20 Tishrei 5779
29 September 2018
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The News on the Israeli Street
Palestinian terror in the last 24 . . .
Along the Gaza border:
Another Friday, another day of violent attacks against Israeli soldiers on the border: what Hamas does now is publish a list of its dead terrorists under the rubric:
“Martyrs of the day in the clashes in Gaza”
The good news is that there were 8 new martyrs yesterday and last night who were “martyred” as they attacked our soldiers on the border fence at Bureij, to the east of Khan Younis, east of Gaza City, and at the “Mohammed Beach Camp”. The doubly good news is that none of our soldiers were wounded.
Martyrs of the day. Can you believe it?
Terrorists in Gaza also launched numerous incendiary balloons yesterday. Several of them exploded near Kibbutz Be’eri.
The “balloon launching unit” threatened last night that it will soon begin sending balloons with chemical weapons and grenades.
In Judea and Samaria:
There were a myriad of “rock’ and Molotov attacks. In addition, an Israeli was shot and wounded near Yatir in the south Hevron hills, and Palestinian terrorists fired on an IDF force near Beit El.
Talk about desperation . . .
Has the PLO run out of options? Yesterday, the PLO petitioned the International Court of Justice in The Hague to order the United States to remove its embassy from Jerusalem.
Really?
Do you think for a moment that a court sitting in The Hague will force the U.S. to move its embassy?
This ploy is born of the same delusional thinking that characterized PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ speech at the U.N. the other day. In that speech, Abbas claimed among other things:
“What are the borders of the State of Israel? I challenge anyone to tell us what they are. Where are the borders of the State of Israel? Please bring me a map and just show where are the borders of Israel.”
And on and on . . .
Oh, and one other statement that leads into Today’s Blog:
“I call upon our people to remain patient, steadfast and to continue to sacrifice until we achieve independence and self-determination and to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital and not in Jerusalem.”
An independent state with Jerusalem as its capital and not in Jerusalem.
This does not need further comment from your humble servant.
TODAY’S BLOG:
Walking For Jerusalem! Pictures, Part 1
This has been a busy Sukkot with your humble servant taking trips to the north to Castle Monfort, throughout Samaria, to Sderot, and around Jerusalem. Yesterday, I posted pictures of our trip on Wednesday to Sderot.
Two days ago, on Thursday, we were up at 5 am to take the bus from here in Ashdod to Jerusalem for the annual Jerusalem Sukkot walk–a walk that we take every year.
Actually, we had a choice of one of three walks ranging from a long and difficult 14 km to a short and easy 4 km. Naturally, we decided to take the long and difficult one but not because of its length and difficulty.
For the first time in recent years, a part of the long walk was through eastern Jerusalem. With the constant barrage of horse manure flowing out of the mouths of the PLO and western media about how eastern Jerusalem is not part of Israel, we thought it was important to take that route to demonstrate that it is.
The route began up on Ammunition Hill, descended deeply past Nahalat Shimon and Sheikh Jarrar, and then climbed steeply up to the top of Mt. Scopus near Hebrew University.
It then plunged downward skirting the Mt. of Olives, continuing along the Kidron Valley facing the eastern wall of the Old City, then climbed steeply again up to the Dung Gate on the southern wall of the Old City beside the Kotel.
From there, the route continued climbing to the Zion Gate before descending sharply out of the Old City near Sultan’s Pool before climbing again into western Jerusalem and ultimately ending in Sacher Park.
So by 7:50 am we began at Ammunition Hill.
This is an important site of which I have written often, most recently a couple of months ago after a visit. Suffice it to repeat what I wrote then about the battle that took place there in 1967:
Trenches like this one at Ammunition Hill held Jordanian soldiers who were shooting downhill at Israeli soldiers coming uphill. Each trench was protected by machine-gun nests.
“36 courageous Israeli fighters were killed in Israel’s ultimately successful effort to dislodge Jordanian troops that were entrenched in bunkers and trenches at the site.”
From Ammunition Hill we began our walk down the hill. Our first stop (we deviated slightly from the route) was at the Tomb of Shimon HaTsadik (Simon the Just), a Jewish priest from the second Temple era whose tomb became the center of the orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Nahalat Shimon.
The tomb:
From there we continued downhill past Sheikh Jarrar. Regular readers of israelstreet know of the continuing struggle at Nahalat Shimon and Sheikh Jarrar, neighborhoods where Jews are returning to homes in which they once lived and are building new ones in buildings they have purchased. Of course the PLO and the media constantly accuse Israel of trying to “Judaize” this area:
After finally reaching the bottom of the hill, we then started the long climb up Har HaTsofim, otherwise known as Mt. Scopus. The climb followed a lovely path through a wooded area that runs roughly parallel to the road:
All along the route, we befriended Jerusalem police, border guards, and border police who were stationed everywhere. The two men here were a Druze and an Israeli-Arab. The woman was an Israeli Jew. This is the face of Israel that no one ever sees–unless you live here.
About midway up, we began to see signs for the Mt. of Olives:
Slowly the Old City came into view in the distance:
Note the Old City in the far center background.
We continued climbing. When I say “we’, I am talking about the thousands of people who were walking in front and behind us stretching for miles in both directions. At one point, we were overtaken by an IDF group:
Your humble servant’s wife stands aside so the soldiers, who were rapidly marching with full backpacks, could pass.
Up and up, we finally reached the top for a grand view looking out toward the east in the general direction of the Jericho and the Dead Sea.
Note the dramatic change in land–from lush green on top of the Mount to a barren brown landscape beyond caused by centuries of Arabs letting their sheep and goats completely denude the land.
Your humble servant also wanted to make a political point:
The large city directly under my hand in the distance is the 40,000 person city of Ma’aleh Adumim. Hopefully it will soon be annexed to Israel.
At this point, we began another steep descent:
Look very closely between my face and my wife’s hat. You can see people on the path far below. The serpentine route took us through Solomon’s Garden.
More groups passed us along the way. This group of men dressed in blue shirts consisted of workers from Rafael Industries which produce among other weapons: the Iron Dome Missile Defense System, the C-Ram system, the Spike anti-tank missile launcher, Python and Shafrir missiles, the “Popeye” missile, and the amazing “Windbreaker” active protection system on Merkava M4 tanks:
These men were singing patriotic Israeli songs as they passed. On their blue shirts was a picture of the Iron Dome.
Obviously, we were in the middle of an olive grove; young Israelis were harvesting olives as they have done for millenia here:
If you look closely, you can see a young man with a long stick which is used to gently knock the olives off of the trees.
Then after the olives were on the ground, other volunteers were separating the olives:
Ironically, directly to the side was the Temple Mount Sifting Project where, much like the workers here sifting for the good olives, archaeologists and volunteers continue sifting through rubble from the Temple Mount to find historical treasures:
The entrance to the sifting facility on the Mt. of Olives.
Finally at the bottom of the hill, the flat Wadi Kidron stretched out before us:
A beautiful sight as we approached the eastern wall of the Old City.
And that is where we will stop our blog for today–to resume with Part 2 tomorrow.
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.