Failure of Palestinian Arab Society

 

The world decries the sad state of life for the average Palestinian Arabs residing under the Palestinian Authority (PA) which is run completely by Fatah (we will be using Fatah as synonymous with Palestinian Authority) and Mahmoud Abbas or those residing under Hamas rule in Gaza. The one favorite reason given for these failures, despite their coming from two opposing systems, is that Israel has not permitted them to succeed. This excuse was prevalent under President Obama and pervades throughout Europe and the main sign has been the presumed lack of elections under Hamas or Fatah. The Europeans blame Israel for this situation despite all evidence to the contrary. In Gaza, Hamas holds dictatorial power only changing leaders when Hamas decides this is necessary usually after a single individual has accrued sufficient money stashed in banks around the world that they are assured a comfortable retirement, as recently occurred with Khaled Mashaal stepping down with Ismail Haniyeh being promoted to take his place while Yahya Sinwar was promoted from being leading officer of the military wing to now take political charge in Gaza. Khaled Mashaal is estimated to have collected a self-worth of approximately $2.5 billion. While in Gaza upon the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004, the emergency election placed his second in command, Mahmoud Abbas in charge of Fatah, the PLO, the PA and the Central Committee. Abbas was to serve a five-year term and is currently in his thirteenth year in office with no elections being held as Abbas knows that he would be replaced by whomever Hamas decides to place on the ballot. Abbas is also aware that once he loses his position, he loses his armed guards and would be fortunate to get out of the area alive. There will be no election held for the Palestinian Arabs in either camp as Hamas and Fatah will continue to hold their power in their respective regions.

 

Then there are the constant attempts to reconcile the differences between Hamas and Fatah and unify rule over the Palestinian Arabs, as this has been a demand by Europe such that a single entity or state can be formed once this is accomplished. As long as there exist two separate entities, the feeling is Israel can claim they have no peace partner, as nobody represents the complete Arab community. The current attempt is being taken by Egypt and was announced a few months back as having all the appearances of coming success. The negotiations have since collapsed and are stymied at an impasse. This is unsurprising as there can be no common ground between Fatah and Hamas. The base problem is that Hamas is a religious movement based in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood and Fatah is a nationalist political movement. The two are like oil and water, no matter how much you shake them trying to find some unity, they simply do not mix. Currently the situation is very counterintuitive as in Gaza the people desire a return of Fatah ruling them as they are tired of the corruption of Hamas stealing all their funds and supplies to fund terrorism and enrich their leadership while in Judea and Samaria the Arabs under Fatah desire Hamas as they are tired of the corruption of Fatah stealing their funds for their leadership to enrich themselves and live lavish lives. Even should both entities get the change in leadership, the corruption will remain the same and the people will continue to suffer. The problem is that neither group, be it Fatah or Hamas, is willing to provide honest and fair leadership and instead end up like every other Islamic governance no matter if its base is political or religious, they will end up as dictatorial with all the wealth going to those at the top and nothing being used to provide for the people. Even in the one place where Islam and good governance had existed, Turkey after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk provided the Turkish people with a Constitution and governance which served the people and separated Mosque and government which functioned for many decades until Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came to power promising to return to Islamic principles. Erdoğan delivered on his promise and now he sits as the head of the government and even should he change titles from President to Prime Minister or Prime Minister to President, the power follows the man and not his title and he has taken Turkey down the road to ruin. Turkey was a wealthy and prosperous nation and had almost run through its vast reserves and will soon begin to resemble Egypt, the Sudan or other functional Islamic governances where the people face high unemployment and moving to a modern society is so slow it does not even rate being called a crawl.

