UPDATES 7 pm Israel time Friday:
**The recent series of Arab/Palestinian graffiti attacks on Jewish holy sites continues unabated. The past few days have seen swastikas painted on synagogues in Haifa and Tel Aviv. This morning, visitors to Joshua’s Altar on the northeast slopes of Mt. Ebal near Elon Moreh found this:
Note the swastikas and writing in Arabic.
What is fascinating is how quickly the international media condemns any graffiti that appears on a mosque and then reports nothing when Jewish buildings and holy places are defaced.
**Mahmoud Abbas was in Jordan this week “searching for peace”. Well not really.
It has now come to light that Abbas spent considerable time meeting with, and awarding a medal to Hanaa Hawatma, Secretary General of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). Abbas actually issued a “presidential decree” praising Hawatma for his organization’s efforts to aid the Palestinian people during all phases of the Palestinian struggle.
Abbas with Hawatma–and the decree announcing his medal.
How has the DFLP helped the Palestinian people? Your humble servant remembers the nine children killed on a school bus, 21 more students killed in another attack, 7 more killed in a bomb blast in Jerusalem, 3 soldiers killed at an IDF post, and . . . and . . .
**On the pinker side, Israel has had an unusual visitor in the last week.
In the midst of the annual migration of thousands of black and white storks through Israel, a pink stork seems to have flown off course and landed in the Harod Valley. The pink stork is of African origin with a yellow beak and, obviously, pink (not too visible below) feathers.
The pink stork coming in for a landing (picture source Irad Thessaloniki).
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TODAY’S BLOG:
A map of the Gush Etzion area.
Gush Etzion residents demonstrated this afternoon against the huge upsurge in violence in the area.
There were 43 incidents of Palestinian terrorists throwing “rocks”, and 11 more incidents of terrorists throwing Molotov cocktails this week alone.
The residents, as most other Israelis, were particularly outraged by IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz’s comments to the Knesset Foreign Affairs Committee this week that the IDF has decided not to change the rules of engagement in Judea and Samaria after all.
In his testimony, the ever fearful Gantz incredibly said that if the IDF “escalates” its response, then the Palestinians will escalate their their attacks on Jewish communities.
Can you believe this dear reader? Your humble servant wonders what planet Gantz is living on–54 violent assaults against the residents of Gush Etzion alone in the last week.
Nevertheless, in all honesty, Gantz’s comments are completely predictable. This is the same Gantz who would not strike against Hamas despite rocket after rocket in southern Israel.
Benny Gantz has been a complete disaster as the head of the IDF. He has infected the entire IDF staff with an egregious passivity which has turned the IDF from an aggressive fighting force to a passive defensive shadow of its former self.
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.