Palestinian Propaganda Brought to Ithaca Third Grade

 

Inviting politically controversial people to speak on a university campus can be argued to be a positive attempt to provide a view unfamiliar to many of the students and as long as there is balance in the views provided, then the students can reach their own conclusions. Bringing a controversial individual to speak to the third grade class of the Beverly J. Martin Elementary in Ithaca, New York is another matter altogether. It would be unthinkable to bring representatives of either side of the most contentious of all disputes from the most volatile areas of our world. Apparently not, as just such a person was brought to speak to third grade children. We are talking about children of eight or nine years of age and with the life lack of experience which goes with such innocence. What makes this even more of a catastrophic potential is that extreme positions were conveyed upon some of the most impressionable and pliable minds which may have a result of warping their potential to reach a fair and balanced decision later in life as this potentially traumatic day will weigh on their decision throughout their lives. The person that was introduced to these impressionable minds was Bassem Tamimi, a member of the Sabeel International and an adult member of a politically active Palestinian propaganda production family which attempts to foment confrontations which they then film, edit and use to destroy IDF soldiers’ reputations and even to bring them under charge by foreign courts such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) or any of numerous European national courts which claim to have jurisdiction over any act against humanity making any foreign travel for such soldiers a risk of arrest and criminal charges often in multiple arraignments from a single act. For an article where the Tamimi Family, including children, were instrumental in a recent IDF video and the story behind the short film just click on the image below.

 

 

The Tamimi family has even deeper ties to actual terrorism as an accessory to one of the worst and most horrific terror attacks as Ahlam Tamimi chose to target the Sbarro’s Pizza Parlor at lunch time when it would have the most families with children and she even encouraged the suicide bomber by emphasizing that he would be targeting “Religious Jews” as his murderous target. She was released as part of the over thousand terror prisoners released in exchange for IDF captured soldier Gilad Shalit. Her video which is shown to Palestinian children as an inspirational video can be viewed below, and she has given talks to school children in the Arab Palestinian Territories, and now the family patriarch has given a similar spellbinding talk to children in the third grade of Beverly J. Martin Elementary in Ithaca, New York.

 

 

 

 

The talk was arranged via anti-Israel activist Ariel Gold, the current head of the North American branch of Sabeel International. Mr. Gold has also been an avid supporter of the BDS movement and appears to assist anything he can find which is derogatory against Israel. What is so interesting is the Sabeel International only appears to have one nation on which they concentrate the lion’s share of their efforts to defame, cast in as negative a light as they are able and demand the erasure of that one nation replacing it with a genocidal Arab Palestinian entity and that targeted nation is Israel. Sabeel has held some prayer vigils for the Christian and other refugees and other victims from the Syrian civil war over the five years but this tragedy has not taken much steam away from their anti-Israel activities. Sabeel emissaries in Lebanon have aided Hezballah with bringing charges against Israel after the wars in Lebanon despite Israel rescuing numerous Christians in southern Lebanon from persecution during the first Lebanon War. For information on that reading the Brigitte Gabriel book Because They Hate for a personal story about her and her family’s experiences and the eye opening experience which changed Brigitte Gabriel’s life and set her on new course and set her mind on doing this work to enlighten people who hold false views of Israel.

 

 

 

 

Ariel Gold met Bassem Tamimi in the Arab Palestinian Authority (PA) town of Bil’in in 2014 and has taken to being his personal agent for international trips to hawk anti-Israel propaganda. Israel arrested Bassem Tamimi on March 24, 2011, for organizing illegal gatherings and incitement in connection with a series of weekly demonstrations in the Arab village of Nabi Saleh which included rock throwing and other provocations against IDF forces. There may have been reasons other than the ones used in the allegations against Tamimi as he has been an instigator and used these demonstrations and manufactured incidents to film and document and then edit the videos and place the altered and edited video on-line and used them as propaganda footage in appearances in Europe and beyond. This may also have had some relevance which drove Catherine Ashton, former High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, to officially criticized Israel for convicting Arab, Palestinian Arab Bassem Tamimi of dispatching stone-throwers and protesting illegally. I guess at this point I am waiting for the trifecta, European Union authorities criticizing his arrest, giving a talk to third grade children in Ithaca, New York and lastly an invite for a White House dinner which President Obama will excuse himself from a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to go honor Bassem Tamimi. What? Perhaps it is simply a habit of President Obama to schedule dinner occasions simply to give him an excuse to break away from meetings with the Israeli leader, last time it was “Michelle and the girls” and this time why not Bassem Tamimi. I’m just saying.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Israel’s Internal Threat

This time around the assault against traditional Jewish values and those whose obedience to strict Torah observance is a group called “Free Israel”. And what is it they would like to free Israel from? They are demanding that the government refuse to provide funding for any Yeshivoth which have separate classes for boys and girls. Such restrictions are put in place for numerous reasons not all of which are strictly religious but for the most part it facilitates modesty and removes distractions which might interfere with serious studies. The reason behind having separate classes for boys and girls is unimportant as all that really matters is that those who send their children to these schools prefer to have single gender orientation is the crux of the matter.

 

The reason “Free Israel” people give for defunding these Yeshivoth is because these single gender classes cannot offer equal quality education in all manners as they point out in their petition we quote, “Separate classes cannot be equal in their nature, as classes for either boys or girls will have different numbers of students, different quality teachers, and different budget needs.” They further claimed that having separate classes also leads to double billing as such schools require two of every grade classrooms to permit this discriminatory separation of genders. This makes one wonder, are there no secular schools with a student population which requires them to have two classes for most, if not all grades? Should such schools which must be prevalent in Tel Aviv, Ashod, Netanya, Haifa and the other major cities be required to knock out the walls separating these doubled up classes in those schools which educate large numbers of students so as to assure that both classes have the same size, as they would not be one class, the same teacher, and all else which would provide these students with an equal but inferior education? There is a bit of nit-picking in this complaint and that is just a minor problem with their demands. Much of this complaint by the people at “Free Israel” seems more like petty complaints and personal dislike for religious Jews as the target of their complaint would mostly affect strictly religious Yeshivoth.

