Today's Example of Ridiculous Media Bias Against Israel

Today's Example of Ridiculous Media Bias Against Israel
By Barry Rubin

Along Israel's border with Lebanon, east of Metulla, some bushes were pushing in on the border fence. The fence is set in slightly from the border precisely so that Israeli soldiers can work on it. The IDF called UNIFIL and informed the UN that this work was going to be done today so that they could tell the Lebanese army that there was no aggression going on but just routine maintenance. Soldiers from UNIFIL came to observe and can be seen standing next to Israeli soldiers in the photos. Photographers were also standing by to film the operation.

But Lebanese soldiers opened fire on the Israelis who were working and in no way acting aggressively. The fact that journalists were standing next to the Lebanese soldiers shows that they knew Israel was going to do this maintenance and were observing. After the Israeli soldiers were ambushed, they returned fire. One Israeli officer was killed, another seriously wounded; three Lebanese soldiers, and a Lebanese (?) journalist were killed.

So how did Reuters and Yahoo report this? By saying that Israeli soldiers had crossed into Lebanon and been fired on, thus implying the Lebanese army was acting in self-defense! Other news agencies merely reported: Israel says the soldiers were inside Israel; Lebanon says they were on Lebanese territory.

Reuters: "An Israeli soldier is seen on a crane on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Israeli border near Adaisseh village, southern Lebanon August 3, 2010. Israeli artillery shelled the Lebanese village on Tuesday, wounding two people, after Lebanese Army troops fired warning shots at Israeli soldiers."

Yahoo: "A Lebanese officer spoke on condition of anonymity under military guidelines, said the clash occurred as Israeli troops tried to remove a tree from the Lebanese side of the border." No Israeli is quoted.

AP also missed explaining the story properly: "The violence apparently erupted over a move by Israeli soldiers to cut down a tree along the border, a sign of the high level of tensions at the frontier where Israel fought in 2006 with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah....There was no sign of any extensive Israeli preparations for a large-scale operation - an early indication the clash might not trigger a wider conflict."

By the way, AP was so "accurate" as to correct the name of their photographer but not the biased inaccuracy of its facts!

The New York Times also takes a "neutral" approach: "Each side blamed the other for the flare-up, trading accusations of violating the United Nations Security Council resolution that underpins the four-year cease-fire." But what is most amazing is the additional information that tells us more about contemporary journalism than almost anything you can read:

"Israel said that its forces were engaged in routine maintenance work in a gap between the so-called Blue Line, the internationally recognized border, and its security fence, and that it had coordinated in advance with the United Nations peacekeeping force in South Lebanon, Unifil."

Hello? Can't the mighty New York Times contact the UNIFIL offices and find out that Israel's story is true? Indeed, isn't it indicated by the UNIFIL presence as observer? Well, it isn't surprising since the same newspaper is unable to find the evidence, publicly available, that the Turkish IHH group that organized the Gaza flotilla had a history of being a terrorist-supporting group.

Oh, and then there's this amazing little example of bias in the article:

"Israeli and Lebanese army troops exchanged lethal fire on their countries' border on Tuesday, in what was the fiercest clash in the area since Israel's monthlong war against the Lebanese Hezbollah militia in the summer of 2006."

So, there's no mention of the cause of the war: a Hizballah attack into Israeli territory, killing several Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two who were taken into Lebanon. According to the great "newspaper of record," Accorfing to the Times, Israel just arbitrarily attacked Lebanon in 2006, just as it is said to be doing in 2010.

The truth, however, is easy to ascertain--did Israel announce the maintenance, permit the photographers and UN people to watch and then cross deliberately into Lebanon?--but Israel is being portrayed as an aggressor that caused the outbreak of fighting. So millions of people will either believe that Israel was at fault or that the event is in question.

The narrative, however, is simple: In an unprovoked attack, Lebanese soldiers fired on Israelis and murdered one soldier.

If the mass media cannot get this right how can it report accurately on other situations like the following:

2000: Israel offers to return the entire Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for full peace. Syria refuses.

2000: Israel offers to accept an independent Palestinian state in all of the Gaza Strip, almost all of the West Bank, and most of east Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority refuses.

2008: Hamas tears up a ceasefire, begins massive mortar and rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, Israel defends itself.

2010: A Turkish pro-terrorist organization trying to help Hamas, a genocidal and antisemitic terrorist group, sends self-described jihadis on a ship who chant slogans about killing Jews and being Jihadi martyrs. When Israeli soldiers land, the Jihad warriors attack them with weapons and kidnap several. Israeli forces rescue the soldiers, killing nine attackers in the operation.

Note, though, that the Times discounted the video of Israeli soldiers being attacked by claiming--with no evidence--that perhaps Israeli forces had been shooting beorehand at unarmed civilians on the ship!

But if the media cannot even get right a previously announced, UN-approved, maintenance activity on Israeli territory then what hope is their getting right anything more complex?

Here's a video of the attack from Reuters.

To its credit, the Canadian Broadcasting Company issued a correction saying that the tree's location is disputed and changing the photo caption to say the tree is "near" the border rather than on the Lebanese side.

We now have a UNIFIL official on record as saying that the Israeli soldiers who were attacked were on Israeli territory. Which mainstream media outlets will or won't cover this fact?

* Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict, and Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan), Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle East (Routledge), The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition) (Viking-Penguin), the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan), A Chronological History of Terrorism (Sharpe), and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).

The Mainstream Media Supports Obama’s Anti-Semetic Agenda

The Mainstream Media Supports Obama’s Anti-Semetic Agenda
Posted on July 14, 2010 by admin
Thanks to MD Israel for this article – Sadly Jews have been ignored by the so called “mainstream” media in many of these discussions on racism and Barack Obama’s Muslim sympathies. That said I cannot for their life of me figure why so many liberal American Jews support this enabler of terror against them and the state of Israel. Support of this anti-Semite enabler might be considered as a betrayal of their own blood. Just my opinion….Bill McCullough

” Anti-Semitism has no historical, political and certainly no philosophical origins. Anti-Semitism is a disease.”

Daniel Barenboim

Barack Hussein Obama The cultural Muslim

By Jeffery T. Kuhner - Washington Times

President Obama is betraying the Jews. He is a cultural Muslim whose sympathies lie with the Islamic world in its life-death struggle against Israel. Unless American Jews wake up and speak out against Mr. Obama’s pro-Arab, anti-Israel policies, the Jewish state faces a possible nuclear war – and even annihilation.
Mr. Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week. The goal: to repair the public rift in relations between Washington and Jerusalem.

“The bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable,” Mr. Obama said. “It encompasses our national security interests, our strategic interests, but most importantly the bond of two democracies who share a common set of values and whose people have grown closer and closer as time goes on.”

Don’t believe him. In front of reporters, Mr. Obama may praise the Jewish state. But behind the scenes, he is selling the Jews down the river.

