks fired warning missiles and waited for the drivers to get out before bombing the trucks.
Who else but Israel would go to such lengths - endangering their mission by lingering in the skies for minutes over an enemy country - to protect human lives?

And the drivers would be considered legitimate targets as support personnel, at least in wartime, although it is possible that they did not know what they were carrying.

Not only that, but it appears that Israel has been adding controls to avoid killing people like this as much as possible. In a very similar air raid in 2015, Israel killed seven truck drivers to stop a shipment of weapons. Quietly, behind the scenes, the IAF figured out a way to do raids like this while giving warnings and saving lives.

This requires layers of bureaucracy, changing training methods, dozens of practice runs - a great deal of time and money to save the lives of people who would be properly considered collateral damage by every other army on Earth.

It would be so easy for the IDF to just say, "Who cares? People will malign us anyway. Why risk our own mission for drivers whose deaths would not be considered war crimes by any objective court?" 

The fact that they go to such lengths anyway to save lives when they are nearly universally derided as the worst human rights violators is nothing less than superhuman. 

This incident proves that the IDF really is the most moral army in the world. 

(h/t Yochanan V)



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Monday, January 23, 2023

Last week, at an impromptu checkpoint, IDF soldiers pulled a young man out of his car. His father, Ahmed Kahla, leaped out of the car (Haaretz' words) towards the soldiers. Fearful that they were being attacked, the soldiers shot the father, killing him.

The IDF investigated and determined that lethal force was not necessary, and that the soldiers' stories about what happened - that Kahla tried to grab one of their guns, or tried to stab them - were not accurate.

So far this year, there have been 18 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank. In nearly all of the cases, the person killed was actively involved in hostilities when killed and/or was a member of a terror group.  (Given that there are millions of Palestinians and, at most, only several thousand members of terror groups in the West Bank, the chances that terror group members were not involved in hostilities and were coincidentally killed is quite small.)

Here is what most of those killed looked like: 


Adin Haykin has been keeping track of the deaths and the circumstances/affiliations.

Notice that two of those pictured here are children (#1 and #8.)  There have been four child terrorists killed this year, three of them PFLP and one Fatah Al Aqsa Brigades. That story, that terror groups are actively recruiting and training children, is simply not reported anywhere. 

The case of Ahmed Kahla is the exception that proves the rule - the IDF tries as much as possible to only kill those who are directly attacking at the time, which is the vast majority of those killed. Moreover, the deaths are investigated, the investigations are done by high level authorities and the IDF will admit when their soldiers violate policies and kill without enough justification. (The last time the IDF admitted to have made a mistake was in December.)

Soldiers are under intense pressure, knowing that they are targets 24/7. They often have to make split second decisions as to whether they are being attacked and from where. And, crucially, they know that if they make a wrong decision, not only could they be responsible for the death of an innocent person, but they may face investigations.

The media typically does not report on most of these cases of actual gunmen attacking soldiers; far more often they will just report a tally of those killed and imply that most of them were uninvolved civilians.  

But as we have seen, well over 90% of those killed are very involved and active in hostilities when killed. And in Arabic, their "heroism" is celebrated.






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Tuesday, January 03, 2023

From Ian:

Israel should put an end to Palestinian diplomatic terror
Palestinian Authority leaders should start to feel overwhelming pressure at every turn. They have become used to a limp response by Israel to its attacks in the international arena and have become further emboldened.

There is no better time than a brand-new Israeli government to state unequivocally that the rules of the game have changed, and there will be a strong and paralyzing response by Israel to the continued Palestinian attacks.

Israeli leaders shouldn’t just send threats behind closed doors but announce very publicly a series of steps it will take in response to the passing of the United Nations General Assembly resolution, with a further set of steps should they continue.

These steps should be designed with one singular goal in mind, to break the will of the Palestinian Arabs to continue fighting this war.

This is not just good for Israel; it will also be good for the Palestinians.

