17 Tammuz 5776
Sunday, July 24 2016
THE 17th OF TAMMUZ
Today is a fast day among many Israelis for it was on the 17th of Tammuz that the Roman army broke through the walls defending Jerusalem. Three weeks later the Romans destroyed the Second Temple. According to Jewish tradition, this is also the day that Moses broke the tablets containing the Ten Commandments when he saw the Israelites worshiping the golden calf.
PICTURE OF THE DAY:
The grueling month-long trial of Elor Azariah, the IDF soldier accused of manslaughter in the killing of a terrorist in Hevron, appears to be reaching its climax with Azariah taking the witness stand today in his own defense (left to right behind him are his father, mother, and sister).
QUOTE and JOKE OF THE DAY:
Who were the 16 best high school students in Palestinian high schools this year? The PLO (aka the Palestinian Authority) extolled the 16 in its publication of the results of Palestinian high school matriculation exams:
“Sixteen students succeeded in Martyrdom for the homeland and withstanding its difficult tests, for death as a Martyr is the path to excellence and greatness, and the path of those who know how to reach the great victory. Sixteen male and female high school students died as Martyrs, leaving behind them friends, ambitions and a feeling of heaviness in the hearts of their family members and loved ones, who had waited for this day to bless them on their success. However, the bullets of the criminal occupation got them and stole their chance of bringing joy to their families and homes at this matriculation event” (as translated by Palestinian Media Watch).
The sixteen students were shot to death as they attempted to carry out terror attacks (primarily stabbings) against Israeli men, women, and children.
UPDATES 8 am Israel time
…Palestinian terrorism not in the mainstream news yesterday…
It was not a quiet Shabbat in Israel with more than 20 terror attacks taking place.
Israeli security forces were attacked in the A-Tur neighborhood of Jerusalem, the Palestinian settlement of Sair in the Hevron Hills, at Dis near Jerusalem, at Al-Khader in Gush Etzion, in the Silwan neighborhood of Jerusalem, and just outside of city Ma’ale Adumim north of Jerusalem.
Terrorists hurled three IEDs at an IDF post at Beit El; remarkably no one was wounded in the explosions. For over an hour, from 10:30 pm until 11:30 pm last night, terrorists ambushed cars on the Husan Bypass Road in Gush Etzion with Molotov firebombs. “Rock” attacks took place at Makel, Beit Hagai, Mt. Hebron, and who knows how many other places (many such attacks are never reported by the residents of Judea and Samaria).
…The shootings in Munich (and elsewhere)…
Your humble servant is sure that we are all happy to know that the Munich police have now determined that the 18-year-old German-Iranian who killed 9 people while yelling “Allahu Akbar” was just committing “a shooting rampage” that had nothing to do with Islam or politics or anything else. The poor man was just a tragically depressed individual.
And isn’t it amazing how the police in other countries (notably the U.S.) also jump through so many hoops to avoid calling a spade a spade. The Orlando murderer, the Ft. Hood murderer, and on and on. No matter that the killers are Muslim, and no matter that they make their “Muslim-ness” known during the perpetration of the crime, still the murderers have nothing to do with Islam.
By the way, Israeli police are no different. How many times have we seen the police here reticent to call a murderer or murderers “terrorists”? The police will contort themselves in any number of ways to call a murderer a “criminal” not a nationalist (aka terrorist).
…The abominable Satmars strike again (or least try to)…
Who is this rabbi (the one with the walking cane) and what is he doing?
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We all know that one of the most anti-Zionist institutions on the planet is the Satmar group of Hasidic Jews (the Satmars are a sect that originated in the 1700s in the northwest Hungarian city of Satu Mare on the Romanian border). They are the ones, along with Neturei Karta, who burn Israeli flags on Israeli Independence Day and spit on anything Israeli (except the money the government provides them).
Over the weekend, the Satmar sunk to new depths.
Rabbi Zalman Teitelbaum, the world’s most prominent Satmar leader, flew to Toronto from New York along with a number of other Satmar rabbis.
What did they do there?
If you can believe this, they raised more than $3,000,000 to counter efforts of the Jewish Agency which is encouraging French Jews to immigrate to Israel. The fear, according to Teitelbaum, is that new immigrants to Israel will become Zionists.
This is not the first time the Satmar have engaged in such activities. Teitelbaum’s uncle Yoel fought tooth and nail 60 years ago to stop Moroccan Jews from immigrating to Israel. He was amazingly unsuccessful in his attempts then, and so will the Satmars be unsuccessful now.
TODAY’S BLOG:
The Israel border with Egypt was a battleground yesterday with Egyptian soldiers killing at least 15 terrorists (undoubtedly affiliated in some way with Hamas) and wounding 12 more.
The terrorists barricaded themselves inside a school in Rafah, and were subsequently eliminated in an Army attack.
Ironically, in an interview published in the Economist several days ago, “a senior IDF official” bewailed the fact that Egypt is being too hard on Hamas:
“Today, Egypt is more against Hamas than we are. In fact, they are putting too much pressure on Hamas in Gaza.”
Take a moment to absorb that.
Egypt is more against Hamas than Israel is.
Egypt is putting too much pressure on Hamas in Gaza.
What in the world has happened to the IDF?
What has happened is exactly what we have been reporting all along. Just like Rabin and Peres turned the PLO into “good guys” in the early 1990s in order to sign the Oslo Accords, so have the IDF and the Israeli government been busy turning Hamas into the “good guys” during the last few years.
According to the IDF, since the 2014 war, all missiles fired out of Gaza have been “false alarms” or fired by some other Gazan group than Hamas. Since the 2014 war, Israel has been doing everything within its power to empower Hamas by providing a steady stream of construction materials and “gestures of peace” to the terrorists.
Those gestures include busing an endless parade of Palestinians to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (where they can wave Hamas and Islamic State flags and shout “Death to Israel”), allowing an endless parade of “humanitarian activists” to set up shop in Gaza (“humanitarians” who demean and seek to delegitimize Israel at every turn), permitting Gazan Palestinians to come into Israel on all sorts of pretexts, providing virtually free electricity and water to Hamas Gaza, and on and on and on.
Finally, think again how absurd it is Israel has become the defender of Hamas, and Egypt is the one carrying the fight to the terrorists.
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.