 

The answer to the problems in the Middle East is to force a separation between Islam and the governance and to educate the people and develop industries and provide jobs and real wealth for the people. The problem is that under Islamic rule the leaders are rewarded with great wealth while the people wallow in dire poverty. The Imams take whatever wealth is available in exchange for not opposing the government and allowing the leadership to remain in power and well to do. Where there is oil, the people have better lives but still have no future and once the oil runs its course, there will be nothing to finance the government and things will turn for the worse and they will end up just like the other Islamic nations either in civil war, popular uprising, dictatorship backed by the military, dictatorship backed by the Imams, or theocracy with the Imams or Mullahs holding the real power. Find an Arab or Middle East and North African (MENA) nation where there is a government which is different from the above mentioned. Unfortunately, such a search is pretty much doomed to failure as are the nations with these forms of government. Egypt may be the closest thing to an actual democratic government but the government still has a former military chief as its President and the one person most likely to replace him is another military officer.

 

The people are largely uneducated and there is a civil war against their Coptic Christians. This is the bogeyman in most Islamic states, the non-Muslims are blamed for every problem and thus routinely struck with violent hatred and uprisings often backed by the military which only steps in to end the violence once the people are satisfied that they have struck fear into these minorities. The world saw all so plainly what happens to minorities in Islamic governance that the Islamic State started to wipe out the Yazidis in Iraq and what the Islamic State did to the libraries and remains of ancient civilizations simply because they were not Islamic. A similar thing happened in Afghanistan to the Buddhas of Bamiyan which were many hundreds of years old and were some of, if not the, largest such Buddhas in the world destroyed simply because they were considered idols and un-Islamic (see images below). This is the fate of anything which is not considered Islamic under the current form of governance and intolerance in the Islamic world. This includes people who are tortured and forced to convert and if refusing, then they will be put to death. Even should one believe differently and still be a Muslim, such as the Shiites and the Sunnis, they will not tolerate any diversion from what the current leadership considers to be the correct form of Islam. This intolerance is found throughout the Islamic world and the most strong evidence is the war Iran is waging to make Shiite Islam the dominant form.

 

Buddhas of Bamiyan before pictured on the left and
being destroyed with explosives by Taliban forces on the right

 

The Iranians leadership, the Mullahs, believe that they have been tasked to bring the end times and spread Shia Islam to the entirety of the world or subject the world to their rule and only then can they consider their charge to be complete. They desire to impress their form and only their form of Islam despite Sunni Islam outnumbering Shia Muslims by multiples as they know that if they can prevail and defeat Saudi Arabia and take their oil fields and the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, they will have become the strong horse which will then gain the allegiance of the rest of Islam. This is very likely the first priority of the Iranian leadership once they solidify their Shiite Crescent to surround Saudi Arabia. The Iranians also intend to be the Islamic force which annihilates all the Jews of Israel and eventually the world. They believe very strongly in the Quranic calls which translate as, “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.” (Sahih Bukhari volume 4 book 52 number 177) There are also references which equate Jews to pigs and apes or also rats. There are verses throughout the litany of Islamic literature which denigrates Jews often doing so while including Christians but sufficiently often alone that one could conclude the Islamic hatred against Jews is particularly virulent and pervasive. The Iranians wish to be the ones who are able to claim they have begun the first stages of the end times and the coming of the Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam. This is the belief of the Twelvers, a group of specifically ardent Shia Muslims who believe that the Twelfth Imam hid in a well to escape assassins sent by the Sunni and lives there to this day near the holy city of Qom. The Mullahs have built a causeway from Qom to Tehran so the Twelfth Imam can easily make the voyage before declaring the beginning of the Islamic end times and their imminent conquest of the world in a great conflagration filled of chaos, violence and great carnage where the unbelievers will be decimated. But Iran is a peaceful trading partner, just ask Germany, France and many other European nations.