If their leaders end their obsessive war against Israel on all its fronts, legal, economic, diplomatic and of course, through violence, it will free up energy and resources for building Palestinian Arab society in all arenas, social, education and infrastructure.

The Palestinian Arab war against Israel is also a war against a decent future for the Palestinian Arabs.

Nevertheless, a more peaceful, prosperous and secure future for both peoples can only be attained once the Palestinian leaders have given up.

This can only happen when Israel forces them to do so.

It will take a change of direction by our security and political establishment, but all other paths have failed.

It is time for more drastic action.

It is time for an Israel victory against Palestinian Arab rejectionism on the front, which is crucial to ending the conflict.
The United Nations for Empowering Terrorists
Hammouri's affiliation with the PFLP and his involvement in planning terror attacks against Israelis, does not, however, seem to concern the UN Human Rights Office. Instead of condemning the convicted terrorist, the UN Human Rights Office chose to condemn Israel for daring to take measures to protect its citizens against terrorism.

This is also the same UN whose representatives have failed to condemn Hamas for building tunnels beneath schools run by its United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip.

Take note: here is a senior UN official sitting with representatives of a terror group whose charter calls for the elimination of Israel and who is expressing "concern" over the rise of right-wing parties in Israel.

The UN official appears unaware that many Israelis voted for right-wing parties because of the increased terror attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups.

It is ironic that a UN official, whose title is "Special Coordinator of the Middle East Peace Process", sits with a Palestinian group that is entirely dedicated to sabotaging peace.

As Article 13 of the Hamas charter states: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

This is hardly how to "prevent and remove threats to peace," as the UN claims in its charter. In fact, the actions of the UN clearly demonstrate that the organization is actually cozying up to terrorists while denouncing those who combat terrorism.

In its defense of, and engagement with, terrorists, the UN is boosting the ability of Hamas and the PFLP to continue their slaughter and genocide.
Ismail Haniyeh’s Son Draws Scorn for Life of Luxury As Gazans Scrape By
One of the sons of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is living in luxury in Turkey and even received a Turkish passport to continue his expensive lifestyle, according to an Arab media report.

Elaph, a Saudi website based in Britain reported from its sources that Maaz Haniyeh recently received a Turkish passport enabling to travel the world with his family while enjoying a rich life in Turkey.

A source in Gaza commenting on the Elaph report told the Tazpit Press Service, “The Hamas apparatus follows Gaza residents who go out for medical or commercial needs and collect sums of money from them and part of the profits, and on the other hand, Maaz was awarded a Turkish passport for free, due to his father’s status.”

The article, titled “Maaz Haniyeh: A Life of Extravagance, Alcohol and Women,” reports that Maaz is known in Gaza as Abu Al Aqarat, or “The Father of Real Estate” for his ownership of several apartments, villas and buildings in different areas of the Strip. Its sources said that outside of Gaza, Haniyeh’s sons drink alcohol — which is prohibited for Muslims — and hang out prestigious clubs accompanied by women.

A journalist who lives in Gaza told TPS, “Maaz Haniyeh was forced to leave the comfortable life in the Gaza Strip and embark on the difficult and arduous resistance missions in the streets of Turkey and in its hotels.”

Two years ago, Maaz was photographed next to his father, Ismail, when he was showing off a new luxury car on the streets of Gaza.

Maaz, one of Ismail Haniyeh’s 13 children, is not the only family member drawing scorn.

Friday, December 23, 2022

From Ian:

Report by UN Middle East envoy ignores Israeli terror victims
UN coordinator to the Middle East Tor Wennesland, reported to the Security Council on Thursday that more than 20 Israeli victims have been killed as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the beginning of 2022 – a number lower than Israeli estimations.

The Envoy reported 150 Palestinian casualties during the same time span, the largest number in recent years.

According to the Foreign Ministry, Wennesland relied on data taken from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which only recognized 19 Israeli victims in terror attacks in 2022.

According to Israeli estimations, 31 Israelis and foreign workers were killed as a result of terror attacks, while the UN claimed the cause of the additional 12 fatalities were inconclusive or their perpetrators remained at large.

