The Thirty Days of Ramadan

 

While there are thirty days in the Muslim holiday of Ramadan as of the writing of this article we are merely approaching the midpoint of the holiday and have but a dozen days’ worth of news to pull from; thus, this is more like the Twelve Days of Ramadan. Perhaps it would be worth it for us to recall back in the days of the Second Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan where the allied troops were warned by the commander of the combined forces, the commander of each nations’ forces, and likely had the reminder driven home by every level right down to your squad leader. Then, additionally, whenever your squad was to perform a patrol the warnings were given in reverse starting with your squad leader to your platoon officer to your company commander and potentially to your battalion commander and, should one be extremely fortunate, your brigade commander to whatever was appropriate to the size of the mission and numbers of troops being dispatched. The warning would quickly sound like a broken record (for those who have never seen a turntable, let alone a record player, a broken record would have damaged tracks causing it to skip, backwards in this case, and repeat the same thing until nudged forward) warning the troops not to eat when Muslims were able to see your actions as this would be insensitive to their fasting during the daylight hours and eating after sundown. Be extraordinarily polite when dealing with a Muslim and be respectful of this holiday of ultimate importance in Islam, and whatever one did or whatever the circumstance nobody, they would usually emphasize this by adding, and I mean nobody, then continuing with the admonition, should discharge their weapon particularly aimed at a Muslim as such action would be desecrating and disrespecting this holy month of Ramadan. For some untold reason these rules of respecting Ramadan by restraining from any use of force was not part of the observance of those the allied troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were observing as they continued their usual ambushes and planting IEDs (improvised explosive devices which served a similar purpose as mines and were simply more ingenious in their construction and camouflage) or other steps of violence against the infidel troops besmirching not only their sacred lands but their sacred holiday by presenting themselves as targets forcing them to shoot at them during Ramadan.

 

Getting down to the serious discussion, Ramadan began on Thursday, the 18th of June, but with Islam using the same changeover of days like the Jews the start is actually the evening before at sunset and will continue until Friday, the 17th of July ending at sunset. Thus far it has been a busy first half of Ramadan despite the allied troops has almost completely disappeared from Iraq and being pulled out from Afghanistan. It was kicked off in Israel with the regularly scheduled rioting, vehement protesting any anti-terror activities such as checkpoints, despite their numbers being decreased for the entirety of Ramadan while concurrently issuing additional travel permits so that Arabs from Gaza desiring to worship at the Temple Mount could do so if they placed any importance on such activities being performed there. These passes were not honored for one entire day in response to rocket attack made the night of Tuesday, June 23 on Israel during Ramadan out of Gaza. The ramifications concerning Ramadan violence took a serious turn for the worse on the second day of Ramadan which was June 19 when Danny Gonen and a friend stopped their vehicle as they were leaving a spring they had visited to assist an Arab man who flagged them down appearing to be in distress. It was then when the Arab man upon approaching the vehicle opened up with a handgun shooting both young men and murdering one of the young men, twenty-five-year-old Danny Gonen, who died as a result of his wounds soon after being airlifted still in an unconscious state to Tel Hashomer Hospital. His friend, whose name has been withheld, received moderate to serious wounds with gunshots mostly to his arms and legs and was taken by ambulance for treatment at Tel Hashomer Hospital. His condition after arrival and treatment at the hospital was reported as moderately injured but stable expected to recover.

 

Just two days subsequent on June 21 a Border Patrol Officer was stabbed repeatedly by his Arab attacker with his most serious wounds resulting from a stabbing wound to his neck. Before losing consciousness the Border Officer managed to shoot and fatally injure his attacker preventing him from injuring others at the scene of the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. The officer regained consciousness after treatment some time on Monday and is expected to recover from his wounds. Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino paid him a bedside visit on Monday morning and was quoted to have told the officer’s family, “They told me what happened to him after the stabbing, it enhances his heroism.”

 

The next day, Monday, June 22, the body of a farmer, David Bar Kapara aged 70 years, was found in his orchards. David Bar Kapara was murdered by what was described as Arab laborers who illegally entered Israel seeking employment and who were likely told that David Bar Kapara and not having found work they struck out and murdered an elderly man little capable of posing any risk to his attackers, a craven and cowardly act. These individuals, when caught, should be charged with having committed a brutal and horrific act, murder of the most serious kind, premeditated as they likely demanded employment threatening David Bar Kapara, a seventy-year-old farmer who was the most innocent and helpless against such an attack by so many attackers and then beat him to death. They could have simply stopped at any time while he would have survived but instead continued the assault like animals in a killing frenzy. They deserve to be treated as the rabid animals their attack closely imitated with its depravity and brutality resulting in cruel murder on a defenseless elderly farmer without any provocation and resulting merely because of their frustrations, a motivation hardly the equivalence of their horrific actions.

 

Then come Friday, June 26, there was an assault on an IDF manned checkpoint in the Jordan Valley. The initial investigations have revealed the perpetrator stepped from his vehicle and proceeded to open fire on the soldiers without managing to hit any of them. A short but decisive gun battle ensued resulting on the attacker’s death and no injuries of the soldiers stationed at the checkpoint. This is being treated as another Arab terror attack. The terrorist was armed with a modified Carl Gustav automatic weapon pictured below. These attacks and attempted murders with one target having suffered fatal wounds have represented the unfortunate upswing in terror attacks both in severity and frequency with these attacks having taken place solely in Israel.

