What is Said About the IDF?

 

We often hear accusations and denunciation of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) claiming the Israeli military uses undue force, excessive force, disproportional force, and cause unnecessary injury, death, damage and destruction while breaking universal codes and laws amounting to crimes against humanity and war crimes and uses methods which can only be termed as collective punishment in order to maximize the pain and suffering of the Arab Palestinians. Such a litany of offenses such that one can only have nightmares when thinking of any Military operations conducted by the IDF would have to be the conclusion reached by any objective research or analysis of IDF operations. So, what have been the results of actual investigations of these alleged criminal offensives committed by Israeli soldiers and forces? Let us look back and see exactly what have been the conclusions of exactly one of these reviews, the most famous, Jenin. But first let us allow an IDF soldier describe the type of soldier serves in an IDF combat unit, and some would say any unit, us included, as he talks to some supporters of Israel visiting the holy lands.

 

The question-
What makes the Israeli soldier the best in the world?

answered by
Colonel Sharon Gat

 

 

One of the supposed famous uses of overt and undue force was the attack on the Jenin Refugee Camp often referred to as the Jenin massacre or the battle for Jenin. The operation took place as part of Operation Defensive Shield which was in response to and in order to bring to an end the Second Intifada after almost two thousand Israelis, mostly civilians, had lost their lives being murdered in suicide bombings, ambushes, shootings, stabbings and many other assaults and terror attacks. Ten times as many suffered injuries of which many were horrific crippling and permanently scarring injuries as a result of explosive devices laced with nuts, bolts, broken glass, screws, metal shards and other projectile some of which had been tainted with rat poison and even with human blood assumed to have carried pathogens such as AIDS infected blood. The use of human blood, even infected with AIDS or other pathogens would be largely ineffectual as the explosive heat would serve to disinfect the blood and break it down making it simply another foreign substance. The Second Intifada was planned to be executed by Yasser Arafat even before his supposed historic visit to Washington D.C. to shake hands with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, thus beginning the Camp David Summit, and work towards a peace with Israel. The Camp David Summit finally collapsed with the end of President Bill Clinton’s term in office after the Taba Initiative in January 2001. The Second Intifada began September 28, 2000 escalating through February 8, 2005 with Operation Defensive Shield executed from March 29 through May 3, 2002 presumably to, according to WikipediA “to catch and arrest terrorists and, primarily, their dispatchers and those who finance and support them; to confiscate weapons intended to be used against Israeli citizens; to expose and destroy facilities and explosives, laboratories, weapons production factories and secret installations. The orders are clear: target and paralyze anyone who takes up weapons and tries to oppose our troops, resists them or endangers them – and to avoid harming the civilian population.” The Arab Palestinian leadership complained to their echo chamber known as the United Nations General Assembly which also allowed the European and rest of the western media, especially left leaning news sources such as Haaretz, the New York Times, the Guardian, France Channel 2, the BBC and so many more, to fill their front pages with horror stories and place large block print headlines to match the hyperventilating verbiage of IDF atrocities of which the largest and most famous was the Battle for Jenin. This is where we start.

 

Jenin Typical Media Image Shot From One End of Destruction
To the Farthest End Making for Devastated Landscape

 

The claims about the Battle for Jenin grew as the days wore on even after the fight was concluded. The actual battle began on April 1, 2002, April Fool’s Day; so appropriate, as what followed could be the biggest and most destructive intended April Fool’s Day lie, prank, ever perpetrated, and continued until April 11, 2002, and the IDF pulled out from the area on April 18, 2002, after making sure that all explosives, traps and other dangerous items assuring that it would be safe when the people, the Arab Palestinians, returned to rebuild the area, a relatively small area, especially when compared to the reports and media exaggerations. The Arab Palestinian representative and assistants kept their echo chamber filled with ever progressively grim and horrific updates about the events in the Jenin Refugee Camp and the echo chamber, better known as the United Nations General Assembly, reverberated each claim assuring that it would ring around the globe repeated in every newspaper and broadcast. They were especially and dutifully reported in the left leaning media such as Haaretz in Israel, the New York Times (the grey lady) from which others get their marching orders, amongst those the Washington Post, and also France 24, the BBC and a host of others where headlines and too serious reporters on screen told of the daily, hourly reports of civilian massacres, torture and all sorts of depravities presumably committed while the few but determined Fatah and PLO warriors attempted in vain to rescue the unfortunate refugees being subjected by the IDF. Not too much later the United Nations sent its investigators team to prove the allegations that the IDF was a marred and all too human and depraved military oppressing and rampaging in the Palestinian camp. Finally, on April 19, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1405 to send a fact-finding mission to Jenin.