 

Shiite Crescent including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran

 

The Iranians are once again being sought by Hamas to provide rockets, missiles and weapons to use against Israel. Iran will support both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the latter being a paid subsidiary of Iran much like Hezballah, just smaller. Iran is all but drooling over the possibility of also gaining inroads to Fatah and the PA. This would provide for them a knife pointed at the center of Israel and when combined with Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the IRGC in the Sinai Peninsula and Syria and the Iranian Army and Air Force in Syria and the Iranian Navy in the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea near Eilat, and Hezballah in Lebanon with approaching 200-thousand rockets and missiles of varying sizes and ranges with some capable of reaching Cairo and Riyadh, let alone all of Israel, allowing an assault on Israel on every front with only the small stretch of border with Jordan south of the Dead Sea along the eastern edge of Israel, assuming Jordan has not fallen to Iran; they believe that is the magic formula for the destruction of Israel. They apparently have not learned history as in 1948, without an actual functioning military, with virtually no air force plus nobody willing to sell Israel even a BB-gun outside of Czechoslovakia, Israel was attacked by Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia along with some select forces from Turkey, Yemen, the Sudan, Algeria, Libya also including the forces fighting under the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini with German (Nazi) officers advising and several militias and families attacked Israel on the day of her founding. As well as having been fighting them for the two years previous, but at a less obvious level so as not to have the British interfere which was required to prevent a few pogroms, invading from every border and fighting the Jews from within (the Jews did have a small number of Arabs who fought with them to preserve the nation as they did not wish to live under Islamic rule) and somehow over the next two years of on and off warfare, the Jews survived. Iran believes that they now have the magic combination with the addition of nuclear, including thermonuclear, weapons that they can wipe Israel from the map along with everyone they have at the borders.

 

All of this is simply further proof of why the Arabs, especially the Palestinian Arabs, are unable to establish functioning governance. Their entire governance is based on destroying Israel with no concern for building an economy and providing necessities for the people. That is a recipe for failure on all fronts. Israel has developed one of the most robust and accurate anti-missile systems with overlapping layers. There are the Arrow Systems; there are three systems in use, David Sling and Magic Wand, Iron Dome, Trophy Systems for vehicle and installation last line of protection and additional measures including from space and ground based installations which are so secretive that some only have their military nomenclature and have not even been named as of this article. Needless to add, the Israelis have systems in place and operational which can take out ICBMs and CBMs anywhere from their initial launching to any point in their trajectory and no matter their path or other measures as Israel probably developed the countermeasure for these offensive systems before the offensive systems were fully tested and placed into service. Attempting to strike Israel with missiles is possible, but it is not financially effective for the attacking nation (or for Israel except Israelis think it well worth the cost if they get to live). Israel has prepared sufficient defensive measures to prevent effective missile strikes such that their layered system has as many as three or even four systems overlapping at many distances. There is a reason why Iran gave Hezballah approaching 200-thousand rockets and missiles; their intent is to overload the Israeli defenses with numbers hoping that some make it through and if they are lucky, actually cause distress and damage possibly also some number of casualties. There is the final level of Israeli preparedness; the public is well trained through experience in finding and taking cover in shelters in case of rocket or missile attack. It is this training and practice which prevents catastrophic casualties as there often are in Gaza where Hamas had not built shelters and often sacrifices civilians to protect their rockets and launchers. Visit the Internet and search for Gaza children rocket launcher and there will be pictures and videos showing the use of children to protect these weapons. Israel will remain despite the attacks and the Arab people, especially the Palestinian Arabs who are on the front line and thus the ones demanded to make the most sacrifices, as Israeli governance treats lives as precious, even Palestinian Arab lives which they attempt to prevent, but one cannot prevent casualties when your opposition has as its main intent to have the maximum number of civilian casualties to show the world. They get their own people killed and then blame Israel and the world drinks this up with great gusto. The one piece of good news in everything thusfar, Hashem will provide that Israel survives and does so with minimal casualties and even minimal damages. This has been proven thusfar and there is no reason to doubt it continuing. Unfortunately for the Palestinian Arabs, you are left being the pawns sacrificed by your leaders such that they can have lavish lives and live the good life. If you reside in Gaza and your apartment building has been destroyed, go visit the westernmost areas where your leaders reside and see the complete lack of damage. Do you desire to know why this is so? The reason is that they never launch rockets or mortars from these areas and thus the Israelis do not launch at these areas. Perhaps you should ask the IDF to target these places and make your leaders also enjoy making great sacrifices you have been called upon to make.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Nasrallah and Allies Throwing Threats at Israel

