Israel - the lies that are kept from you

Latest Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Exposes Surreal Reality

Perception and reality continued to baffle Palestinian advocates on Thursday as the conflict between Israel and Gaza terrorist groups reached its third day.

Palestinians fired more than 100 rockets at major Israeli cities, including Beersheba, Rehovot, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. Israel, meanwhile, stepped up efforts to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure and leadership responsible for the attacks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with his security cabinet late Thursday, saying the military campaign was going well and “more stages were expected.”

Slate reporter William Saletan, a critic of the Israeli government, nonetheless saw reality. Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas started firing rockets at Israeli cities “well before” Israel started bombing targets in Gaza, he wrote.

Israel has conducted more than 500 airstrikes as part of Operation Protective Edge since then, yet the death toll stands at around 80 Palestinians. Their deaths are tragic, but “you’d have to conclude that either Israel is failing miserably to kill people or, more plausibly, it’s largely trying not to kill them,” Saleton wrote. He notes that Israel directly calls occupants of targeted buildings urging them to get out, and fires warning shots in an attempt to limit civilian casualties.

Yet, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas calls Israel’s strikes, which target rocket launch sites and terrorist leadership, “collective genocide.”

“The charges are false,” Saletan writes. “By the standards of war, Israel’s efforts to spare civilians have been exemplary.”

For Israel’s foes, “exemplary” is not a concept they can handle. National Islamist groups are condemning Israel’s strikes while staying silent about Hamas’ rocket fire. Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Los Angeles office, similarly absolves Hamas of responsibility for the violence. And, ignoring Israel’s attempts to minimize casualties, he lashed out on Twitter, with a “damn you” post toward Israel and those who support “your filthy, criminal #Zionism.”

Hassan Shibly, Ayloush’s CAIR colleague in Tampa, similarly blasted Israel for not valuing “the lives of Palestinian children” and said that Israel, “on an institutional level treats Palestinians worse than animals.”

Contrast that with the reality of the Hamas message this week. When it comes to the Israeli warning calls, a Hamas official went on the group’s Al Aqsa television to encourage people to stay in the buildings as human shields, the Israel Defense Forces reported, offering the video.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Media Watch reports about a song that Al Aqsa television aired Wednesday, which praises Hamas’ al-Qassam brigades for firing rockets at Israeli civilians. “O Al-Qassam, victory is from Allah,” the lyrics say. “In Paradise there is a Garden [for Martyrs] calling to you Fajar 5 [rocket], O blaze, hurry, destroy Tel Aviv O Martyrdom-seeker (i.e., suicide bomber), O blaze, hurry, blow up Tel Aviv.”

A Washington Post blog Thursday showed that no matter how much Hamas incites violence and places its own people in harm’s way, and no matter how far Israel goes to minimize casualties, Israel still has to be faulted. The blog describes a warning call to a Khan Younis woman, Sawsan Kawarea.

“He asked for me by name. He said: ‘You have women and children in the house. Get out. You have five minutes before the rockets come,’” she told a Post reporter. First a warning missile came, then, after five minutes elapsed, came the real attack, leveling the house. Several men actually ran into the house after the warning missile was fired, Kawarea said. Hamas claimed seven people died there.

This is not a new tactic, the Post reports, pointing out it even has a name – “roof knocking.”

For all the good intentions, the Post calls it “a controversial tactic” and cites critics who call it psychological warfare because not every warning is followed by an actual bombing.

Hamas rocket fire, which persisted despite repeated warnings from Israel of impending retaliation, precipitated this latest conflict. Hamas fires rockets at population centers, using its broadcast outlets to advocate wiping out Tel Aviv. Israel gives five-minute warnings for people to evacuate places where the rockets are coming from, or where terrorist leaders are operating. Hamas then encourages people to ignore that, and blames Israel for their resulting deaths and injuries.

It strikes us as crazy. But it’s reality





http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/11/israels-critics-refuse-to-accept-reality-on-gaza-war/

A Game Changer in Gaza

Terrorism is a game. The rules are simple. You have three choices. 1. Destroy the terrorists. 2. Live with terrorism. 3. Give in to the terrorists.

There are no other choices.

The first choice comes from the right. The third choice comes from the left. The second choice is what politicians choose when they don’t want to make a decision that will change the status quo.

Despite all the explosions in Gaza, Israel is still stuck on the second choice. The air strikes aren’t meant to destroy Hamas. They are being carried out to degrade its military capabilities which will buy a year or two of relative peace. And that will be followed by more of the same in the summer of 2016 when Hamas will have deadlier Iranian and Syrian weapons that will terrorize more of the country.

That doesn’t sound like much of a deal, but these kinds of wars have bought more peace than the peace process ever did. The peace process led to wars. The wars lead to a temporary peace.

This status quo became the mainstream choice ever since Israelis figured out that the peace process wasn’t going to work and that their leaders weren’t about to defy the UN, the US, the UK and all the other U’s by actually destroying the terrorists.

When Netanyahu first ran against Peres, the difference between the center-right and the center-left was that he campaigned on security first and appeasement second, while Peres campaigned on appeasement first and security second. The center-right has dominated Israeli politics because most Israelis accepted Likud’s security first as a more reasonable position than Labor’s appeasement first.

Living with terrorism was a viable choice in the 80s. It stopped being a viable choice after Israel allowed terrorist states to be set up under the peace process. It’s one thing to manage terrorism in territories that you control. It’s another thing to deal with entire terrorist states inside your borders. Even physical separation isn’t enough. Not when terrorist groups can shell all your major cities.

Israel responds to that threat with light air strikes which damage Hamas’ military capabilities. Hamas loses a few commanders, fighters and rockets, but scores a PR victory. Israel buys two years of peace while encouraging its enemies to attack it as a bunch of racist baby killers. Then Hamas replaces the rockets and fighters and launches a new operation and the whole thing begins again.

The left’s argument, framed by Washington Post pundits, Israeli leftists, Obama, assorted diplomats, retired security chiefs, activist busybodies funded by radical billionaires and the entire gang of foreign and domestic enemies, is that Israel has no choice except to default back to choice three; appeasement.

Israel has to gamble on appeasement because its situation is constantly worsening, they argue. What they neglect to mention is that the situation is worsening as part of their pressure on Israel to appease terrorists even though the current problems exist because of earlier appeasement.

“Drink this poison,” the doctors of diplomacy say. “It’ll cure you of all the aches and pains you’re suffering from the last time we told you to drink poison.”

“If you don’t drink more poison, you’ll get sicker and die,” they say. And if you do get sicker after drinking more poison, they’ll say it’s your own fault for not drinking enough poison. If only you had given away all of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, the terrorists wouldn’t be attacking you again.

Israel has been caught between choices two and three, either live with terrorism or make concessions to terrorists, and it has been bouncing between these choices.

People and politicians choose the option that causes the least pain at any given time. Israel chooses appeasement in response to international pressure. And when appeasement leads to terrorism, it does enough damage to Hamas to serve as a temporary deterrent, without leading to too much international outrage, again choosing the least painful option.

This is the true cycle that Israel is caught in. It’s not a cycle of violence. It’s a cycle of expediency.

The first choice, destroying the terrorists, is the most painful option in the short term, but the least painful option in the long term. The third choice, appeasing the terrorists, causes the least pain in the short term, but the most pain in the long term and the medium term. The second choice, living with terrorism, is slightly more painful in the short term, less painful in the medium term, but still quite painful in the long term.

Israelis have accepted short term and long term pain in exchange for a certain amount of relief in the immediate future. The occasional terrorist attack and the more ominous escalating conflict, an example of which we are seeing now, is accepted in exchange for a year or two of relative quiet.

It’s easy to criticize Israel for not finishing off Hamas, but let’s look at what is really standing in its way.

Israeli Prime Minister Rabin deported 400 Hamas terrorists, including many Hamas leaders. In a Knesset speech he warned that, “We call on all nations and all people to devote their attention to the great danger inherent in Islamic fundamentalism. That is the real and serious danger which threatens the peace of the world in the forthcoming years.”

Instead the international community decided that the peace of the world was threatened by deporting Hamas terrorists. The media spent months covering the “suffering” of the deported Hamas terrorists. The United States voted for a UN resolution condemning Israel and ordering it to “insure the safe and immediate return of all those deported.”

The United States Ambassador to the United Nations said that deporting Hamas terrorists does “not contribute to current efforts for peace.”

In 1988, Israel had deported a handful of Hamas and PLO terrorists.

One of them, Jibril Mahmoud Rajub, vowed that if Israel didn’t let them back in that they would “infiltrate in as human bombs with explosives belted around our waists.”

Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead warned Israel that if it didn’t reconsider the deportations “damage to our bilateral relations will occur.”

If that was the reaction by the Reagan and Bush administrations to deporting a few terrorists, imagine the reaction by Obama and the EU to a comprehensive effort to force Hamas and the PLO out of Israel.

And yet the inevitable can’t be postponed forever.

If Israel had not folded in the peace process, it might have been able to maintain the status quo of the intifada. But the second choice is no longer a viable long term option. The attacks have long since passed the point of mere terrorism and are taking place on a military scale.

Tolerating terrorism has ceased to be a long term strategy. That is something that both the left and the right agree on. The attacks are pushing Israel into choosing either large scale conflict or large scale appeasement. Appeasing terrorists has failed every time. Only destroying them can work.

Israel has a left that is eager to embrace the destructive policies of appeasement without regard to the consequences. It needs a right that is equally heedless of consequences when it comes to war to overcome that pain threshold which prevents it from doing the right thing and reclaiming the future.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/a-game-changer-in-gaza/

White House Middle East coordinator Phillip Gordon scolded Israel on Tuesday, even as Israelis hid from Hamas rockets that plunged from the heavens like deadly hailstones.

Israel “cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely,” Gordon said in a Tel Aviv speech. “Doing so is not only wrong but a recipe for resentment and recurring instability.” Gordon added that Israel’s leaders “should not take for granted the opportunity to negotiate.”

Gordon addressed Israel’s role in the West Bank and its relationship with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. However, Gordon just as easily could have invoked the Gaza Strip.

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As if psychically predicting Gordon’s speech, Israel in August 2005 decided that it could not “maintain military control of another people indefinitely.” So it capitalized on “the opportunity to negotiate” and did something astonishing:

Israel expelled from Gaza some 9,000 Jews in 25 settlements. Those who lingered were ejected by Israeli soldiers. And then — in a major confidence-building gesture — Israel bequeathed the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians, like a landlord handing a tenant a home deed. Jew-free at last, which pleased many Palestinians, Gaza’s denizens faced a golden opportunity.

“We want to build the most dynamic bank between Gibraltar and the Taj Mahal,” Gaza’s leaders could have said. Financiers from Wells Fargo to Sumitomo would have flown in and shown them how — pro bono.

