12 Iyar 5778
27 April 2018
The Tragic Pictures of the Dead Students:
All 18 years old–none of them should have died. See Today’s Blog below.
May their memories be blessed.
The News on the Israeli Street
Palestinian terror in the last 24 hours . . .
**Another major vehicle-bomb attack was thwarted last night when Border Police at the Ein Yael crossing near Jerusalem noticed a suspicious vehicle being driven by two Palestinians–one from Hevron and the other from Beit Jala. When they stopped the small van, they discovered that it was loaded with a bomb.
The vehicle that was carrying the bomb.
Apparently stolen, the vehicle had Israeli license plates. This is the second such attempted attack in the last three weeks.
**Palestinian terrorists also carried out numerous other attacks.
–At Ofra, Palestinian terrorists attempted to kill Israeli soldiers with a roadside IED made with a mortar.
–At Beit El, Palestinians terrorists fired machine guns into the homes of community members.
—Palestinian terrorists carried out “rock” and Molotov attacks at such places as Har Homa, Halhul, Shuafat, El Aruv, Givat Assaf, Tekoa, Silwan, on Roads 443 and 446, Ofra, Yitzhar, Neve Daniel, Hizma, Azzun, and Kiryat Arba.
More protests on the Gaza Border today . . .
Today is the “shoe day protest” with about 3000 Palestinians supposedly throwing their shoes at Israeli soldiers 100 meters away.
Of course (remember the “burning tires” Friday and the subsequent Hamas claims of a tire shortage) tomorrow morning, the Palestinians will claim that there is a shortage of shoes in Gaza.
And the world community will rush to donate shoes to the “poor shoeless Palestinians.”
There is no end to world catering to infantile Palestinian society. Yesterday, Peter Kraehenbuehl, the head of UNRWA, cried that because President Trump has withheld even more money than he said he would withhold, Gaza is on the verge of collapse.
Again.
One would need a super calculator to add up all the times that Gaza has been on the verge of collapse. Here was some of Kraehenbuehl’s nonsense:
“You already have a very, very fragile community in Gaza. So if you suddenly have no certainty about the amount of food aid coming from the UN for a million people … you can just imagine the kind of effects it could have.”
People could die in the streets. The situation could explode.
Yawn.
Egregious discrimination by Israel’s Shin Bet . . .
We have long discussed the incredible fact here on israelstreet that Israel’s Shin Bet service has a peculiar knack for torturing Jewish community members in Judea and Samaria.
At long last, this fact was recently recognized in the Duma case–leading to the withdrawal of all “confessions” of the defendants.
But this maltreatment of community members extends far beyond illegal roundups and detentions. It happens on a daily basis in Judea and Samaria where “leftist anarchists” from around the world and elsewhere in Israel are given a free pass to violently attack our soldiers, while community members are arrested for protesting against the leftists.
It is a totally pathetic situation.
Just how pathetic was revealed yesterday when it was revealed that in 2017 alone, Shin Bet filed 105 indictments against Jewish community members and issued detention orders against 63 more.
In light of these statistics, an organization of 700 reserve IDF officers presented a petition to Defense Minister Lieberman yesterday which reads in part:
“We, about 700 officers who served in the regular army, are demanding that you exercise your authority and order enforcement measures against the anarchists involved in incitement [against the IDF], with emphasis on administratively detaining those anarchists operating in Judea and Samaria who are not residents of the area at all.”
Your humble servant doubts that Lieberman will act out of fear of doing anything politically incorrect, but the petition will at least draw attention to an absurd situation.
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TODAY’S BLOG:
“We Are Going To Die, I Am Serious.”
The scene at Nahal Tzafit yesterday with IDF, MADA, and ZAKA present. Note some of the body bags in the lower left of the photo.
Your humble servant cannot get over his anger at the loss of the ten teenagers at Nahal Tzafit yesterday.
Their deaths were caused by an egregious and perhaps even criminal negligence on the part of their instructors at the religious Bnei Tzion pre-military preparatory program in Tel Aviv.
Allow me to back up for a moment to provide context.
Incoming weather is tracked very closely in Israel. When your humble servant and his wife left Israel on April 20, we knew that a large storm was on the way–predicted to hit yesterday.
We talked with our neighbors about it, and even asked them to check on our house after it hit to make sure that there were no leaks from the expected heavy downpours or breakage from the expected hail.
When we left, everyone was talking about the weather.
During the next six days, every Israeli newscast talked about the upcoming bad weather and warned people to stay away from areas likely to flood. The police issued additional warnings to everyone to stay away from places where flash floods would take place.
In particular, the police warned people to stay away from the Negev, the most likely place for flash floods. In fact, anyone who has ever driven through the Negev knows that there are signs warning about flash floods everywhere.
In short, everyone knew about the dangerous situation that was about to happen in the Negev–including the instructors at Bnei Zion and the students.
One of the most chilling pieces of information yesterday was the discovery of messages that one of the dead young women sent her friends before they left on the trip stating that she couldn’t believe that they were going to a place with such danger:
“I can’t believe that I’m actually going out on a trip in this weather. It’s not logical that we should go to a place that is completely flooded. It’s tempting fate. We are going to die, I am serious.”
And die they did.
Not only did the instructors take them to Nahal Tzafit, but they took them on a hike directly in the dry river bed. It was into that river bed that the flash flood erupted.
It is being reported today that two instructors from Bnei Zion have been arrested and are being charged with “causing death by negligence.”
There is little more to add today except to say angrily once again that this was a tragedy that should have never happened.
Addendum:
It is a strange irony that almost to the day, 55 years ago, nine other religious young women drowned in Israel. That time the tragedy took place in Tel Aviv, just across from the Sheraton Hotel.
The newspaper article from April 23, 1963. Note the people on the beach attempting to resuscitate a few of the young women. The names of the dead are bullet-pointed in the article.
That was also a tragedy that should have never happened. The women were attempting to swim in an area where they could not be seen by men–and inadvertently went into water with a strong undercurrent.
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.