Israeli and IDF Morality Irrelevant

 

We read and hear of the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-IDF protesters all repeating that everything Israel is immoral, of lesser rights, unjustifiable, everything negative that those who hate us believe they can make stick and our responding to them only strengthens their arguments. They use our defensiveness as proof that they have hit a nerve, found some hidden nugget of truth and thus that makes all their hateful messaging correct and true. It had nothing to do with Israel or the IDF. Every Western nation has sent their representatives of the government or military to Israel since the last war in Gaza against Hamas to learn two things, how to effectively gather the necessary intel on the terror groups operating in their nations and how to fight a just and moral war. The first has to do with technical items which we in Israel have depended upon to keep us alive. The second, how to fight a war even close to the level of morality and at best at avoiding civilian casualties against a foe using innocents as their bunkers against attack as Hamas and their ilk have taken to doing. So, there is sufficient proof that Israel is a just and merciful society and the real world outside of academia knows it leaving only the anti-Semites and those they can sweep off their feet with lies are against the truth. The sad thing is that they too know what Israel represents and that scares them more than anything else.

 

That brings us to the crux of the matter, why then if they know that Israel is just, moral and so above the level in act and purpose do they desire to tear us down and destroy us. The reason is twofold and half of it is because we are just, moral and so above the level in act and purpose. The truth is proven by our actions that Israel in its new revival is proof that there is a Creator and that that Creator is Hashem. Our return as a nation built in a single day is proof of Hashem and that Hashem is real; His covenant with the people of Israel who are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have returned to their Promised Land; and the covenant has again been verified. They are the equivalent of those who opposed the land of Israel back then and they too have survived unto this day. They live and breathe deceit and all those traits that Israel does not and our existence frightens them beyond belief. This is why they are sworn to tear us down.

 

If these are the modern idolaters and worshipers of the false gods such as the tribes that rose against Israel in the Bible, the Old Testament, then how is it they were not vanquished over time. The truth is their original societies did fall but the people continued on. Many were converted to modern faiths and the majority held no religious belief beyond the worship of man as the ultimate entity, the supreme beings above all else. To these heathens the human being is god and they are the leading example of this truth. They still have their pantheon of gods and it is they and they must tear down the proof of any Higher Creator which disproves all that they believe and hold as truth. If there is a Creator then their rules and beliefs all crumble before Hashem and Hashem’s covenant is the proof of Hashem’s existence. As long as there are inheritors of the land of Israel who serve Hashem and keep the covenant then there is a Creator, a Higher Being and man is but one of Hashem’s creations, perhaps His greatest creation, but still simply one of those created and placed here by Hashem. This they must destroy.

 

Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Dome of the Rock
Jerusalem circa 1860 in disarray and in ruin
after centuries of disrepair and lack of concerns or interest

 

Thus the best way to destroy the fact that there exists a Creator is to cast those who serve and enjoy a covenant with Hashem down and make the holders of His covenant to be craven low beasts who are less than men and thus we are to be cast as jealous and weaker beings because of our false beliefs of which the most preposterous and most vile is this belief that mankind is not the highest of all life forms and that it is our weakness that we follow Hashem and his covenant to toil and care in the lands granted us by Hashem’s promise. They must divide up this land and steal as much as possible for as long as those who hold this covenant with Hashem do not possess all of the Promised Lands, then the promise has been broken. This is what is behind every attempt to establish two states for two peoples within the lands between the Jordan and the Sea as these are the lands Hashem did promise to Abraham and to Isaac repeatedly in the Bible, in Torah. Having taken Gaza is not sufficient as they know that the ancient Hebrew tribes did not necessarily have Gaza as part of the Promised Lands but they know without a doubt that Judea and Samaria were part of the Promised Lands and they know that Jerusalem, especially the Temple Mount, were crucial parts, the heart, one might say, of the Promised Lands. So they claim that these lands were never the holdings of the Hebrew People of the Bible as described in Torah as those are simply stories with no truth. They know as long as they cast doubt on the validity of the Bible and Torah in particular, then they have negated the covenant, denied the fulfillment of Hashem’s promise to return his children to the lands that Hashem had promised them as their inheritance. The covenant was that the Hebrew tribes would tend the land and the land would reward them as long as they served Hashem by keeping the laws and observing the words of Torah and thus receiving the rains and water for the land such that it would sustain them.