“We want the deepest-thinking university in this time zone to blossom in this soil,” top Gazans could have announced. Deans and professors from Stanford to Georgetown to Oxford would have rushed there to develop curricula, erect academic buildings, and stock libraries with Earth’s most compelling books and periodicals. World-class faculty would have flocked in.

“We want the loveliest tourist spot on the eastern Mediterranean,” Gaza’s honchos could have stated. Experts from Hilton to Club Med to Carnival Cruises would have sailed in with their talents.

By now, Gaza could be developing into the Hong Kong, Berkeley, or Cancun of the Middle East. “And we, the Palestinians, built this — once Israel left,” Gazans could have said, as proud as Americans after Cornwallis and the Redcoats sailed home in defeat.

But no.

Gaza’s Palestinians have done little with their territory other than turn it into a launch pad for heaving projectiles at Israel. Beneath the iron fist of the Islamic extremists of Hamas, anti-Semitic rockets have become Gaza’s chief export.

“Since June 30, 450 missiles were fired into Israel, of which 58 were intercepted,” Yigal Palmor tells me. The spokesman for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Jerusalem, added, “The others fell in open areas, and only a couple were missed by Iron Dome,” Israel’s extremely effective and relatively low-cost anti-missile defense system.

Last month saw 36 rocket attacks from Gaza, versus nine in May. These assaults have skyrocketed lately, along with tensions after the kidnappings and murder of teenage yeshiva students Naftali Fraenkel (an American citizen), Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrah. The alleged revenge killing of Muhammad Abu Khdeir by Israeli Jews has brought everything to a boil.

Gazan missiles sent Philip Gordon’s audience scrambling for safety at the David Intercontinental Hotel just hours before he spoke there. To stop such onslaughts, Israel destroys launch sites, many cynically stationed by Hamas in civilian neighborhoods — all the better to create martyrs for Allah and bloody videos that boost sympathy for the Palestinian cause.

While Israel always gets blamed for anything worse than a paper cut among the Palestinians, a website called Elder of Ziyon notes that some Gazan casualties are caused by terrorist rockets that drop short of Israel and land inside Gaza. When they go boom, Hamas fingers the Jews.

In an irony of almost biblical proportions, the Gazan rockets would not be roaring down from the skies if Israel had not generously pried its citizens from Gaza and delivered the strip on a serving tray to the Palestinians. And the thanks Israel gets could not be more vividly displayed.

In this respect, Israel has become a 13,000-square-mile metaphor for the fact that no good deed goes unpunished.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/382474/strange-way-say-thank-you-deroy-murdock

HAMAS USING FALSE PHOTOS IN PROPAGANDA WAR AGAINST ISRAEL……

http://tundratabloids.com/2014/07/hamas-using-false-photos-in-propaganda-war-against-israel.html

Palestinian Authority President and Fatah head Mahmoud Abbas on Monday called for an "immediate cessation" of Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.

But Abbas stopped short of calling for an end to rocket attacks on Israel, an omission of what triggered the current round of fighting.

Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile defense system launches a missile to intercept a rocket fired from Gaza. (Image source: IDF)

Instead of calling on his partners in the "national consensus" government -- Hamas -- to stop their rocket attacks on Israel, Abbas appealed to the international community to "intervene" to stop the Israeli "escalation."

So as far as Abbas is concerned, "it all started when Israel fired back" in response to hundreds of rockets that were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip during the past few days.

Why did Abbas refrain from condemning or calling for an end to the rocket attacks?

First, Abbas does not want to anger Hamas by issuing a condemnation of its rocket attacks. Such a condemnation would certainly lead to the collapse of the "reconciliation accord" that his Fatah faction signed with the Islamist movement last April.

Second, condemning Hamas would be seen as an admission that the "national consensus" government bears responsibility for the firing of rockets from the Gaza Strip. After all, this is a Fatah-Hamas government, although its ministers are described as "independent technocrats."

Third, Abbas is fully aware that the Palestinian public would not accept such a condemnation, especially in the wake of increased tensions with Israel in the aftermath of the kidnapping and murder of the Jerusalem teenager, Mohamed Abu Khdeir.

Abbas is already facing a smear campaign waged by many Palestinians for condemning the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank last month.

Photos depicting the embattled Abbas as a "Jewish rabbi" and "settler" have been circulating on social media over the past few weeks.

Several senior Fatah officials have also joined the anti-Abbas campaign, some openly calling for his removal from power for denouncing the murder of the three Israeli youths and saying he would pursue security coordination with Israel.

Fourth, Abbas is not willing to condemn the rocket attacks because his own Fatah loyalists in the Gaza Strip are also participating in the fighting against Israel.

Fatah has several hundred militiamen in the Gaza Strip who belong to various armed groups. Some, according to sources in the Gaza Strip, are former members of the Palestinian Authority security forces, who continue to receive their salaries from the Western-funded Palestinian government in Ramallah.

Shortly after Israel launched air strikes against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip on Monday, Fatah spokesman Fayez Abu Aitah issued an urgent call to his men to take part in "defending the Gaza Strip against Israeli aggression."

Echoing the Fatah argument that "it all started when Israel fired back," the spokesman accused Israel of "violating international laws" by targeting terrorists in the Gaza Strip.

Abu Aitah's call for joining the fight against Israel did not fall on deaf ears. Within minutes, at least two Fatah armed groups announced that they had started firing rockets at the "settlements" of Ashkelon and Sderot, cities inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel.

One group, called Jaish al-Karamah [Army of Dignity], published a statement entitled, "Gone are the Days of Defeat; Victory is Close."

The group even admitted that one of its "rocket units" had narrowly escaped an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip.

Another Fatah group, called "Brigades of Martyr Abdel Qader Husseini - Armed Wing of Fatah," also took credit for firing two rockets at Israeli towns and cities.

A third Fatah group, called Jaish al-Asifah [Army of the Storm], distributed leaflets in which its members claimed responsibility for launching 35 rockets at Israel since Sunday night.

The Fatah militiamen in the Gaza Strip were also acting at the request of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who called on all Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip to close ranks in order to fight against the Israeli enemy.

The involvement of Fatah in the rocket attacks against Israel shows that the "reconciliation" pact with Hamas is much more than a political partnership. Obviously, Hamas and Fatah militiamen are working together on the ground to carry out attacks against Israel.

What is happening in the Gaza Strip these days is not just another confrontation between Israel and Hamas. It is a confrontation between Israel on the one hand and Hamas and several armed groups, including Fatah, on the other hand.

That is why Abbas finds it difficult to condemn the rocket attacks on Israel. Such a move would put him on a collision course not only with Hamas, but also with Fatah, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Movement and at least 10 other jihadi cells operating in the Gaza Strip.

Moreover, Abbas seems to be concerned that if the world hears about the role of Fatah in the rocket attacks, the news will affect Western financial aid to his Palestinian Authority, dominated by Fatah.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4396/fatah-rockets

I have been writing about your conflict for more than three decades. Invariably, I find myself delving into the same themes time and again. The nature of the conflict remains the same. You coexist, and short of self-inflicted catastrophe, you are destined to coexist until the end of time. You must now choose to live in harmony and peace, or in self-consuming enmity and hate.

No Israeli or Palestinian child should ever die for a cause that defies reality and reason. Taking teens hostage and horrifically killing them in cold blood, or abducting a child and grisly burning him alive defies your religious beliefs and the basic tenets of your humanity.

Like beasts, the militant madmen among you creep in the shadows for their prey, to satisfy their lust for revenge and retribution. They disgrace you as a people and a nation, while poisoning the next generations with hostility and disdain, robbing them of their future and destroying the little hope left to live in harmony and peace.

A majority of you Israelis and Palestinians are crying out for peace, yearning still for that elusive day when you can retire to bed without fear and face tomorrow excited about what lies ahead. Every day that exacts blood and torments so many is a day when your graves are dug ever deeper, burying innocent children and any hope for a better future.

The gap between you grows ever wider, feeding the vicious cycle of death and destruction. Instead of reaching out compassionately, you obliterate the last traces of empathy toward one another, knowing that there is no place to go but together.

You, the so-called leaders, are the culprits behind this miserable state of being. Immersed in blind ideology or misguided religious dogmas and possessed by a messianic mission, you incite your people and fan the flames of acrimony and violence.

Shame on you Naftali Bennett, you are a zealous madman. You want to annex much of the West Bank and openly preach the invasion of Gaza. You proclaim that war with Hamas is inevitable and that “It’s preferable that we’re [the Israelis] the ones who initiate it.”

You are a menace to the people of Israel whom you presumably wish to protect. It is alright that hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians die as long as you continue to amass fortunes and enjoy the opulence that life can offer.



And what about you, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ misguided leader? You are a fanatic fool who refuses to see the light. You extolled the kidnapping of the three Israeli youth, you call for another Intifada and encourage “the escalation of the resistance,” only to watch thousands of Palestinians die as sacrificial lambs to satisfy your twisted ego and hollow religious convictions.

And Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon, you have long since lost your moral bearings; unabashedly you advocate collective punishment of the Palestinians, proudly announcing: “If terrorists find refuge among Palestinians, then Palestinians will pay the price.”

Khaled Meshal, Hamas’ brazen political leader, you encourage more abduction of Israelis and with venom you “congratulate” the abductors as if this is the recipe to be “[free] from the prisons of the occupation.” You invite more misery on so many innocent Palestinians, who simply want to live a normal life devoid of constant anguish and pain.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, you cannot hide behind your tempered reaction to the abduction of the three Israeli teenagers and your expressions of sympathy to the family of the young Palestinian boy who was beaten and set on fire. You are now reaping the fruits of your relentless expansionism and blind ideological bent.

You have created this untenable situation between you and the Palestinians a nd largely contributed to the impasse and the hopelessness of ever reaching a peace agreement.

This is your plight, Israelis and Palestinians alike; you are led by inept, self-centered leaders with no vision and no courage. Have you ever paused and asked the simple question: where do we go from here? None of you – Bennett, Haniyeh, Netanyahu, Meshal, and Abbas – know what will be the fate of Israel and Palestine in five or ten years should you continue to pursue your bankrupt policy.

You, Israelis and Palestinian leaders and people, must come to terms with the harsh reality you refuse to face. You are stuck; there is no escape and no future without the other.

You radical Palestinians who seek the destruction of Israel will do so at your peril. Israel is here to stay and will never die alone. And you Israeli zealots who conspire to thwart the Palestinians’ aspiration for a state of their own will irreparably erode Israel as a Jewish state. Israel will become a garrison state, isolated and loathed by the community of nations.

Paradoxically, Netanyahu and Abbas, you can still change the current perilous path. If you truly desire to achieve peace based on a two-state solution, then prove it by rising to the call of the hour and reverse the tragedies of recent days into a triumph over the evil of extremism.

This is the time when you must stand tall together and proclaim your unshakable commitment to realize peace now, in our time. You have the moral responsibility to make the sacrifice of innocent Israeli and Palestinian children whose lives were cut short the catalyst for peace and not the cause of more violence and death.