 

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel to “Count to one million!” this past Monday before starting any attacks or violence against Lebanon. To those who know Israel they realize this threat has nothing to do with any threats which might emanate from Israel, they have everything to do with Nasrallah reinforcing his own standing as Hezballah has some difficulties as their losses in the Syria conflict continue to mount. Hezballah requires their front with Israel to give their movement legitimacy and without support in Lebanon they would not have this front. Nasrallah’s problem is the fighting by Hezballah in support of Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad in his war to try and reestablish his country with him still in control. Hezballah only has an obligation to fight for al-Assad because Iran insists they assist the Iranian efforts to support al-Assad, an ally, or should we say the more honest assessment of puppet, and thus retain Syria as the anchor on the Mediterranean of the Shiite Crescent across the Middle East. This Shiite Crescent begins with Iran bordering the Indian Ocean and Persian (Arabian) Gulf across Iraq and on through Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean Sea. Should Iran lose their claim to Syria personified by Bashir al-Assad who is more Shiite than Sunni as an Alawite Muslim, they lose their western Shiite Crescent anchor. The civil war in Syria has drawn more assets from Iran who has sent mostly Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) units and as the fighting had continued they demanded that Hezballah assist the efforts and this demand has only increased as the fighting became more and more desperate. Initially Hezballah had great successes but soon they began to have sufficient losses that they were no longer able of hiding the deaths and severe injuries to their fighters. As Hezballah is mostly an all-volunteer force, leaving Hezballah has proven bad for some individuals’ health.

 

Hassan Nasrallah Gesturing during remote feed video onto large screen during Hezballah semi-annual pretense of readiness to defeat any Israeli assault as he remain in hiding presumably beyond the reach of Israeli drones and commandos. This enhances his appearance of constantly under threat by Israeli forces seeking to assassinate him. The likely truth is that Israel had no reason, desire or even bothered to draw up plans to do so. As far as whether Israel could find Hassan Nasrallah’s various secreted locations, probably already have them pinpointed on some map just in case it becomes advantageous to remove Nasrallah from his position as the figurehead of Hezballah.

 

Still, and especially with the losses in Syria, Hezballah needs volunteers to fill their ranks of fighters. They control much of the government forces throughout Lebanon and is allied closely with President Michel Aoun and through these connections they control the education system in much of the areas and through this they indoctrinate the youth thus providing for future volunteers. One of the main attractive themes which is used in the schools and in their seeking for new recruits is the idea of fighting the Jews, Israel in particular. This has been a central theme even in Iran where their two major indoctrination inducing themes are “Death to America” teamed with “Death to Israel” both of which are often chanted in demonstrations after Friday prayers. This is the Iranian version of George Orwell’s 1984 “Two Minutes of Hate.” The similarity between the Iranian use of hate and Nasrallah using hate for Israel and the Jews are asimple means of holding power through defining and demonization of the other. This has been one of the means of unifying populations throughout Islamic history beginning with Muhammad during his later period in Medina after his being cast out of Mecca as his preaching that his revelations were the only truth, something the pluralistic society of Mecca refused to accede to, eventually rubbed the leaders of the city and the populace to such an extent they rejected both his preaching and soon the man himself, Muhammad, was cast out of the city. Once he established his power base in Medina he turned on those who had rejected him, first the Jewish tribes in the vicinity of Medina and then on Mecca bringing it down and subjugating those who had formerly rejected him. This was why he called his religion Islam which best translates as submission. This is still the method used by Islam that all must bow to their wishes and as Muhammad chose the Jews for a special place as the most accursed by Islam, this theme is repeated today. This is part of why Israel is so hated and why they so often depict the United States as controlled by Jews or as the puppet of Israel and thus singling the United States for equal hate as is given Israel. Some may ask why then is Britain also given such hate even more so than France, which was just as much a colonial power after the end of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, and the reason is simple, the Balfour Declaration brining Israel into existence, as they were under Jewish control. Everything traces back to the Jews no matter how absurd such a premise may be. Below we have Orwell’s “Two Minutes of Hate” and a rally against Israel, Britain and America from Tehran and the similarities are easily recognized.

