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

 

Tribute to Three Beloved Teens

The three abducted Israeli teenagers, Eyal Yifrah, Gilad Sha’ar and Naftali Frenkel, were found murdered late Monday afternoon. Their bodies had been disposed of in three shallow graves near the Hevron locations which had been under intense searches since their disappearance over two weeks before. A number of national leaders expressed their sympathies and gave condolences to the families with heartfelt words of kindness and compassion. Then there were those who expressed semi sympathetic words which lost most of their meaning as they were followed by other thoughts which stole from their words any kind content.

 

One official stated, “There can be no justification for the deliberate killing of civilians.” Then this person of leadership stated that they had “hopes Israeli and Palestinian authorities will work together to bring the perpetrators swiftly to justice, and extends his deepest sympathy to the families of the victims.” This would had been wonderful had their office not followed the quotes stating that this official “believes this heinous act by enemies of peace aims to further entrench division and distrust and to widen the conflict. It must not be allowed to succeed. He calls on all parties to abide by their obligations under international law and to refrain from any actions that could further escalate this highly tense situation.”

 

Another national leader gave words of sympathy expressing the sympathies of his country’s peoples adding, “…I extend my deepest and heartfelt condolences to the families of Eyal Yifrah, Gilad Sha’ar, and Naftali Frenkel…” This leader extended a personal touch showing his deepest understandings stating, “As a father, I cannot imagine the indescribable pain that the parents of these teenage boys are experiencing.” They added again the national thoughts adding that the nation “condemns in the strongest possible terms this senseless act of terror against innocent youth. From the outset, I have offered our full support to Israel and the Palestinian Authority to find the perpetrators of this crime and bring them to justice, and I encourage Israel and the Palestinian Authority to continue working together in that effort.” Then came the part which just spoiled the entire servings of sympathy and understanding of the grief and pain on a national level in Israel, and could have pained the parents during their time of deepest suffering when they added, “I also urge all parties to refrain from steps that could further destabilize the situation.”

 

Finally, there is one agency which made similar conditional statements, the United States Department of State. The State Department did refer to the murders as a “tragedy.” Then they went and demanded that “both sides to maintain patience and restraint,” and urged Israel and the Palestinian Authority to continue their security cooperation. There was not condemnation of Hamas or critique of the wisdom of Mahmoud Abbas having agreed to form a unity government with Hamas. There was no condemnation of the full forced attempts called for, encouraged, and held up as patriotic and exemplary the obstructions and impediments by the Palestinian population within Hevron working to prevent the success of the IDF units searching for the abducted teens. There was no mention of the probability that the Palestinian Authority as a unity government including Fatah and Hamas knew the location of the youths’ corpses and ignored any responsibility to inform the Israeli government of their location. There were absolutely no denunciations of the complete and total lack of cooperation throughout the entirety of the ordeal while exhorting their people to take all possible opportunities to obstruct the search efforts. Also there was no mention of the fact that since the abductions there had been over seventy rockets fired from Gaza into Israel by the Hamas section of the new Palestinian Authority unity government.

 

Within Israel there is a general numbness and shock despite the reasoning that with each day that passed the probability that things would have a horrific ending, hope was held to with a determination that by strength of hopes and prayer alone the youths could be sustained. Little did anybody know in the Israeli public that the three boys had been murdered almost immediately after being abducted and then discarded in shallow graves hastily dug and then the car used in the abduction was burned to destroy evidence. Now comes the period where emotions run wild and still decisions need to be made as to what the response Israel should pursue. There are those calling for a serious assault in an effort to completely devastate and destroy all of Hamas. Some claim that Israel needs to build more homes in the neighborhoods where the boys attended their Yeshivas and the neighborhoods where their families reside. Another option being bandied is to annexing lands unilaterally as a response to the grisly murderous result from the abductions. There have been reports that the meetings of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet have been divided with Naftali Bennett supporting the most hawkish positions calling for a military assault against Hamas eradicating their ability to threaten Israelis while both Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid demanding that restraint be the watchword and any actions going forward be weighed carefully and warning against any unilateral actions which might risk damaging any future peace negotiations.