 

 

Modified Carl Gustav automatic weapon used in the Friday, June 26, 2015, assault on an IDF manned checkpoint during Ramadan celebration and observance

 

 

Come Saturday night an ambulance and its driver were shot upon while returning from Ofra driving on the recently opened new highway adjacent to Beit El in the Binyamin region of Samaria, north of Jerusalem. The terrorist was standing next to his car with its engine running when, without any warning, the terrorist brandished his weapon and opened fire hitting the vehicle three times but injured nobody. The terrorist then proceeded to fire at the next vehicle right behind the ambulance. After apparently missing striking both vehicles the Arab shooter decided to call it a night and climbed back into his vehicle and sped off out of sight. The ambulance driver was quoted revealing that, “We get a lot more attacks at the entrances to Jerusalem, where they throw rocks, firebombs, and other things at us. I was told that this was the first time they fired at an ambulance in this area.” Let us hope that was the last attack on that route from this day forward.

 

This weekend and start of the new week has seen more than its share of Ramadan violence. Still listing violence in Israel, on Sunday there were two separate incidents. The first incident there was nobody hurt or injured as the IDF and security sources prevented the attack by intercepting a woman, an Arab Palestinian, who was trying to cross the security fence from Qalqiliya into Judea-Samaria carrying a rifle slung across her back. During questioning the would be female terrorist revealed that Hamas had sent her to carry out a terror attack to shoot as many Israelis as she could before being captured or otherwise prevented from continuing her assault. Then early on Monday we suffered a far more serious attack when an Arab woman and terrorist stabbed the twenty-five-year-old female IDF soldier placed to guard Kever Rachael (Rachel’s Tomb) north of Bethlehem and south of Jerusalem. In the assault the IDF guard was wounded with repeated stabbings largely in her neck as well as other minor injuries. The soldier received treatment at the scene and was still unconscious and listed as serious when placed for transit to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem. During the trip, the female soldier regained consciousness and by the time she was transferred to the hospital she was listed to be in stable condition. She is expected to also make a complete recovery.

 

There was another attack Monday night first reported in the final hour before midnight and Tuesday morning. In yet another shooting attack these terrorists this time opened fire on a car near the community of Shvut Rachel where their bullets wounded four occupants in the car in which they were traveling. Of the four injured three were in light to moderate condition and the fourth suffered serious wounds. The most severely wounded victim was evacuated to the Shaarei Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem along with one of those in moderate condition while the other two victims were transferred to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital. These attacks were in addition to the return of rockets across the Gaza front and the barrages of rocks, bricks, cinderblocks and other various objects hurled at vehicles mostly in Judea and Samaria with recent outbreaks beginning within Israel largely thus far in central and northern Galilee. There also has been a marked increase in rockets fired by the Gaza terrorist outlets including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

 

Israel was far from the only scene of Islamic Jihadist violence. By now it should be becoming evident that as Giulio Meotti in “Terrorists are not Barbarians, They are Enemies at War with the West” made evidently clear, this is not simply a bunch of lone wolf attacks or even coordinated attacks meant to simply scare and worry people but a bonafide war being waged by slow escalations with the eventual intent to make one last final thrust and depose every Western Government in Europe and around the developed world. These soldiers of this Jihad are slowly being placed in vital points to take out leadership and infrastructure thus causing maximum confusion and lack of leadership and then exploiting the chaos that results. In what many news services are covering as three completely separate incidents with nothing in common except that they have been declared by many government experts in the Western World are loudly and vehemently exclaiming that they have nothing to do with the religion of peace, Islam. Yet, in the weekend following a call by ISIS for their followers around the world to rise up and terrorize the world, and three responded. We have and will continue to be told that these three individuals had nothing in common with each other and these were isolated incidents which just happened as these three simply went insane each at their own time for their own reasons.

 

Tunisia is reporting that they have arrested the first of those who planned and carried out the beach terror attack in which at least thirty-eight people were killed. They have detained “a significant number of people from the network that was behind this terrorist” attack on a popular tourist resort in Port El Kantaoui. The authorities have also claimed to have identified 23-year-old Seifeddine Rezgui as the man who has pulled an AK-47 from its concealed location inside a beach umbrella and began walking along the beach shooting as he walked along the beach. During the same period there was an assault on a Shia Mosque in Kuwait City. This attack murdered at least another twenty-seven people and wounded over 200 others simply because they practiced a separate branch of Islam. Finally, in Lyons, France, Yassine Salhi, who has admitted to decapitating his boss and placing his head trophy style on the fence post at the gates to the factory, has been detained along with his wife, sister and one other person. The man beheading his boss and mutilating his body, being as disturbing as it may be, that is the worst of the story as the explosion caused by Yassine Salhi ramming and exploding his truck into the gas factory where he has been employed resulted only two injuries while the rest of the employees were evacuated with no further harm to people. This may result in having been a terror attack which also targeted the terrorist’s place of work and mutilating and decapitating his boss may also be classified as possibly the worst case of workplace violence. Even removing the French attack, the Kuwait and Tunis attacks murdered sixty-five innocent people thus far and let us pray for no more to be counted amongst the dead, and well over two-hundred injured. The fact that these attacks occurred almost immediately after ISIS leadership called for their followers to rise up and attack and terrorize those who are the enemies of ISIS and their version of Sunni Islam, a call that likely places two-thirds of Sunni Muslims as legitimate targets which has been proven by the numbers of fellow Sunni Muslims have been murdered after ISIS has taken some presumed Sunni areas where the people apparently were not quite diligent or exactly the same as the one defined by ISIS. The one item which the people need to start with their elected representatives is that they no longer jump immediately to the conclusion that nothing initially appears to be a terror attack and then dancing around the point avoiding that which is obvious to the rest of us as terrorism. They and their co-conspirators from the mainstream media must be forced to recognize that the so-called unwashed masses are literate these days and though we may not have gone to Harvard or Columbia Universities, we are thinking and smarter than many of them would believe and we can handle the truth (no matter what Jack Nicholson may declare). They need to trust the people as the people, as a group, will often come to a better conclusion than the five-hundred-thirty-five, thirty-six if we count the man at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, seem to be capable of reaching. The people would not write laws which one must pass to know what is in it and the people would write laws that make sense and not make laws because they had little else to do. I’d rather have a society designed by fifty to one-hundred land-owning farmers than a thousand lawyers, and thinking of it, was that not who wrote the Constitution of the United States that our modern day heroes are attempting to redefine to mean what they want it to mean and have a court which has recently twisted almost to if not past the breaking point. No, give me that original and unpolluted document even with the first ten amendments and allow a start-over for America, she will be better for the restart. Just as Israel would be at a greater advantage and healthier to return to their original constitution, not the one started as a conglomeration of “Basic Laws” which can be changed at whim, I mean Torah, the five books of Moses, even if it does mean no government making new laws, just using the ones written in Torah, all six-hundred-thirteen commandments.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