 

Actually, when one looks at the body of petitions, demands for legislation, complaints over funding and the plethora of other moves against religious Jews one would likely think that the Israeli minorities were behind many of these efforts but you would be dead wrong. The strongest and most visceral abhorrence of any and every-thing religious comes from other Jews. These Jews have as the basis of their form of Judaism secular humanism and believe in such niceties as fairness, equal outcomes, equality in income, wealth redistribution, and everything else far left liberal socialists all over the world support. These are the people for whom government is the singular route to addressing all of society’s ills, which is why they are petitioning the government to place an unfair financial burden on religious schools as these leftists are against traditional anything, not just traditions of a religious nature, and are all new age, new world, old progressive failed policies of government secular everything. They are also hypocrites as they claim to be for individual choice except for those individuals who choose anything which these progressives disapprove of. Perhaps if these progressive busybodies would work at perfecting their own lives and allow those who seek a different way to reach a perfect life live as they please receiving equal treatment from the government which these progressives like to believe is their personal weapon to wield against those they regard as those others who are just so old fashioned and un-fun. After all, Israel is the Jewish State and should be for all Jews, yes, even the strictly religious believe it or not as they will be the future of Judaism and the guardians of Torah, and like it or not, Torah is the central spine and the soul of Judaism without which Judaism is nothing but a social club.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Ancient Israel Time is Finally Coming Due

From the time of Abraham, followed by the miracle of the Exodus and Israel’s leader, the Lawgiver Moses, leading to the beginning of the taking of the Promised Land under Joshua, on to the building of a true nation by King David which led immediately to the building of the Temple by King Solomon, even through the hardships of the Babylon Exile and the near countless conquests by empire after empire from Persia through the Greeks and finally ending less than merciful Roman conquest that lead to the near two thousand years in the wilderness of the Diaspora, a people have been forged who have finally returned to their national home with a unique history intertwined with the experiences from every corner of the world and are finally on the cusp of realizing their true destiny. Now the Children of Israel face likely their most insidious of challenges, economic success with a pampered class of the permanently disgruntled. These children of discontent were on full display with their temper tantrum and extremist displays when the authorities actually refused to allow them the same license to disrupt life in the center of Israel’s cities with a replay of last summer’s tent protests. Their aim is to again protest the unfairness of the society which will not allow them to begin life at the top of the heap replete with all the comforts of their adolescence generously provided by their parents who had reached the pinnacle of long years of diligently toiling at their professions.

This denial of the indignant class to once again set up their disruptive tent cities in the heart of the Israeli hubs of commerce and business marks the beginning of the end of this hijacking of the Jewish faith by the liberal elites of Western civilization. As Jews, we have seen this play out numerous times over our history with likely the most memorable being the Bar Kochba revolt against the Greek Seleucid Empire of Syria in 165 BCE which is celebrated during Chanukah. This revolt was, in reality, more than a simple revolt against the Seleucid Greeks, it also was a battle against those Jews who had adopted a corrupted version of Judaism that knitted Greek culture into its practices and had adopted many of the Greek philosophies and practices. They were referred to as Hellenized Jews and were rejected by their brethren who saw their corruption of Torah and their incorporation of Greek practice into their Judaism as a form of idolatry making their Jewish practices compromised and impure. One of the initial killed was one such Jew when a Jewish priest from Modiin, Mattathias the Hasmonean, started the revolt by thrusting a spear through the Hellenistic Jew who had been willing to bow to idols and then the commander of the Greek soldiers which spurred his five sons and those who answered his call, “Those who are for G0d, follow me!” set upon and killed the squad of soldiers. Hopefully this rejection of the modern Hellenized Jews will not require such violence but will end simply due to a resurgence of traditional Judaism. What makes this even more hopeful is that we are witnessing two completely separate and different series of events within modern Judaism. A recent <a href= target=blank> article reports,</a> “New York’s Jewish population is on the rise after decades of decline. Researchers credit orthodox birthrates. The change was attributed to birthrates in the orthodox Jewish community, particularly in Chassidic circles. Forty percent of New York City Jews now identify as orthodox, up from Thirty-three percent a decade ago. Nearly three out of every four Jewish children in the city are growing up in orthodox families.” Similar results have been evident throughout most Jewish populations, especially within Israel.

This return to traditional Judaism and the sanctification of a people is a necessary prelude to the building of the Holy Temple and a complete return to fulfillment of all of the six-hundred-thirteen Commandments as spelled out in Torah. It is then possible for a new age of humankind to rise up and bless the Earth with peace, understanding, kindness and a mutual respect among the peoples that is written of in most prophetic works. As far as what other occurrences and events will befall humankind and whether these will be pleasant or turmoil depends on the course taken by the nations and the peoples. Looking over human history one would not be condemned for believing that before we attain a Divinely inspired world we will first face some horrific events and calamities. I have always held out hope that humankind will come to realize that more can be accomplished by assisting one another than is accomplished through conflict or chaos. Unfortunately, that Pollyannish worldview is often smashed to pieces simply by reading the daily news stories, but one can always hold out hope. But first it is necessary to work towards satisfying those necessary initial steps before we are able to even begin to work towards building that perfect society which most everyone at least secretly hopes is somewhere in our future. Even if it is beyond our days, we can only pray our children will witness such developments. After all, it is our hope of a better future which is part of why we bother to raise our children giving them our hopes and dreams to pass on until they become reality.

Beyond the Cusp