UPDATES 9 am Israel time, Sunday, June 8 2014:
**Several attempted infiltrations of Israel have been stopped over the last 24 hours with 10 Palestinians captured near Taybeh in central Israel after breaching the suicide bomber prevention fence and another 3 tracked down in the Eshkol region along the Gaza border in the middle of last night.
The truth of the matter is that despite the IDF and Border Guards’ best efforts, both the Gaza fence and suicide bomber prevention fence in central Israel are porous in the extreme. For every terrorist who is captured another one gets through.
Mahmoud Abbas (left) signing in Rami Hamdallah as the titular head of the PLO-Hamas terrorist government under the watchful eye of Abbas’ mentor Yasser Arafat (photo: Reuters).
In the meantime, the new PLO-Fatah terrorist government fired two more missiles at Sha’ar Hanagev region of southern Israel yesterday from Gaza. We had the usual case of sirens sounding, followed by missile impact explosions being heard by Israelis on the border, followed by the IDF spokesman claiming it was a false alarm, followed by IAF planes over the skies of Gaza.
**Unfortunately, we seem to have Egypt jumping on the bandwagon of PLO-Hamas terrorism today with President Al-Sisi offering to “permanently” open the Rafah Crossing as along as Hamas is not charge.
Of course, this is simply laughable. If anyone thinks that Palestinian terrorist Hamas is going to turn over its lucrative crossing/smuggling trade to the Palestinian terrorist PLO, your humble servant will sell him or her some beachfront property in Mitzpe Ramon.
**Fierce fighting continues along the Israel-Syrian border as Assad’s forces–led by Lebanese Hezbollah– attempt to displace the Al-Qaeda “rebels” that have taken root along the Golan Heights. Last night a Syrian “scud” missile hit about 10 km from the Israeli border.
There was also an incident on the Lebanese border with Israel yesterday in which a Lebanese vehicle crashed into a containment barrier at the Fatima Gate near Metulla. The driver of the vehicle remains in custody, and whether this was an attempted terrorist attack or not has yet to be determined by security forces.
TODAY’S BLOG:
The news this week that the Australian government has proclaimed that it will no longer refer to the eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem as “occupied” because it does not view any of the neighborhoods of Jerusalem or communities of Judea and Samaria as “illegal” has inspired your humble servant to reprint, with additions and revisions, the basic israelstreet lexicon that first appeared in this blog in 2011.
Your humble servant encourages you to use the following vocabulary when you have conversations, attend meetings, and write letters. Words are important and powerful–just ask the Palestinians who are going crazy this morning trying to undermine the Australian statement by threatening to have Arab countries cut off diplomatic ties with Canberra.
Here are a few suggestions:
1. Use the Jewish and Israeli names for things; here are five to start with:
Har HaBayit instead of Temple Mount
Kipat HaSela instead of Dome of the Rock
The Kotel instead of the Western Wall
Shechem instead of Nablus
The Kineret instead of the Sea of Galilee
2. Use ‘Judea and Samaria’ instead of ‘the West Bank‘. ‘West Bank’ is a term of occupation and exploitation created by the Jordanians to refer to the area west of the Jordan River illegally seized and annexed to Jordan in 1948. Prior to 1948, the land was referred to as Judea and Samaria for almost 3000 years. In the 1947 U.N. Resolution that partitioned “Palestine”, “Judea” and “Samaria” were the terms used.
3. Use ‘Palestinian Autonomous Territories’ to refer to Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria–never under any circumstances use the term ‘occupied territories’ because it is simply not true; Israel is not occupying anything. Areas A and B have been under Palestinian civil administration since the signing of the Oslo Accords two decades ago. By the way, when PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas wants to compare these areas to Gaza, he uses the term “Palestinian Autonomous Territories.”
4. Use ‘Jewish communities’ or ‘Israeli cities instead of ‘settlements.’ How in the world can anyone call the communities and cities of Maaleh Adumin (40,210) and Modin Illit (51,773), Gush Etzion (54,939), and Ariel (41,720) ‘settlements’?
5. Use ‘construction of Jewish homes, schools, and hospitals’ instead of ‘settlement activity’. By obscuring what the activities are, the activities are delegitimized.
6. Use ‘new Jewish communities’ or ‘fledgling Jewish communties’ instead of ‘outposts‘. An outpost is a small military encampment, not a place where people permanently live.
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7. Use ‘Jewish community member’ instead of ‘settler’. Are we living in the wild west? Most Jewish community members are suburbanites commuting to jobs in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and elsewhere. If you want to use the term ‘settler’, refer to Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria as settlers–after all, they are the late arrivers to the land (see No. 13 below).
8. Use ‘eastern Jerusalem’ or the ‘eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem’ instead of East Jerusalem. The city of Jerusalem must never be divided again. Again, areas such as Ramat Shlomo and Gilo are ‘neighborhoods’ of Jerusalem, not ‘settlements.’
You are looking at Har Gilo–a huge 40,000+ person Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem.