According to a recent story in World Tribune, a prominent intelligence news website, administration officials have assured the Saudi royal family that Mr. Obama is determined to pressure Mr. Netanyahu into accepting an independent Palestinian state encompassing the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. Mr. Obama – like many in the Arab world – believes that the key to Middle East peace is resolving the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

It isn’t. Rather, an independent Palestine will be an Islamic stake aimed at the heart of the Jewish state. Israel’s withdrawal to pre-1967 borders will leave Jerusalem vulnerable to an all-out military assault. The Arabs will have the strategic means to implement their overriding ambition since the creation of Israel in 1948: wiping out the Jews.

Why the Death of Israel Wouldn't Slow Anti-U.S. Terrorism
IPT News
July 12, 2010


A fairly dishonest discussion about the root causes of Islamist terrorism is being pushed with renewed vigor. It is based on the false claim that American support for Israel fuels the terrorism targeting us.

At best, this is academically dishonest, ignoring a laundry list of grievances that has been used to justify terrorism.

Yet, as Americans celebrated Independence Day, Thaddeus Russell took to the pages of the Daily Beast to argue just that. In an article titled, "Does Israel Make Us Safer?," Russell puts the issue bluntly:

"There was not a single act of Arab terrorism against Americans before 1968, when the U.S. became the chief supplier of military equipment and economic aid to Israel. In light of this fact, it's difficult to credibly sustain the argument that Arab terrorism is spawned by Islam's alleged promotion of violence and antipathy toward American culture or by a 'natural Arab anti-Semitism.'"

That's not exactly true, as others have pointed out. And it ignores the words terrorists themselves have used to explain their motivation.

A look at recent terror attempts finds American support for Israel nowhere in the picture. Instead, terrorists describe their belief that America is at war with Islam. They want to strike back, or to stop Americans from fighting Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, or to punish them for having done so.

That's what would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad said in his defiant guilty plea in federal court last month. "It's a war," he told the court. "I'm going to plead guilty a hundred times over because until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and stops the drone strikes ... we will be attacking the U.S. And I plead guilty to that."

Nidal Hasan gunned down 13 soldiers at Fort Hood because he felt he had to stop them from going to battle zones where they might kill his fellow Muslims. His spiritual mentor, radical Yemeni cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki, called Hasan "a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people."

Russell is but one voice pushing the theory about American support for Israel despite evidence to the contrary. During the annual Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conference July 4th weekend in Chicago, speaker Paul Larudee called the Palestinian issue the most important to resolve, arguing that while "people are constantly talking about terrorism," the Palestinian issue "is at the bottom of many of the problems that our community is facing. It's at the root of the problems we are facing in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Yemen and in the United States."

Fellow panelist Hatem Bazian called Israel's 2008 war with Hizballah in Lebanon "a poster recruitment for terrorism," because "they see that the one-sided U.S. policy is failing them and therefore they feel that militarization and going through terrorism is the only option."

National Islamist organizations have pushed this line for years. At a March 2006 fundraising dinner in Anaheim, "Sami Al-Arian Banquet Dinner," Ali Mazrui of the American Muslim Alliance (AMA) Policy Committee said that Israel's "militarism" triggered the terrorism against it and the United States:

"Israeli repression and militarism provoke suicide bombers and give rise to movements like Hamas and Al Qaeda. The Israeli atrocities and repression cause terrorism in the United States, and terrorism in turn threatens civil liberties in America….The behavior of the State of Israel threatens not merely democracy within the Jewish state; Israel threatens democracy in America as well."

At a January 2009 program at Masjid Omar al Farouk in Anaheim, entitled "Gaza, Jerusalem and Palestine: What You Need to Know," Hussam Ayloush of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the perception that America is Israel's "partner in the crimes" against Muslims makes us an enemy ripe for targeting by terrorists:

"We tend to forget that actually the terrorists who committed the September 11 attacks, one of the main grievances they raised, almost the only one they raised, what was it? Palestine. They said it was because of the U.S.'s unconditional support of Israel that we're doing this."

Reading these statements, one would think that the panacea to America's problems—or at least the end of terrorism aimed at America—is simple. Cease support for Israel, even if that allows Islamist extremists to destroy it. After that, radical Islamists and terrorists like Al Qaeda will leave us alone.

While Israeli action, or the country's mere existence, may indeed serve as a source of motivation for some terrorists, it is not the primary cause. For proof, look no further than a 1998 fatwa issued by the World Islamic Front, widely considered to be synonymous with Al Qaeda, calling on Muslims "to kill Americans and their allies-civilians and military." The primary justifications for the edict?

"First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million…despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation. So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans' aim behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula."
A plain-text reading of the fatwa suggests that America's support for Israel constitutes one half of one of the three main justifications of terrorism. The fatwa places far more emphasis on justifying terrorism against Americans who are "the crusaders" and are "occupying" and "plundering" Muslim lands such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Even when Osama bin Laden talks about Palestine, analysts believe it is at least partially a cynical play at popular support. He started speaking more exclusively about Palestine in 2008, prompting Nigel Inkster, Director of Transnational Threats and Political Risk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, to note the shift came as Al Qaeda in Iraq was defeated.

In addition, many Muslims turned against it after Al Qaeda attacks killed so many fellow Muslims.

"Al Qaeda could now be preparing its followers for a strategic failure in Iraq," Inkster told the BBC. "It therefore needs a rallying cry and Palestine is a no-brainer."

A Slate magazine article reached a similar conclusion four years earlier:

"Bin Laden continues to emphasize the plight of the Palestinians, as he has since the second intifada broke out in 2000, because he knows that is a bigger winner for him with ordinary Muslims than the corruption of the Saudi monarchy, his old hobbyhorse."

Arguments like Russell's fail to address the threat posed by Islamic terror to Western countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, Australia, Canada, Bosnia, India, and so many others that do not significantly support Israel. It also ignores the threat of terrorism faced by the Philippines by Abu Sayyaf and to Somalia by al Shabaab—a violence that is unrelated to Israel but shares a foundation of Islamist extremism.

Then there are the global aspirations for many hardcore Islamists. They want a Caliphate, a world ruled by Islamic law, and will do what it takes to create that. Take Abu Hamsa al-Masri, an imam jailed in England for inciting murder, and wanted by the U.S. for terror charges. In addition to coveting global sharia law, al-Masri's interpretation of Koranic verses allows for open season on non-Muslims, or the Kaffir.

"Killing of the Kaffir for any reason you can say it is OK, even if there is no reason for it," he has said, advocating a variety of means from poisoning to ambushes. "You must have a stand with your heart, with your tongue, with your money, with your hand, with your sword, with your Kalashnikov. Don't ask shall I do this, just do it."

Does such a blood lust die if America abandoned a long-standing ally? Not likely.



Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2054/why-the-death-of-israel-wouldnt-slow-anti-us

Why Is Israel Blamed For Terror Attacks on America?

Why Is Israel Blamed For Terror Attacks on America?
Steve Emerson


A fairly dishonest discussion about the root causes of Islamist terrorism is being pushed with renewed vigor. It is based on the false claim that American support for Israel fuels the terrorism targeting us.

At best, this is academically dishonest, ignoring a laundry list of grievances that has been used to justify terrorism.