 

Two Minutes of Hate

 

Endless Mindless Hate

 

There has also been a renewed belligerence from Gaza using a new tactic of firing their rockets from both within Gaza and from the Sinai Peninsula. Other than opening up a new front by using Egyptian territory there may be more involved. These rockets have been largely a single volley and then a return to what can be described as a normal level of fear and anxiety. The truth is, as we noted in our article Hamas Appointments Signal Coming Conflict, the recent retirement by Ismail Haniyeh and his replacement by Yahya Sinwar signals an expected increase in belligerence and the definite possibility of another Gaza war as Hamas will likely start a new rocket offensive this spring and into the summer. More rockets were fired into Israel today and all that remains is to see who and how many take credit for the attacks. Currently there is a war ongoing in Gaza in a rather subdued struggle for control of the area, the attacks on Israel as well as potentially Egypt between Hamas and Islamic State. Both groups would desire to eradicate Israel and both find Egyptian President Sisi to be a threat to their particular version of Islam, as he is calling for a reformation within Islam placing the emphasis on the Meccan coexistence verses instead of the Medina conquer the world and subjugation verses. Both Islamic State and Hamas see conquest as the true path of Islam holding no question in the supremacy which must be brought about by any and all means necessary including by the sword. Their argument with Sisi still would take a back seat to their hatreds for Israel and the Jews. In the case of Hamas one should not believe their aim is simply to destroy Israel and scatter the Jews to the far corners of the Earth as their Charter calls for the annihilation of all Jews wherever they may be found. Quoting the Hamas Charter, it states in Article 7, “The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, ‘O Muslim, O servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’” Further, it states in Article 32, “Zionism scheming has no end, and after Palestine, they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates River. When they have finished digesting the area on which they have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion. Their scheme has been laid out in the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’” These are actual beliefs which they intend to act upon yet nobody appears capable of understanding their deep-seated anti-Semitism and the extents to which they intend to carry the extermination of the Jewish People. What the world need understand is that the Islamic hatred for the Jews goes all the way back to the beginning starting with Muhammad and was not a product of their influence from the Nazis but rather it was an Islamic influence of Jew hatred which spurred the Nazis even further and was responsible in part for the “Final Solution” which was in part formulated through the input of the Mufti of Jerusalem in discussions he partook in at the Wannsee Conference. Hamas is simply the continuation of Muhammad’s preoccupation with the extermination of the Jewish People.

 

Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar

 

What poses the real threat is the possibility of facing a two front assault from the south using both Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula by Hamas as well as facing Hezballah in the north potentially attacking from both Lebanon and onto the Golan Heights from within al-Assad held areas around Damascus in Syria. Where such would not prove an impossible task for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), it would limit that care which could be granted should the IDF only need fight on just one front. There would be a necessary broadening of any theater of operation with less ability to use discretion when targeting essential structures being used as rocket launching facilities or command and control. This would be particularly true on the front against Hezballah as they have been provided with sufficient ability to destroy much of Israel with their estimated one-hundred-fifty-thousand rockets and missiles. With such an arsenal they could probably overwhelm the Iron Dome systems and in order to preserve the nation the IDF would be required to rely on intensive air strikes and use of Israeli missiles in a series of precision munitions. The usual surgical precision and calling off air strikes simply because there would be a potential for civilian casualties would need to be given less urgency as many of these rockets and missiles and their launchers have been placed in what Hezballah refer to as their hardened positions which they claim Israel is unable to strike. What they are relying upon is that no Israeli government would ever permit the unrestricted use of missiles and air strikes regardless of civilian casualties. The difference in any coming conflict with Hezballah is that it would come down to Lebanese casualties or Israeli casualties and that would not be a difficult, though it would be an unpleasant, thought for any Israeli Prime Minister no matter where on the political scale they may sit. Any Israeli Prime Minister who would hold Lebanese or Gazan lives as more important and more precious than Israeli lives and call off strikes which would save Israeli civilians simply because Lebanese or Gazans might be hurt should step down immediately. There is a point where being humane when fighting a war has to give way to the practicality of fighting a war. Any war with Hezballah who have been provided with more missiles and rockets than many European military powers could put into use at any given time by Iran with the intent of overwhelming Israel and destroying as much of the country and murdering as many of the people as possible, that requires taking off the gloves and fighting any confrontation as what it is, an all-out no-holds-barred war. Such is not exactly something to be proud over, but reality has consequences and the only thing which Israel can promise is that she will not fire the first shot.