The Foreign Ministry said the UN’s report ignored terror attack victims including Aryeh Shchupak and Tadese Tashume who were killed in a bombing attack in Jerusalem last November, Shulamit Rachel Ovadia who was killed by a Palestinian terrorist in September, Victor Sorokopot and Dima Mitrik who were killed in a terror attack in Bnei Brak last March.

Also not mentioned were Ivan Tarnovksy who was killed in a stabbing attack in Jerusalem in March, Rabbi Moshe Kravitsky, Laura Itzhak, Doris Yahbas, and Meha and Menach Yehezkel who were killed in a terror attack in Be’er Sheva also in March, and Border Police officers Shirel Abukarat and Yezen Falah who were killed in a terror attack in Hadera that same month.

Wennesland did not mention that out of the 150 Palestinians who were killed since the beginning of 2022, at least 80% were what the ministry called "terrorists," describing them as Palestinian civilians.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan’s appeals to the OCHA for the reevaluation of the data presented, have so far, remained unanswered.


Showing gratitude to the IDF, the modern-day Maccabees
As we reflect on the joyous holiday of Hanukkah, a commemoration of the notable and valiant fighting prowess of the Jewish people in ancient times, we also celebrate the unyielding resilience and determination of the Jewish people and our homeland.

From Maccabees to modern miracles
For this year’s Festival of Lights, Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) organized a “Live the Miracle” campaign. On each night of Hanukkah, Jewish celebrities and influencers welcomed soldiers from the IDF into their homes to light candles together in a symbolic act of solidarity with Israel and the never-ending fight against the darkness that is antisemitism.

The candle lighting took place at the homes of Lizzy Savetsky, a social media influencer, matchmaker and unabashed Zionist activist; Alexei and Loren Brovarnik, stars of the hit series 90 Day Fiancé; Modi Rosenfeld, a stand-up comedian and actor; Tova Friedman, an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor and recent TikTok sensation; Ashley Waxman Bakshi, a beauty, travel and fashion creator; Cathy Heller, an author and podcast host; Kosha Dillz, a rapper; and Noa Tishby, an Israeli actress, writer and activist.

In the face of social media attacks, these nine brave individuals stood up for morality, for dignity and for the young men and young women who are literally at the front line of humanity.

Hanukkah is the celebration of miracles, of right over might: of the small yet fearless Maccabee army’s defeat over the formidable Greco-Syrian forces and a tiny vessel of oil, enough to light the menorah in Jerusalem’s Temple Mount for 12 hours, that burned instead for eight days.

A group of educators, the Maccabees fought to defend the religious freedom and basic human rights of the Jewish people. Their victory over their imposing enemy ultimately emancipated the Jewish people so that they could live freely and exult each day in their fundamental humanity.

Tuesday, December 20, 2022


The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights reports:
Two unidentified gunmen, likely to belong to Lebanese Hezbollah, were killed due to the Israeli attacks near Damascus International Airport and the vicinity of Damascus, where the attacks targeted a Hezbollah warehouse containing weapons and logistic materials in a farm located between Al-Saida Zainab and Al-Bajdaliyah, destroying it completely, amid reports of more casualties in the site.

Israel fired four missiles on positions of Iranian militias in the vicinity of Damascus International Airport and farms in Al-Saida Zainab area in Rif Dimashq, where ambulance vehicles rushed to the site. However, no casualties were reported.
This indicates two things: that Iran is hiding its weapons en route to Hezbollah in farms - and that Israeli intelligence is finding them.