They Speak as if Somebody Will Care

 

This particular terrorist attack took the life of an Israeli, in this case twenty-five year old Danny Gonen, pictured below, while his friend who was accompanying him on their day trip was also shot at close range and is being treated at Tel Hashomer Hospital with gunshot wounds to his limbs and is expected to survive. As stated by Ambassador Prosor before the United Nations, which we will discuss more deeply below, the two young Israelis had just completed a trip to a nearby spring and were just leaving when an Arab flagged them down requesting assistance. It was as they stopped and were approached by an Arab asking them for water and as they were distracted reaching for their water that they were shot, Danny at point blank range mortally wounding the young Israeli. The attacker fled to a nearby Arab village and will likely be shielded by the occupants as the IDF begins an investigation seeking to locate the terrorist. We wish and pray for a quick recovery from his wounds for Mr. Gonen’s friend and for Hashem to comfort the family and friends of the diseased, Danny Gonen.

 

Danny Gonen age 25 shot at point blank range murdered during Arab Palestinian who flagged him and a friend down asking for a drink. Danny Gonen’s friend remains hospitalized and will likely recover while Danny Gonen will be buried.

 

 

Responding to this horrific and meaningless shooting of two young Israelis, murdering one and hospitalizing the other, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor gave a pointed speech in the General Assembly Main Hall of the United Nations to an indifferent audience, at least those who even bothered to attend and not simply walk out as many Ambassadors have been known to do when any Israeli Ambassador is allowed to speak; especially if the address comes the day after or close to another Arab Palestinian committed terrorist attack. Ambassador Prosor plainly stated Israel’s case, “on the eve of Shabbat, a Palestinian man shot two 25-year-old Israeli civilians at close range, killing one of them. The terrorist attracted the attention of his victims by asking for their assistance. When they approached to help him, the terrorist pulled a gun out of his bag and shot the two in cold blood. This terrorist took advantage of the compassion of these young men to commit this heinous crime.” Additionally, Ambassador Prosor pointed out the fact that this act of vicious, violent, horrific, premeditated cold terrorism was not any form of “cycle of violence,” as so many from around the world; from government leaders, spokespersons, NGOs, United Nations Agency representatives and Islamic institutions claim; but was as Ron Prosor called the situation responsible for, “These violent acts are ignited by the constant incitement by the Palestinian leadership. Instead of leading their people towards peace, these leaders are leading the whole area into instability.” Further, Ambassador Ron Prosor fired off a scalding letter to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, and the UN Security Council, urging that the UN abandon its “so-called balanced response that is calling on both sides to show restraint.” Ambassador Prosor pressed further that, “During this period of Ramadan, Israel has taken steps to reduce tensions, removing restrictions in order to allow Palestinians to celebrate, and enjoy maximum freedom of movement for the holiday prayers.” He pointedly exclaimed that the international community had a special obligation to “insist that the Palestinians prevent violence, and refrain from inciting emotions during this sensitive period.”

 

In Israel we are expecting absolutely no positive actions or other responses from any corner of the globe as past history has taught us unfortunate lesson that only Palestinian lives matter to much of the world. We realize things that Ambassador Prosor must refrain from ever stating as should he actually speak the truth too forcefully, too explicitly, too poignantly, then he would face aggravated, heated and personally hurtful accusations and denouncements while excuses would be presented glorifying the murder of one Israeli and complain that the other ‘oppressor’ was surviving the military operation, as much of the world believes that any Palestinian murdering an Israeli is justified and to be honored and protected from Israeli oppressive enforcement of what Israel denotes as acts of terror and too many across the globe believe are honorable acts towards the liberation of the land from the occupying colonizers. What is the sole thing which does upset Zionist and nationalist Israelis are the Israeli Jewish run and named NGOs who join with those from the uncouth in the world who denounce Israel for producing the situation which presumably drove this Arab Palestinian to the point where in his desperation he committed this action, an action the extreme leftist accept as the result of the ‘settlements’ and other Israeli improprieties and often instigate Arab Palestinian protests often turning them into riots and other violence targeting Israeli IDF or other security positions in efforts to provoke a reaction from the soldier that they catch on camera where they edit out the violence of the riot and replace it with films showing a peaceful protest tying the two together in a damning presentation. What is irresponsible is the infinitesimal amount of verifying performed on these propaganda films which are almost unilaterally taken at face value and considered to be accurate to the finest detail. It is the readiness around the world to accept any damning evidence or even rumor which is immediately considered the gospel truth as the people accept everything as a confirmation of their thoughts of the Jews as evil by their nature and only capable of acts of random and unprovoked violence at any moment. It is this belief which allows the world to accept any act of terrorist violence as deserved.