 

The fact that the IDF is such a moral fighting force is further proof that those serving Israel are also serving the will of Hashem as they guard the Promised Lands for Hashem’s people and keep them safe. Look at the first wars fought to reestablish Israel and there are miracles galore. Virtually any military historian will try and give a thousand and one reasons that the nascent Israeli Defense Forces which were nothing but some ragtag collection of groups which had been terrorizing and harassing the British to get them to leave as the land was no longer worth their time and efforts, a formula which worked but also saw some British officers from World War II recently decommissioned taking a new assignment upon themselves to aid the Arab armies of Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and others and they did so even in some instances sharing command advisory positions cooperating with Nazi officers also from World War II. The Arab armies had air forces, armored divisions and thousands of men for every Israeli fighting and had many Arab villages behind the Israeli lines ready to strike at the rear disrupting the Israeli, the Jewish efforts and allow for an easy victory. This was not to be as Hashem had promised that we would return and tend the lands once again for Hashem and he would care for us and provide as long as we kept our side of the bargain.

 

The efforts under way using discrediting accusations of immorality of actions and impure acts by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in any effort, they have been forced to fight against a relentless set of foes. The Six Day War was just as much a miracle as was the wars of 1948 and 1949. The Yom Kippur War was an even greater miracle than was the Six Day War and there have been those miracles witnessed by so many IDF troops and some have become stalwarts known by many throughout the world. They must all be proven to be anything but the miracles they are so when they are recounted they are claimed and sworn by Israel’s detractors to be fables and Israelis nothing but boastful liars. Those making these accusations know who is doing the lying but as lies are the stock of their trade, what else could one think. They also use the traces of anti-Semitism to gain any additional following that will join just because they oppose Jews, that is another front to this entire assault upon Israel. These people who appear, and there is a concerted effort to achieve this result, to be a loosely strung groups of grassroots gathering is a highly organized and well-financed assault upon Israel and the love of Hashem. This is highly funded by the Palestinian Authority, the United Nations, the European Union, Oxfam, numerous other NGOs, numerous governments from every corner of the globe and incorporating some of the most deeply pocketed nations on the planet and even some so far in debt they cannot see the top of the hole, and all from small to large, right to poor, apparently religious to completely secular, free to dictatorial, professing morality to the most hedonistic all group together as they all rely on the Hebrew Creator, Hashem, be proven false by breaking his covenant which requires the destruction of Israel.

 

Getting to the bottom and finding the dark core requires a long and often seemingly fruitless endeavor as one peels back the layers of this onion and at its core one will find a small number of individual seed cores, the Vatican, the Palestinian Authority backed by Sunni Muslims, Iran and Shiite Muslims, and a core group of secular humanist anti-religious NGOs. This would appear to be a group completely unrelated and potentially adversarial but they all have as their greatest enemy the covenant the Children of Israel have with Hashem as to each should that covenant and special relationship prove valid and true then their entire defining principles and core beliefs go up in a puff of smoke. For that reason and that reason alone these groups would stand with Satan, a nonentity in Judaism as there is no deity, even of sin and the underworld (hell), other than Hashem and all supreme power lies with Hashem, the Creator who came before and will be after and exists in all He Created and there is a truth to hang one’s hat (or yarmulke) on. Hashem promised the land to the seed of Abraham and Isaac for eternity and our exiles were punishments for not following the playbook, the Torah, and using it as our guide for a happy and fruitful life.

 

We are now being gathered as promised by the prophets and our ingathering is being facilitated by these anti-Semites who are spreading their virus of hate infecting the world. The Muslim World had this virus from their inception. So too the Roman Catholic Church and a fair number of the Protestant reformers and the idolaters too have had it from the start and others were gathered along the way all aligned to destroy Hashem’s jewel, a land that never gave its bounty up to any other but always favored the Children of Israel, not by accident. Has it never struck anyone as unexplainable that places on earth where there has never been a Jew for people to meet are still rank with Jew hatred and thus Israel hatred? Another item which is often called an anomaly as Jew hatred is considered the norm, almost every nations which has had a catastrophe which all but wiped their peoples off the map, the earthquakes in Haiti, Nepal and Japan, the typhoon in the Philippines and Viet Nam and countless other places where Israel was the first aid in and first hospital up and running and the last to leave and often leaving behind fully stocked clinics for remote places or particularly bad areas such as an orphanage in Haiti or a remote village deep in the interior in the Philippines and in each clinic they also left a few key people to train and when they left their final act was to assure that the monitors all worked, all the equipment was calibrated, the stocks filled, and then the tearful good-byes and these places who have met real Israelis love Israel, and that is how it will remain, where Israel touches the world it will heal. Where Israel is rebuked and maligned they will remain pitted in petty differences and hatreds and eventually eat their civilized world and all will be lost. It may sound insane but Israel is the world’s future or the world will become a place of perpetual darkness and that will end poorly for mankind. Learn to witness what Israel is and not the lies you have been told. Is Israel perfect, no, but Hashem is and in His service and in keeping His Torah we are slowly getting closer.