Yet, as Americans celebrated Independence Day, Thaddeus Russell took to the pages of the Daily Beast to argue just that. In an article titled, "Does Israel Make Us Safer?," Russell puts the issue bluntly:

"There was not a single act of Arab terrorism against Americans before 1968, when the U.S. became the chief supplier of military equipment and economic aid to Israel. In light of this fact, it's difficult to credibly sustain the argument that Arab terrorism is spawned by Islam's alleged promotion of violence and antipathy toward American culture or by a 'natural Arab anti-Semitism.'"

That's not exactly true, as others have pointed out. And it ignores the words terrorists themselves have used to explain their motivation.

A look at recent terror attempts finds American support for Israel nowhere in the picture. Instead, terrorists describe their belief that America is at war with Islam. They want to strike back, or to stop Americans from fighting Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, or to punish them for having done so.

That's what would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad said in his defiant guilty plea in federal court last month. "It's a war," he told the court. "I'm going to plead guilty a hundred times over because until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and stops the drone strikes ... we will be attacking the U.S. And I plead guilty to that."

Nidal Hasan gunned down 13 soldiers at Fort Hood because he felt he had to stop them from going to battle zones where they might kill his fellow Muslims. His spiritual mentor, radical Yemeni cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki, called Hasan "a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people."

Russell is but one voice pushing the theory about American support for Israel despite evidence to the contrary. During the annual Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conference July 4th weekend in Chicago, speaker Paul Larudee called the Palestinian issue the most important to resolve, arguing that while "people are constantly talking about terrorism," the Palestinian issue "is at the bottom of many of the problems that our community is facing. It's at the root of the problems we are facing in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Yemen and in the United States."

Fellow panelist Hatem Bazian called Israel's 2008 war with Hizballah in Lebanon "a poster recruitment for terrorism," because "they see that the one-sided U.S. policy is failing them and therefore they feel that militarization and going through terrorism is the only option."

National Islamist organizations have pushed this line for years. At a March 2006 fundraising dinner in Anaheim, "Sami Al-Arian Banquet Dinner," Ali Mazrui of the American Muslim Alliance (AMA) Policy Committee said that Israel's "militarism" triggered the terrorism against it and the United States:

"Israeli repression and militarism provoke suicide bombers and give rise to movements like Hamas and Al Qaeda. The Israeli atrocities and repression cause terrorism in the United States, and terrorism in turn threatens civil liberties in America….The behavior of the State of Israel threatens not merely democracy within the Jewish state; Israel threatens democracy in America as well."

At a January 2009 program at Masjid Omar al Farouk in Anaheim, entitled "Gaza, Jerusalem and Palestine: What You Need to Know," Hussam Ayloush of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the perception that America is Israel's "partner in the crimes" against Muslims makes us an enemy ripe for targeting by terrorists:

"We tend to forget that actually the terrorists who committed the September 11 attacks, one of the main grievances they raised, almost the only one they raised, what was it? Palestine. They said it was because of the U.S.'s unconditional support of Israel that we're doing this."

Reading these statements, one would think that the panacea to America's problems—or at least the end of terrorism aimed at America—is simple. Cease support for Israel, even if that allows Islamist extremists to destroy it. After that, radical Islamists and terrorists like Al Qaeda will leave us alone.

While Israeli action, or the country's mere existence, may indeed serve as a source of motivation for some terrorists, it is not the primary cause. For proof, look no further than a 1998 fatwa issued by the World Islamic Front, widely considered to be synonymous with Al Qaeda, calling on Muslims "to kill Americans and their allies-civilians and military." The primary justifications for the edict?

•"First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

•Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million…despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation. So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.

•Third, if the Americans' aim behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula."

A plain-text reading of the fatwa suggests that America's support for Israel constitutes one half of one of the three main justifications of terrorism. The fatwa places far more emphasis on justifying terrorism against Americans who are "the crusaders" and are "occupying" and "plundering" Muslim lands such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Even when Osama bin Laden talks about Palestine, analysts believe it is at least partially a cynical play at popular support. He started speaking more exclusively about Palestine in 2008, prompting Nigel Inkster, Director of Transnational Threats and Political Risk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, to note the shift came as Al Qaeda in Iraq was defeated.

In addition, many Muslims turned against it after Al Qaeda attacks killed so many fellow Muslims.
"Al Qaeda could now be preparing its followers for a strategic failure in Iraq," Inkster told the BBC. "It therefore needs a rallying cry and Palestine is a no-brainer."

A Slate magazine article reached a similar conclusion four years earlier:

"Bin Laden continues to emphasize the plight of the Palestinians, as he has since the second intifada broke out in 2000, because he knows that is a bigger winner for him with ordinary Muslims than the corruption of the Saudi monarchy, his old hobbyhorse."

Arguments like Russell's fail to address the threat posed by Islamic terror to Western countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, Australia, Canada, Bosnia, India, and so many others that do not significantly support Israel. It also ignores the threat of terrorism faced by the Philippines by Abu Sayyaf and to Somalia by al Shabaab—a violence that is unrelated to Israel but shares a foundation of Islamist extremism.

Then there are the global aspirations for many hardcore Islamists. They want a Caliphate, a world ruled by Islamic law, and will do what it takes to create that. Take Abu Hamsa al-Masri, an imam jailed in England for inciting murder, and wanted by the U.S. for terror charges. In addition to coveting global sharia law, al-Masri's interpretation of Koranic verses allows for open season on non-Muslims, or the Kaffir.

"Killing of the Kaffir for any reason you can say it is OK, even if there is no reason for it," he has said, advocating a variety of means from poisoning to ambushes. "You must have a stand with your heart, with your tongue, with your money, with your hand, with your sword, with your Kalashnikov. Don't ask shall I do this, just do it."

Does such a blood lust die if America abandoned a long-standing ally? Not likely.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Steve Emerson is an internationally recognized expert on terrorism and national security and the author of five books on these subjects, most recently "Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the US." Steve also writes for the Counterterrorism Blog.

Jihad means one thing - violence

BOSTOM: John Brennan: Witless for the defense
Jihad means one thing - violence
By Andrew Bostom
7:54 p.m., Monday, July 12, 2010

A dry pun asks, "When is a door not a door?" - the answer being, "When it is ajar." But dry humor is clearly preferable to the deluded warping of the lexicon by the Obama administration's lead counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, which leads to this question, and requisite answer, "When is jihad not jihad?" - "When it is bloodless, spiritual struggle." Mr. Brennan vociferously advocates an exclusive, bowdlerized definition of jihad in the public discourse as "to purify oneself or one's community," lest the tender sensibilities of Muslims be offended. He further claims that, somehow, self-described jihadists "have truly just distorted the whole concept" of jihad. But it is Mr. Brennan who, irrespective of whatever flimsy, ahistorical rationale he provides, thoroughly misrepresents jihad - a living, bellicose Islamic institution that dates from the advent of the Muslim creed almost 14 centuries ago.