9. Use ‘Palestinian cities’ instead of ‘Palestinian refugee camps‘. Who is kidding whom? Cities such as Kalandiya are huge places with massive construction going on all the time–the Palestinian residents of these cities are not nomads living in tents.
10. Use Palestinian ‘settlements’ instead of Palestinian ‘villages’ or ‘hamlets’.
Accorcing to the leftist Israeli newspaper Haaretz, this is a picture of the Palestinian “village” of Halat Makhoul. Would you call this a “village” or even a “hamlet”? This is a settlement.
Who is kidding whom? “Village” is a word blatantly used to make the West think that the Palestinians are (and have been) living peacefully and sleepily in hamlets for thousands of years. Nothing could be further from the truth.
11. Use Palestinian ‘settlers’ instead of Palestinian ‘farmers’ and ‘villagers’. Let’s call people what they are, not what the delegitimizers would have us believe that they are.
12. Use ‘PLO’ or ‘Palestine Liberation Organization’ instead of ‘Palestinian Authority‘. Mahmoud Abbas has made it clear that the PLO runs the show in Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria, and the United Nations recognizes the PLO–not the Palestinian Authority. Your humble servant was the first to use the abbreviation “PLO/PA” when writing about the governance of Areas A and B–an abbreviation now used by various newspaper columnists here in Israel.
13. When possible, use ‘Palestinian Terrorist Organization–HAMAS’ instead of merely ‘Hamas‘. HAMAS is an acronym for “Harakat al Muqawamah al Islamiyya” which means ‘Islamic Resistance Movement’–which is a euphemism for Palestinian Terrorist Movement. It is easier to say or write HAMAS, but the acronym does not tell what the organization is about.
14. In regard to the new PLO-Hamas “government”, use the phrase ‘terrorist government‘ instead of ‘reconciliation‘ or ‘unity‘ government. They only thing the PLO and Hamas are unified about is their desire to destroy Israel.
15. Use ‘conservative politicians’ instead of ‘right-wing politicians‘. Smearing someone as ‘right-wing’ is a convenient way of dismissing what they have to say. Note how quickly international politicians and media (and the leftist Israeli media) call conservative politicians such as Naftali Bennett, Moshe Feiglin, and Orit Struck “right-wing extremists” and “right-wing fanatics” when in fact all they advocate is Israeli nationalism. We should all be so extremist and fanatic.
16. When possible, use ‘Israeli men, women, and children’ instead of ‘Israeli citizens‘ when referring to those of us assaulted by terrorists. After all, Palestinian terrorists delight in trying to kill all Israelis–regardless of age or gender.
17. When referring to the human results of Palestinian terrorism, use the term ‘wounded’ instead of ‘injured’. ‘Wounded’ connotes an intentional act committed by someone trying to hurt you; ‘injured’ usually does not.
18. When referring to the human results of Palestinian terrorism, never let someone get away with saying that “no one was wounded.” In fact, an Israeli is wounded in every terrorist attack whether those wounds be physical or emotional–just look at the incidence of PTSD among children and adults living along the Gaza border. In fact, using the phrase “no one was wounded” is part of the underpinning of the absurd ‘disproportionality’ canard.
Note that in this blog, your humble servant often says that “no one was physically wounded but the emotional toll is incalculable.”
19. Use “so-called human rights organizations” or “self-proclaimed human rights organizations” instead of “human rights organizations” to denote the so-called human rights organizations operating in Israel. None of these organizations are in the least interested in protecting Israeli or Jewish human rights.
20. Use international ‘lawbreakers’ instead of international ‘activists’ when referring to those members of the international community who come to Israel for the express purpose of breaking Israeli law and attacking Israeli police and soldiers.
21. Use ‘the suicide bomber prevention fence instead of the ‘separation fence’ or ‘wall’. Have we all forgotten why the suicide bomber prevention fence was built? To stop suicide bombers.
22. The current round of so-called “peace talks” has apparently come to an end, but it will be back in a new form before we know it. Use “Israel concession process” instead of “peace process”. There never has been a peace process between Israelis and Palestinians–only a process of trying to wrench ever more concessions out of Israel in return for nothing.
23. Use “Muslims” instead of Muslim fundamentalists, Muslim extremists, Muslim fanatics, Islamists, militant Islamists, hostile Islamists, radical Islamists, and Salafists. If you must use two words to describe terrorists, use “Muslim terrorists.”
What are Muslim fanatics, Muslim extremists, Muslim fundamentalists, Islamists, and Salafists? They are simply Muslims, and the attempt to cast them otherwise is an obvious attempt to portray just plain old “Muslims” as not fanatic, not extremist, not fundamentalist, not Islamist, and not Salafist. In Gaza, we now have the ludicrous situation in which Palestinian terrorist Hamas–which is one of the most fanatic, extremist, fundamentalist, and Islamist terror organizations on the planet–being portrayed as the “good guys” by the media. The time has come once again to call a Muslim a Muslim.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.