 

Where full scale military operations against Hamas might present some difficulties and before considering such an option there should be discussions with the IDF commanders and proposals placed before the Security Cabinet and fully discussed and if the IDF leadership determines that such an option should necessarily be scheduled for months in the future after training for such a mission had been conducted and troops readied for any and all of the exacting challenges and prepared for the inevitable difficulties and unexpected surprises, then their advice must be taken as necessary facts. Where building more housing in these neighborhoods would be a feel-good move, it would only serve to cause even more international condemnations and demands that such plans be nixed as they might cause even more difficulties in the peace process going forward. Then there is the ramification of any move which needs to be measured, but only in order to understand and prepare for the onslaught of world condemnations which will be launched no matter what steps Israel takes in her defense and in service of the future of the nation. Perhaps the question Israel should address first and foremost is exactly how much of the world’s scorn and defamation they are ready to suffer with each of the options available and decide which option offers the most gains for the least aggravation and suffering of the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune.

 

Past experience has proven that the world explodes into immeasurable emotional outbursts that rise to thunderous crescendos with every claim of dastardly deeds by the Palestinian media and complaint professionals and their echoes throughout the mainstream media. These protestations continue to echo through the weeks and months after the end of military confrontations with occasional reinforced bursts stimulated by media reports often instigated by Palestinian circulated outrages of supposed Israel crimes. These claims are almost always proven fabrications but also go to prove that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on. Any building projects necessarily because of legal licensing, proposal filings and other governmental requirements forces several stages where public announcements are required with the same expected feigned outrage which is inevitably picked up by the mainstream media fanning the flames of ignited outrage. That leaves taking the peace process into Israeli hands and unilaterally annexing some parts or possibly all of Judea and Samaria or retaking Gaza. Israel has absolutely no desire to retake Gaza, or so it would appear if polls taken over the past few years are at all accurate, which is probably a good reference as these polls have been sponsored from all fronts across the political field. This move would likely cause the initially most ferocious reaction, but one which would peak quickly and fall off rapidly. The problem with annexation is that it also requires acceptance and recognition by world bodies and other nations, and there lies the problem. Where the Palestinians have appeared to be capable of gaining support in the General Assembly of the United Nations which they definitively proved by gaining an upgraded status within the United Nations community, Israel might face some difficulties directly proportional to the Palestinian successes. One must remember one small factor; the Palestinians have the support of the twenty-two Arab nations, the additional Muslim nations and most of the members of the Non-Aligned Nations group. This combination provides the Palestinians with an unassailable block of support in that body but they lack the complete and unopposed support of all five permanent members of the Security Council thus leaving them short of the requirements for membership in the United Nations and thus recognized statehood. The supportive block of the Palestinians would largely oppose any Israeli moves to annex any of Judea and Samaria. But could annexation have some other means of becoming reality?

 

The surprising answer is yes. Israel actually has that often raised issue of International Law on their side. First, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which was signed by the allied powers after World War I, once adopted the agreement formalized the Mandate System and define the divisions and borders for the new nations to be formed from the lands formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire. This placed the French to manage the French Mandate which was to establish an Islamic state and a Christian state. This eventually led to the founding of Syria and Lebanon as the Islamic and Christian nations. The British also had a Mandate from which they were to facilitate the formation of a state for the Jewish People. The British Mandate included lands between Iraq and the Mediterranean Sea. The Sykes-Picot Agreement was signed into effect on May 9, 1916. Needless to say, the British could not bring themselves to allow for a state for the Jewish People covering such a large amount of land and they had a further problem that they also had promised the Hashemites a nation to reward them for their assistance during World War I and due to the loss of their former lands around and including Mecca and Medina which were taken by the Family Saud. They had also promised the Jews from the Balfour Declaration and furthermore in recognition for the bravery and actions during World War I of the Palestinian Division which was a unit totally consisting of Jews mostly from within the traditional ancient Jewish homelands as well as throughout the British Empire. This led to the Churchill White Paper (also known as The British White Paper of 1922) which would clarify the Balfour Declaration providing they were granted agreement by the Zionists who held the superior position for claims due to the former Sykes-Picot Agreement. The promise the British gave the Zionists to finalize and attain their agreement was in exchange for permitting the British to establish a state for the Palestinian Arabs east of the Jordan River in what measured out at seventy-eight percent of the original British Mandate lands and were originally named Transjordan and subsequently Jordan, the Zionists would be granted all of the lands west of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea in perpetuity and guaranteed by the British Crown. These two agreements are recognized and accepted by the United Nations in Article 80 of the United Nation Charter. Article 80 recognized the Mandates, both the French and British Mandates and related agreements. With these agreements which have historical records and are accepted by modern agreements through the auspices of the United Nations which has become the declared enforcing agent in addition to the British, French, Japanese and the United States, Israel could annex legally all of Judea and Samaria and would not be required to accept the Palestinians residing in these areas as citizens unless they would meet requirements defined by Israel.