 

We can once again witness the celebrations of this brutal and craven act throughout many of the Arab towns and cities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. There may even be some of the Arab enclaves within the Israeli Green Line, the demarcation of the ending positions of Israel’s first war of annihilation started by seven nation’s armies the morning of her declaration of statehood, an act which so many desired making temporary, that is until the Arab forces believe they have finally gained the upper hand and once again launch their assault from the same borders as in 1967. What is amazing is setting this Green Line as the Israeli borders is supported by Israeli friends and foes alike and even to such who have earned the title of fiend such as Mahmoud Abbas, Khaled Meshaal, Ismael Haniyeh, Saeb Erekat and some others who are responsible for so much of the torturous relations and the refusal to make any peace which would leave even a single building in Tel Aviv as Jewish. Some, like Hamas, would not be satisfied to force every last Israeli Jew to be wading out into the Mediterranean Sea towards many waiting boats where they would tour the world being refused entry by every nation, with some sending their remnants of what had been a thriving Jewish community ejected to board those very same boats in a permanent limbo until every Jew was forced from what had been their family homelands for as much as two thousand years with some being even longer. Such treatment should be expected as the story has been the same for longer than most people’s histories are traceable; the Jewish people’s history is traceable as the Hebrew Bible and numerous other writings spanning both good times and bad relating the history of the Jews going back three-thousand-plus years to the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt. Placing longevity aside, the Jewish history starts a mere thousand years before Christianity was born during the Roman Occupation and based on the preaching and life of Jesus and the writings collected in the New Testament and seventeen-hundred years before the founding of Islam based on the life and visions of Mohammad which were collected and make up the Koranic verses. The Roman Occupation was a seminal point in Jewish history as they were responsible for the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, the dispersal of the Jews across the face of the Roman Empire in an attempt to destroy the Jewish People and for the name Syria Palaestina in an attempt to erase any Jewish ties to the Holy Lands just as Palestine, term derived from the Roman distinction, is attempting to accomplish today and which is why the nation of Israel rid itself of ties to that name which was a reminder of the evils of the Roman rule.

 

The founding of Israel and its survival through the near two years of war resisting, even, if unable to fully repulse, the assault by the combined forces of seven Arab national armies aided by numerous militias including one made up of Arabs who had been the Jews’ neighbors, some of whom waited for the troops to pass their seemingly peaceful villages only to then follow and make a rear assault to coincide with the Jewish engagement with Arab forces from the front thus forcing the Israelis to fight many battles from two fronts, one was their engaging of actual armies with all the resources one might expect from an established army and the other a well-armed militia closing in from the rear. This was the practice which led to the Jewish and other forces supporting the survival of the formation of Israel to force those Arab towns and sectors of cities which could not be vouched for as friendly to be either sent to a camp for the duration. There had already been a mass exodus of Arabs who fled their farms, towns, cities, enclaves and neighborhoods taking positions behind the Arab armies engaging the Jews and their allied fighters for their lives and very survival because a loss would have meant another annihilation, this time on the soil of our native soil, a risk many Jews gladly made. The aim of that assault on May 15, 1948 was an assault with the intent to drive the Jews into the sea or to murder every last Jew found after Arab victory was secured. That was thwarted as the Jewish forces fought the Arab armies to a standstill initially and then began pushing them from the Jewish lands which made up Israel west of the Jordan River. Once the Jewish forces had started to make gains and appeared to be defeating the opposing forces the United Nations at the request of the British, Americans and the Arab League to impose an end to the fighting, thus bringing an end to the war which for all intents and purposes had been being fought since the imposition of the British Mandate and the idea of forming a Jewish State between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea was an anathema to the Arabs as they firmly believed that all the lands which had formerly been a part of the Ottoman Empire were supposed to be sacredly kept in Arab Muslim hands and guaranteed by Allah. To allow a Jewish State in the heart of the Middle East was beyond acceptable and must be erased even before it starts. This is part of the reason for the riots by the Arabs against the Jews starting in the early 1920s and continuing right up to the official founding of the Jewish State of Israel. From that point the fight was joined by the armies from over a half dozen Arab Nations with the blessings of the Arab League and were supposed to slaughter every last Jew casting their lifeless bodies into the Sea. As the Jews and their few Arab allies as well as some of the other tribal units including many of the Druze halted the advancement and began to back the Arab armies back across the Jordan River, into Lebanon, onto the Golan Heights, back into the Sinai Peninsula and Egyptian lands and out of Jerusalem, a major task left unfinished as time ran out approximately one year three months and so many days into 1949 and which had officially been declared as intent by the combined forces of the Arab League starting for them on November 30, 1947. The Arab countries signed armistice agreements with Israel in 1949, starting with Egypt (Feb. 24), followed by Lebanon (March 23), Jordan (April 3) and Syria (July 20). Iraq was the only country that did not sign an agreement with Israel, choosing instead to withdraw its troops and hand over its sector to Jordan. The rapid placing of a deadline soon after Israel was gaining the upper-hand was something which was to be repeated throughout Israeli history and up to and including the present. The intent of every move made even by those considered as the closest of friends to Israel almost as if aiding those seen as Israel’s enemies who are pushing the return to the 1967 Lines, just as President George W. Bush based and pushed with the Roadmap to Peace and as President Barack Obama has adamantly held as sacrosanct from day one and was a centerpiece of his infamous Cairo speech which was seen to also empower the Muslim Brotherhood and being chiefly responsible for their rise to power in Egypt only to be overthrown by the people and the military and the election of General Sisi as Egyptian President forcing him to surrender his military career and once again placing a military leader at the helm of Egypt.