Netanyahu, you can no longer use the potential fall of your coalition government as an excuse for making gratuitous concessions to the Palestinians. Do not listen to the hawks and invade Gaza time and again.

Once the calm is restored, you must muster the courage, dissolve your government and form a new coalition dedicated to the path of peace.

In spite of your past mistakes, you still possess the leadership qualities needed now to prevent the looming disaster. This could be your long career’s finest hour, or the hour of infamy and shame for failing to rise above the fray.

Abbas, you too must make the hard choice. Whereas your unity government is preferred for peace negotiations, you must demand that Hamas adhere to the rules of engagement and no longer permit Hamas to have it both ways.

You must insist that Hamas’s leaders forsake violence once and for all, or dump them to wallow in their own morass. They will pay dearly for betraying their fellow Palestinians in Gaza, who are despairing for a taste of freedom and a glimmer of hope.

You, Israelis and Palestinians of conscience, must now raise your voices and be heard loud and clear: enough is enough, no more bloodshed, no more waste of precious lives, no more tears, and heartbroken mothers and fathers.

The time has come for you to strive for peace as the continuation of conflict will never yield a winner but mutual death and destruction. There is no glory, no heroism, no dignity and no martyrdom in death, when peace is within your grasp.

*****

*****

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alon-benmeir/an-open-letter-to-the-isr_b_5578303.html


Why hate never accomplishes anything, it only seeks to fuel more hate and death and destruction, without a care for anything but their own agenda of hate, They as seen fuel the hate and misery to continue.

I have been writing about your conflict for more than three decades. Invariably, I find myself delving into the same themes time and again. The nature of the conflict remains the same. You coexist, and short of self-inflicted catastrophe, you are destined to coexist until the end of time. You must now choose to live in harmony and peace, or in self-consuming enmity and hate.

No Israeli or Palestinian child should ever die for a cause that defies reality and reason. Taking teens hostage and horrifically killing them in cold blood, or abducting a child and grisly burning him alive defies your religious beliefs and the basic tenets of your humanity.

Like beasts, the militant madmen among you creep in the shadows for their prey, to satisfy their lust for revenge and retribution. They disgrace you as a people and a nation, while poisoning the next generations with hostility and disdain, robbing them of their future and destroying the little hope left to live in harmony and peace.

A majority of you Israelis and Palestinians are crying out for peace, yearning still for that elusive day when you can retire to bed without fear and face tomorrow excited about what lies ahead. Every day that exacts blood and torments so many is a day when your graves are dug ever deeper, burying innocent children and any hope for a better future.

The gap between you grows ever wider, feeding the vicious cycle of death and destruction. Instead of reaching out compassionately, you obliterate the last traces of empathy toward one another, knowing that there is no place to go but together.

You, the so-called leaders, are the culprits behind this miserable state of being. Immersed in blind ideology or misguided religious dogmas and possessed by a messianic mission, you incite your people and fan the flames of acrimony and violence.

Shame on you Naftali Bennett, you are a zealous madman. You want to annex much of the West Bank and openly preach the invasion of Gaza. You proclaim that war with Hamas is inevitable and that “It’s preferable that we’re [the Israelis] the ones who initiate it.”

You are a menace to the people of Israel whom you presumably wish to protect. It is alright that hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians die as long as you continue to amass fortunes and enjoy the opulence that life can offer.



And what about you, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ misguided leader? You are a fanatic fool who refuses to see the light. You extolled the kidnapping of the three Israeli youth, you call for another Intifada and encourage “the escalation of the resistance,” only to watch thousands of Palestinians die as sacrificial lambs to satisfy your twisted ego and hollow religious convictions.

And Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon, you have long since lost your moral bearings; unabashedly you advocate collective punishment of the Palestinians, proudly announcing: “If terrorists find refuge among Palestinians, then Palestinians will pay the price.”

Khaled Meshal, Hamas’ brazen political leader, you encourage more abduction of Israelis and with venom you “congratulate” the abductors as if this is the recipe to be “[free] from the prisons of the occupation.” You invite more misery on so many innocent Palestinians, who simply want to live a normal life devoid of constant anguish and pain.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, you cannot hide behind your tempered reaction to the abduction of the three Israeli teenagers and your expressions of sympathy to the family of the young Palestinian boy who was beaten and set on fire. You are now reaping the fruits of your relentless expansionism and blind ideological bent.

You have created this untenable situation between you and the Palestinians a nd largely contributed to the impasse and the hopelessness of ever reaching a peace agreement.

This is your plight, Israelis and Palestinians alike; you are led by inept, self-centered leaders with no vision and no courage. Have you ever paused and asked the simple question: where do we go from here? None of you – Bennett, Haniyeh, Netanyahu, Meshal, and Abbas – know what will be the fate of Israel and Palestine in five or ten years should you continue to pursue your bankrupt policy.

You, Israelis and Palestinian leaders and people, must come to terms with the harsh reality you refuse to face. You are stuck; there is no escape and no future without the other.

You radical Palestinians who seek the destruction of Israel will do so at your peril. Israel is here to stay and will never die alone. And you Israeli zealots who conspire to thwart the Palestinians’ aspiration for a state of their own will irreparably erode Israel as a Jewish state. Israel will become a garrison state, isolated and loathed by the community of nations.

Paradoxically, Netanyahu and Abbas, you can still change the current perilous path. If you truly desire to achieve peace based on a two-state solution, then prove it by rising to the call of the hour and reverse the tragedies of recent days into a triumph over the evil of extremism.

This is the time when you must stand tall together and proclaim your unshakable commitment to realize peace now, in our time. You have the moral responsibility to make the sacrifice of innocent Israeli and Palestinian children whose lives were cut short the catalyst for peace and not the cause of more violence and death.

Netanyahu, you can no longer use the potential fall of your coalition government as an excuse for making gratuitous concessions to the Palestinians. Do not listen to the hawks and invade Gaza time and again.

Once the calm is restored, you must muster the courage, dissolve your government and form a new coalition dedicated to the path of peace.

In spite of your past mistakes, you still possess the leadership qualities needed now to prevent the looming disaster. This could be your long career’s finest hour, or the hour of infamy and shame for failing to rise above the fray.

Abbas, you too must make the hard choice. Whereas your unity government is preferred for peace negotiations, you must demand that Hamas adhere to the rules of engagement and no longer permit Hamas to have it both ways.

You must insist that Hamas’s leaders forsake violence once and for all, or dump them to wallow in their own morass. They will pay dearly for betraying their fellow Palestinians in Gaza, who are despairing for a taste of freedom and a glimmer of hope.

You, Israelis and Palestinians of conscience, must now raise your voices and be heard loud and clear: enough is enough, no more bloodshed, no more waste of precious lives, no more tears, and heartbroken mothers and fathers.

The time has come for you to strive for peace as the continuation of conflict will never yield a winner but mutual death and destruction. There is no glory, no heroism, no dignity and no martyrdom in death, when peace is within your grasp.

*****

*****

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alon-benmeir/an-open-letter-to-the-isr_b_5578303.html

so now didge is spamming the thread to smother the truth

smelly_bandit wrote:

a

I have been writing about your conflict for more than three decades. Invariably, I find myself delving into the same themes time and again. The nature of the conflict remains the same. You coexist, and short of self-inflicted catastrophe, you are destined to coexist until the end of time. You must now choose to live in harmony and peace, or in self-consuming enmity and hate.

No Israeli or Palestinian child should ever die for a cause that defies reality and reason. Taking teens hostage and horrifically killing them in cold blood, or abducting a child and grisly burning him alive defies your religious beliefs and the basic tenets of your humanity.

Like beasts, the militant madmen among you creep in the shadows for their prey, to satisfy their lust for revenge and retribution. They disgrace you as a people and a nation, while poisoning the next generations with hostility and disdain, robbing them of their future and destroying the little hope left to live in harmony and peace.

A majority of you Israelis and Palestinians are crying out for peace, yearning still for that elusive day when you can retire to bed without fear and face tomorrow excited about what lies ahead. Every day that exacts blood and torments so many is a day when your graves are dug ever deeper, burying innocent children and any hope for a better future.

The gap between you grows ever wider, feeding the vicious cycle of death and destruction. Instead of reaching out compassionately, you obliterate the last traces of empathy toward one another, knowing that there is no place to go but together.

You, the so-called leaders, are the culprits behind this miserable state of being. Immersed in blind ideology or misguided religious dogmas and possessed by a messianic mission, you incite your people and fan the flames of acrimony and violence.

Shame on you Naftali Bennett, you are a zealous madman. You want to annex much of the West Bank and openly preach the invasion of Gaza. You proclaim that war with Hamas is inevitable and that “It’s preferable that we’re [the Israelis] the ones who initiate it.”

You are a menace to the people of Israel whom you presumably wish to protect. It is alright that hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians die as long as you continue to amass fortunes and enjoy the opulence that life can offer.



And what about you, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ misguided leader? You are a fanatic fool who refuses to see the light. You extolled the kidnapping of the three Israeli youth, you call for another Intifada and encourage “the escalation of the resistance,” only to watch thousands of Palestinians die as sacrificial lambs to satisfy your twisted ego and hollow religious convictions.

And Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon, you have long since lost your moral bearings; unabashedly you advocate collective punishment of the Palestinians, proudly announcing: “If terrorists find refuge among Palestinians, then Palestinians will pay the price.”

Khaled Meshal, Hamas’ brazen political leader, you encourage more abduction of Israelis and with venom you “congratulate” the abductors as if this is the recipe to be “[free] from the prisons of the occupation.” You invite more misery on so many innocent Palestinians, who simply want to live a normal life devoid of constant anguish and pain.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, you cannot hide behind your tempered reaction to the abduction of the three Israeli teenagers and your expressions of sympathy to the family of the young Palestinian boy who was beaten and set on fire. You are now reaping the fruits of your relentless expansionism and blind ideological bent.

You have created this untenable situation between you and the Palestinians a nd largely contributed to the impasse and the hopelessness of ever reaching a peace agreement.

This is your plight, Israelis and Palestinians alike; you are led by inept, self-centered leaders with no vision and no courage. Have you ever paused and asked the simple question: where do we go from here? None of you – Bennett, Haniyeh, Netanyahu, Meshal, and Abbas – know what will be the fate of Israel and Palestine in five or ten years should you continue to pursue your bankrupt policy.

You, Israelis and Palestinian leaders and people, must come to terms with the harsh reality you refuse to face. You are stuck; there is no escape and no future without the other.

You radical Palestinians who seek the destruction of Israel will do so at your peril. Israel is here to stay and will never die alone. And you Israeli zealots who conspire to thwart the Palestinians’ aspiration for a state of their own will irreparably erode Israel as a Jewish state. Israel will become a garrison state, isolated and loathed by the community of nations.

