30 Cheshvan 5779
8 November 2018
Quotes of the Day (parsed sentence by sentence)
From PM Netanyahu, speaking at a Likud party meeting:
“Accusing Israel of ‘occupation’ is nonsense. There are countries that have conquered and replaced entire populations and the world keeps silent.”
Absolutely correct.
“Strength is the key, it makes all the difference in our policy towards the Arab world. As opposed to the perception that concessions promote agreements with the Arabs, they only bring minor and short-term changes—nothing more.”
Absolutely correct again. But it is also absolutely hypocritical for Netanyahu to say so inasmuch as he spends his entire life making concessions to the PLO, to Hamas, to the Jordanians, to the Egyptians, to just about any Arab he can find to make concessions to.
The right thing to do is to make progress through common interests which are based on technological strength.”
Yes and no. It’s good to make progress through common interests undergirded by our technological strength. However, what the Arabs really respect is military strength which Israel is loathe to use vis a vis the Palestinians.
The News on the Israeli Street
Palestinian terror in the last 24 hours . . .
In Judea and Samaria:
Following three days of stabbing attacks, Palestinian terror morphed into gunfire yesterday as a bus traveling near Givat Assaf was riddled with bullets. One passenger and the driver were wounded and had to be transported to a nearby hospital.
One of about ten bullet holes in the bus that was attacked yesterday (photo: Hakolhayehudi).
Palestinian terrorists throwing “rocks” and Molotovs assaulted Israelis at such places as Curve 160 near Hevron, Karmei Tzur, the the Gush Etzion road near Hevron, at Yitzhar, and Beit Ummar.
Palestinian terrorists who infiltrated the community of Migdal Oz were captured by community security personnel.
Some small justice . . .
Back in 2015, a sixteen-year-old ultra-orthodox man who was walking down through the Muslim Quarter on his way to pray at the Kotel on Shavuot, was viciously stabbed in the back with a 30 cm long blade on a knife wielded by a Palestinian terrorist.
Thankfully, he survived.
The terrorist was captured, and ultimately a trial was held. Not surprisingly (because the Israeli justice system goes out of its way to protect terrorists), the terrorist was not charged with attempted murder but instead with “causing serious bodily harm”, found guilty, and sentenced to 9 years in prison.
Infuriated by the outcome of the trial, the Israeli young man decided to sue the terrorist in a civil court and yesterday won a judgement which calls for the terrorist (who receives a “monthly salary” from the PLO for the attempted murder) to pay him 60,000 shekels.
No justice served . . .
As anyone who has ever gone up to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem knows, an egregious discriminatory system exists aimed at Jews.
While Muslims are subject to no check whatsoever before entering any one of nine gates to the Mount, Israeli Jews are restricted to entrance from the Mughrabi Gate alone and only then for a total of 20 hours a week.
What is infinitely worse is that to enter the Mughrabi ramp to get to the Mughrabi Gate, Israelis are forced to wait in line (often for hours) while our Israeli ID cards are checked.
After this, we are permitted to a station on the ramp where we must pass through a magnetometer, be body checked to be sure we are not carry a Torah or Israeli flag or even a water bottle, and then we must have our clothes approved.
After all of this, we then are allowed up the ramp in groups of 20, and once on the Mount strictly limited to a 3 minute walk along the west side of the Mount.
All in all, it is a humiliating experience.
However, yesterday our nauseating Supreme Court rejected a petition by several Jewish groups which sought to end this abominable discrimination.
Supreme Court Justice Esther Hayut, Vice-President Justice Hanan Meltzer and Justice Neal Hendel rejected the petitioners’ claim that there is unequal treatment of Jews and Muslims and absurdly declared: “The right of worship of the Jewish worshipers who enter through the Mugrabi Gate is not harmed . . . despite the difference in the means of inspection at various gates . . .”
The right of worship of the Jewish worshipers? There is no Jewish worship on the Mount; if one even bows toward the Kipat HaSela he or she is arrested on the spot.
It is not harmful to be discriminated against? What kind of court could possibly rule this?
As the attorney for the petitioners said after the decision was rendered: “This is a black day for Israeli democracy, the Supreme Court perpetuates discrimination, and even justifies it.”
So much for BDS (1):
BDS attempts to stop Eurovision 2019 from being held in Israel have failed miserably.
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Yesterday the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) announced that 42 countries will be competing. The few that will not be are not coming because of financial problems.
Countries attending will be:
Albania, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgiusm, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
So much for BDS (2) . . .
Maybe one reason that countries are coming to Tel Aviv is that the city has just been awarded the moniker “Best City To Take a Break” at the World Tourism Fair. The award says that Tel Aviv is the best place “to take a short vacation of several nights.”
TODAY’S BLOG:
If This Is The State of American Jewry, Heaven Help Us
As we all know, virtually no poll can be trusted these days because they are so infused with the biases of those who paid for the survey or asked the questions as to render them meaningless.
We should completely expect this bias in any survey conducted by J Street.
Yesterday, J Street released a survey it paid for that was produced by American pollster Jim Gerstein who polled more than 1,100 Jews in the United States.
The questions in the poll were designed to denigrate President Trump and blame him for the murders at the Pittsburgh synagogue.
Among the “findings” related to Israel:
*78% of U.S. Jews support a peace agreement based on a two-state solution according to the 1967 lines with agreed upon border changes.
*50% believe that the U.S. should exert pressure on Israel to make “compromises for peace.”
*49% believe that Israel should stop all construction outside of existing Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
*74% support the Obama Nuclear Deal with Iran, and 67% oppose President Trump’s decision to pull out of that agreement and impose sanctions.
Jeremy Ben Ami summed up the survey’s findings concerning Israel this way (who knows if he wrote this before or after the survey):
“The results show that an overwhelming majority of American Jews oppose President Trump’s destructive foreign policy, starting with abandonment of the nuclear agreement, abandoning the two-state solution and the destruction of diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority . . .
The Jews of the United States are concerned about the direction that Prime Minister Netanyahu is taking Israel and that the policy of supporting settlement expansion endangers Israel’s future as the national and democratic home of the Jewish people. The Jews continue to support the two-state solution and want to see an American leadership that will work to bring both sides back to the path of negotiations and peace.”
Allow your humble servant to summarize the poll in a different way:
*American Jews do not live in Israel where we hear daily threats from Iran to destroy us, see hundreds of thousands of missiles arrayed against us in Lebanon and Syria, and see Iranian proxies in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza whose expressed goal is the destruction of Israel.
Most American Jews are naive and have no appreciation of the existential threat we face.
*American Jews do not live in Israel where we experience terror from Palestinians everyday and listen to the PLO and Hamas incite their populations and reward them for killing or trying to kill us.
Most American Jews are naive and have no understanding of how the Palestinians killed the two-state solution decades ago.
*American Jews do not live in Israel where free speech and democracy is seen on every street corner, in every Knesset debate, on every newspaper page, and in every demonstration against the government.
Many American Jews are naive and have no idea about how utterly democratic Israeli is.
*American Jews do not live in Israel and appreciate what President Trump has done for this country by recognizing Jerusalem, moving the American embassy to our capital, and doing all he can to cut through the false Palestinian narratives that have long plagued our region.
Most American Jews are naive and have no idea how much Obama-esque actions undermined this country.
Enough said.
If the J Street survey accurately reflects the opinions of American Jewry, heaven help us.
Or rather, heaven help American Jews.
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.