 

These facts are important because within hours there will be those, even including some foreign funded Israeli NGOs such as Adalah, Itijah, and the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions and others including the New Israel Fund (NIF) which is utilized by numerous nations and is a darling getting billions of dollars from leftist Jews in the United States, many of whom voted for President Obama twice and agree that Jerusalem should be shared with any Palestinian State which is formed and claim that if Israel would just sacrifice and offer the Palestinian a deal that they would perceive as just and fair then peace would break out and flowers bloom ending wars in every corner of the world and proving the leftist blame Israel firsters to have been right all along. What they refuse to realize, let alone believe, is that in reality the only deal Mahmoud Abbas, like Yasser Arafat before him, would accept is the turnover of the entirety of the state of Israel and while most of the Jews would be permitted to seek refuge wherever they were offered sanctuary, there would be those seen as the most adamant Zionists and members of the IDF, present and past and largely commanders, be turned over to the Palestinians to be tried for war crimes and then promptly executed as a message to all Jews to never return to Eretz Yisroel as it is now and will forever be part of Dar al-Islam. The real question would be where would those Jews who were amongst the nearly one million Jews rejected from their homes across the Arab and Muslim worlds and their descendants go to take refuge? There is absolutely no possibility their former home nations while they were in the Diaspora would ever accept them. Further, where would those Jews who either escaped or were allowed to emigrate from the Soviet Union and from Russia after the fall be permitted to reside. Finally, there is Europe where there would be massive violent protests and quite possibly pogroms forcing the remaining Jews from their homes and sending them to live with their kind on this floating nation, and that is quite likely what the ships would eventually come, the world’s first floating city (assuming Atlantis was an Island and not a floating city which got tired of humanity and simply pulled up the earthly anchor chains and fled to greener, or maybe not so much greener but some other color, say golden color like wheat pastures.

 

As has been noted here before, there will be only one solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the eradication of one group from the lands west of the Jordan River, south and west of the Golan Heights, potentially including the Druze enclaves north of Mount Hermon, very possibly, depending on the actions from Hezballah and whether their efforts continue against Israel and thus require a definitive and defendable border which rivers provide, south of the Litani River in Lebanon and including all the Christians and Druze who cared to become Israeli citizens, an offer that should be given a set date after which it will be too late, and along the Gaza and Sinai Desert borders with the Negev Desert including the retention of Eilat and all of Jerusalem with liberal allowances for Arabs and all others to visit the Temple Mount for prayer or simply to visit the Holy Sites. Israel has proven over the years to offer and protect religious freedoms and has many such minorities as members of the Israeli Knesset, the parliamentary body which is chosen to rule over Israel. Gaza can remain as it is providing that there are no, zero, rockets fired into Israel and further there be no infiltrations through tunnels and other entry devices or deceptions. Any Judean or Samarian Palestinians desiring to remain under Palestinian rule can be relocated to Gaza as the concentrations of people which provide pictures to back up the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others’ claims are the only places so overcrowded. Much of Gaza is farmland which is why the Hamas and Islamic Jihad demand open borders for the farmers to sell their goods and pay confiscatory taxes to finance terrorism and the lifestyles of their rich and infamous leadership. A map showing the population densities across all of the Gaza Strip is below. The reality is that nowhere in the world can the over six-million and rising Jews be quartered as Europe would simply turn them away and the United States would do the same as each governor would refuse to allow such an influx as such would be interpreted as a complete change in the state’s economy as almost anything the Israelis, known as start-up nation around the world, would produce would be additive to the Alaskan economy, but even that positive note would likely cause a drastic alteration in the Alaskan demographics and then there would be the problem of retaining them in Alaska as many speak fluent English and actually came from the United States and retain their United States Passport (it comes in handy if one desires to see the pyramids). So, even the United States would likely have cold feet when facing this dire situation and putting such a question to the people would likely put on display the ugly realities of anti-Semitism, giving it a venue to be on display for the world to see, and if Jews who had been deposed and deprived of their homelands were to need to find refuge the world would very quickly become a very dangerous place to be Jewish. The masks would be removed and any residual or other ugliness and would rear its grotesque head for all to see and the mobs of what had been normal citizens the day before would turn on the American Jews likely expunging them from within the society carrying out the first American purification pogrom expelling the Jews from their midst and adding another five and a half million plus Jews onto the boats to join their dispossessed brethren. It would not be a pretty site nor would anybody desire to step forth and offer a solution with approaching twelve million Jews into its hinterlands where they could guard and protect these lands and all the inhabitants therein, especially the those threatened beasts, such as all are given a chance to thrive. The other potential ending is that should Iran become a nuclear power, they would most likely provide Hamas and/or Hezballah with a device knowing full well it would be deployed in Israel. These are dangerous and perilous times made all the more so as there exists no force countering the evils being perpetrated while America sleeps. Be worried, very worried, should she wake to view the evils and wayward actors strewn from pillar to post attempting to impose their will all in the hope that America continues to be transfixed only on her bottom line. The economy is about to change and the job market with it as robotic units can be made more lifelike and replace workers, especially at repetitive tasks. This high unemployment future is just around the corner and it will have a great impact on life in every corner of the job market. As Bob Dylan sang, “The World she is a-changin’.”

 

Display shows large open areas with little population where Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other combatants could operate without threat to the population.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

 

Coddling Barbarians While Condemning the Civilized

 

Let it be understood that our nerves are still raw and our restraint in wording may suffer a tendency towards the extreme but we will attempt to keep it civil as the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov has insisted in his statement that, “On this second day of Ramadan and at the start of the Shabbat, I call on all sides to exercise the utmost restraint, to maintain calm and promptly bring the perpetrators to justice.” We will attempt to exercise the ‘utmost restraint’ but that will be difficult. Still, odds are you will never hear about Danny Gonen who at the tender age of twenty-five was gunned down along with a friend who remains hospitalized in moderate but stable condition simply for the crime of being Jews passing a barbarian with blood in his eyes seeking his sacrifice to his gods or martyrdom in their service. The one thing I can be assured of is he must not have worshiped as a member of the religion of peace as if he was, how such a barbarous act could have happened? This is a familiar story and Danny Gonen will be labeled a settler because Jews should know their place and not stray beyond the Green Line. There are those in the world demanding that Israel accept as many as five-million Arab refugees within the Green Line in order to make Israel the twenty-fourth Arab State behind the twenty-third Arab state of Palestine but Jews must know their place in the world. We must obey our masters at the United Nations, the European Union, countless western Capital Cities and whomever else demands our restraint, a restrain which is never truly demanded should in response to rioting and attacks on Israeli police or other security personnel result in an Arab Palestinian accidentally or in response to imminent threat to the life of said Israeli law enforcement personnel but always almost simultaneously with the viscous and unprovoked attack upon Jews, usually Israeli Jews but the victim can be a Jew visiting from outside Israel or even a Christian visiting or residing in Israel.