But that is not the only impressive feat of Israeli intel mentioned in this article. It has a tally of those killed by similar Israeli attacks in Syria this year:

SOHR documented 32 airstrikes and ground rocket attacks since the beginning of 2022, during which Israel targeted several positions in Syria, destroying nearly 90 targets, including buildings, warehouses, headquarters, centres, and vehicles. These strikes killed 85 military personnel and injured 115 others, as well as injury of 23 civilians, including a little girl and at least three women.
The deaths were as follows:
• Two Iranian officers operating under the banner of Al-Quds Corps.
• Ten Iranian-backed Syrian fighters.
• 29 Iranian-backed fighters of non-Syrian nationality.
• 36 Soldiers and air defence officers of regime forces.
• Eight collaborators with Lebanese Hezbollah.
That is a perfect record in avoiding deaths for civilians. Given that many of these airstrikes were in cities, that is a further indication of the depth of Israeli intelligence - and not incidentally, that many Syrian informers do not want Iran taking over their country.

In 2021, there were several civilians reported dead during Israeli airstrikes, but most  of them seem to have been killed by debris from Syrian anti-missile systems falling to the ground in populated areas.



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Monday, December 19, 2022

The top story on St. Louis KSDK news last night was about a dual citizen Palestinian American who was detained by the Israeli army as she tried to go through a checkpoint to Jerusalem:

 Israeli Defense Forces detained a St. Louis college student on Friday and held her over the weekend after she attempted to cross the border from Ramallah into Jerusalem to visit revered holy sites with her family.

Hala Kasim Salameh, a 22-year-old Palestinian-American woman from St. Louis, was visiting the West Bank with her mother, sister, aunt and cousin.

According to her family, Salameh is an American citizen who had proper documentation, a travel permit, a U.S. passport and her Palestinian I.D. card when she approached the first checkpoint but was turned away.

"Sometimes it doesn't really go how you want, and they can refuse your entry for no reason at all, and that's exactly what happened to my sister," her younger sister Yumna Salameh told 5 On Your Side in a video call on Sunday night.

"She tried to ask them twice to go in, and they still refused her entry," she said. "They kind of got aggressive with her, too."

After being separated from her family at the first checkpoint, Salameh tried again to reconnect with them in a taxi cab. She managed to make one final phone call to her family before she was arrested. 

Neveen Ayesh, a St. Louis advocate with the Missouri chapter of American Muslims for Palestine, is working with Salameh's family to get her legal representation. 

"To begin with, she was not wrong because she did have a permit to enter," Ayesh said. "The soldier just decided he didn't want to let her in."
The story is very strange. Why would the soldiers let her family through and not her? Why would she be put into jail for something so minor - why not just release her?

If you listen carefully, the video of the story answers both questions, with two buried details that are not in the written story.


At 2:23, after the video report, the news anchor mentions as an aside, "The family tells us that she did have the proper documentation, but did not have it on her when she was detained."

Suddenly, things are starting to make sense. The family and lawyer in the news story were lying when they said she had all her documentation, and then - perhaps upon further questioning from a skeptical reporter - the family changed their story. But that detail didn't make it into the print and video story, which still quotes the AMP lawyer as saying she had her permit on her.

Now look at the video at 1:00: "Now, separated from her family, she tried to enter a third time, in a taxicab." Her sister then says, "Oh, the third time they said, 'you disobeyed us, and now we catch you.'"

Meaning, they let her go twice, but she still tried to sneak into Israel a third time by hoping that they wouldn't check her papers from a taxicab. 

This isn't a story of an American girl being abused by the IDF. It is the story of a person trying, three times, to cross a border without documentation - and the third time, knowingly trying to sneak past the border guards. 

This is what would happen at any border crossing worldwide. 

The family turned to pro-terror American Muslims for Palestine for help. AMP saw an opportunity for a propaganda bonanza, so they immediately contacted the media and concocted a story about a forlorn American girl of Palestinian ancestry who was arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned for no other reason except that Israelis hate Palestinians. 

And KSDK happily runs with the story as their top story of the evening. Not only that, they illustrate the part where she gets arrested with this photo of Israeli police detaining a violent protester, as if this was how Hala was treated:


This is not news reporting. This is anti-Israel propaganda. 

A proper news organization would have reported this the way they would report anyone trying to bypass security at an airport - as a potential terrorist trying to illicitly cross an international border. 

(h/t RealJerusalemStreets)




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Read all about it here!

 

 

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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