 

That leads us to the final reason Nasrallah made the comments he did. His other purpose is to establish through quotations the idea that any confrontation must have been started by Israel. In this with repeated statements of how Hezballah will go to any length in protecting Lebanon from Israeli aggressions, Hezballah will not shy when Israel attacks, Hezballah stands ready for the coming Israeli attacks and statement after such statement that when Hezballah strikes Israel in a cross border raid killing IDF soldiers on patrol and kidnapping soldiers if able they will claim the Israelis attacked and the world, even for a moment believes and reports such, then the entire following conflict will be blamed on Israel. Many of the world media will point to all the times Nasrallah warned of impending Israeli attack. The problem is Hezballah claims that the Galilee is occupied land and that Israel illegally holds these lands so when they attack it is in defense of lands they claim are occupied despite there being a recognized international border which places these lands within Israel. The entire length of the Lebanon Israel border is fenced and any attack required crossing through the fence at recognized crossing points. The entire border between Israel and Lebanon is supposed to be monitored by the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon. These are the same peacekeepers who were supposed to prevent Hezballah from rearming and prevent their digging an entire new set of underground facilities. This is the same United Nations peacekeeping force which the Europeans walked out of supporting, India left after they were threatened and these peacekeepers now basically work for Hezballah. These United Nations forces were referred to as UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) and were put in place after the Second Lebanon War and almost lasted two years before basically turning the other way and allowing any breaching of the agreements they were supposed to enforce. They became so threatened that one seldom sees any United Nations vehicles south of the Litani River and those one can find are often being driven by and used to transport Hezballah units, rockets and provisions. UNIFIL became a joke and if there is any logic left in Israel, they will never again trust the United Nations, European union, European nations or most of the world to keep even a single promise if doing so places them in opposition to the forces of Islam as the world is more afraid of terrorists than they are of Israel because Israel will not be blowing things up in their capitals or anywhere they care about. Israel needs to realize they are on their own for the most part and any friends they may have after an election may disappear after the next election and their promises will leave with them. Such is the lesson of the written agreement given Ariel Sharon by George W. Bush which has since become a dead letter with at best may become resurrected briefly but will then be eclipsed somewhere down the road, guaranteed. The only promises Israel can count upon are in Torah.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Hard Truth in Action

 

We need to establish a small matter for defining what makes a civilized human being. Does a civil human being assist people in distress? How about if it is a group of women? A group of women in their eighties out for a stroll when they are assaulted and two or three are hurt, even bleeding? Do you agree with me that any normal human being with an ounce of human emotions and compassions would jump in and at the very least call for an ambulance if not apply basic first aid? I would hope we are in agreement on at least this much as a true test of humanity and moral humanity. Now we can proceed with the article. We can examine a morning in Jerusalem and a string of events which scream a reality which, until the world wraps their arms around this, are faced in Israel almost daily.