 

Abed Rabbo claimed about the mission that it was to be, “the first step toward making Sharon stand trial before an international tribunal.” That was just another of the accumulating charges being barked by the Arab Palestinians from top to bottom. The refugees were the prime players telling the media horror stories about how the bulldozers were collapsing houses on entire families intentionally preventing them from escaping, torturing, shipping bodies out in trucks, mass graves and every other conceivable horror imaginable. The reporting made some wild conjecture over what horrors were to be reported and how Israel was finally going to be found out as finally the United Nations, backed by the Security Council, nothing would stop the truth this time, the reckoning was upon Sharon and the Israelis and their infernal IDF. The moment came and passed anticlimactically as only fifty-two Palestinians died, the majority combatants.

 

Jenin Battle Map and the Truth

 

After the rumors rampant before the report continued, despite knowing they would soon be proven a lie, continue claiming that upwards of 16,000 killed and the entire camp all but destroyed. The media in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv reported these claims often as facts. The end result was an area the size of a football pitch was destroyed and less than 100 casualties were suffered combined. The entire build-up crashed in a single hour when the truth cut it to the bone, to the marrow. But the lie of Jenin refuses to die as it is still referred to as the Jenin massacre. Reality rarely shines on the Jenin story as the only thing still massacred in Jenin is the truth and the truth is further wounded every time the lies seep forth being used to rile hatreds.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Deadly Game Played on New York City Streets

The New York City Police Department, especially those stationed in mixed Jewish and minority neighborhoods, have their work cut out for them in their efforts to end a potentially deadly and most certainly repugnant “game” which was started in Crown Heights and may potentially spread to other neighborhoods if allowed to persist for any length of time. The “game” has been given the identifying name of “Get the Jew,” or “the Knockout Game,” according to a police spokesperson. The rules to this “game” are quite simple and simply repulsive and offensive to anybody with an ounce of decency. The object is to strike any identifiable Jew with one solid blow while passing them in the public walkways and knock the victim out cold or simply result in putting him on the pavement. The punch is always thrown when the perpetrator is with friends and the Jewish victim is a sole individual thus rendering the attacker sage from any reprisals due to numerical advantage. At least one known victim of this “game” was merely twelve years of age and there have been a small number of these instances caught on video security cameras and in some incidents fellow participants have taken video of the incident which is then posted to social networking sites on the Internet.

 

In an article Thomas Sowell wrote, “responsible authorities in New York seem to have been caught by surprise, even though this knockout game has been played for years by young black gangs in other cities and other states, against people besides Jews — the victims being either whites in general or people of Asian ancestry.” Writing in the New York Post, Sowell further pointed out that “attacks of this sort have been rampant in St. Louis. But they have also occurred in Massachusetts, Wisconsin and elsewhere. In Illinois, the game has often been called ‘polar-bear hunting’ by the young thugs, presumably because the targets are white.” A final mention in Thomas Sowell’s coverage of these events states, “Because Jews have been singled out in these attacks, are considering prosecuting these assaults as hate crimes.”

 

There is another side to this story that will never be reported in the mainstream news, and that is that these crimes have been all but ignored by the mainstream media. Even when such assaults have been given coverage by the mainstream media, the racial angle of these being black on whites, black on Jews or black on other minorities have been omitted by never mentioning the race of the perpetrators. If a similar game were to be perpetrated in such a wide and overt manner and the victims were blacks the mainstream media would be giving such attacks rail to post coverage with front page banners and clocks counting the number of incidents and the elapsed time since the first reported case. Somehow this not fitting the mainstream media’s preferred slant and political shading this news is left with minor coverage if getting any coverage whatsoever.