The dangerous absurdity of Mr. Brennan's jihad denial is self-evident: More than 15,600 jihad terror attacks have been committed by Muslims worldwide since the cataclysmic acts of jihad terrorism committed against the United States itself on Sept. 11, 2001. These data should remind us that there is just one historically relevant meaning of jihad, despite contemporary apologetics. Jahada, the root of the word jihad, appears 40 times in the Koran. With four exceptions, all the other 36 usages in the Koran, as understood by both the greatest jurists and scholars of classical Islam (including Abu Yusuf, Averroes, Ibn Khaldun and Al Ghazali) and ordinary Muslims - meant and mean "he fought, warred or waged war against unbelievers and the like."

The Muslim Prophet Muhammad waged a series of proto-jihad campaigns to subdue the Jews, Christians and pagans of Arabia. Numerous modern-day pronouncements by leading Muslim theologians (see Yusuf Al-Qaradawi's "The Prophet Muhammad as a Jihad Model," 2001) confirm that Muhammad remains the major inspiration for jihadism today. Jihad has been pursued continuously since the seventh-century advent of Islam, through the present, because it was institutionalized by seminal early Muslim theologians based on their interpretation of Koranic verses, and long chapters in the "hadith," or acts and sayings of Muhammad. Within a century of Muhammad's death, violent jihad conquests - achieved by religiously sanctioned massacre, pillage, enslavement and deportation - Islamized a vast swath of territory, extending from modern Pakistan to Portugal. The permanent goal of jihad is to bring humanity, en bloc, under the jurisdiction of Islamic law - a totalitarian system of religious governance particularly oppressive to all non-Muslims and women.

Alexis de Tocqueville, upon returning from America, where he famously analyzed and celebrated America's nascent democracy, studied Islamic doctrine, which included an 1838 assessment of the Koran, in preparation for his visits to Algeria (in 1841 and 1846) while serving as a French parliamentarian. Tocqueville concluded:

"Jihad, Holy war, is an obligation for all believers. ... The state of war is the natural state with regard to infidels ... [T]hese doctrines of which the practical outcome is obvious are found on every page and in almost every word of the Koran ... The violent tendencies of the Koran are so striking that I cannot understand how any man with good sense could miss them."

The late Iranian Shiite leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1900-1989) was also a pre-eminent 20th-century theologian who wrote and lectured extensively on Sharia (Islamic law) for more than five decades. Khomeini articulated a modern vision of jihad entirely consistent with the classical Islamic formulations recognized by Tocqueville a century earlier. Khomeini's 1942 speech "Islam Is Not a Religion of Pacifists" pronounces unapologetically:

"Those who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. All the countries conquered by Islam or to be conquered in the future will be marked for everlasting salvation. For they shall live under Allah's law (Sharia). ... Islam says: 'Kill [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter their armies.' Islam says: 'Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors (jihadists)!' There are hundreds of other Koranic psalms and hadiths (sayings of the prophet) urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim. ...Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless."

One can now safely include Mr. Brennan among those whose willful misapprehension of jihad Khomeini characterized, appositely, as "witless." This juxtaposition of views on jihad would be comical - the learned, pious Muslim theologian, Khomeini, versus the uninformed infidel cultural relativist adviser, Mr. Brennan - if the implications for U.S. security were not so ominous.

Andrew Bostom is the author of "The Legacy of Jihad" (Prometheus, 2008) and "The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism" (Prometheus, 2008).

"Mandate for Palestine"

A LETTER OF INTEREST ,WHAT THE WORLD SAYS IS TRUTH AND WHAT IS TRUTH, IS NOT ALWAYS THE SAME

Dear MK Haneen Zoabi,
July 14, 2010 Eli E. Hertz

The Israeli Parliament revoked some of your political privileges, sighting your consistent support of Israel's worst enemies.



You claim you are a "Palestinian" - you are not. You are an Israeli Arab living in the geographical area known as Palestine, a territory assigned in 1922 by the League of Nations as the Jewish National Home.

Furthermore; Political rights in Palestine were granted to Jews only according to the "Mandate for Palestine," an historical League of Nations document. All other inhabitants of the Land of Israel including you are to enjoy Religious and Civil Rights only.

The "Mandate for Palestine" clearly differentiates between political rights - referring to Jewish self-determination as an emerging polity - and civil and religious rights, referring to guarantees of equal personal freedoms to non-Jewish residents as individuals and within select communities. Not once are Arabs as a people mentioned in the "Mandate for Palestine." At no point in the entire document is there any granting of political rights to non-Jewish entities (i.e., Arabs). Article 2 of the "Mandate for Palestine" explicitly states that the Mandatory should:

"Be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish National Home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion."

Political rights to self-determination as a polity for Arabs were guaranteed by the League of Nations in four other mandates - in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and later Trans-Jordan [today Jordan]. International law expert Professor Eugene V. Rostow, examining the claim for Arab Palestinian self-determination on the basis of law, concluded:

"The mandate implicitly denies Arab claims to national political rights in the area in favor of the Jews; the mandated territory was in effect reserved to the Jewish people for their self-determination and political development, in acknowledgment of the historic connection of the Jewish people to the land. Lord Curzon, who was then the British Foreign Minister, made this reading of the mandate explicit. There remains simply the theory that the Arab inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have an inherent 'natural law' claim to the area. Neither customary international law nor the United Nations Charter acknowledges that every group of people claiming to be a nation has the right to a state of its own."

Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century

Taboo no longer?
By Ira Rifkin

It is an irony of Jewish life that it took the Holocaust to give anti-Semitism a bad name. So widespread was international revulsion over the annihilation of six million Jews that following World War II anti-Semitism, even of the polite variety, became the hatred one dared not publicly express. But only for a time.

At the dawn of the 21st century, virulent, open anti-Semitism has surfaced yet again, and in a big way. One need only read a Jewish newspaper or website--replete as they are with accounts of verbal anti-Semitism by high officials and intellectuals, and anti-Semitic physical attacks by common street thugs--to understand the depth of concern this has stirred among Jews.

The United States
The new anti-Semitism is most apparent in Western Europe and the Muslim world. But even in the United States, long viewed as the world's safest nation for Jews, anti-Semitism's resurgence may be seen in the proliferation of websites maintained by right-wing extremists and anti-Israel activists, and in the rhetoric of left-wing anti-globalization demonstrators on the streets of New York and Washington, many of whom equate Israel with fascism.

Modern Israel, the state its founders believed would provide safe sanctuary for Jews, is the prime target of contemporary anti-Semitism. It is recognizable in anti-Israel criticism that blurs the line between legitimate opposition to Israeli government policies and a barely concealed hatred that blames Israel's very existence--and by extension Jews everywhere, all of whom are presumed to support Israel's every decision--for much of the world's troubles.


The new anti-Semitism is also discernible in the claims that "neocons"--now a trendy pejorative for some well-connected, political conservatives (some of them Jews) who are aligned with Republican policies--are manipulating U.S. foreign policy for Israel's benefit. It amounts to a new twist on the age-old anti-Semitic canard that what Jews seek above all else is global hegemony.

How bad is the situation? "The combination of Jew hatred and the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction by hostile governments makes the threat of this anti-Semitism the greatest since the Holocaust," Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham H. Foxman warned in a December 2003 newspaper column.