 

The news I read the other day in this article about a group of five octogenarians, grandmothers or potentially great-grandmothers, but that is simply some additional information which makes these ladies potentially even more deserving of civility, was shocking in its inhumanity. Unfortunately that was quite the case this past week as they set out as they had many times before for their stroll around the Promenade near their assisted care residence. These lively ladies, well, lively for octogenarians of either gender and may we be capable of such a stroll when we reach that fine age, faced a horror purely shocking in its remifications. There was something these ladies had not prepared for, as how does one prepare to be violated walking right next to their residence. That was when they heard one of their company scream out, not in pain but in warning. Marina Fuchs, 86, shouted to her friends: “Girls, run, run!” Further information on this cowardly attack can be read here. The attack was as horrific as it was disgusting, completely disgusting and carried out by some really depraved excuses for human beings as no normal human would ever commit such an assault against women for starters and octogenarian women at that.

 

So we have an assault of five octogenarian women by a pair of bold, brave, stout, masked terrorists and also unbelievably vicious risk adverse terrorists who had been obviously seeking the easiest prey they could find and who have more to be ashamed over than they have to their credit for drawing blood from a couple of eighty year old plus women. Such boldness should never go unpunished, even by their fellow jihadists. These women who ended up as the targets for these brave soldiers of Allah were walking by the Haas Promenade as has been their habit. Perhaps having their promenade on the promenade take place around the same time day after day made them targets. Who chooses a group of eighty plus year old ladies as their target, we do not care how regular and dependable these ladies walking the promenade happened to be. Eighty year old ladies are far from appropriate targets unless the aim is to murder every last Israeli. That may not be all that far from their target, but that we will reach later. The immediate problem is entirely separate for now. These assailants, terrorists, set upon two of the women, eighty year old women, stabbing them multiple times, one stabbed from behind, and then fled before the remaining three actually knew what had struck their friends. As noted above, one of the stabbed victims shouted out her warning, not necessarily that concerned for her own welfare but thinking of the welfare of her friends. She immediately warned the others with her yelling of, “Girls, run, run!” The rest were taken aback by their friend’s scream but turned and saw their friends fallen onto the pavement with one obviously bleeding from her chest. The attackers had run off probably scared defenseless that the remaining three eighty year old women might turn on them and disarm them beating them senseless with their purses. These two brave attackers had seen how vicious old women with purses are capable of becoming when seeing Monty Python.

 

Seriously, the other women did not flee but instead returned to assist their friends as best as they were able. This was where the story became really sickening. They turned to some construction workers who were taking a break near to the scene for assistance. They did not expect these men to be physicians; they simply requested that they call for an ambulance. The workmen refused to assist initially pretending not to understand Hebrew and then feigning to be having important discussions on their phones making them unable to disconnect and phone for help, or possibly place their all-important call on hold pausing it to call for help. Marina Fuchs revealed that Arab laborers at the scene of the attack refused to help the Jewish victims, even as they bled from their stab wounds. She reported that, “We walked and next to the bathrooms stood Arabs who were cleaning there. We asked them to call an ambulance. They wouldn’t agree to do so, and acted as if they were talking on the phone.” The assailants were an evil enough representation but this was even a worse representation of the depth of the Arab hatred for the Jews residing amongst them as they desire the Jews not just gone but dead, and that was what this refusal indicates and is what everyone in the world needs to understand. There are far too many who would instead of criticizing the Arabs would claim that if this is so bothersome, then maybe the Jews should heed this hatred and simply leave and return from whence they came. The question then has to be where does the half of the Israeli population, Jewish population, who were spat out by their former Arab nations go? These Jews had never resided in Europe or elsewhere and their families had resided in their Arab homes through thick and thin for, in many cases, over a thousand years. Where do these Jews go, suggestions?