 

Doctor Tali Shaltiel of IsraAid an Israeli Humanitarian Relief NGO
funded by donations and Israeli government as part of IDF relief efforts
wades into the water to take a small Syrian child from drowning
after her rubber raft she and other refugees had overturned

 

One last point, what about those who are secular and fight against the religious inside Israel amongst her Jews? Their numbers shrink every year, every month, every week and every hour. The IDF is becoming an army of religious and believing Israelis who worship Hashem. This scares the top generals as has become evident in a small crisis centered around the General Staff and former Defense Minister Ya’alon. That is an example of the IDF moving in a correct direction and the top will change as those below it in the chain of command have changed. Israel still has a way to go but she is heading there as your read. We are getting there as well and the ride has had its challenges but it has also had rewards beyond description. A number of years ago while still in the United States this article would have been beyond our knowledge and now it is our daily lives. That itself is a testament to Hashem and the way Hashem permeates these lands. It may take centuries or it may already be happening. But all what Hashem promised will come to be, Period.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Temple Mount Status-Quo Must Go

 

The current rendition of a Temple Mount status-quo includes the understanding that whenever rioting on the Temple Mount strikes, then Jews must be banned from accessing the Temple Mount, is quite removed from the initial status-quo from right after the Six Day War in the first weeks of June 1967. We discussed this in yesterday’s article to some depth and will hopefully add more to the discussion here. We find the discussions, demands, condemnations and exclamations between politicians, be they Jordanians speaking for the Waqf which is run with Jordanian oversight, the Arab Palestinians who constantly make demands and incite violence, Arab leaders including the Arab League who simply add fodder for the rioting masses, the United Nations leaders who are stuck on blame Israel first and always, and defensive Israeli politicians who try and sound serious and upset while apologizing all to be useless in altering the volatile situations and providing a final solution which will end the current insanity. The truth of the current state of affairs is that the Arabs are in the process of incitement and attempts at expanding their boundaries to outside the walls of the Temple Mount. The incitement has been instigated and inflamed by Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate inciter, and other Arab Palestinian Authority (PA) government officers with assistance from Hamas out of Gaza.

 

The initial violence which has led to where we now are facing the Third Intifada began just before Rosh Hashanah in efforts planned well ahead of time to prevent Jews ascending to the Temple Mount during the Jewish High Holidays. The al-Aqsa Mosque played a very important part in the instigations and the actual rioting being the main base and armory providing safe refuge for the rioters to retreat beyond the reach of Israeli Security Police and to store rocks, cinderblocks, pyrotechnics, and Molotov cocktail making supplies among other weaponry and supplies (pictured below). The instigation is identical to the cry which began the rioting in 1929 murder spree in Hevron and Jerusalem and again across the entirety of the 1930s which was the lamentation that the Jews were violating the al-Aqsa Mosque. In his speech Abbas claimed that, “The al-Aqsa (Mosque) is ours, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is ours (as belonging to the Arab Palestinians), and they (Jews) have no right to defile them with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem.” The complete video from Palestinian Media Watch can be viewed right below the al-Aqsa picture set.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pre-Rosh Hashanah violence did have pretty much the effect desired as free access to the Temple Mount was not permitted and when the first few Jews were permitted onto the Temple Mount Arab women descended upon them calling them names, screaming “Allahu Akbar” at the top of their lungs and spitting with shoving whenever possible and the rioters mounted a simultaneous assault coming out from the al-Aqsa Mosque armed with large rocks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails with backing by others with steel pipes and clubs which these added pressures forcing the cancellation of further visits until things calmed and when they attempted another the escalation was again immediate and final. The rioting continued with it ramping still more fevered than before heading into Yom Kippur and continued through Sukkot and beyond. The rioting also was accompanied by attacks across all of Israel both within and outside the Green Line. There were attacks even in Tel Aviv including two assaults in a Tel Aviv neighborhood called Ra’anana which occurred within minutes of each other. In both instances there were four injured in the second attack after one was injured in the first before a number of others in the immediate vicinity intervened and subdued the terrorist forcing him to remain on the ground until police arrived and pushed the crowds back and arrested the ‘suspect’ while in the other attack the terrorist ran from the scene and was subdued at a short distance and turned over to police. Below is a video which caught the second terror assault where four people were stabbed in quick succession before the assailant continued to flee the scene only to be subdued by a number of other pedestrians and turned over to police.

