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Yom Shishee

Friday

12 Iyar 5782

May 13 2022

May His Memory Always Be For A Blessing: Noam Raz

Yamam Officer Noam Raz: fighter, paramedic, breacher, sniper, who leaves behind a wife and six children. We have lost one of our best–needlessly (see Today’s Blog below).

The News on the Israeli Street

The funeral procession in Jerusalem today . . .

Not surprisingly, the world–led by U.S. President Joe Biden, EU FM Josep Borrell, and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres–is “outraged” by what happened during Al-Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral procession today.

I say “not surprisingly” because Biden, Borrell, Guterres and the world have never been encumbered by facts. 

Just to restate what happened.

The Israel police had carefully coordinated plans for the funeral procession with Akleh’s family. The idea was that the casket containing her body would be taken from hospital in eastern Jerusalem past the Jaffa Gate, along the outside of the Old City Walls, to the Protestant Cemetery located on the southwestern side of Mt. Zion.

That cemetery is one of six located in the area (the others being the Armenian, Catholic, Dajani, Samboski, and Dormition Abbey cemeteries–Oskar Schlindler for example is buried in the Catholic Cemetery).

To avoid violence, the Police asked the family to handle the casket themselves, limit the number of mourners, not chant nationalistic slogans, and not wave PLO flags. None of these restrictions were followed.

As the casket emerged from the hospital, it was taken over by hundreds of riotous demonstrators chanting “We shall redeem Shireen’s blood” (the same chant–with the substitution of “Shireen” for “Al-Aksa”–that is always chanted by Palestinian rioters). Israeli flags along the route were torn down and PLO flags were waved.

The Police were assaulted with “rocks” and other projectiles which led to the Police wading into the crowd to push them back. In the process, the casket nearly fell to the ground at one point. Eventually, the procession made it to the grave site where it was interred.

Now Biden has called for a probe into the funeral procession. Just like he called for a probe into Akleh’s death, just like called for a probe into . . . and into . . . and into . . . Can you even begin to imagine what will happen when if and when Biden comes to Jerusalem later this year?

TODAY’S BLOG 

The Tragic And Unnecessary Death of

Sgt. Maj. Noam Raz this Morning 

When your humble servant first saw the news this morning, it immediately seemed remarkable.

A Yamam unit (the counter-terror arm of the Border Police composed mainly of former IDF soldiers) had tracked a wanted Palestinian terrorist to a house in the Palestinian settlement of Burkin near Jenin. What then ensued was a firefight the likes of which  had not been witnessed in recent memory.

In the words of a soldier on the ground: “I do not remember anything like this for 20 years. Thousands of bullets were fired at us. I was in the Gaza wars and the Second Lebanon War but I have never seen such firepower directed at us.”

One of the bullets hit 47-year-old Sgt. Maj. Noam Raz in the back and killed him.

As soon as I read the account of the battle, I asked the obvious questions: Why didn’t the Yamam unit call in airplanes, or helicopters, or drones to simply bomb the house into rubble? Why was it necessary to expose our fighters to this kind of attack?

The answer is nowhere to be found except that some hours later, the same question was asked to a military commentator on Israeli television. His answer was “Planes, helicopters, or drones are not used in this kind of situation.”

Say what?

We lost one of our bravest because of a strategic decision not to employ all the weapons at our disposal. 

That decision stinks to high heaven and once again highlights the way that “humanitarianism” has taken over the decision-making processes of the IDF, Border Police, and every other unit of our security forces. 

Sgt. Maj. Raz should be at home tonight celebrating Shabbat with his family. Instead he is dead.