 

Such requirements could require these people to sign a citizenry allegiance deposition after fulfilling requirements such as learning Israel’s Basic Laws, mastering Hebrew, and sufficient knowledge of Jewish historical claims to these lands. These requirements are similar to those requirements of other nations for immigrants to master and pledges they must make in order to be granted citizenship. There could also be a monetary requirement as part of the requirements and those desiring not to undertake the requirements for citizenship, they could be offered two choices, either they could request to remain as permanent resident aliens or they could avail themselves of an offer which Israel would make available for a set period where those desiring to leave and set up a new life in another country they could be granted airfare and a monetary remittance with which to make their adjustment to their new life. Such an offer to assist with the relocation of those who desire such is actually above and beyond any requirements which have been applied with other relocations of persons across borders. Other such movements of populations in the past includes Pakistan and India; Greece and Bulgaria; Turkey and Greece; and Poland and Germany. There was one other involuntary population transfer which is the most ignored reality of the Arab-Israeli conflict beginning with the independence of Israel in May of 1948 through the mid to late 1950s when numerous Arab nations used differing methods which resulted in dispossessing their Jewish populations with some nations actually expelling them under pain of death to laws restricting Jewish ownership of properties or holding certain professional positions and other methods of making life sufficiently uncomfortable so as to force their Jewish populations to leave. The estimates of the totals of the Jewish refugees cover a range from eight-hundred-thousand to closer to one-million. The vast majority of these refugees ended up in Israel where they were greeted with varying levels of joy and were absorbed into society rather than left to languish in refugee camps as some other refugees which even were granted their own international refugee organization independent from the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees. This refugee organization has a unique goal and mission statement where they are tasked to pass the refugee status to the ensuing generation perpetrating a permanent and constantly growing numbers of refugees into perpetuity. Could annexation of Judea and Samaria with the presentation of signed agreements which are presumably enforceable through the powers and auspices of the United Nations bring the entire Arab-Israeli problem to a close once and for all.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Escalation in Violence Since the Abduction of the Teens

Hamas has chosen to escalate their efforts against Israel in the two plus weeks since Hamas terrorists abducted three teen boys, Eyal Yifrah, Naftali Frenkel, and Gilad Sha’ar, as they were returning home from their studies at two Yeshivas. Hamas with the assistance of Fatah as well as officials from the Palestinian Authority in encouraging the citizens of the Palestinian Authority communities to do everything in their powers to impede, hinder and frustrate the efforts to locate and rescue the three teens by Israeli forces even going so far as to advocate such actions through Palestinian media. There were calls for those who owned stores with video monitoring systems and other monitoring devices to erase or destroy any tapes or other electronic records in order to deny the IDF such vital evidence which could possibly have made the searches more targeted and effective. The obstructions to the search from the outset eventually led to the worst of possible end results, the needless and unconscionable murder of the three teens. Their bodies were located late yesterday just outside Hevron, the location in which the search had been focused. This news reached us after this article had been written and before its publication. This shocking end to an already emotionally draining series of events lead to the comments that were added to reflect this emotionally draining and disheartening reality whose heartache is beyond measure. Israel has not utilized the death penalty throughout her history with the exception of Nazi criminal who was guilty of unfathomable crimes against the Jewish People. May we have the fortitude and strength of conviction to once again measure out the ultimate punishment for this senseless crime in which the terrorists chose to slaughter Jews with the same lack of any feelings of guilt or seeing them as remotely being human, just as the Nazis such as Eichmann. They deserve the same fate.