Paradoxically, Netanyahu and Abbas, you can still change the current perilous path. If you truly desire to achieve peace based on a two-state solution, then prove it by rising to the call of the hour and reverse the tragedies of recent days into a triumph over the evil of extremism.

This is the time when you must stand tall together and proclaim your unshakable commitment to realize peace now, in our time. You have the moral responsibility to make the sacrifice of innocent Israeli and Palestinian children whose lives were cut short the catalyst for peace and not the cause of more violence and death.

Netanyahu, you can no longer use the potential fall of your coalition government as an excuse for making gratuitous concessions to the Palestinians. Do not listen to the hawks and invade Gaza time and again.

Once the calm is restored, you must muster the courage, dissolve your government and form a new coalition dedicated to the path of peace.

In spite of your past mistakes, you still possess the leadership qualities needed now to prevent the looming disaster. This could be your long career’s finest hour, or the hour of infamy and shame for failing to rise above the fray.

Abbas, you too must make the hard choice. Whereas your unity government is preferred for peace negotiations, you must demand that Hamas adhere to the rules of engagement and no longer permit Hamas to have it both ways.

You must insist that Hamas’s leaders forsake violence once and for all, or dump them to wallow in their own morass. They will pay dearly for betraying their fellow Palestinians in Gaza, who are despairing for a taste of freedom and a glimmer of hope.

You, Israelis and Palestinians of conscience, must now raise your voices and be heard loud and clear: enough is enough, no more bloodshed, no more waste of precious lives, no more tears, and heartbroken mothers and fathers.

The time has come for you to strive for peace as the continuation of conflict will never yield a winner but mutual death and destruction. There is no glory, no heroism, no dignity and no martyrdom in death, when peace is within your grasp.

*****

*****

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alon-benmeir/an-open-letter-to-the-isr_b_5578303.html


Why hate never accomplishes anything, it only seeks to fuel more hate and death and destruction, without a care for anything but their own agenda of hate, They as seen fuel the hate and misery to continue.

smelly_bandit wrote:Latest Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Exposes Surreal Reality

Perception and reality continued to baffle Palestinian advocates on Thursday as the conflict between Israel and Gaza terrorist groups reached its third day.

Palestinians fired more than 100 rockets at major Israeli cities, including Beersheba, Rehovot, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. Israel, meanwhile, stepped up efforts to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure and leadership responsible for the attacks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with his security cabinet late Thursday, saying the military campaign was going well and “more stages were expected.”

Slate reporter William Saletan, a critic of the Israeli government, nonetheless saw reality. Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas started firing rockets at Israeli cities “well before” Israel started bombing targets in Gaza, he wrote.

Israel has conducted more than 500 airstrikes as part of Operation Protective Edge since then, yet the death toll stands at around 80 Palestinians. Their deaths are tragic, but “you’d have to conclude that either Israel is failing miserably to kill people or, more plausibly, it’s largely trying not to kill them,” Saleton wrote. He notes that Israel directly calls occupants of targeted buildings urging them to get out, and fires warning shots in an attempt to limit civilian casualties.

Yet, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas calls Israel’s strikes, which target rocket launch sites and terrorist leadership, “collective genocide.”

“The charges are false,” Saletan writes. “By the standards of war, Israel’s efforts to spare civilians have been exemplary.”

For Israel’s foes, “exemplary” is not a concept they can handle. National Islamist groups are condemning Israel’s strikes while staying silent about Hamas’ rocket fire. Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Los Angeles office, similarly absolves Hamas of responsibility for the violence. And, ignoring Israel’s attempts to minimize casualties, he lashed out on Twitter, with a “damn you” post toward Israel and those who support “your filthy, criminal #Zionism.”

Hassan Shibly, Ayloush’s CAIR colleague in Tampa, similarly blasted Israel for not valuing “the lives of Palestinian children” and said that Israel, “on an institutional level treats Palestinians worse than animals.”

Contrast that with the reality of the Hamas message this week. When it comes to the Israeli warning calls, a Hamas official went on the group’s Al Aqsa television to encourage people to stay in the buildings as human shields, the Israel Defense Forces reported, offering the video.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Media Watch reports about a song that Al Aqsa television aired Wednesday, which praises Hamas’ al-Qassam brigades for firing rockets at Israeli civilians. “O Al-Qassam, victory is from Allah,” the lyrics say. “In Paradise there is a Garden [for Martyrs] calling to you Fajar 5 [rocket], O blaze, hurry, destroy Tel Aviv O Martyrdom-seeker (i.e., suicide bomber), O blaze, hurry, blow up Tel Aviv.”

A Washington Post blog Thursday showed that no matter how much Hamas incites violence and places its own people in harm’s way, and no matter how far Israel goes to minimize casualties, Israel still has to be faulted. The blog describes a warning call to a Khan Younis woman, Sawsan Kawarea.

“He asked for me by name. He said: ‘You have women and children in the house. Get out. You have five minutes before the rockets come,’” she told a Post reporter. First a warning missile came, then, after five minutes elapsed, came the real attack, leveling the house. Several men actually ran into the house after the warning missile was fired, Kawarea said. Hamas claimed seven people died there.

This is not a new tactic, the Post reports, pointing out it even has a name – “roof knocking.”

For all the good intentions, the Post calls it “a controversial tactic” and cites critics who call it psychological warfare because not every warning is followed by an actual bombing.

Hamas rocket fire, which persisted despite repeated warnings from Israel of impending retaliation, precipitated this latest conflict. Hamas fires rockets at population centers, using its broadcast outlets to advocate wiping out Tel Aviv. Israel gives five-minute warnings for people to evacuate places where the rockets are coming from, or where terrorist leaders are operating. Hamas then encourages people to ignore that, and blames Israel for their resulting deaths and injuries.

It strikes us as crazy. But it’s reality





http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/11/israels-critics-refuse-to-accept-reality-on-gaza-war/

a

smelly_bandit wrote:

hating this video arent you didge

I have been writing about your conflict for more than three decades. Invariably, I find myself delving into the same themes time and again. The nature of the conflict remains the same. You coexist, and short of self-inflicted catastrophe, you are destined to coexist until the end of time. You must now choose to live in harmony and peace, or in self-consuming enmity and hate.

No Israeli or Palestinian child should ever die for a cause that defies reality and reason. Taking teens hostage and horrifically killing them in cold blood, or abducting a child and grisly burning him alive defies your religious beliefs and the basic tenets of your humanity.

Like beasts, the militant madmen among you creep in the shadows for their prey, to satisfy their lust for revenge and retribution. They disgrace you as a people and a nation, while poisoning the next generations with hostility and disdain, robbing them of their future and destroying the little hope left to live in harmony and peace.

A majority of you Israelis and Palestinians are crying out for peace, yearning still for that elusive day when you can retire to bed without fear and face tomorrow excited about what lies ahead. Every day that exacts blood and torments so many is a day when your graves are dug ever deeper, burying innocent children and any hope for a better future.

The gap between you grows ever wider, feeding the vicious cycle of death and destruction. Instead of reaching out compassionately, you obliterate the last traces of empathy toward one another, knowing that there is no place to go but together.

You, the so-called leaders, are the culprits behind this miserable state of being. Immersed in blind ideology or misguided religious dogmas and possessed by a messianic mission, you incite your people and fan the flames of acrimony and violence.

Shame on you Naftali Bennett, you are a zealous madman. You want to annex much of the West Bank and openly preach the invasion of Gaza. You proclaim that war with Hamas is inevitable and that “It’s preferable that we’re [the Israelis] the ones who initiate it.”

You are a menace to the people of Israel whom you presumably wish to protect. It is alright that hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians die as long as you continue to amass fortunes and enjoy the opulence that life can offer.



And what about you, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ misguided leader? You are a fanatic fool who refuses to see the light. You extolled the kidnapping of the three Israeli youth, you call for another Intifada and encourage “the escalation of the resistance,” only to watch thousands of Palestinians die as sacrificial lambs to satisfy your twisted ego and hollow religious convictions.

And Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon, you have long since lost your moral bearings; unabashedly you advocate collective punishment of the Palestinians, proudly announcing: “If terrorists find refuge among Palestinians, then Palestinians will pay the price.”

Khaled Meshal, Hamas’ brazen political leader, you encourage more abduction of Israelis and with venom you “congratulate” the abductors as if this is the recipe to be “[free] from the prisons of the occupation.” You invite more misery on so many innocent Palestinians, who simply want to live a normal life devoid of constant anguish and pain.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, you cannot hide behind your tempered reaction to the abduction of the three Israeli teenagers and your expressions of sympathy to the family of the young Palestinian boy who was beaten and set on fire. You are now reaping the fruits of your relentless expansionism and blind ideological bent.

You have created this untenable situation between you and the Palestinians a nd largely contributed to the impasse and the hopelessness of ever reaching a peace agreement.

This is your plight, Israelis and Palestinians alike; you are led by inept, self-centered leaders with no vision and no courage. Have you ever paused and asked the simple question: where do we go from here? None of you – Bennett, Haniyeh, Netanyahu, Meshal, and Abbas – know what will be the fate of Israel and Palestine in five or ten years should you continue to pursue your bankrupt policy.

You, Israelis and Palestinian leaders and people, must come to terms with the harsh reality you refuse to face. You are stuck; there is no escape and no future without the other.

You radical Palestinians who seek the destruction of Israel will do so at your peril. Israel is here to stay and will never die alone. And you Israeli zealots who conspire to thwart the Palestinians’ aspiration for a state of their own will irreparably erode Israel as a Jewish state. Israel will become a garrison state, isolated and loathed by the community of nations.

Paradoxically, Netanyahu and Abbas, you can still change the current perilous path. If you truly desire to achieve peace based on a two-state solution, then prove it by rising to the call of the hour and reverse the tragedies of recent days into a triumph over the evil of extremism.

This is the time when you must stand tall together and proclaim your unshakable commitment to realize peace now, in our time. You have the moral responsibility to make the sacrifice of innocent Israeli and Palestinian children whose lives were cut short the catalyst for peace and not the cause of more violence and death.

Netanyahu, you can no longer use the potential fall of your coalition government as an excuse for making gratuitous concessions to the Palestinians. Do not listen to the hawks and invade Gaza time and again.

Once the calm is restored, you must muster the courage, dissolve your government and form a new coalition dedicated to the path of peace.

In spite of your past mistakes, you still possess the leadership qualities needed now to prevent the looming disaster. This could be your long career’s finest hour, or the hour of infamy and shame for failing to rise above the fray.

Abbas, you too must make the hard choice. Whereas your unity government is preferred for peace negotiations, you must demand that Hamas adhere to the rules of engagement and no longer permit Hamas to have it both ways.

You must insist that Hamas’s leaders forsake violence once and for all, or dump them to wallow in their own morass. They will pay dearly for betraying their fellow Palestinians in Gaza, who are despairing for a taste of freedom and a glimmer of hope.