The Muslim World

Foxman's mention of "hostile governments" was a reference to Middle East Muslim nations that view Israel as a colonialist cancer injected into their midst without any moral or historical justification. Tensions have existed between Jews and Muslims since the seventh-century Jews of Mecca rejected the religious and political leadership of the Prophet Muhammad himself. Still, the violent and ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict has ratcheted up Muslim animosity toward Jews--and the Jewish state--to unprecedented global levels. Making it worse are radical Islamists who, to advance their own cause, cast Jews, along with "crusader" Christians, as the enemies of all Muslims, Palestinian or otherwise.

Muslim anti-Semitism has ranged of late from Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad's enthusiastically received claim at the 2003 Islamic Summit Conference that "Jews rule this world by proxy," to the Ramadan holy month broadcasts of multi-part dramatic TV series purporting to document Jewish plans to subjugate the world. Such series, widely shown across the Muslim Middle East, rely heavily on the infamous 19th century anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as "proof" of their claims.

Then there's the constant demonizing in Muslim newspapers and magazines of Jews as "pigs and sons of monkeys," and the fiery sermons of Muslim clerics who equate Jews with Nazis and maintain that virtually all Israeli measures to contain Palestinian terrorism amount to nothing less than a new "Holocaust." Yet another example from July 2003 is the charge in a Saudi Arabian newspaper that Jews of Iraqi ancestry will seek to return to their former homeland now that Saddam Hussein has been ousted "for the realization of expansionist Zionist goals."

Given the heightened state of political tensions that have inflamed the Middle East for nearly a century, Muslim anti-Semitism, it may be argued, can be understood as an inevitable, if tragic, group response to a seemingly unsolvable conflict. Surely there are also Jews who, as a result of the conflict, blindly view all Muslims as supportive of hateful terrorism without ever having spoken person-to-person to a single Muslim.

Europe
Less easily understood, however, is the resurgence of Western European anti-Semitism. There, French Jews have been attacked and Jewish schools burned by arsonists. Israeli academics--whose area of research has nothing to do with politics or Israeli policy--have been uninvited from European academic conferences that likewise aren't political in nature or subject matter. In Turkey, suicide bombers attacked two synagogues during Shabbat prayers in late 2003.

Writing in The Jerusalem Report, commentator Stuart Schoffman postulates that Western European anti-Semitism is both an attempt to shake off Holocaust guilt by arguing that Jews no longer warrant sympathy due to Israel's alleged wrongs, and "a twisted expression of atonement--in France and Belgium in particular, but elsewhere too--for (Europe's) own sordid colonial past."

Also a factor is Western Europe's burgeoning Muslim population. It is simply politically expedient--not to mention a hoped-for hedge against revengeful terrorist rage--for Western European nations with growing Muslim under-classes and shrinking, if not miniscule, Jewish communities, to excuse or even agree with Muslim anti-Semitism rather than confront it.

A European Union report on growing anti-Semitism on the continent unwittingly highlighted this last factor. The study concluded that Muslim youths were in large part responsible for the surge of anti-Semitic incidents across Europe. The EU withheld from publicizing the study--prompting Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, and Cobi Benetoff, president of the European Jewish Congress, to jointly accuse EU leaders of exhibiting anti-Semitism. (EU commissioners said they decided to withhold the study because its methodology was flawed.)

A major development in today's anti-Semitism in Europe is its prevalence in the non-communist left. Europe's right-wingers have long used anti-Semitism as a political rallying cry. European communists, taking their cue from the former Soviet Union, also railed against Jews and Judaism as counter-revolutionary elements.

But the current surge in anti-Semitism has seen major artists, intellectuals, and politicians of the left also engaged. Among them have been Portuguese novelist José Saramago, winner of the Nobel Prize, who compared Israel to Nazi Germany; Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis, who called Jews the root of all the world's evil; and Daniel Bernard, the French ambassador to Britain, who was overheard in an unguarded moment at a dinner party calling Israel "a shitty little country" that was bringing the world to the brink of World War III.

Anti-Israel/Anti-Semitic
To be fair, legitimate criticism of Israel's actions vis-à-vis the Palestinians cannot all be labeled anti-Semitism, as some would have it. Complicating this is the fact that the Magen David [Star of David] is a symbol for both Judaism and Israel, which gives license to political cartoonists, for example, to depict the Star of David in work claiming to be critical only of Israel's actions and not of Jews more broadly. Israel's claim to be a homeland for global Jewry provides its enemies with additional reason--disingenuous as it may be--to claim that virtually all Jews give aid and comfort to the Jewish state.

Anti-Semitism, then, may be said at times to be in the eye of the beholder. Yet when Israel alone is singled out from among the family of nations as an illegitimate state, when Jewish nationhood is belittled as a modern political claim despite its 3,000-year-long history, and when United Nations officials allow an international conference on racism to focus almost entirely on the Jewish state, as happened in Durban, South Africa, just weeks before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it is no surprise that Jews believe they are facing unabashed anti-Semitism rather than legitimate political disagreement.

"Let's be realistic," David A. Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, wrote in mid-2003. "Given its longevity, anti-Semitism in one form or another is likely to outlive us all. That seems like a safe, if unfortunate, bet. No Jonas Salk has yet come along with an immunization protocol to eradicate forever the anti-Semitic virus, nor is any major breakthrough likely in the foreseeable future."

At the same time, Harris continued, "the Jewish community looks radically different than it did, say, 60 or 70 years ago" when anti-Semitism in Europe erupted into the Holocaust.

"Today, there is an Israel; then, there was not. Today, there are sophisticated, savvy, and well-connected Jewish institutions; then, Jewish institutions were much less confident and sure-footed. Collectively, we have the capacity to track trends in anti-Semitism, exchange information on a timely basis with other interested parties, reach centers of power, build alliances within and across borders, and consider the best mix of diplomatic, political, legal, and other strategies for countering troubling developments."

For Harris, at least, the ability of Jews to stand up to anti-Semitism is greater today then it ever has been. "We may not succeed in each and every case," he said, "but we've come a very long way thanks to a steely determination, in Israel and the Diaspora, to fight vigorously against anti-Semitism, while simultaneously helping to build a world in which anti-Semitism-and everything it stands for-is in irreversible decline."

There are, however, many Jews less confident about the future than is Harris. It remains to be seen whether Harris is correct about Jews' ability to withstand the latest tide of anti-Semitism--and whether those many non-Jews who today speak up in opposition to anti-Semitism will be there should their support become even more crucial.



Ira Rifkin is a national correspondent for Religion News Service based in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Spiritual Perspectives on Globalization: Making Sense of Economic and Cultural Upheaval.

Antisemitism in History: Nazi Antisemitism

Within the context of the economic depression of the 1930s and using not only racist but also older social, economic, and religious imagery, the Nazi party gained popularity and, after seizing power, legitimacy, in part by presenting "Jews" as the source for a variety of political, social, economic, and ethical problems facing the German people.