 

While this barbarity was being understood and calm was the response as it would have been even had nobody said a word, as Jews tend not to take vengeance as much as we try to understand, but to put some emphasis on this need for Jews to sacrifice more than our young but also risk sacrificing our entire nation, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius is jetting his way for meetings with the Arab League and then on to meet with Mahmoud Abbas and then complete his mission meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu where the demand of the combined Arab world will be delivered and the message will be to give them everything they demand before they murder more Jews, more Israeli youth. What all the caring souls such as French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon who just finished his dressing-down of Israel for the use during the defensive response to terrorist assaults sending thousands of rockets into Israel last summer named Protective Edge consider is that it is all Israel’s responsibility all the time. Maybe you have heard about it in the recent report by Willy Stern of Vanderbilt Law School which complained of the IDF actions in the preliminary cautionary steps leading up to strikes on positions stating, “It was abundantly clear that IDF commanders had gone beyond any mandates that international law requires to avoid civilian casualties,” also made the point, “The IDF’s warnings certainly go beyond what the law requires, but they also sometimes go beyond what would be operational good sense elsewhere,” concluding in a cautionary tome with an actual complaint, something we and the IDF are used to, but this one was different claiming that, “People are going to start thinking that the United States and other Western democracies should follow the same examples in different types of conflict. That’s a real risk.” Yet Moon demanded Israel respond to the use by Hamas of children as shields for their rocket stores, rocket manufacturing facilities, and rocket launching locations while firing rockets statin, “I urge Israel to take concrete and immediate steps, including by reviewing existing policies and practices, to protect and prevent the killing and maiming of children, and to respect the special protections afforded to schools and hospitals.”

 

Ban Ki-Moon’s admonitions came right on the heels of the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl who managed to make an admission buried between a litany of complaints, accusations, admonitions and spurious excuses, reasons and explanations that there indeed were rockets and other stores, but left out any comments on the UNRWA clinic built with explosives within the walls so as to be used at a later date as a trap to kill IDF soldiers, were indeed found in UNRWA schools and other structures. He also had to include such tales of his noble and brave actions stating, and we fear this will be another long quote as he was long winded in his self-congratulatory-orations stating, “We were the ones who found the weapons caches in our facilities during inspections,” not entirely true as the IDF found and reported the first two of the finds, not Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl and friends. Continuing, “The reason that the whole world knew about it is that we told them,” after initially denying the reports then feigning surprise, shock and complete protestations of innocence and having no prior knowledge of such transgressions. But wait, there’s more, “We knew the revelation would lead to harsh responses against us in Israel, but try to imagine what would happen if we weren’t the ones who published it. The act of publishing proves we aren’t ready to allow it and show restraint,” such restraint such as calling Hamas rocket removal services to remove the rockets from the first location and having a collapse of memory on who they called to remove the rockets from the subsequent locations but we have our suspicions, we know, so cynical of us. Additionally we have the self-aggrandizement phase of his response, “I was the only senior international official who condemned the rocket fire from the Gaza Strip at Israel. And I didn’t do that from a place where it was easy and convenient to talk like Jerusalem or Geneva, but rather from within the Gaza Strip itself. I can say of myself that I take international law very seriously, and if I know that rockets are fired intentionally at regions where there is a population that can be harmed by it – I condemn.” Now comes more self-involvement and self-congratulatory rhetoric while condemning Israel and the IDF along the same venue as Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, “The day after the strike I visited the wounded children at the hospital, and I saw with my own eyes their parents who stood by them; what does that mean when you don’t have the ability to protect your children. When I see whole neighborhoods in Gaza that were destroyed by the IDF, or that there are UNRWA schools that were harmed after we gave the IDF their locations a dozen times and clarified that there are citizens there, then certainly we will put out condemnations. The price of the last operation was very high: 540 killed children and 3,000 wounded children. That doesn’t match with the Israeli statement that all steps were taken to reduce to a minimum the number of wounded.” Noticeably missing from his diatribe was any mention about his dear friends and combatant-in-arms Hamas and their usage of locations such as schools, hospitals, refugee centers and clinics to store, fire and place positions all in efforts to maximize civilian casualties with a special effort to include as many children as possible by such means as asking young children in an excited and playful tone if they would like to come and ‘help’ the brave Jihadist warriors as they fire rockets at those demonic Israelis, what youth could resist? Perhaps a recount of the report from Professor Stern of Vanderbilt Law School’s content.

“It was abundantly clear that IDF commanders had gone beyond any mandates that international law requires to avoid civilian casualties. The IDF’s warnings certainly go beyond what the law requires, but they also sometimes go beyond what would be operational good sense elsewhere. People are going to start thinking that the United States and other Western democracies should follow the same examples in different types of conflict. That’s a real risk.” A further conclusion from the report added that the IDF, “is setting an unreasonable precedent for other democratic countries of the world who may also be fighting in asymmetric wars against brutal non-state actors who abuse these laws.” Pnina Sharvit Baruch, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) concurred with the report adding her assessment stating legal advisers from other militaries around the world confront her with “recurring claims” that the IDF “is going too far in its self-imposed restrictions intended to protect civilians, and that this may cause trouble down the line for other democratic nations fighting organized armed groups.”