 

Perhaps some day in the far off future we will be blessed with a press which actually reports facts without any slant or filtering news by its potential political effects and simply allow each individual to interpret the facts as they see fit. The current mainstream media apparently feels that they need to report the news in such a manner as they also instruct their audience exactly what the reported news means and what they should take away from the story as well as what their thoughts on the subject as a whole should reflect. This slanting and coloring of the news is most evident in the reporting during campaign season leading up to elections and has become so blatant that it is bordering on embarrassing. The slant on the news is also blatantly obvious in much of the reporting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict where one of the main tools used by the liberal-leftist mainstream media is to report any offensive actions taken by the Palestinians whether it be Fatah, the majority member of the Palestinian Authority and also headed by Mahmoud Abbas, or be it Hamas in Gaza using passive terms such as rockets struck Israeli farmlands doing minimal damage while reporting on Israeli counter terrorist measures in more active and violent terms such as the Israelis bombed numerous buildings causing serious damage to the structures and potentially injuring numerous bystanders. The difference is the ineffectiveness of any attack upon Israel is minimized while also often not even mentioning who launched the attack or from where it originated while any reprisal by the Israelis identifies Israel and even will state an implication of possible injuries where none were reported. The other mainstream media way of reporting these instances in a slanted manner is they first mention the Israeli counter-terror operation first and include the name of Israel and their retaliation as an attack in the article title while mentioning the initial attack by the Palestinian terrorists later in the article and then finish the article restating their slant of the Israeli strike thus making it appear as if Israel was the aggressor and not the recipient of the initial strike and only after being struck did they make any retaliatory strike. The mainstream media also tends to not bother to report that the Israelis have often absorbed weeks of multiple attacks, especially rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza as there is an extensive record, and they only bother to make any news articles after the Israelis have responded with a counter-terror-strike and then intentionally write an article more damning of the Israeli measures and making excuses for the Palestinians who were the ones on the offensive. The leftist-liberal-progressive media actually sides with the Palestinian terrorists and appears through their reporting to believe that Israel has no right to take measures in defense of their civilians or their property. The most famous of these cases was the “murder” of a young Palestinian named Muhammad al-Dura by French Channel 2 who were taken to court over their editing and misreporting and then slandering a critic and lost after the court forced them to turn over the entirety of their tapes and the truth became known to the court. To this day the entirety of the film shot by French Channel 2 of the al-Dura incident has never been released allowing the public to view the unvarnished and unedited truth. Perhaps the mainstream media should come with a warning label stating that all of what you are about to see and hear has been altered to fit the political slant and preferences of the well-known media bias, precautions should be taken and nothing should be accepted as actual fact without further corroboration from outside the mainstream media. Like that could ever happen in this somewhat less than perfect world. For those who may wish to point out the bias of the commentary here at BTC, may we remind you that this site does editorializing commentary where the slant is both obvious and to be expected, we try to report new events accurately and also include what our opinion may be and most of our readers are fully aware of this fact.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Beware of Kerry Offering Peace Process Deals

When United States Secretary of State remained behind after accompanying President Obama on his recent trip to Israel and the Middle East in order to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to feel out both sides on his ideas for restarting the peace process, there were some ideas floated about where Secretary Kerry planned to go and what he was expecting from the two sides in order to gain some reactions and gage the amount of resistance or acceptance the initiatives would encounter. The proposals Secretary Kerry is expecting Israel to adopt were very similar as the usual ploys demanded of Israel, release some thus far undisclosed number of terror prisoners from Israeli custody and allow for restructuring Area B in Judea and Samaria to merge it into Area A giving complete and total control over even more lands to the Palestinian Authority. Unfortunately, Secretary Kerry’s proposals for the Palestinians were also very similar to previous offers, to promise not to seek further gains through international agencies or courts and drop the Palestinian demand for a building freeze. So, here we go once more into the breach with the demands placed on Israel are cemented deeds of surrendering even more lands to Palestinian control for the use of launching terror strikes and other disruptions and releasing a significant number of the worst of the worst terrorists who will assist in facilitating the terror attacks and other demonstrations and lawlessness. Meanwhile the Palestinians are being asked to make empty promises which they will break just as soon as they have used Secretary Kerry and the full pressure of the United States State Department as well as President Obama’s support with all that such can entail to squeeze as much from the Israeli negotiators before walking out on the negotiations and starting the next round of violence. We have all seen this song and dance numerous times since the introduction of Oslo which was perhaps the biggest perpetrator of this scenario of evils.

