Yom Chamishee
Thursday
20 Av 5781
July 29 2021
Egregiously Atrocious Statement of the Day
“The decision to stop sales outside sovereign Israel is not a boycott of Israel and the company’s statement did not support the BDS movement. The company clarified that the decision is not against Israel, but against its policy – preserving the occupation that has become a barrier to peace . . . As Jews who love Israel, we completely reject the assumption that questioning Israeli policy is anti-Semitic.”
Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfeld, founders of Ben and Jerry’s in an op-ed in the New York Times yesterday.
This statement is so full of horse crap that we need a tractor to shovel it off the page.
The decision to stop sales outside of sovereign Israel is not a boycott of Israel? Lest we forget, Ben and Jerry’s wanted to stop all sales everywhere in Israel but were stopped by their corporate owner Unilever. The action taken by Ben and Jerry’s is absolutely a boycott of Israel.
“The company’s statement did not support the BDS movement? “The statement may not have used the acronym “BDS”, but supporting BDS is precisely what Ben and Jerry’s decided to do. All you have to do is ask BDS what they thought about the statement.
” . . . the decision is not against Israel, but against its policy – preserving the occupation that has become a barrier to peace”?
Obviously it was a decision against Israel. And exactly what occupation are we talking about: the so-called “occupation” of Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria that have been under Palestinian control since 1994? The only barrier to peace has been the continual Palestinian rejection of Israeli peace plans that would have given them virtually all of Judea and Samaria.
“As Jews who love Israel, we completely reject the assumption that questioning Israeli policy is anti-Semitic.”
“As Jews who love Israel” (pardon your humble servant while he throws up: isn’t this what all Israel-hating Jews say?), “we completely reject the assumption that questioning Israel is anti-Semitic.” Your humble servant questions Israeli policy everyday as do virtually all Israelis, but we do not seek to delegitimize Israel by doing so. To single out Israel, as Ben and Jerry’s did, is blatantly anti-Semitic.
Protest of the Day
Last week, disabled Israelis blocked highway junctions all over Israel to call attention to the fact that the government has not ponied up the subsidies promised them.
This morning, farmers have taken their place in protest of the apparent government decision to start massive importing of vegetable, fruits, and other agricultural products.
The idea is to lower the price of these items through competition, but we have seen similar import programs in recent years bankrupt large swaths of the agricultural sector. Israeli farmers who are subject to stringent rules concerning such things as pesticides used and worker benefits cannot compete with items from places like Gaza and Turkey where there are no rules at all.
OneIsrael fully supports our farmers!
The News on the Israeli Street
Daily Corona update:
2,269 newly confirmed cases yesterday.
14,863 active cases of Corona in Israel, 314 of which are IDF soldiers.
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149 Israelis hospitalized in serious condition.
29 Israelis hospitalized in critical condition on ventilators.
6,462 Israelis have died since the pandemic began last year.
Palestinian terror in the last 24 hours . . .
In Judea and Samaria:
The worst of many “rock” and Molotov attacks yesterday occurred at Hawara where more than a dozen Palestinian terrorists ambushed an Israeli family. The driver of the car (father) was badly wounded by a “rock” that hit him in the head and shattered glass that hit him in the eyes. In the words of the father: “Last night we were returning from a bar mitzvah from Elon Moreh to the Tapuach junction when suddenly dozens of masked men threw stones at us, the children started crying, my wife shouted at them to duck and miraculously they came out safe, I got a stone in my head but reached the Tapuach Junction apple and an ambulance came to evacuate me to the hospital.”
On the Gaza border:
Another day, more fires from detonating explosive balloons launched from Gaza: this is a photo this morning from Sdot Negev:
A firefighter at Sdot Negev. Photo source on photo.
Fascinating population facts about the Old City of Jerusalem . . .
From researcher Israel Kimhi of the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Studies:
There are 870 total dunams (215 acres) of land in the Old City: 415 dunams are residential, 270 are taken up by religious and educational institutions, 75 for commercial activities, 50 are where archaeology is taking place, 26 are unused.
There are 6,187 apartments in the Old City: 3622 in the Muslim Quarter, 1295 in the Christian Quarter, 677 in the Armenian Quarter, 493 in the Jewish Quarter.
Approximately 35,000 people live in the Old City: 25,367 in the Muslim Quarter, 4269 in the Christian Quarter, 3022 in the Jewish Quarter, and around 2000 in the Armenian Quarter. Around 650 Jews now live in 75 properties in the Muslim Quarter; however, the number of Muslims in the Old City has doubled since 1967–as a result of a concerted effort by Palestinians to Muslimize the Old City.
TODAY’S BLOG
Saving Private Gur, Part 3
For the past two days, we have been telling the story of Gur Nedzvetsky, a practitioner of naginata (Japanese fencing) whom we happened to meet at our guest accommodations near Kiryat Shmona this week.
Along the way, we found out that Gur was a Staff Sgt in an elite IDF unit who was badly wounded in the Second Lebanon war in 2006.
Yesterday, I left you with Gur having just made it alive by heroic helicopter evacuation to Rambam Hospital. He had been shot in the head at almost point blank range by a Hezbollah terrorist–with the bullet having entered his mouth and gone out his left ear. For hours he had lain on the ground bleeding profusely until he was able to be airlifted in a hail of missiles and bullets.
For the next two years, Gur endured numerous complex surgeries–in one surgery alone, he had a nerve removed from his leg and implanted in his face. To a large degree, the left side of his face was reconstructed with metal for bones.
By 2008, he was on the way to a measure of physical recovery though he realized he could never be a combat soldier again. That realization and other facts sent him into PTSD, and he decided that he had to do something other than just lay in bed all day.
At this point, according to Gur, a somewhat mysterious woman (he calls her his “angel”) led him to a naginata expert. Shortly after introducing him, she “disappeared”–but Gur’s life pattern was set.
In the intervening years, Gur has become a naginata teacher, won naginata competitions in Europe, and is now aiming for a higher grade at an examination in Japan in January. We will finish his story by revealing that he married and has four children–one of whom was with him and his wife in Kiryat Shmona.
What an amazing man!
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.