 

Still, the violence which added the name of a blessed young adult, Danny Gonen, barely beyond his childhood, and actually would be considered a child in any report which lists the children killed in any IDF action as child seems to go as far in life as a few years past thirty if the cause is righteous and favored by those purveyors of Human Rights. Meanwhile Israeli and Jews who are murdered are often cast-off as deserving of such as they are “settlers” or were taking unadvisable and dangerous, life-threatening risks hiking in the wrong location, that location is anywhere in Israel according to the growing numbers of extremist reporters and commentators. Recent reports have introduced one more the concept that all of Jerusalem should be made the capital of and Arab nation formed out of the hide of the Jewish State as Israel already has a city worthy of the title as their capital, Tel Aviv, after all, is that not where the European and American embassies are located. I wonder if the Israelis moved their capitals from Paris to Marseilles, Berlin to Frankfurt, Moscow to St. Petersburg, London to Manchester, Rome to Milano, Warsaw to Krakow; would the world accept the Israeli media using these replacement capital cities in their news reports or would there be a holy stink and caseloads of indignation showered onto such acts of perceived disrespect for national pride and the self-determining right of nations to choose their own capital city, at least in the rest of the world. The same also applies to the Israeli citizens living or visiting the contested areas which were legally repatriated through a defensive war which liberated them from Jordanian internationally declared illegal occupation even by the Arab League and the Arab nations individually. Since Jordan was occupying Judea and Samaria which she illegally renamed the West Bank, a name that has become so popular it has all but erased the lands real names, and Egypt was occupying Gaza, and the Golan Heights by Syria, from whom were they occupying these lands? The answer can be found in numerous places and historic treaties, conferences and documents; they were occupied Israeli lands and were liberated, not conquered during that fateful week in June of 1967. Israel has returned the lands she has occupied over her short history where she has responded to attacks and gained legal right to those lands, but she has exited them and returned them. Israel has returned the Sinai Peninsula and returned after the 1973 defensive war, one where Israel was almost overrun and would have been if not still possessing the Sinai, the lands west of the Suez Canal and the control over the Suez Canal as Israel was well on her way to Cairo in the south and withdrew back to the Golan Heights from her advance almost to Damascus in the north, responding to simultaneous assaults by Syria and Egypt. The remaining lands, with possible discussions as to where exactly in the Golan Heights region the border needs to be drawn, are all rightfully belonging to Israel by treaties reaching back to the 1920s. That is the simple truth nobody cares to mention in polite conversation.

 

Also left from polite conversations is the fact that from May 15, 1948 through June 8, 1967 the lands of Gaza, Judea and Samaria were held by Egypt and Jordan respectively and during that nineteen year and three weeks interval the Arab citizens within these areas, they had yet decided that they were Palestinians as they still identified as Syrian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Turkish, Saudi, Yemenis, and Balkans; anything but Palestinian as that was still the reference for the Jews who had resided in these lands returning in numbers and joining the Jewish communities which could be found largely in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, on Kibbutzim, working farms, in Shechem (Nablus), in Hevron, Beersheba, Eilat, Jaffa, Haifa, Jericho and numerous other cities, towns, villages and such where many of the families had resided for as long as close to three-thousand-years and many could trace their heritage in these lands which are Israel back to before the Greek invasions having resided in these lands since returning from the Babylonian exile and some since the Exodus itself. These so-called ‘Palestinian’ Arabs never once during those nineteen years of Egyptian and Jordanian occupation muttered a peep about their ancient and holy land of Palestine as they were as content as an unkosher animal in a mud-puddle. There were no riots even after the Israelis liberated the lands and were well on the path to patronizing these Arab populations to potentially Israeli citizenship while offering them opportunities they had never even dreamed of before Israel arrived on their scene, as Israel opened new schools, a university, hospitals, paved many roads, new sewage treatment facilities, new water mains and pipes to virtually every town and farm and electricity from the Israeli grid and phone service which reached out to the world. It was not until KGB agent and provocateur Yasser Arafat and his second in command Mahmoud Abbas arrived and stirred up racial strife and began the first Intifada, invented a new meaning for Naqba Day which originally referred to the partitioning of the area into French and British Mandated lands thus separating those Arabs living mostly east for the Jordan River but in British Mandate lands from their holy city of Damascus where they were required to make regular pilgrimages since the Mecca was denied them during much of the Ottoman Empire which preferred the Damascus location of the Hajj as it meant more money for their empire. These Arabs who cast their allegiances as being citizens of the southern region of greater Syrian Province with Damascus as its capital city and thus considered a place of importance that any perception of difficulties preventing travel to Damascus as being life-altering and thus given the name Naqba meaning catastrophe. This all started after World War I and the setting of the Mandate Lands and the division of their governance during the 1920s.

 

