Another Wonderful Day Publicly Supporting Israel!

There’s no honor among thieves (or terrorists) . . .

It couldn’t have been more hilarious in a darkly perverse sort of way. As you may have known, a 15-year-old young man was sent by Hamas the other day to try to breach the Gaza Border fence..

He didn’t make it and in the process was transformed by the Hamas publicity machine into a cause celebre by virtue of being ridiculously relabeled as a “child.”

At the public “mourning” of his death yesterday which took place at the family home in Gaza and of course was arranged by Hamas, a senior leader of the PLO’s Fatah organization showed up and tried to horn in on Hamas’ “party”.

A brouhaha ensued with the “mourners” battling each other. The senior leader had to be evacuated to a local hospital with a broken nose and all of his front teeth knocked out.

Your humble servant supposes that there just wasn’t enough “grief” to go around.

With friends like Kate, who needs Natalie? . . .

The absurdity involving BDS heroine Natalie Portman becomes funnier by the minute. After refusing to come to Israel to collect her $2,000,000 Genesis Award, Portman absurdly claimed yesterday that she was merely motivated by her hatred of PM Netanyahu:

“I chose not to attend because I did not want to appear as endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to be giving a speech at the ceremony. By the same token, I am not part of the BDS movement and do not endorse it.”

What hokum. Actions speak louder than words: by not coming, Portman absolutely endorsed the BDS boycott of Israel.

A fact that BDS joyously crowed about on its disgusting website:

“After decades of egregious human rights violations against Palestinians, Israel’s recent massacre of peaceful protesters in Gaza has made its brand so toxic that even well-known Israeli-American cultural figures, like Natalie Portman, now refuse to blatantly whitewash, or art-wash, Israeli crimes and apartheid policies.”

As we wrote in our last blog, Portman is now a certified BDS heroine.

By the way, Portman continued her above post by adding this nonsense:

“I treasure my Israeli friends and family, Israeli food, books, art, cinema, and dance.”

Hmm.  Let’s see, Portman’s Israeli friends and family are now just lumped in with Israeli food and . . .

As far as Israelis are concerned, Portman can continue to treasure her litany of Israeli-likes from afar–as she always has.

In any case, Kate Upton was in Israel yesterday, and she had no problem expressing her love for our country:

With friends like Kate, who needs Natalie?

One final note: the Bereshit Foundation which administers the Genesis Award has noted that Portman will not be receiving her 2 million dollar award, but Portman has announced that she will send Bereshit a list of charities to which she would like for the 2 million to go to. We’ll see how that plays out.

Speaking of BDS . . .

The Israel High Court of Injustice is getting set to invalidate another decision made by the Knesset.

Israeli-Arab member Yosef Jabareen is asking the Court to overturn a decision by the Knesset Ethics Committee which prevents legislators from interacting with BDS groups by receiving funds from them for “lecture tours” (read: Israel-bashing tours) of the United States and Europe.

Jabareen is upset because he was all set up to take a Jewish Voice for Peace anti-Israel junket when the Committee told him he could not do so because Jewish Voice for Peace is one of the most strident supporters of BDS.

You can expect that the High Court of Injustice will quickly act to further emasculate the Knesset and send Jabareen on his way to fame and fortune bashing Israel. 

The events in Saudi Arabia overnight . . .

Your humble servant has always had his doubts about the “rapprochment” between Saudi Arabia and Israel. When one looks at statements and actions by King Salman (such as at the recent Arab League meeting in Riyadh), Saudi Arabia has not deviated very much from its hatred of Israel.

Even if we assume that there has been a sea change in Saudi Arabian attitudes toward Israel, your humble servant has often wondered what would happen in the event of a coup.

Which was what was initially reported last night. Apparently, gunfire erupted near the King’s palace, and he was rushed to an underground military bunker. Some time later, the story was changed to being the innocuous shoot-down of a toy drone in the airspace over the palace.

Really?

TODAY’S BLOG:

Another Wonderful Day Publicly Supporting Israel!

As I noted above, we returned to northern California on Thursday night after being in Israel for Yom Hazikaron and Yom Atzmaut . Specifically, I wanted to get back to lead my California group in the annual University of California-Davis Picnic Day Parade.

We have had an entry in the parade for last four years, but with all of the anti-Semitism rampant in the city where the local imam last year called on his worshipers to exhort Allah to kill Jews–later amended to Israeli Jews–and where swastikas have appeared at local high schools, we thought it was especially important to show our support for Israel.

We also thought it was important because Jewish students have told us about the widespread attempt to intimidate Jewish students on the UCD campus–to the point that they are even afraid to be seen with a Star of David on a necklace or anything Jewish on their person.

How did the day turn out?

Wonderfully.

We were met with applause all along the route (our cohort was one of 82 entries in the parade). That applause came from a wide variety of people among the 50,000 lining the parade route through the campus and city.

Of course, there were a handful of naysayers–as always. One small contingent of 3-4 Arab students shouted “Free Palestine”–and another man told us that “we had a lot of nerve” being in the parade.

To which I respond: “You bet we do.” We refuse to be cowed and intimidated. We will let the world know that we support Israel and why.

But like I said before, 99.99% of the response was positive, and we felt like we had done something important in publicly supporting Israel.  Thank you to those people of Davis and those students at UCD who showed their support for Israel yesterday!

Here are some pictures:

The “lead element” of our 25-person group which consisted of walkers and haywagon riders (you can see other Israeli flags in the far background. Picture courtesy of Dov Ben Zion, president and co-founder of “My Brother’s Keeper International” who joined us on our walk.