 

Additionally, Hamas has announced that they are supporting freedom in the launching of rockets into Israel and have halted all patrols which had enforced any restrictions on such attacks. Hamas went even further by not only facilitating an atmosphere for other terrorist groups to launch attacks on Israel including, or even specially, should such attacks target largely civilians, they have also resumed their assaults and launchings with each week escalating over the previous week. From Sunday evening through the early hours of yesterday, over approximately a fifteen hour period, Hamas alone launched fifteen rockets, the majority in one barrage. These rocket attacks have destroyed a plastic manufacturing plant and a paint manufacturing workshop in Sderot. This is addition to the discovery that within Hevron there have been tunnels and terrorist infrastructure throughout numerous locations. These tunnels have been found obscured beneath heavy furniture and beneath various laundry machines. They have also located numerous laboratories which were manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as well as numerous weapons caches with hundreds of weapons and thousands of rounds plus rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) and some heavy weapons systems.

 

These are within areas where the Palestinian Authority is required to work to end all terror activities and prevent the stockpiling of weapons, ammunition, explosives and specialized or heavy weaponry. They are also tasked to prevent the building of tunnels and the manufacturing of explosive devices and weapons laboratories. This is the Palestinian Authority Security Forces which has been being trained by the United States State Department at a military grade training facility built with over ten-million-dollars of American taxpayer’s money. This training has provided military training using United States military personnel and has been overseen by General Keith Dayton. Some of the Palestinian Authority Security Forces have also received counter-terrorism training and there have been reports that of those selected for this specialized training have actually tuned around and provided guidance for the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and other terrorist forces in methods to be applied in order to defeat such methods and avoid detection and other anti-terrorist enforcement techniques. Hopefully, when the terrorists responsible for abducting the three teenage students are caught, it will be verifiable that they are not from amongst those trained by the United States State Department or trained by those who received such training. Such a determination would be very disheartening for Israelis just as it would be for many Americans who support Israel and would be troubled to realize their government has assisted even unknowingly in assisting the Hamas or other Palestinian terrorists.

 

Additionally there have been further efforts to obstruct and frustrate all efforts to locate the abducted teens which have required less desirable responses by the IDF. Where the necessity for such actions is always unfortunate and undesirable, the alternative would be unthinkable and unacceptable. The Palestinians have set ambushes for the IDF units who have been deployed to try to locate and free these three youths. These ambushes have included rock throwing with slings used to launch stones and some attacks included the use of fire-bombs escalating the attacks to a life-threatening level. There have been injuries to some IDF units as well as injuries to some of the rioters when IDF units found the situation sufficiently threatening that it required responses to break-up the rioting for the safety of the troops under ambush. There were reportedly as many as four Palestinians who have died as a result of the escalating levels of the rioting and ambushes which have posed some serious and threatening assaults where IDF units were cut-off from escape and found their positions necessitated them fighting their way to safety. The screams calling the IDF defending themselves a form of disproportional and overtly violent responses come from familiar places and consisting of fully predictable phrases.

 

These are the situations which the United Nations Human Rights Council and United Nations Office of the Secretary General referred to in their admonishing Israel and the IDF for using force when their troops were threatened. The main idea was that IDF individuals should be denied the right to protect themselves when they come under attack no matter how severe the threat and risks to their lives. There can be no excuse for Israelis defending themselves from ambush as they have no right to be in areas claimed by the Palestinians even to attempt to find the abducted teen boys before their murder by their abductors. Israel must use only diplomacy and throw themselves prostrate before the Palestinians and beg for their kindness in gaining the release of the kidnapped youths. Well, we have a little rejoinder for the United Nations, “Never Again!”

 

That includes never again will Jews beg for the mercy of others, it never comes. Never again will Jews request permission from the world to be permitted to protect ourselves, it does not offer any salvation. Never again will Jews apologize for existing, we choose life and to live it unafraid. Never again will Jews plead on bended knee for the tender mercies of our enemies, we will treat them as they would treat us, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, life for a life, and actions against threats. Never again will Jews apologize for defending ourselves, we will simply demand our rights and defend them with whatever force may be necessitated. Never again will Jews cower before those who threaten us and demand that we have no right to our homelands, no right to our lives, or no right to anything such enemies wish to deny us; instead we will exercise all the rights and freedoms of a peoples and defend our own nation from any threat be the source come from without or within. Simply put, whenever you demand of us that we cower, tremble, whimper, defer or cry for your tender mercies asking that you please grant us the scraps if you would be so kind; Never again!

 

Beyond the Cusp