You, Israelis and Palestinians of conscience, must now raise your voices and be heard loud and clear: enough is enough, no more bloodshed, no more waste of precious lives, no more tears, and heartbroken mothers and fathers.

The time has come for you to strive for peace as the continuation of conflict will never yield a winner but mutual death and destruction. There is no glory, no heroism, no dignity and no martyrdom in death, when peace is within your grasp.

*****

*****

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alon-benmeir/an-open-letter-to-the-isr_b_5578303.html


Why hate never accomplishes anything, it only seeks to fuel more hate and death and destruction, without a care for anything but their own agenda of hate, They as seen fuel the hate and misery to continue.

Didge wrote:I have been writing about your conflict for more than three decades. Invariably, I find myself delving into the same themes time and again. The nature of the conflict remains the same. You coexist, and short of self-inflicted catastrophe, you are destined to coexist until the end of time. You must now choose to live in harmony and peace, or in self-consuming enmity and hate.

No Israeli or Palestinian child should ever die for a cause that defies reality and reason. Taking teens hostage and horrifically killing them in cold blood, or abducting a child and grisly burning him alive defies your religious beliefs and the basic tenets of your humanity.

Like beasts, the militant madmen among you creep in the shadows for their prey, to satisfy their lust for revenge and retribution. They disgrace you as a people and a nation, while poisoning the next generations with hostility and disdain, robbing them of their future and destroying the little hope left to live in harmony and peace.

A majority of you Israelis and Palestinians are crying out for peace, yearning still for that elusive day when you can retire to bed without fear and face tomorrow excited about what lies ahead. Every day that exacts blood and torments so many is a day when your graves are dug ever deeper, burying innocent children and any hope for a better future.

The gap between you grows ever wider, feeding the vicious cycle of death and destruction. Instead of reaching out compassionately, you obliterate the last traces of empathy toward one another, knowing that there is no place to go but together.

You, the so-called leaders, are the culprits behind this miserable state of being. Immersed in blind ideology or misguided religious dogmas and possessed by a messianic mission, you incite your people and fan the flames of acrimony and violence.

Shame on you Naftali Bennett, you are a zealous madman. You want to annex much of the West Bank and openly preach the invasion of Gaza. You proclaim that war with Hamas is inevitable and that “It’s preferable that we’re [the Israelis] the ones who initiate it.”

You are a menace to the people of Israel whom you presumably wish to protect. It is alright that hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians die as long as you continue to amass fortunes and enjoy the opulence that life can offer.



And what about you, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ misguided leader? You are a fanatic fool who refuses to see the light. You extolled the kidnapping of the three Israeli youth, you call for another Intifada and encourage “the escalation of the resistance,” only to watch thousands of Palestinians die as sacrificial lambs to satisfy your twisted ego and hollow religious convictions.

And Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon, you have long since lost your moral bearings; unabashedly you advocate collective punishment of the Palestinians, proudly announcing: “If terrorists find refuge among Palestinians, then Palestinians will pay the price.”

Khaled Meshal, Hamas’ brazen political leader, you encourage more abduction of Israelis and with venom you “congratulate” the abductors as if this is the recipe to be “[free] from the prisons of the occupation.” You invite more misery on so many innocent Palestinians, who simply want to live a normal life devoid of constant anguish and pain.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, you cannot hide behind your tempered reaction to the abduction of the three Israeli teenagers and your expressions of sympathy to the family of the young Palestinian boy who was beaten and set on fire. You are now reaping the fruits of your relentless expansionism and blind ideological bent.

You have created this untenable situation between you and the Palestinians a nd largely contributed to the impasse and the hopelessness of ever reaching a peace agreement.

This is your plight, Israelis and Palestinians alike; you are led by inept, self-centered leaders with no vision and no courage. Have you ever paused and asked the simple question: where do we go from here? None of you – Bennett, Haniyeh, Netanyahu, Meshal, and Abbas – know what will be the fate of Israel and Palestine in five or ten years should you continue to pursue your bankrupt policy.

You, Israelis and Palestinian leaders and people, must come to terms with the harsh reality you refuse to face. You are stuck; there is no escape and no future without the other.

You radical Palestinians who seek the destruction of Israel will do so at your peril. Israel is here to stay and will never die alone. And you Israeli zealots who conspire to thwart the Palestinians’ aspiration for a state of their own will irreparably erode Israel as a Jewish state. Israel will become a garrison state, isolated and loathed by the community of nations.

Paradoxically, Netanyahu and Abbas, you can still change the current perilous path. If you truly desire to achieve peace based on a two-state solution, then prove it by rising to the call of the hour and reverse the tragedies of recent days into a triumph over the evil of extremism.

This is the time when you must stand tall together and proclaim your unshakable commitment to realize peace now, in our time. You have the moral responsibility to make the sacrifice of innocent Israeli and Palestinian children whose lives were cut short the catalyst for peace and not the cause of more violence and death.

Netanyahu, you can no longer use the potential fall of your coalition government as an excuse for making gratuitous concessions to the Palestinians. Do not listen to the hawks and invade Gaza time and again.

Once the calm is restored, you must muster the courage, dissolve your government and form a new coalition dedicated to the path of peace.

In spite of your past mistakes, you still possess the leadership qualities needed now to prevent the looming disaster. This could be your long career’s finest hour, or the hour of infamy and shame for failing to rise above the fray.

Abbas, you too must make the hard choice. Whereas your unity government is preferred for peace negotiations, you must demand that Hamas adhere to the rules of engagement and no longer permit Hamas to have it both ways.

You must insist that Hamas’s leaders forsake violence once and for all, or dump them to wallow in their own morass. They will pay dearly for betraying their fellow Palestinians in Gaza, who are despairing for a taste of freedom and a glimmer of hope.

You, Israelis and Palestinians of conscience, must now raise your voices and be heard loud and clear: enough is enough, no more bloodshed, no more waste of precious lives, no more tears, and heartbroken mothers and fathers.

The time has come for you to strive for peace as the continuation of conflict will never yield a winner but mutual death and destruction. There is no glory, no heroism, no dignity and no martyrdom in death, when peace is within your grasp.

*****

*****

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alon-benmeir/an-open-letter-to-the-isr_b_5578303.html


Why hate never accomplishes anything, it only seeks to fuel more hate and death and destruction, without a care for anything but their own agenda of hate, They as seen fuel the hate and misery to continue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQQFJXMrg4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQQFJXMrg4

I see smelly has no answer to common sense, there is hate on both sides, which this letter is showing, that means wrongs done on both sides, I have openly condemned Hamas as a major problem, as are the Zionists, hence why you are clueless smelly. You though wish to sow the seed of hate and care not that innocent people die on both sides, just as long as you continue your hate.

You will never win with hate, too many people can see past such hate and in the end you will lose as you always do, to compassion.

Didge wrote:I see smelly has no answer to common sense, there is hate on both sides, which this letter is showing, that means wrongs done on both sides, I have openly condemned Hamas as a major problem, as are the Zionists, hence why you are clueless smelly. You though wish to sow the seed of hate and care not that innocent people die on both sides, just as long as you continue your hate.

You will never win with hate, too many people can see past such hate and in the end you will lose as you always do, to compassion.

my name is didge

i hate Jews and like licking Muslim ass

piss off didge no one cares about you opinions

ANKARA — A popular Turkish female pop singer was under pressure Friday to make a public apology after she posted a succession of anti-Semitic tweets over Israel’s deadly air campaign in Gaza

Yildiz Tilbe, who has been making folk-influenced hit albums since the 1990s, appeared to praise Hitler in the tweets and say the end of the Jews was near.

“If God allows, it will be again Muslims who will bring the end of those Jews, it is near, near,” she tweeted on her official account @YildizzTilbee.

“They (Jews) are hostile to Allah and all prophets including their own prophet Moses.”

In another tweet she appeared to praise Hitler for the mass extermination of Jews in the Holocaust, writing “May God bless Hitler.”

The Jewish Community of Turkey condemned the singer’s tweets as “racist and inciting hatred,” calling on judicial authorities to “immediately start necessary legal procedures” under the country’s penal code.

Over 120 Palestinians have now been killed in Israel’s air campaign against Gaza, causing grave international concern.

The comments also went viral on social media where a petition campaign was launched to convince the singer to offer an apology.

Tilbe wrote after the criticism that she was not racist.

“There is oppression against Muslims everywhere in the world. Is there any single American or Jew being massacred, whose country is bombed or whose people are killed?”

Turkey is one of few majority Muslim states to have full diplomatic relations with Israel but ties have deteriorated seriously under the rule of the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has dominated politics in Turkey for over a decade, is known for his angry outbursts at the Jewish state.

The mayor of Ankara, Melik Gokcek, a senior member of the AKP, backed the singer’s Gaza tweets, re-tweeting most of her comments except the one on Hitler, calling them “full of intelligence.”

“I applaud you Yildiz Tilbe for the messages you deliver to many of your colleagues and especially to the Turkish nation,” he wrote.

Tilbe released her debut album in 1994 and has enjoyed growing fame since then. She writes most of her songs and also composes for other singers including Turkey’s internationally-renowned pop star Tarkan.

Read more: Turkish singer writes anti-Semitic tweets over Gaza | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/turkish-singer-writes-anti-semitic-tweets-over-gaza/#ixzz37HneDk4E

Poor smelly he has no response, he just needs more deaths to satisfy his blolodlust

Didge wrote:Poor smelly he has no response, he just needs more deaths to satisfy his blolodlust

no one is dying didge calm down

smelly_bandit wrote:

Didge wrote:Poor smelly he has no response, he just needs more deaths to satisfy his blolodlust

no one is dying didge calm down

Weird, people die everyday, even more so in mindless stupid conflicts, which poor infantile hateful people wish to keep fueling, what people need to ask, is why you need this blood sacrifice to get through each day?
have you tried masturbating whilst stabbing a mouse to satisfy your craving?

getting wound up eh didge??

smelly_bandit wrote:getting wound up eh didge??

Actually I think it is the other way around by your responses, how they get shorter and poorer by the minute.
Again, do you get a hard on, seeing people die?
Do you need to jerk off when you see people die?

Its a fair point, because you lack any empathy or compassion for when innocent children die., so its fair to ask, being as you seem to crave and love children dying as is happening at the moment, if you get sexually turned on by this.

innocent is relative

innocent



innocent??