The recent report which came from the United Nations decrying the unnecessary and needless deaths of children would not have included any reference to Danny Gonen just as it did not mention anything about Yaakov Naftali Fraenkel age 16, Gilad Michael Shaer age 16 and Eyal Yifrah age 19, who were kidnapped, possibly tortured and then brutally murdered and hastily buried in a shallow grave on June 12, 2014, which prompted a weeks’ long search before the bodies were recovered. Let us pass on some more names not covered by the United Nations report of violence against children where Israel received far more coverage for her ‘crimes’ than were ISIS, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Iran, North Korea or elsewhere, surprised? We weren’t. There is Adele Biton who was three-years-old when injured and received serious head wounds and brain damage in early 2013 and has subsequently died under two years later succumbing to her horrific wounds. Yonatan Palmer died on September 23, 2011 on a roadside in the family van striking a tree at speed as his father, Asher Palmer, slumped over the steering wheel dead with his face smashed partially through his skull with a rock which bore a striking resemblance to the horrific wound; Yonatan Palmer was barely one-year-old. There was the Friday, March 11, 2011 attack on the Fogel family where both parents were murdered with the father having his throat cut while he slept and his wife murdered after a brief struggle with her attacker who slit her throat as well just to make sure she was dead. The children murdered were Hadas age three months, Yoav age eleven years and Elad age four years all except little Hadas from having their throats slit while sleeping on a Friday night Shabbat evening. Tiny little Hadas had initially escaped notice as had two of her older brothers sleeping in the living room rather than their beds and the families’ oldest, their daughter who was still attending a Shabbat late prayer session and young adults’ Torah session who returned to find the family slaughtered. Little three month old Hadas was not in a crib but was mostly concealed by the covers as she slept next to her father who had his arm holding her even in his death. Something woke the little, nay, infant girl as the two Arab teen cousins from the Arab town bordering the Jewish community of Itamar, a place unfortunately all too familiar with such terror attacks, were making their escape and when she started crying they heard her. One of the cousins returned to silence the infant, a mere three-month-old barely out of the womb tiny girl, helpless, innocent, no real cares in the world as we adults know it, everything was a new and fascinating experience until that Shabbat night. She lie there next to her father probably aware that something was amiss, little children have a built in alarm system which warns them when there is a tear in their world and she likely sensed there was quite a bit wrong with her world. The Arab teen returned and murdered little Hadas quite measurably more brutally as she had her little neck slit like the other members of the family murdered that night but before slitting her throat this barbarian had plunged his knife violently and viscously into her chest piercing her heart multiple times during that four or so stabs into her little torso in such a brutal and hateful way.

 

What makes a person so dead inside as to be capable of such an act? How does one desensitize someone to be capable of such brutality to a three month old baby girl, and mere infant whose life has barely begun and who is the most helpless and innocent amongst us. It is beyond reason and understanding and even human nature to take such action or is it. This was an act carried out in these lands four or five thousand years ago. Nobody knows when it was finally ended, or was it when we see what was perpetrated against little Hadas. The practice in prehistory and even into the age of written history was to sacrifice young children to the pagan gods, but not to all or any random of these false gods often represented by a stone idol. One of the chief gods to which children were sacrificed was Baal. Priests would hold a great ceremony of which was the culmination where a child or even many children were sacrificed depending on the whims of the priests. The Priests used the threat of granting you the honor of presenting your young child for the sacrifice as a way of governing and assuring that nobody opposed their will, or at least not for long. The method of sacrifice varied as some were thrown into pits of fire while another popularly used was to slit the child’s throat and then plunge the dagger into their heart several times, almost the same manner in which little Hadas was murdered. If this can be looked upon as a ritual sacrifice then we truly are dealing with barbarians and they are inside our gates. This is not to claim that all people who share racial, religious, societal or any other convictions as these two teens and the other perpetrators given to list of their victims above are all barbarians as there are monsters amongst all societies, just some more than others, but that alone does not make their actions the nourishment upon which it suckles. But should a society find that more and more of their youth have taken to such violent acts, then it is up to the adults and influential people to make an effort to end such barbarisms, and if they miss the opportunity to make such changes as required to end barbarous behavior, then their society may gain the label of barbarians and that should result in their being shunned and ostracized for the good of the society as well as for its own survival. When people exhibit such violent tendencies and show no remorse, or as the perpetrators of the acts above, show pride and the feelings that such acts are an accomplishment, then there is a serious problem which must be addresses with the utmost urgency and not necessarily taking steps to assure the exercise of the utmost restraint.

 

With our sincerest apologies to United States President Obama, European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini, United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov. Another note for Mr. Mladenov, the (so-called) Honorable Ban Ki-Moon, UNRWA’s Commissioner-General Krahenbuhl and all the other holier-than-thou human rights experts and other busybodies; the truth be told the Israeli public is getting good and fed-up with having to take the high road and always turn our rage aside and simply quietly and politely bury our dead and try and believe it is all over till the next time, which comes a lot more frequently the further we go down this road. When we look back down the road to see from where we have come there are too many bouquets lining the road on both sides and too close together to even try and pretend there is nothing wrong. There is something wrong and it is wrong here, in Europe, in the United States, it’s permeating the Western World and to a lesser extent, the entire planet. You ask us to “exercise the utmost restraint” or to “practice restraint” or as Ban Ki-Moon demanded when commenting on the commission report on the suffering of children from violence where he appeared to instruct Israel to, “take concrete and immediate steps, including by reviewing existing policies and practices, to protect and prevent the killing and maiming of children,” with no mention of Hamas practices or the report that Israel has set the bar too high for the rest of the Western nations to be capable of meeting those standards implemented and utilized by the IDF with the intent of decreasing, if not eliminating, not only children’s casualties but all noncombatant casualties. The day may come and come sooner rather than later when Israelis go out of their minds and show the world what the ethnic cleansing and genocide would look like if the political leadership decided to actually let loose the maximum capabilities of Israel to sew the whirlwind. Do not get all frantic as Israel would never actually commit such acts, but we could perform an operation by displaying in an exercised war scenario in conjunction with another nation providing the necessary opposing forces using the laser tagging vest system to depict what could happen if we were to actually commit the crimes which so many are so fond of accusing us of committing or intending to commit. If we intended to commit such acts, the world would know about it really quickly, but let us hope things never come to such a state as, oh, say Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and having used them on another nation, not necessarily Israel as though they have promised to destroy Israel, they never reserved the first slot for Israel, that is likely either for the United States or Saudi Arabia, and we might desire to strike back in their names. That would provide a definitive display of Israel letting loose the dogs of war and doing so with every dog we can muster.

 

Beyond the Cusp