Israel through Music

Showing anti-Israel hypocrisy through song, Yedida Freilich does a very good job of promoting Israel's right not only to exist, but to defend itself against her enemies.



If you have the talent, you could do the same. Join the Israel Online Ambassadors and show off your talent at the same time as supporting Israel (and potentially winning a cash prize too!).

Gilad - a citizen of the world?

You're the Prime Minister of Israel.

You have two choices.

1) You negotiate with terrorists, possibly releasing several hundred of their incarcerated, perhaps murderous "brothers". By so doing you release one, just one, captured Israeli soldier.

2) You don't negotiate, and this soldier, who's been held in solitary confinement for five years remains there even longer. 

Either way, you're breaking one of the most solemn promises held for generations by successive governments - either that of not negotiating with terrorists, or that of never leaving a soldier behind. 

I'm glad I'm not the Prime Minister of Israel.

As we approach the fifth anniversary of Gilad Shalit's capture by Hamas, one blogger has started a new initiative, campaigning for the Mayor of London to confer an honorary citizenship on Gilad, as several other cities worldwide have done. It may not bring about his immediate release, but it will raise awareness of Gilad's plight and highlight once again the evil that is Hamas. 

H/T OyVaGoy

Work Accident

Few phrases in news related to Israel upset me as much as the title of this post. 

A "work accident" gives the impression that someone going about their daily, legal, legitimate business has been injured or killed in a regrettable incident. 

In this brief report in "Haaretz", along with many others in various news outlets in the past, it refers to terrorists, in this case three members of Hamas, being killed by their own explosives. They were, undoubtedly, preparing them for use against the Israeli population. 

This sort of activity may be "work" for Hamas, but to call such incidents "Work Accidents" lends them an air of legitimacy. 

Perhaps "Reverse Engineering" or "Boomerang Terrorism" would be more appropriate? 

Catastrophe

It's been a very busy few days, consisting of Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha'atzmaut (Remembrance Day, immediately followed by Israel Independence Day), and I wrote about neither. 

Then, over this past Shabbat, I met members of a delegation of Israeli political high-fliers, about whom I was going to post, and will do soon. 

Today, I attended what seemed to be the very highly successful "We Believe in Israel" conference. I've taken so many notes, and wasn't sure where to start. I've got several days' worth of material to write about. 

And then, as I finally sat down to see, hear and read about today's news, once again I'm left writing about turmoil in Israel. 

In the morning rush-hour in Tel Aviv, an Israeli-Arab truck driver seems to have purposely driven into several other cars and ended up crashing into a primary school. A 27-year-old man was killed, and over a dozen injured. 

Around Israel's borders, in particular on the Golan border with Syria, and at the Erez border crossing into Gaza, large numbers of people started violent protests. The BBC has reported that twelve people have been  killed. They've managed to miss the fact that ten of them were killed by the Lebanese army. Their headline, as usual, speaks initially of Israeli aggression, and only mentions the Palestinians' initiating actions as a secondary detail.

All this, in the name of marking the "Nakba", the Arab description of Israel's independence - Catastrophe. 

The real catastrophe is that this can all have been avoided, and could certainly come to an end. All it will take is some very brave decision-makers, and the acceptance of one simple fact: Israel is there, always will be there, and will always remain, an independent, democratic, Jewish state. 

Make mine a Double

Double standard, that is. 

In the aftermath of Osama Bin Laden's death, the West in the form of European leaders and the United Nations have gone out of their way to congratulate America on this triumph over terror. 

The hypocrisy of the West is shocking, but unsurprising. The very fact of his death, in a targeted killing, has brought what can only be described as joy to millions. Whilst watching scenes of jubilation across the United States, I have to admit that I understood that joy, but felt a little uncomfortable with how much these scenes of celebration reminded me of the celebrations held in Gaza and other parts of the Arab world after September 11th 2001, and more recently after the massacre of the Fogel family in Itamar. Having said that, I'm not comparing the events. In the latter cases people were celebrating evil and the murder of innocents, whilst in New York and Washington they were celebrating the demise of one of the purveyors of that evil. 

His death, as the news has been slowly revealed over the last few days, came about in a combat action, despite the fact that he was unarmed and reportedly ill at the time. The comparisons with Sheikh Yassin, the Hamas leader killed in 2004, are inevitable. Yet the United Nations along with several Western leaders have lauded the death of Bin Laden as a strike at the heart of terrorism. 

When Israel killed Sheikh Yassin, who was also supposedly ill and unarmed, it was accused of war crimes, of illegal executions and wrongful assassinations. His death was even described as tragic by the now, thankfully, defunct UN Commission on Human Rights. This was a man who was directly responsible for ongoing terrorism against the people of Israel, and multiple lethal attacks prior to his death. Israel's actions were said to "...not do anything to help the search for a peaceful solution." (Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General at the time.)

You can't have it both ways. Either the death of a terrorist is a good thing, or it is a bad thing. 

Either the extra-judicial killing of an arch-terrorist is a move towards peace or a step away from it. 

If the USofA was right in its actions, then so was Israel. 

The West, its leaders and its people, owe themselves as well as Israel, a little honesty. It shouldn't be that difficult, but seeing the inevitable hypocrisy rear its ugly head, it could drive a man to drink. 

Just make mine a double. 

Kever Yosef

Kever Yosef, or in English, Joseph's tomb, a pilgrimage site for Jews for thousands of years, has once again been the site of violence towards Jews. It has been a flash point for many years, and when Sh'chem (or Nablus) was handed over to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords, one of the first acts perpetrated by the residents was to set fire to the tomb. Only recently was it finally restored. 

Smoke billows from Kever Yosef after it was torched,
whilst locals dance on the roof.

A group of Hasidic Jews entered the site in Sh'chem this morning in order to pray, and as they were leaving the area a "Palestinian police officer" opened fire on their cars. 

One person was killed - 25 years old Ben-Yosef Livnat, a nephew of the Likud minister Limor Livnat. 

Several others were injured in what the Palestinian authorities are calling a security incident. 

To me it sounds like murder. 

As if murder wasn't quite enough, the holy site was then torched. Again. 

Missiles, school-children, and foul mouthed footballers

A short time ago, several missiles, possibly mortar shells or anti-tank missiles were fired across the border from Gaza into Israel. A school bus was targeted, and at this point one child is critically injured, and the driver of the bus injured lightly. An amateur video of the damage to the bus is shown below. There is no commentary. None, in truth, is necessary. 

Luckily, if one can call it that, approximately fifty other school-children had alighted from the bus only moments before. 

As usual, the BBC news website opens its report with "Israel shells Gaza City", whilst the news hasn't yet made it onto television. Wayne Rooney's suspension is apparently more important.