I can show the hate from Zionist children also, it shows idiots on both sides indoctrinate children and it is people like you that corrupt children with hate.

cause and effect didge

when you are faced with a terrorist nation that wants to exterminate you then its only natural that you will grow to hate them

too bad the Palestinians hate Jewish children more than they love their own

but hey lets prey for the IDF in the coming weeks and months and lets hope they are successful in wiping out the terror state of gaza

smelly_bandit wrote:cause and effect didge

when you are faced with a terrorist nation that wants to exterminate you then its only natural that you will grow to hate them

too bad the Palestinians hate Jewish children more than they love their own

but hey lets prey for the IDF in the coming weeks and months and lets hope they are successful in wiping out the terror state of gaza

Again more absurd terminology, if you teach children hate, they will hate, using excuse to allow hatred, will never bring about peace but more hate and more innocent people dying.
When will you ever learn, your cause and affect just creates more hate and more innocent people dying, one big vicious circle of hate, one you fail to see, you need to break the cycle, not fuel it, because as seen such methodology has only allowed for innocent people to die each year with such idiotic view

Guest wrote:

smelly_bandit wrote:cause and effect didge

when you are faced with a terrorist nation that wants to exterminate you then its only natural that you will grow to hate them

too bad the Palestinians hate Jewish children more than they love their own

but hey lets prey for the IDF in the coming weeks and months and lets hope they are successful in wiping out the terror state of gaza

Again more absurd terminology, if you teach children hate, they will hate, using excuse to allow hatred, will never bring about peace but more hate and more innocent people dying.
When will you ever learn, your cause and affect just creates more hate and more innocent people dying, one big vicious circle of hate, one you fail to see, you need to break the cycle, not fuel it, because as seen such methodology has only allowed for innocent people to die each year with such idiotic view    

so true

 

ALL of this c&p'ing on smelly's part...

AND all that he's managed to do is to flood his own boring little thread with all of that endless dross, that nobody on here will ever possibly read, no matter how boring their lives may get..

IS IT too much to ask, that the 'orrible little mud-slinging wannabe troll should learn the meanings of brevity, summaries and synopses, links, and editing ?

OH - and would somebody give that little munchkin a keyboard with punctuation keys ! Please..   

According to many critics, Israel is slaughtering civilians in Gaza. It’s “purposefully wiping out entire families,” says an Arab member of Israel’s parliament. It’s committing “genocide—the murder of entire families,” says Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. Iran says Israel has committed “massacres against the defenseless Palestinians.”

The charges are false. By the standards of war, Israel’s efforts to spare civilians have been exemplary.

Israel didn’t choose this fight. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the terrorist organizations that dominate Gaza, claim that Israel provoked the conflict by arresting Hamas members in the
West Bank. But arrests in one territory don’t justify aerial bombardment from another. Israel didn’t hit Gaza until terrorists had fired more than 150 rockets into Israel and had rejected a cease-fire.

Some of the pictures that purport to show devastation from the Israeli strikes are fakes borrowed from other wars. As of Wednesday afternoon, the death count ranged from 30 to 50 or more, depending on where you mark the onset of the conflict. Every death is tragic, and the longer the assault goes on, the higher the toll will go. Still, given that Israel has launched more than 500 airstrikes, you’d have to conclude that either Israel is failing miserably to kill people or, more plausibly, it’s largely trying not to kill them.

Israel’s defense minister admits his forces have targeted “terrorists’ houses” as well as “arms, terror infrastructures, command systems, Hamas institutions, [and] regime buildings.” The houses belong to Hamas military leaders. An Israeli official boasts that “there's not a single Hamas brigade commander that has a home to go back to.” Israel’s legal rationale for targeting these homes is that they were “terror command centers” involved in rocket fire or other “terror activity.” But while Israel has tried to kill commanders in their cars (and has succeeded), it has avoided unannounced strikes on their homes.

The last time Israel targeted buildings in Gaza, a year and a half ago, it used leaflets and phone calls to warn residents to get out beforehand. It also fired flares or low-impact mortars (known as a “knock on the roof”) to signal impending strikes. Human rights groups didn’t accept these measures as protection from legal responsibility, but they did hail them as progress. Israel claims to be applying the same measures today. Hamas and other Palestinian sources confirm that the Israeli military has issued phone warnings to families in the targeted homes.

The worst civilian death toll—seven, at the latest count—occurred in a strike on the Khan Yunis home of a terrorist commander. Hamas calls it a “massacre against women and children.” But residents say the family got both a warning call and a knock on the roof. An Israeli security official says Israeli forces didn’t fire their missile until the family had left the house. The official didn’t understand why some members of the family, and apparently their neighbors, went back inside. The residents say they were trying to “form a human shield.”

Human shields are a difficult problem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Hamas is responsible for civilian deaths in Gaza, because it deliberately sets up rocket launchers and military infrastructure in civilian areas. That excuse is too broad. The low death rate in this week’s airstrikes—and the explanations from Israeli officials as to how the casualty rate has been minimized—show that it’s possible to degrade Hamas’ military assets without killing hundreds of people.

The Khan Yunis scenario is different. There, the human shield was voluntary. According to Ha’aretz, an Israeli officer insisted on Wednesday morning that if other civilians followed this example—responding to prestrike warnings by going onto the roofs to form human shields—Israel wouldn’t be deterred. Maybe the officer was bluffing. But what if this scenario happens again? And what if the would-be martyrs appear on the roof while Israel still has time to avert the strike, which wasn’t the case in Khan Yunis? Would their deaths be homicide? Would they be suicide?

That’s a tough call. But anyone concerned about the deliberate targeting of civilians in this conflict should first look at Hamas. The rocket fire from Gaza into Israel began well before the Israeli assault on Gaza. Initially, the rockets were Islamic Jihad’s idea. But in the last few days, Hamas has joined in with gusto, claiming credit for missiles fired at several Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa.

Apologists for Hamas argue that its weapons are less precise than Israel’s, so collateral damage is inevitable. That won’t wash. Hamas now has longer-range missiles, known as M-302s or R-160s, that are more precise than its clumsy old Grad rockets. It has been firing the new missiles at cities anyway. Hamas has also flatly rejected the principle of sparing civilians. According to a Hamas spokesman, “All Israelis have now become legitimate targets.”

I’ve criticized Israel for demolishing the West Bank homes of suspected Arab terrorists. That policy is indefensible. But in the Gaza war, it’s clear that Israel has gone to great lengths to minimize civilian deaths. The same can’t be said of Hamas.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2014/07/gaza_civilian_casualties_while_hamas_targets_innocent_people_israel_tries.html

“Palestinian” Muslims cheer as Gaza rockets fly toward Israeli population centers

West Bank Palestinians cheered on Saturday as Hamas militants fired the largest salvo of rockets yet on the Tel Aviv area since the start of the recent escalations.

Hamas claimed responsibility for 10 rockets that were launched at Tel Aviv on Saturday but which caused no casualties or damage.

Sirens sounded across central Israel as people rushed for cover from the rockets. One group of youths sitting at the beach cheered as they saw a rocket intercepted in the night sky. In Gaza, Palestinians stood at rooftops chanting Allah Akbar (God is great), cries that also echoed over mosque loudspeakers.

The Iron Dome defense system intercepted three of the rockets over greater Tel Aviv and another struck an open area.

Hamas had broadcast a televised statement an hour before the salvo to say it was preparing a major attack on Tel Aviv. The Israeli military said it bombed the rocket launcher used for the salvo.

Minutes before the salvo launched, Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron gathered at a lookout point. When what appeared to be rockets streaked across the night sky, they chanted and cheered.

“Today we have come to see the rockets hitting our cities occupied since 1948 and to see these moments of dignity and pride carried out by the resistance in Gaza,” said one resident. “I invite everyone to come and watch the rockets, in order to confirm that the Palestinians are not weak, the Palestinians are strong. But because of the betrayals, and all that has happened in the past, now we are opening a new page for the resistance and Hebron will be the spark,” said another.

Later on Saturday night, the IAF struck the home in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza which contained a launcher used in the attack on the metropolitan Tel Aviv area.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/07/palestinian-Muslims-cheer-as-gaza-rockets-fly-toward-israeli-population-centers

Sometimes in conflict it is black and white, a clear dispute between good and evil.

Today, the United Nations, European Union, United States and others pressure Israel to accept a ceasefire with the terrorist organization Hamas.  They are asking Israel to accept terrorism and an organization that seeks to destroy the Jewish people. Perhaps in a sign of good faith and solidarity with the Middle East, America, the UK and other Western nations should stop attacking – and recognize and accept – the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas. Then perhaps they can approach Israel and ask Israel to do the same.

Terrorists seek to destroy Western civilization and are barbarians who target innocent people in their quest to kill and inflict violence.  Today, Israel is defending herself from thousands of rockets and attacks fired into all cities in the State of Israel.  All Israeli citizens are at risk and live under this threat of terror.  No sovereign nation should ever be asked to accept this —  and clearly the State of Israel will not.

Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish People. Along these lines, perhaps the lives of barbaric terrorists cannot be valued the same way as an actual human being.  One wonders why the media equates deaths of Hamas terrorists in Gaza with deaths in Israel. How many members of Hamas reside in Gaza – and is not that relevant when discussing the death toll? Why should Israel show restraint because the Iron Dome works?  What level of response is “proportionate” for protecting the lives of innocent people?

How many killed is not relevant in terms of determining who the aggressor is.  Nor is it relevant to determine who is good and who is bad.  One should hope that the good guys are stronger and win decisively. Was not America (and Britain) the aggressor against Germany & Japan during World War II?   And how many Germans & Japanese were killed by the aggressive army?

The Israel Defense Forces is the world’s most moral army, which defends innocent people.  They show tremendous restraint – even to the point of endangering their own at times.  Meanwhile, the enemy, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have constantly inflated the number of dead people during times of conflict.  And in this round, are none of the dead terrorists?  Why is it that seemingly every bomb fired by Israel hits a nursery school or baby milk factory or mosque? Yet, despite it all, Israel warns before it hits Gaza – as terrorists are granted shelter amongst the Palestinian Arab people.

Would one even ever imagine the Israeli Army hiding behind Israeli civilians?  Which group seeks destruction or devastation? No one in Israel seeks martyrs nor awaits 72 virgins in paradise. And if, heaven forbid, Israelis are killed in an attack, does the media then justify Israel stopping a terrorist organization on her borders devoted to eliminating the Jewish state?

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/the-number-of-hamas-arabs-vs-israeli-dead/

Muslim IDF officer: “From the age of zero I was told that Israel stole Palestine from us, but when I was 14 I woke up.”

“I am the operations officer at the IDF ground forces training base at Tze’elim,” Ala Wahib says at the start of our conversation, his eyes twinkling with excitement. “I am like the mother and father of that place,” he adds. “The only thing is that I don’t really have anyone to share it with, so I make sure to pat myself on the back every now and again, and say ‘dude, you’re awesome. Look how far you’ve come.’”

The truth is that he deserves these accolades. It is not every day that a Muslim Arab, hailing from a village whose residents largely do not recognize Israel’s right to exist, comes to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. And he doesn’t only serve: Major Wahib, 32, is currently the highest ranking Muslim officer in the IDF. He is enormously patriotic, a true Zionist. Precisely the kind of person we like to see lighting the torches during the national Independence Day ceremony every year.