Inspired by Adolf Hitler's theories of racial struggle and the "intent" of the Jews to survive and expand at the expense of Germans, the Nazis, as a governing party from 1933-1938, ordered anti-Jewish boycotts, staged book burnings, and enacted anti-Jewish legislation. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws defined Jews by race and mandated the total separation of "Aryans" and "non-Aryans." On November 9, 1938, the Nazis destroyed synagogues and the shop windows of Jewish-owned stores throughout Germany and Austria (Kristallnacht). These measures aimed at both legal and social segregation of Jews from Germans and Austrians.

Kristallnacht, the initiation of World War II in 1939, and the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 marked the transition to the era of destruction, in which genocide would become the key focus of Nazi antisemitism. To justify the murder of the Jews both to the perpetrators and to bystanders in Germany and Europe, the Nazis used not only racist arguments but also arguments derived from older negative stereotypes, including Jews as communist subversives, as war profiteers and hoarders, and as a danger to internal security because of their inherent disloyalty and opposition to Germany
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.

Comments On National Amnesia

Comments On National Amnesia
Political Opinion: Thoughts On Obama From A Patriotic American Jew
Posted on June 26, 2010 by admin


“Mr Obama…I refuse to call him my President, has made it very clear where he stands as far as America and the Muslim World.
He does have an agenda, that agenda is to break this Nation from within, while furthering Islam. It is his goal to shut down our offshore drilling, which he has always been opposed to, thus the poor job of trying to stop the oil spill and and also standing in the way of everyone who could have helped minimize the damage from this disaster. I also believe, it is his goal to make us completely dependent on Muslim nations for oil, not to mention, force us into a union with those, who in a one world order, would unite against Israel to bring about it’s destruction.
As for the flotilla, it is plain to see that Israel was not at fault. Under International Admiralty law, Israel had every right to interdict those vessels. I would suggest to Mr. Obama, that if Governments are no allowed to defend and protect their own people, if they are not allowed to uphold and enforce laws, that he also allow open house at the White House, so we as Americans can move him out.
I am sure some of his Brothers in Gaza, would be glad to take him in, and to marry his daughters, quickly, before they are old maids by Islamic standards. They are already over 3 years of age after all. I am sure in his twisted mind he sees himself as the first ruling Muslim Prince of America, where you are not voted in nor removed, but ascend to power by birthright. In that Obama fancies himself as America’s first Muslim President, you can figure out the rest.
He has done and is doing everything he possibly can to tear down this Nation, and to isolate Israel, one of this countries few loyal allies.
The Question is, what will Americans do and what will those weak, spineless leaders on the Hill do?
We can not afford even one full term under Obama, and he should be and could be removed for less than he has already done to this Nation.
He should have been removed the day he bowed to the Saudi King and in effect said, you are greater than me, greater than America and I vow allegiance to you.
The American people have lived in freedom so long that they do not understand a dictatorship nor believe that it can happen here.
Well Wake Up America…. it is happening…and it is snowballing every day.
Maybe it is time for another Revolution , time to take out the trash and make us one Nation Under G-d again,
The Land of the free, home of the brave.
From where I am sitting right now….it seems, we are becoming the land of Islam and the Hill, the home of the fools.
They lack the courage or the integrity to remove this spawn of a camel and who like old women, hide hoping they will make it through until next election. Because we must not upset anyone….no not in America, we may be called a racist.
If believing in and defending Freedom , if standing up against foreign governments, if staying on the side of our Ally and true friend Israel, and standing together alone, if necessary, is Racism….then I am a Racist…and proud of it.
It’s time America….to restore our country to the greatness they are slowly destroying….and if not now, When ??? Time is running out.

Anti-Semitism in the Media (STILL SO FAR TO GO )

United States Mission to the OSCE
OSCE Conference on Anti-Semitism
As prepared for delivery by Jack Rosen,
Workshop on Anti-Semitism in the Media, i.a. Internet: Problems and Solutions
OSCE Conference on anti-Semitism
Berlin, April 29, 2004
Thank you.
As a child born to Holocaust survivors in a post war displaced persons camp, permit me to express some wonder not only that this conference is taking place, but also that we are holding this conference in the German Foreign Ministry.
If one looks at the glass as half full, then surely these opening observations serve as ample justification. We sit here, all the European and Eurasian states, America and Canada, in a unified and democratic Germany, almost sixty years after the end of the Holocaust. Germany invited us here at its own initiative and is quite prepared to discuss with us the most difficult chapter in its long history.
But the glass is also half empty. We are here to discuss the state of anti-Semitism, an angry and reactionary wave of hatred, bigotry and violence that has shaken Europe, and has shaken us in America as well.
The media are a key institution in modern society. They inform the public, and can reinforce or challenge conventional views. They deliver a message and invariably has a major impact. The problem is that too often the media in major parts of the OSCE region misquote or distort the facts of a story, and do not cover ongoing violence in a balanced fashion. The ripple effect that the media have on the public cannot be under-estimated.
Criticism of Israel is surely permissible. Moreover, legitimate criticism of a government’s policy should not render one vulnerable to charges of hostility to the entire nation, its people and culture. In Israel itself all parts of society are engaged in an ongoing and vigorous public debate of the situation in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel’s own media scrutinize thoroughly the country’s internal political situation.
Unfortunately, reports we see from Israel and the Palestinian-populated areas often lack balance. Reporting on a complex situation requires rigor, discipline, and a special sensitivity to culture, restraint in language and a sense of historical responsibility. Inaccurate reporting can influence public opinion and produce a distorted picture of events and of the Jewish role in those events. This can trigger anti-Jewish hatred.
Distorted reportage blurs the distinction between being anti-Israel and being anti-Jewish. It is anti-Semitic to vilify the state of Israel, to invent malignant outrages, or to hold Israel to a standard to which other nations are not held.
Obersteinergasse 11 Telephone Fax press@usosce.at
Vienna, Austria A - 1190 +43-1-313-39 ext. 3201 +43-1-368-6385 http://osce.usmission.gov/
1
There are those who say that some of the media’s portrayal of the Arab-Israeli conflict is so biased as to cross the line separating legitimate criticism from rank anti-Semitism. Even Le Monde editorialized that “disapproval and condemnation of Israel’s policy in the Palestinian territories have clearly lowered the barrier – already unclear to some – between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.” And just last week Stephen Byers told the House of Commons in London that “the line is now being crossed from legitimate criticism” of Israeli policy to the “demonization, dehumanization of Jews and the application of double standards.”
But other press reports are less constructive and less observant. Some strongly criticize Israeli actions against known terrorists while Palestinian suicide bombings are portrayed sympathetically as “retaliation for Israeli aggression.”
Another example concerns inflammatory reporting. The Guardian wrote that “Israel has no right to exist.” The Observer described Israeli settlements on the West Bank as “an affront to civilization.” L’Osservatore Romano spoke of Israel’s aggression that’s turning into extermination.”
Media reports based on this kind of thinking and analysis stoke emotions and provide an excuse for anti-Jewish hatred.
Rigor, sensitivity and historical perspective are pre-requisite to the telling of a balanced story. The absence of these qualities leads to a distorted story. An example of the impact that such reporting can have is the recent poll indicating that a majority of Europeans see Israel as the greatest danger to world peace. This is a simplistic conclusion based on incomplete information about the complexities of the Middle East. More balanced news reporting would contribute to a better understanding of the situation on the ground and the realities with which the countries in that part of the world have to deal.
I urge the media to rethink their approach to the Middle East conflict, not because every Jewish action is legitimate and every Palestinian claim without merit, but because the situation is complex, and there are both Jewish rights and Palestinian rights to consider.
The media can help by paying attention to the root phenomenon of anti-Jewish outrages in the OSCE region. Does the current reporting make a difference? You bet. If the media explored anti-Jewish violence and attitudes more fully and actively, those who currently go with the flow of bigoted thinking could be exposed to a steady stream of information, analysis and reasoning to support an alternative case. There is no place in today’s world for calumny based on ancient or modern racial and political hatreds. There is room, however, to air political differences in a context of objectivity and detachment.
Journalists and their editors have a special role in balancing their personal judgments and their reporting. Their work strongly influences what people think about a far away conflict that dramatically impacts inter-communal relations at home.
Obersteinergasse 11 Telephone Fax press@usosce.at
Vienna, Austria A - 1190 +43-1-313-39 ext. 3201 +43-1-368-6385 http://osce.usmission.gov/
2
Obersteinergasse 11 Telephone Fax press@usosce.at
Vienna, Austria A - 1190 +43-1-313-39 ext. 3201 +43-1-368-6385 http://osce.usmission.gov/
3
Some of the burdens of peace-making fall on the diplomats. Others, on the storytellers or the media. Journalists and editors have an important role to play and a responsibility to play it wisely. The media can help spread tolerance and understanding by condemning anti-Semitism outright and remaining on guard for its subtler manifestations.
The consequence of the media not taking steps to improve its product will be the growth of anti-Jewish hatred in the OSCE region.
Our challenge is to prevent this from ever happening again.