 

 

 

 

The rioting has included a growing number of stabbings, some shooting attacks, the use of vehicles to run over people walking on sidewalks or waiting for mass transit more often than not at bus stops as most train and light rail stops have been fortified against such attacks after some horrific terrorist acts earlier this year. These transit stops which were fortified with steel and concrete barriers were relatively few in number compared to the number of bus stops across all of Israel and fortifying these will take a large outlay of funds and probably years to complete. Fortifying bus stops will likely cost even more than it did to fortify schools which were determined to be most vulnerable to being struck by Hamas and other rockets which continue to be fired into Israel at a rate of anywhere from two or three to a half dozen each week with nary a week going by without at least one attempt. Fortunately, there have been a greater than normal percentage of rockets which have not cleared Gaza and instead have hit locations within Gaza and have struck a number of residences and a few other buildings within Gaza. We have been waiting for the United Nations to demand Israel fortify buildings in Gaza as there were calls for Israel to share some of the Iron Dome anti-missile batteries (launch of interceptor pictured below) with Hamas so Hamas could guard Gaza from rockets and artillery. The actual words, according to Haaretz, from High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay were, “They have not only provided the heavy weaponry which is now being used by Israel in Gaza but they’ve also provided almost one-billion dollars in providing the ‘Iron Domes’ to protect the Israelis from rocket attacks. But no such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling.”

 

 

Iron Dome Launch to Intercept Rockets Originating from Gaza
which is Under Hamas Governance and Held Responsible for all
Rockets by Israel Regardless of Who Actually Launches Rockets

 

 

The latest information about the levels of violence and what part Hamas can play was defined in their call for Hamas terrorists who live in Judea and Samaria to assault Israelis using suicidal homicide bombing attacks instead of Hamas returning to a rocket onslaught out of Gaza. Their reasoning for not starting another rocket offensive was, according to the Hamas rumor mill, they did not want to outshine the efforts currently being performed by Fatah and other PA aligned groups with the stabbings and using vehicles to injure and murder Israelis, especially Jews. The one complaint was that nobody was attempting to use bombs even if it became necessary to use suicidal homicide bombing attacks which they then made the request for Hamas operatives to immediately start to work with whoever was required to carry out such attacks in the immediate future. Should this actually signal the next ramping in the violence it may bring a definitive series of steps by Israeli security and IDF forces in order to put an end to the slowly rising level of attacks and do what will eventually be necessary. No matter how long the leadership is willing to put up with the violence, it has driven many an Israeli to the point of distraction and they have already started demanding that the government take the required steps to return calm and make the streets and bus stops and everything else safe again before there is an attack whose results are so horrific that the government will have no choice but to act. It would really be preferred for things not to escalate any further and for the government to cut the IDF, Shin Bet, Police and Border Patrol free to put an end to the violence and have them start by arresting Mahmoud Abbas, Saab Erekat and the rest of the Fatah, PA, PLO and al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades leaders and cut the head off of this terror snake. Enough was enough when the violence just continued to ramp through the High Holidays and now has turned to general mayhem across the width and breadth of Israel and the areas beyond the Green Line.

 

The reason that the world will be upset is ridiculous as we all know they will be upset with anything the Jews in Israel do to protect themselves and will only accept Jews who allow others to murder them at will and simply plead for our betters to come and save us. That is not the kind of Jew who lives in Israel and it is time for our leaders to have the same grit that the citizens have shown when faced with armed terrorists and they charge them in numbers and subdue them despite the danger or the fear of what the world will think. We honestly do not care what the world may think. We care about what we think and we think that this is our homeland, all of it from the Sea to the River and it has gone beyond time we enforced that and took control of our future taking it in our hands. We need to take responsibility for our lands and take care of the threats which reside within and without, and there are legions of both and we recognize this. We know that the threat will only increase and grow for as long as we allow the Arab threat from within our homeland to continue with their murderous defiance, and we have seen where many of the latest terrorist attackers come from within Green Line Israel and the world is not at ease that we arrest them any more than when we arrest Hamas and Fatah terrorists from within Arab Palestinian areas. The world can rot for all that matters here; what matters here is our safety and our future and the government making both as promising as possible. The first step to that promise is to end the murderous terrorisms from all sources. If that means taking control of all of Judea and Samaria, then get it done now as there will be no better time. Should we wait we will end up facing armies of Europe and the United States and who knows who else. As Israel we have One Ally and He sits on high and sees all that we do. Hashem is likely very sad at our timidity and lack of faith that He is with us and wants us to take care of the land, all the lands which He entrusted to us. What more reason could one need beyond Hashem commanded us to take, keep and flourish in His lands for as long as we followed the commandments and kept the covenant and it is time to do both. The people of Israel are ready and Hashem is always ready for when we act boldly and in His name and with the blessings of Hashem, so what are you waiting for, the people to rise up on their own? That you cannot afford and we know that as well which is why it is necessary for the leadership to act and let the world cry and fume, at least we will have served Hashem, Baruch Hashem.

 

Beyond the Cusp