But still, Wahib came to this interview with immense trepidation. Even today, after 12 years in the Israeli military, he still doesn’t feel comfortable openly discussing his views. For years he struggled on all fronts: he fought against the residents of his village, who to this day refer to him as a traitor, and he fought the military institution that never fully understood his motives.

Maj. Ala Wahib: “From the age of zero I was told that Israel stole Palestine from us, but when I was 14 I woke up.”



“In my village, they can’t understand what could possibly motivate me to protect a country that is not my own. In the army there are people who know me and would go all the way with me, but there are those who don’t know me and don’t really know how to relate to me,” he says.

So why did he decide to give this interview, with his face exposed and his full name in print? “Because it is important to me to show the Arab public what they are missing. There are quite a lot of people [in the Arab community] who want to enlist, but they are afraid and they don’t know if they will be accepted by their environment. It is important to me to show them the road I’ve traveled, and to make them understand that it is possible.” Regardless, he doesn’t take his hand off his gun for a second during the entire interview. “It is my security. It is my only means of protecting myself,” he says.

His Hebrew is fluent, without a hint of an accent, and he could easily be mistaken for an average Tel Avivian. A map of the training grounds hangs on his office wall, and his green eyes constantly sweep it, making sure again and again that everything is under control. Every once in a while a soldier will knock on the door, asking permission for this or that mission, and one of them, noticing the newspaper crew, can’t resist and says “write that he is the best commander there is.” Wahib tries to hide an embarrassed smile and tells the soldier to get his backside back to the field.

Maj. Ala Wahib, one of only two Muslim officers currently serving in the IDF

He describes himself as a “Zionist Israeli Arab.” Four years ago he went on a tour of Nazi extermination camps in Poland, together with his fellow officers, as part of the IDF’s Witnesses in Uniform program. “As a child,” he says, “I grew up in a society that denies the Holocaust. When I arrived in Poland I was shocked. I cried a lot. It was difficult to contain this thing called genocide. There was something very powerful in the fact that I was standing on Polish soil, holding an Israeli flag and donning the uniform of the Israeli army, but this time from a position of power. It was proof that we can’t be broken.”

When Wahib says “we” he means the Jewish people. “I believe in the Muslim faith, and I will never abandon it, but I think that Zionism is more than a religion. It is something that fully represents my sense of belonging to the State of Israel and to Israeli society, and the immense commitment I have to protecting and guarding the country of which I am part.”

Hold on a second. Doesn’t protecting Israel’s security mean fighting your own people?

“Look, I served in Lebanon, in Gaza and Judea and Samaria and I took part in plenty of clashes where my life was in danger. I never, not for a second, ever thought of leaving. I never asked myself ‘what am I doing here?’ As far as I am concerned, there is no other way.”

I never threw rocks

He was born in the village of Reineh in the Galillee, which currently houses some 17,000 residents, more than 80 percent of whom are Muslim. His father was born in Syria, and had two wives. Each wife had four children. Wahib is the second son of the second wife. Today he lives alone in the village, in a huge house that he built himself. The dichotomy that characterizes his life can easily be seen in his house: modern Israeli furniture side by side with traditional Arab pieces. Two statues of dogs welcome guests, perhaps as a warning to ill wishers to keep their distance.

His family lives on the other side of the village, and has no contact with him. “It is not because I went to the army,” he rushes to explain. “It would make sense for my family not to accept my enlistment, but that is the one thing they could actually live with. My father even supported me. The problem was that after he died, I met a Christian girl. My mother forbade the relationship, and the entire family exerted heavy pressure on us to break up. There were a lot of confrontations. I didn’t want it to become violent, so we had no choice but to split up. The way things look now, I don’t see how we could ever be together. That is why I severed ties with my family. The only family member I am still in touch with is, of all people, my father’s other wife and her children. They are now my only family.”

The price he pays for serving in the IDF is dear. It is a price he pays daily. He has no contact with any of the people in his village, and the only friends that ever visit are his colleagues from the army. “In Arab society it is customary to be involved in each other’s lives, there is no privacy,” he says sadly. “I often prefer the company of the cows that graze down here. They don’t judge me, they let me live my life in peace. I built this house to show everyone all that I’ve achieved – in our society the size of your house is a social status symbol. But today there is nothing tying me to this place. When people ask me where my home is, I immediately answer that my home is my room on the base.”

Why don’t you leave the village?

“I lived in Jewish communities for several years – in Yavne’el, Korazim and She’ar Yashuv. A year ago I returned to the village. I suppose I will leave again soon. You have probably noticed that I haven’t worked on the yard yet, and as long as there’s no garden, the home is a temporary one. I decorated this house with my Christian girlfriend. It is difficult for me to leave this house now – I have so many memories.”

The overwhelming majority of residents of Wahib’s village do not recognize Israel’s right to exist on “Palestinian land.” Wahib says that “from the age of zero I was told that Israel took Palestine away from us, so naturally I referred to myself as a citizen of Palestine. I didn’t recognize the Israeli flag, and I certainly didn’t see myself as part of the country. Every once in a while I would take part in an anti-Israel demonstration, but I never threw rocks.”

He woke up, he says, when he was 14 years old and began studying at the technological high school in Nazareth – a Christian boarding school. There he was exposed to the modern world for the first time. The distance from the village and the family, during these teenage years when one develops an identity, took its course.

“The Christian Arabs’ culture is similar to the Europeans’. They are less fanatic and far more modern than the Muslims. The lessons at the school followed Education Ministry guidelines, and I suddenly discovered a world that I never knew existed. I discovered that the Jews weren’t as bad as I was told growing up. I discovered that they have a good side that I am drawn to. I identified with their principles and the way they protect one another. I felt that I wanted to become a part of this country.”

At the age of 18 he approached a human resources company, looking for a job. He was sent to the Rabintex factory in Beit She’an to manufacture defense gear. “I would manufacture helmets and flak jackets and I would sew bulletproof vests. That is where I began to see things differently, to think differently. That is also where I began speaking Hebrew. You could say that I really emerged from the bubble I had been living in. My eyes were opened wide and when that happens, it is very difficult to close them again.”

The call up

Wahib put in a request with the IDF to enlist. “Once every few weeks I would travel to the IDF recruitment office in Tiberias to find out why I wasn’t being called up. The only answer I received was ‘you have to wait. There is no answer yet.’ At one point I gave up. I decided to register for automotive engineering studies at a college in Haifa.

“Suddenly, one bright morning, after two years of waiting, the army called. I will never forget that moment. They said ‘get to the induction center in two days.’ I had no idea what an induction center was. I didn’t know what to bring. I didn’t have anyone to ask, either. I said goodbye to my parents, threw some underwear and a towel in a bag and took off.”

As a volunteer, Wahib requested to serve in the Nahal. Not because he knew what the Nahal was, but because he had once heard a friend say it was a good unit. “When I was at the induction center, I thought that those commanders would determine my future in the IDF so I thought it was important to impress them. For a whole week I did everything the drill sergeant could possibly ask, I volunteered for every kitchen duty, I cleaned up cigarette butts without even being asked to, just so they would let me go to Nahal. I refused to go to any other unit. I don’t know if that is what did it, but ultimately I was sent to Nahal boot camp. There was no one happier than me.”

As fate would have it, Wahib’s first days in the IDF were during a particularly tempestuous time in Israel – the Second Intifada. Riots broke out in his village and neighboring villages across the Galilee. “The fear was insane, and I had quite a few doubts about even staying in the army. One of the dangers was going home in uniform. I remember that the army suggested that I change into civilian clothes at the bus station to avoid confrontations. But it was very clear to me that I was going all the way with the truth I believed. I still used side roads, however, so as to run into as few people as possible.”

“I still remember, to this day, the looks I would get. Children would follow me around calling me ‘Jew’ and ‘traitor’ and very quickly I realized that it was better to be smart than to be right. I tried to come home late at night, to draw as little fire as possible.

Do you still avoid walking around the village in uniform?

“Yes. I don’t want to stir up trouble. I sometimes come home late at night, starving, and I want to stop at the convenience store to buy something to eat but I don’t dare do it in uniform. By the time I go home and change I don’t have the energy to go out again. I remember one time when I couldn’t resist and I came into the village with an Israeli flag attached to my car. I was sure that someone would take it down, but it was still there in the morning.”

And how were you treated by the soldiers?

“There were always those who were afraid to get close to me, and didn’t speak to me, calling me ‘Arab.’ But anyone who served with me knew that I was with them all the way. At the end of the day, these people who slept next to me on adjacent beds were my family. They ate with me, and they shared with me all the goodies they got in care packages from home.”

Wahib, for his part, still with very little Hebrew and a heavy Arabic accent at the time, realized that he would have to work much harder than anyone else to be accepted into this family. “I worked my ass off. I carried people. I spit up blood. I completed almost every level of the army with honors. Suddenly I heard that people were talking about me everywhere. I realized that I was good.”

Despite his successes, he knew that wherever he went, and as many honors as he got, his ethnic background would always be with him and never let him go. Instead of going to the Nahal’s reconnaissance platoon, which is considered more elite, he was sent to the Granite Battalion. That is where he first learned about his security clearance, and what a huge obstacle his background posed. “I completed boot camp with honors, and guys who weren’t nearly as good as me were accepted into the reconnaissance unit, and I wasn’t. I was deeply insulted, demanding answers from my commanding officer, and I refused to back down until he told me that it was because of my security clearance.”

He completed his preparatory officer’s training third in his brigade, but again, because of security clearance, he was not allowed to go to the officer’s training course. His feelings were hurt and he asked for some time off. He sat at home and waited. “I had a major crisis,” he says, and the scars are still evident. “I almost gave up and got myself discharged. I couldn’t understand how I was giving my all and getting nothing but endless obstacles in return. I couldn’t understand why I kept having to prove my loyalty over and over again.”

Wahib sat at home for a week and waited for answers. Finally, he was given the go ahead for the officer’s training and he was over the moon. After he completed the officer’s training course he went back to the Granite Battalion to command over boot camp at the same base where he got his start. Knowing that he would have a hand in shaping the future generation of IDF soldiers gave him immense satisfaction. “It was the first time that I had fighters under my command, 56 guys, and I learned the true meaning of leadership. I got soldiers who just enlisted, and I groomed them and raised them to be the type of soldiers that I want them to be,” he says proudly. “I actually left my mark on them.”

No one will ever catch me off guard

In the various command posts that he has filled, Wahib has found himself in complex situations many times. One such situation occurred when he was appointed operations officer of the Southern Gaza Territorial Brigade (Katif Brigade) just as the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza was underway. “I would stand in front of Jews, and they didn’t believe that I was there to protect them. The situation was extremely charged. In retrospect, I think I managed to get through it without any extraordinary clashes.”

After a year and a half in the post, Wahib left the Nahal for the first time and served as a trainer at the National Urban Training Center (known by its Hebrew acronym MALI). This is where he first became acquainted with all the different units that use the facility for training. After another year and a half, he served as an operations officer in Judea and Samaria.