Remember the Hatuel Family Via G. Katz

Tali Hatuel, 34, and her daughters - Hila, 11, Hadar, 9, Roni, 7, and Merav, 2 - of Katif in the Gaza Strip were killed when two 'Palestinian' terrorists fired on an Israeli car at the entrance to the Gaza Strip settlement bloc of Gush Katif.

Tali Hatuel and her four daughters were killed when two 'Palestinian' terrorists fired on an Israeli car at the entrance to the Gaza Strip settlement bloc of Gush Katif. They were on their way to campaign against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan. Their white Citroen station wagon spun off the road after the initial shooting, then the attackers approached the vehicle and shot the occupants dead at close range. The Hatuels' car was riddled with bullets, and the carpet inside was stained with blood. The girls were killed hugging one another. On the car was a bumper sticker saying, "Uprooting the settlements, victory for terror."

Another Israeli civilian, a resident of Ohad in the Eshkol region, traveling in a separate car, suffered moderate gunfire wounds and two soldiers were wounded before the terrorists were killed. Fatah and Islamic Jihad claimed joint responsibility for the attack.

Tali, nee Malka, originally from Ashkelon, settled with her husband David in Katif 12 years ago. As a social worker for the Gaza Coast Regional Council, it was she who would comfort families of terror victims on the death of their loved ones. Tali was eight months pregnant, and was looking forward to the birth of her first son. The three older girls studied at a school in Atzmona where there father, David Hatuel was the principal.

Standing over the shrouded bodies of his wife and daughters, David Hatuel asked for their forgiveness for spending time away from home lobbying against the plan to pull out from Gaza. "On Friday the girls drew me a picture and wrote 'Daddy, we are proud of what you are doing for the home where we were born'," he said. "You were my flowers and I will not forget you," he said, and added, "Tali was a woman of valor. All the responsibility for the family was on her shoulders."

Tali Hatuel and her four daughters - Hila, Hadar, Roni, and Merav - were laid to rest side by side in Ashkelon. Several thousand mourners attended the Hatuel funerals the same evening. They are survived by husband and father David Hatuel, Tali's parents, two sisters, Orit and Sigalit, and brother, Yuval.

It was reported in various newspapers that official Voice of 'Palestine' radio hailed the gunmen as “heroic martyrs”. The radio station repeatedly used the term is tish-had (heroic martyrdom) and mustash-hidin (heroic martyrs) to describe the act of the “two youths”. After reporting the attackers’ names it repeated that they were “heroic martyrs". The 'Palestinian' Authority, the so-called peace partner, has remained silent about the attack.

Between 16 and 30 August 2005, Sharon controversially expelled 9,480 Jewish 'settlers' from 21 settlements in Gaza and four settlements in Samaria.

Lukas Schneider

Sources:
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
journalist Michael Widlanski


Israeli writer Naomi Ragen :

“We will not add five more numbers to those slain. We will not turn the Hatuel family into a statistic. We will not forget those five bodies wrapped in white shrouds, lowered into the ground. The four little Jewish girls, and their mother, pregnant and about to give birth to her first son. We will not call them “settler” and thus say: it is all right for armed men to put a gun to the head of a two year old and shoot her twice, after letting her watch her mother die. It is not all right for Yasser Arafat to praise the men he sent out to murder them as “heroic martyrs”. We will not allow the international conspiracy of the world press to hide what happened here, to succeed.
Remember Tali. Remember her daughters. Hila, Hadar, Roni, Merav. Remember. Say the names on every street corner. Shout out your anger, your disgust. Cry out for justice. Don’t let them be forgotten. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never."

Re :Danielle Shefi Article :
This is the Reality of Life in Israel.
Where children are killed , simply for being a Jew.
This story is from 2002, however it is the same story that has happened many times since, and one that should not be forgotten.
The media often shows images of Palestinian children, that are killed in Gaza, what they don't tell you, is that many are killed by their own people and used as a tool against Israel, others are killed because Hamas chooses to hide weapons in Civilian Areas, in schools and Mosques, in the homes of the people.
Israel, always warns the people before they make a major strike on Gaza, they even tell them where it will be, to give the people time to leave the area.
And these strikes, are an act of self defense or an act made during war (Jihad) started by the Palestinians.
Never will you hear or see an Israeli sneaking into the homes of civilians and killing their children like this,
In fact, the Palestinians kill far more of their own children, than anyone else has ever killed.
And that does not include suicide bombers.
When you are dealing with a people, that holds no value on a human life, including that of their own children,
And sees those children as only a device by which to kill Jewish people, or to be used as propaganda in the Media , how can you have peace with such a people.
Today the World screams out at Israel, and blames her for all their Woes, just as Germany blamed the Jewish people ,not long ago,along with so many others down through History.
But, they never bother to look and to see, just what is being done to the Jewish people.
There can not be peace with a people that do not value life.
And in my personal opinion, anyone that can put a gun to the head of a child and pull the trigger (not just once),but twice, is soulless and less than Human.
Golda Meir said it best :“We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us”

Apr 27, 2002 - Danielle Shefi, 5, of Adora, was one of four people killed when terrorists dressed in IDF uniforms and combat gear cut through the settlement's defensive perimeter fence and entered Adora, west of Hebron. The terrorists entered several homes, firing on people in their bedrooms.