 

Eventually help was called and the Magen David Adom (MDA) paramedics treated the victims and evacuated them to Sha’arei Tzedek Hospital. The MDA senior paramedic spokesperson Shlomi Tedgi reported, “We saw two elderly women, about 80 years old, lying on the dust by the promenade. They were fully conscious and suffered from stab wounds, one in her limbs and her upper body and the other in her upper body. They talked and interacted with us. We gave them field medical treatment an evacuated them to the hospital. They were in moderate but stable condition.” Sha’arei Tzedek Hospital reported that the elderly ladies they treated are both in moderate condition with wounds to their backs and limbs.

 

Octogenarian Women Haas Promenade Terror Scene

 

Were this refusal be the Arab worker an isolated instance, then perhaps the argument could be made that it was an outlier, an isolated incident and dismissed as a boorish response to fellow human beings in distress. Unfortunately it is simply reminiscent of a more tragic incident just this past October in the Old City sections of Jerusalem. This incident was in many ways even worse scenario as in this attack Rabbi Nehemia Lavi, age forty-one, and Aharon Banita Bennett, age twenty-one, lost their lives while Bennett’s wife was seriously wounded and his two-year-old son was lightly wounded. The deadly attack took place on Hagai Street immediately adjacent to a medical clinic. This Arab health clinic was open and fully staffed at the time of the incident yet not a single staff member went to the aid of the injured and dying despite pleadings for assistance. This was not the end of the disgusting behavior as the residents of this Arab neighborhood mocked and laughed at Bennett’s wounded wife as she tried to escape the attacker and was seeking assistance, any assistance. This has not always been the response and to be fair there have been Arab families who have taken in Jews in distress hiding them from mobs which would have easily murdered them. These instances are instructive as the Arab families who decide to take such bold actions are often at the behest of the head of household who pleads to never be identified as they fear their governing Palestinian Authority, if not their neighbors, would murder them. Assisting a Jew is almost always punished as it is seen as supporting the Zionist enemy. The unfortunate thing is those willing to risk everything and act humanely are in the minority and often pay the price for their heroic deeds. Still, when physicians refuse to give aid, what may have been life-saving aid, that is a whole new area which can only leave one to wonder how any peace can be reached when the population holds such animosity.

 

This hatred has been cultivated through the Palestinian Authority and related media, schools, entertainment industry and enforced through laws making interactions such as selling an apartment or land to a Jew or Jewish institution punishable by death. The indoctrination has been instituted for over two generations and has taken such a poisonous affect that even if peace were reached tomorrow it would take numerous generations to undo the damages already inflicted. It is the deep-seated animosity and visceral hatreds which now prevent any peace from being initiated as Mahmoud Abbas, even if he desired peace, which his actions prove he does not, he would be murdered in the most horrific of manners imaginable by his own people for making such an agreement. It would not matter how he would plead that he had tricked the Jews, just the picture of him in a signing ceremony with an Israeli would be sufficient cause for his lynching. The reason Abbas demands ever more ludicrous concessions from the Israelis just to simply meet once, shake hands, and never meet again and end all even motions of negotiating a peace can be traced to the absolute poisoning of the waters separating the Arab Palestinian society from the Jews. The proof of which way the animosity and hatreds flow is easily represented as the above is indicative of Arab refusal to even call an ambulance for an eighty year old woman victim of a terrorist stabbing and the refusal by medical “professionals” to treat Jews stabbed right outside their clinic while the examples of Israeli hospitals treating Arab Palestinians are long and documented well. Here are just a few stand-out examples of Arabs treated by Israeli hospitals, Ismail Haniyeh’s daughter’s week-long admission to a hospital in Tel Aviv, Mahmoud Abbas’s wife treated in Israel, mother-in-law of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Gazan child with severe burns is being treated in an Israeli hospital after a devastating house fire in Gaza and we could continue this for hours as this search in Google proves but one would be beyond hard-pressed to find a single case of an Israeli, Arab, Jew or other, being treated in a Palestinian Hospital. This does not mean to overshadow this terror attack against these elderly women and the refusal to even lift a finger and call an ambulance by nearby Arab workers which itself speaks volumes.

 

Beyond the Cusp