“I found myself in Judea and Samaria, dealing with a fanatic Arab population and a Jewish population who was there because of their beliefs, and they both hate each other. I think that it was there, of all places, that the fact that I was Arab gave me an advantage. I was often able to accurately assess the situation thanks to my understanding of Arab mentality.”

“One day, a young Arab woman arrived at the checkpoint with a knife and tried to stab a soldier. When I was called to the scene she burst into tears and showed me her body. It was covered with black and blue marks. I understood that she had been severely beaten at home for having soiled the family’s honor and that she didn’t really want to kill a soldier. It was just her way of getting away from her family. She preferred to be in an Israeli jail rather than going back home, possibly to her death.”

“When I understood that, though I really couldn’t justify what she had done, I tried to help her. Her family came to the checkpoint to retrieve her, and I literally protected her with my body. They beat me and spit on me. At one point I had to call for backup just to end the incident. The girl was ultimately arrested, but I have no doubt that my interference had saved her. That is just one example of a situation that could have easily ended differently.”

About seven months later, Wahib began training to become a company commander and was appointed to a command post in the Caracal Battalion, which operates along the Egypt border. From there he made his way to Tze’elim. Since 2009 he has served as the deputy commander of the IDF’s Urban Warfare Branch. “All the IDF units, including reserves units, even the most elite, have been trained by me,” he says with unabashed pride.

Have you ever felt that the soldiers under you command doubted your leadership?

“Not even once. I think that I have excellent leadership abilities, and I see the bigger picture, precisely because of where I come from. I have always struggled and worked very hard not to let anyone ever catch me off guard. On nights before giving a lecture to soldiers I would sit at the base and study like crazy all night long, just so they would not catch me unprepared. I think I have also passed my tenacity on to my soldiers.”

Wahib was only appointed to the post of operations officer at Tze’elim last week. His seat is not even warm yet, but to an outside observer he looks like he has been sitting in it for a long time. He has a firm grip on every training area under his command, and he explains that “MALI is one of the bases with the most live fire training facilities. I am responsible for all the training facilities at Tze’elim where training and drills take place. I have to be fully synchronized with everyone all the time, to avoid a situation in which two units train at the same facility at the same time. That could be disastrous. And there are a lot of Bedouin here too who infiltrate the live fire training grounds to collect shells and sell them later, and I have to make sure that this doesn’t happen during a live training exercise. It is a lot of responsibility.”

Wahib “is one of the best officers in the IDF,” says Lt. Col. Itzik Cohen, who currently serves as the commander of the Givati training base, but served as Wahib’s commander for the last three years. “He sacrificed a lot in order to be where he is today, went through a lot of anguish, and I will go out on a limb and say that woe is the IDF if it fails to hug him and welcome him and keep him in the army. I did, and will do, everything in my power to keep him in the system. We don’t let good people go that easily. Wahib got an opportunity to prove himself in a very important, key post. It is exactly the kind of post one gets promoted from. I believe in him.”

Wahib is under contract to serve for another year. During this year, he hopes to get promoted to a post that will keep him in the military. He wants to get as far as possible in the ranks, but the fear of disappointment lets him dream of only one achievement at a time. “I hope to make lieutenant colonel and continue in a core post,” he says.

His eventual discharge worries him. “My uniform, my rank, my officer’s card – these are my VIP ticket into Israeli society, they protect me. When I take off my uniform and go back to being a regular citizen, I will once again have to deal with the fact that I am an Arab citizen in the State of Israel.”

Do you believe that things will change in the future, and that you won’t need a VIP ticket to protect you one day?

“The State of Israel has a lot of different colors. There is a wide variety. Two peoples live here, and the sooner we recognize it, the faster we can minimize the damage. I think that the fact that I am an officer in the IDF communicates a positive message to the Arabs living here. I want to believe that the path that I chose will prove to them that there is another way. My nephew and my cousin enlisted in the Border Police this year, for example. I support them and I help them, with my experience.”

“I feel that I am on a mission. I hope that in the future there will be a lot more Muslim Arab officers in the IDF, and that by virtue of us being human beings we will find a way to communicate and find solutions for a shared life.”

In recent years, hundreds of individuals from ethnic minorities have enlisted in the IDF every year. The IDF personnel branch reports that the numbers have tripled in five years. Of the minorities that serve, 65% are Bedouin, 20% are Christians, and 15% (just a few dozen) are Muslim. The Muslim communities that yield the most soldiers are Nazareth, Dir al-Assad, Bi’ina and Reineh. According to IDF statistics, there are two Arab officers currently serving in the IDF, and only one, Ala Wahib, in a core post. A female Muslim officer was recently discharged from the Air Force. Fifteen Muslim Arabs and 14 Christian Arabs have been killed over the years while serving in the IDF.

http://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/Muslim-idf-officer-from-the-age-of-zero-i-was-told-that-israel-stole-palestine-from-us-but-when-i-was-14-i-woke-up/

Israel Is the Victim of Mohammed’s War Against the Jews

Hamas isn’t shooting rockets at the Jews because of persecution, isolation or occupation. The Sunni Islamic terrorist group is doing it for the same reason that Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other in Iraq and Syria. And why its Muslim Brotherhood core group is killing Christians in Egypt.

To understand why, let’s step into a time machine and go back to the spring of 632. The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius is engaged in the first of a series of wars with Mohammed’s maddened followers. England is divided into seven quarreling kingdoms. Across the water, the Merovingians are killing each other in ways that would give George R.R. Martin nightmares. Meanwhile in a more civilized part of the world, China’s fading Sui Dynasty fields an army of over a million men in a failed effort to invade Korea.

Back in Medina, Mohammed had come down with the sniffles. He had a fever and a headache and there wasn’t any Tylenol around for miles. Mohammed hadn’t been a very good man and he made a very bad patient. Upon being told that he had pleurisy, he claimed that only people possessed by Satan came down with that disease so he couldn’t possibly have it and instead blamed the Jews for poisoning him.

His own homemade cures, such as bathing in seven skins of water from seven different wells, didn’t help. But before he died, he managed to make the Middle East an even worse place by ordering the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians.

“Two deens (religions) shall not co-exist in the Arabian Peninsula,” Mohammed declared. “If I live, if Allah wills, I will expel the Jews and the Christians from the Arabian Peninsula.”

There could be only one.

Mohammed didn’t live, but that didn’t matter. His bigotry had long ago been coded into the theological DNA of Islam. Islam isn’t built on matters of the spirit, but the sword. Its theological proof is in the Muslim supremacist subjugation of non-Muslims.

The Bible begins with the creation of the universe. The Koran starts off with curses and threats aimed at non-Muslims and Muslims who aren’t Muslim enough. There is no greater contrast between the sublime and the tawdry than G-d creating the universe and Allah yelling at his followers like a frustrated fishwife with a bad temper.

Over a thousand years later, Muslims are still killing each other, along with Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and countless others, to prove that their flavor of Islam is right and everyone else’s religion is wrong.

Theological consensus can only be achieved by the suicide bomber, the sniper, the Sarin nerve gas shell and the death squad. If England and France have come a long way since then, the Middle East hasn’t. Mohammed’s way or the highway is still the rule of the road. And Mohammed’s way is whatever the man with the most guns and Korans says it is.

Destroying Israel has nothing to do with the so-called plight of the so-called Palestinians. They weren’t an issue in June 632. It was about oppressing and killing Jews then. It’s about the same thing now.

Israel’s critics start the historical record in 1948 while insisting that before that everyone lived in peace. They zoom in on a country that could be dropped into New Jersey without inconveniencing Jersey Shore surfers while ignoring all the Muslims around it killing each other and any surviving non-Muslims that still haven’t run away.

The truth about what is happening in Israel becomes obvious if you pull back to take in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. And after viewing those three bloody battlefields, we can go on a little tour of the region.

In Algeria, Muslims are protesting the possible reopening of a synagogue because it will “Judaize” the country. Most of the synagogues have already been seized and turned into mosques.

In 1994, the Armed Islamic Group vowed to eliminate Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims whom it accused of “colonizing” Algeria. That same year it met with Bin Laden. Its plot to crash an Air France jet on Christmas Eve into the Eiffel Tower was said to have inspired September 11.

Over 1,300 years after Mohammed called for the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians, Muslims were still carrying out his will.

In Yemen, a handful of Jews still live in a ghetto. Between a third and two-thirds had already died in the 17th century after they were ethnically cleansed due to yet another deathbed decree from an Islamic leader. The dying Imam Isma’il based this on Mohammed’s original ethnic cleansing Hadith from 632.

Events like these were and are the normal course of life for Jews under the shadow of Mohammed.

Hamas is not firing rockets at Jews because of some tricky bit of territory that can be swapped at the negotiating table. Its charter, like the Koran, begins by cursing the Jews. It declares that “Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it”.

Not Palestine, Islam. Not the 1948 territories, but everything. Article Seven envisions an end times genocide that will entirely eliminate the Jews. “The Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”

The source of that is not some distressed refugee from Gaza. It’s another ancient Islamic Hadith.

Ignorance of history is the greatest ally of Islamic terror.

The rockets falling on Jews are only the latest phase in an ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing by Muslim colonists against the indigenous peoples of the Middle East. It’s a campaign that long predates any territorial debates about the West Bank and Gaza.

The same is true of September 11 and 7/7, both of which emerged from an Islamic theocratic worldview rooted in the seventh century that predates the United States and the United Kingdom. The causes of Islamic terror are not rooted in the recent present, but the ancient past.

And it is this past and its burden of bigotry that we are fighting.

The world has changed a great deal since June 632, but the Middle East hasn’t. The armies of Islamic raiders have traded camels and horses for pickup trucks. They recite their boasts over Twitter and share their grisly trophies using smartphones. But the fundamental attitude that drives their violence has been preserved in museum quality terror.

Israel’s critics are at war with context. They want to talk about Gaza, not Hamas. They don’t want to talk about the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood which Hamas is part of. They don’t want to talk about the Muslim Brotherhood’s invasion of Israel in 1948. They don’t want to address the Muslim Brotherhood’s declaration that “Jews are the historic enemies of Muslims”. Or its Secretary General’s statement that “Every Jew is a Zionist… the Zionist question is but a Jewish question with all that the word entails.”

“Would they (Muslims) fight the Jews as he had fought them and eject them from the Holy Land… as their ancestors had ejected them from the Arab Peninsula?”Secretary General Salih Ashmawi asked.

Once again everything returned to Mohammed’s original sin of ethnic cleansing.

Instead of pretending that a few territorial concessions by Jews to the regional Sunni Muslim majority will change anything, we have to address the political and religious territories of 632. Unless Muslims reject that ugly act of ethnic cleansing, their cycle of supremacist violence against Jews and Christians will continue

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/israel-is-the-victim-of-mohammeds-war-against-the-jews/