The attack took place at about 9 AM on Saturday morning in the hilltop community of Adora, northwest of Hebron. At least two terrorists, wearing IDF uniforms and flak jackets, armed with Kalashnikov and M-16 assault rifles, infiltrated the community. They entered several homes, killing 5-year-old Danielle Shefi, who was playing in her parents' bedroom, and Katrina Greenberg, asleep in her bedroom, and injuring seven others. Arik Becker and Ya'acov Katz were killed as they and others from the community's response team exchanged fire with the terrorists.

Ya'acov Shefi, a policeman who serves in the Hebron district, was attending Shabbat services in the synagogue when he heard gunshots. He raced toward his home and saw two people near the dining-room door wearing army uniforms and flak jackets. "I asked them what had happened. They didn't answer and began shooting at me," he said.

Unarmed, he ran to a neighbor's house in order to find out what had happened to his family, and learned his daughter had been killed and his wife and two sons wounded. "I saw my wife Shiri being carried out on a stretcher, and she called out, 'They murdered our daughter,' " he said.

Shiri was in the bedroom playing with her three children. A terrorist entered the bedroom and sprayed them with gunfire. She pushed the terrorist out, closed the door and hid with the children underneath the bed. She told them not to cry. Five-year-old Danielle, who was shot in the head, was killed. Eliad, 2, his brother, Uriel, 4, and their mother, Shiri, were lightly injured.

Ya'acov Shefi said: "Danielle, who never hurt anyone and who was taught to love and respect all human beings, Jew or Arab, was murdered in her parents' bedroom - which for her should have been the safest place."

Danielle, who attended the Sigalit kindergarten, was described by her teacher as bright and charming, well-liked by the children, and always nicely dressed. Her playmates, told that her soul had gone to heaven, asked, "What is Danielle doing up there near the birds and planes?"

Danielle Shefi was buried in Kiryat Gat. She is survived by her parents and two younger brothers.

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-%20Obstacle%20to%20Peace/Memorial/2002/1/Danielle%20Shefi

FACTS ABOUT ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM

1. ISRAEL BECAME A STATE IN 1312 B.C., TWO MILLENNIA BEFORE ISLAM

2. ARAB REFUGEES FROM ISRAEL BEGAN CALLING THEMSELVES "PALESTINIANS" IN 1967, TWO DECADES AFTER (MODERN) ISRAELI STATEHOOD

3. AFTER CONQUERING THE LAND IN 1272 B.C., JEWS RULED IT FOR A THOUSAND YEARS AND MAINTAINED A CONTINUOUS PRESENCE THERE FOR 3,300 YEARS

4. THE ONLY ARAB RULE FOLLOWING CONQUEST IN 633 B.C.
LASTED JUST 22 YEARS

5. FOR OVER 3,300 YEARS, JERUSALEM WAS THE JEWISH CAPITAL.
IT WAS NEVER THE CAPITAL OF ANY ARAB OR MUSLIM ENTITY.
EVEN UNDER JORDANIAN RULE, (EAST) JERUSALEM WAS NOT MADE THE CAPITAL, AND NO ARAB LEADER CAME TO VISIT IT

6. JERUSALEM IS MENTIONED OVER 700 TIMES IN THE BIBLE,
BUT NOT ONCE IS IT MENTIONED IN THE QUR'AN

7. KING DAVID FOUNDED JERUSALEM; MOHAMMED NEVER SET FOOT IN IT

8. JEWS PRAY FACING JERUSALEM; MUSLIMS FACE MECCA.
IF THEY ARE BETWEEN THE TWO CITIES, MUSLIMS PRAY FACING MECCA, WITH THEIR BACKS TO JERUSALEM

9. IN 1948, ARAB LEADERS URGED THEIR PEOPLE TO LEAVE, PROMISING TO CLEANSE THE LAND OF JEWISH PRESENCE.
68% OF THEM FLED WITHOUT EVER SETTING EYES ON AN ISRAELI SOLDIER

10. VIRTUALLY THE ENTIRE JEWISH POPULATION OF MUSLIM COUNTRIES HAD TO FLEE AS THE RESULT OF VIOLENCE

11. SOME 630,000 ARABS LEFT ISRAEL IN 1948, WHILE CLOSE TO A MILLION JEWS WERE FORCED TO LEAVE THE MUSLIM COUNTRIES

12. IN SPITE OF THE VAST TERRITORIES AT THEIR DISPOSAL, ARAB REFUGESS WERE DELIBERATELY PREVENTED FROM ASSIMILATING INTO THEIR HOST COUNTRIES.
OF 100 MILLION REFUGEES FOLLOWING WORLD WAR 2, THEY ARE THE ONLY GROUP TO HAVE NEVER INTEGRATED WITH THEIR CO-RELIGIONISTS. MOST OF THE JEWISH REFUGEES FROM EUROPE AND ARAB LANDS WERE SETTLED IN ISRAEL, A COUNTRY NO LARGER THAN NEW JERSEY

13. THERE ARE 22 MUSLIM COUNTRIES, NOT COUNTING PALESTINE. THERE IS ONLY ONE JEWISH STATE. ARABS STARTED ALL FIVE WARS AGAINST ISRAEL, AND LOST EVERY ONE OF THEM

14. FATAH AND HAMAS CONSTITUTIONS STILL CALL FOR THE DESTRUCTION OFISRAEL. ISRAEL CEDED MOST OF THE WEST BANK AND ALL OF GAZA TO THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY, AND EVEN PROVIDED IT WITH ARMS

15. DURING THE JORDANIAN OCCUPATION, JEWISH HOLY SITES WERE VANDALIZED AND WERE OFF LIMITS TO JEWS. UNDER ISRAELI RULE, ALL MUSLIM AND CHRISTIAN HOLY SITES ARE ACCESSIBLE TO ALL FAITHS

16. OUT OF 175 UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTIONS UP TO 1990...97 WERE AGAINST ISRAEL

17. OUT OF 690 GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLUTIONS, 429 WERE AGAINST ISRAEL

18. THE U.N. WAS SILENT WHEN THE JORDANIANS DESTROYED 58 SYNAGOGUES IN THE OLD CITY OF JERUSALEM. IT REMAINED SILENT WHILE JORDAN SYSTEMATICALLY DESECRATED THE ANCIENT JEWISH CEMETERY ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, AND IT REMAINED SILENT WHEN JORDAN ENFORCED APARTHEID LAWS PREVENTING JEWS FROM ACCESSING THE TEMPLE MOUNT AND WESTERN WALL.

THERE ARE MANY VOICES IN THE WORLD TODAY , THE VOICE OF TRUTH MUST BE HEARD.
AND WE MUST ASK OURSELVES WHAT WE SHOULD BE DOING, AND WHAT CAN WE DO , TO MAKE A CHANGE IN OUR WORLD ,TO THE BETTER.
FOR OURSELF, OUR CHILDREN AND THEIR CHILDREN.