One can likely easily predict what President Abbas will have to say when Secretary Kerry comes knocking on his door. He has already accepted the expectation that Prime Minister Netanyahu will release a sizeable number of Palestinian terrorists from serving out the rest of their sentences and the transfer of most if not all of Area B into Palestinian hands making them completely off limits to Jews who would pay with their lives for trespassing onto Palestinian lands. In return he will likely promise not to take Israel before any international court or agency and will agree not to press for an Israeli building freeze beyond the negotiations but will attempt to have Secretary Kerry demand that Israel impose a building freeze for the entire period while negotiations are being considered. For some unknown reason, I can see Secretary Kerry agreeing with President Abbas that a building freeze makes perfect sense and add that demand to the Israeli to do list. Expect to hear plenty of quotes from Mahmoud Abbas about how he is looking forward to negotiation and how he is ready to make the necessary sacrifices for peace and if only Netanyahu would show the same flexibility as the Palestinians have there would be talks and peace breaking out momentarily. Expect much of the world press to seek answers from Netanyahu about if he is ready to meet Abbas half way and if not why is it the Israelis refuse to even try to make peace and how long are the Israelis going to deny the Palestinians their rightful homelands. I foresee a wholesale assault on Netanyahu while the praises of Abbas are sung far and wide. I call it “The Adoration and the Beast.”

Abbas already knows exactly what he needs to do to come out looking like he is the man of the hour. All he needs to do is grin and shake hands with Secretary Kerry and make grand statements about his being anxious to get to the peace table and work with Netanyahu and Tzipi Livni to reach a fair and equitable peace. He will not need to deliver on any of his grand illusions; he just has to paint the picture of willingness and affability. Then when it all falls apart Abbas simply has to condemn Netanyahu and most of the world’s mainstream press will join in on damning Netanyahu while heaping praises on Abbas. In the meantime, Abbas, with the aid of the press, will be spreading the blame for the uptick in violence on Netanyahu and the Israelis for some offense such as Judaizing Jerusalem, using overly strong tactics against innocent Palestinian demonstrators, Being unyielding and refusing to take a chance on peace, obstinacy, and a the litany of other evils just as the act had been mastered originally by Yasser Arafat and nearly perfected by his protégé who was by his side when founding the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas. People tend to forget that next to Yasser Arafat from the beginning was the representation of the PLO as statesmen, the man who wore a suit, Mahmoud Abbas. Replace the suit with fatigues and a gun on his hip and take away his razor for a couple of days and you would have a second Arafat because the lying and underhandedness of Arafat is found just as deeply in Mahmoud Abbas, he just looks and smells better.

Meanwhile, what should be Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reaction to the trip into shame being planned for him by Secretary Kerry? Netanyahu has to know that there is nothing that will favor Israel in Secretary Kerry’s plans and that Kerry will ally and work to assist the Palestinians in every way he can as Kerry has proven by past actions and statements that he believes that the Palestinians are peace loving and that if only Israel could be brought to bend there would be peace. Kerry does not believe that the Palestinians have never desired peace but only wish to destroy the Jewish State of Israel. The Palestinians, including Abbas and Fayyad, have said time and time again that they will only accept a peace which will lead to the destruction of Israel even if it must be done in stages. So, what can Prime Minister Netanyahu do to prevent the field-day that the press is praying for at his and Israel’s expense? Other than meeting Secretary Kerry at the airport and handing him a fishing rod and requesting he go fishing elsewhere, is there a magic bromide which can be applied to save Israel from this trap? Yes, there is one item that Netanyahu can request that would end any attempts from Abbas and Kerry to demonize Israel. He would have to tell Kerry that should Abbas agree that he will give up the Palestinian right to violence against the presumed occupation for the duration of the peace talks he will release prisoners and transfer the land at the conclusion of the talks providing the peace has not been violated, not one stone thrown, not one knife wielded, not one tire set aflame, not one fire-bomb thrown, not one riot to prevent Jews from visiting the Temple Mount, not a single provocation of any kind, that is what Israel demands. It probably does not seem like a very big demand and should be something easy to arrange, but in that rides the problem. If Abbas does manage to arrange the quiet and stops the attacks and rioting, then he is able to stop terror and he becomes responsible for any further act of terror. And if Abbas is unable to enforce calm then why negotiate with a person who does not even control the people he presumably represents? The request is a simple one that almost everyone would agree is righteous and noble and not out of the question. If anything it should be the easiest of requests to grant but Abbas would refuse to accept such a request and by doing so would have his façade stripped away. So, Prime Minister Netanyahu, just meet Kerry with a fishing rod and request that Abbas guarantee calm and a complete cessation to terrorism, riots, and lawlessness for the duration of the peace talks and ask that Kerry call him once he has that guarantee but in the meantime, tell him you are going fishing.

Beyond the Cusp