STEVE PLAUT: THE MT. CARMEL INFERNO
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/12/08/the-mt-carmel-inferno/
The Mt. Carmel Inferno Posted By Steven Plaut
Now send and gather all of Israel to Me on Mount Carmel….Then the fire
of the Lord fell and devoured the sacrifice and the wood and the
stones and the dust and the water. — Kings I 18: 19, 38
“Carmel” means the orchard of God in Hebrew.
The Bulgarian firefighters have agreed to let me tag along with them
as they make their way up the gullies in the Carmel Forest, seeking
out flames still burning uncontrolled. I walk with Mikhail, probably
the only Bulgarian firefighter on earth who speaks Hebrew. He is also
a medic, and had earlier done some work in Israel; long enough to pick
up basic Hebrew. He and the other Bulgarian firefighters just came
down from the command center at the University of Haifa. His
colleagues are amused that an aging professor from the same university
wants to accompany them. One tells Mikhail to explain to me that he
wants to come back later to be a student in my university. A religious
couple from Haifa comes out of the bushes carrying large boxes of
sufganiyot, Hannuka cakes, and distributes them to the firefighters,
thanking each of them personally with a “Spaseeba!”
All around us the brush and trees are smoking. Every gust of wind
stirs up ash. Countless fire-fighting planes circle overhead,
interrupted by the circling giant American 747 that has just arrived.
The command-and-control center for the entire battle against the
fires has been set up on the University of Haifa campus. A parking
lot there contains so many Russian firefighters that a large Russian
flag has been raised. The firefighters are amazed when all of the
campus security staff speak and joke with them freely in Russian, and
when they see so many posters on billboards in Russian. They are
commanded by the Russian Deputy Minister for National Emergencies, the
same fellow who led the battle against the forest fires around Moscow
last summer. The soft-spoken guy is a giant, a Russian Paul Bunyon,
and seems capable of blowing out forest fires with only his breath.
These were not the Hannuka flames Israel was expecting. On the first
day of the festival, the top of Mount Carmel looked like one of those
volcanoes you see on the National Geographic Channel. The pillar of
smoke could be seen from 50 miles away. Gusts of wind bring ash and
smoke into Haifa. Residents of some streets closest to the flames are
evacuated. Friends and relatives from around the country call and
offer us sanctuary if we need it. It feels a lot like the summer of
2006, when Haifa was the target of hundreds of rockets fired by
Hezb’Allah terrorists during the Lebanese War. The man at the meat
counter in the supermarket jokes with me; if the wind changes
direction he will be holding a special sale on barbecued chickens that
never even had to be put into the oven. We are all sold out of
marshmallows, he adds.
But it was hard to keep a sense of humor in the midst of Israel’s
worst-ever natural disaster, one in which over 40 Israelis died in the
flames. Besides the bus full of prison service cadets, the victims
included a 16-year old Haifa boy who had long served as a volunteer
fireman with one of the brigades. He was overcome after he rushed
into the conflagration with his colleagues. Another victim was the
Haifa Chief of Police, a courageous 52-year old woman, Ahuva Tomer,
who died from burns. She was born in the USSR and came to Israel
alone as an infant. But do not expect her courage and ordeal to
arouse any sympathy from radical feminists. They are too busy
cheering on the Hamas terrorists.
There is still debate about the exact cause of the inferno. The
government has been claiming that a teenager from the Druse town of
Usafiya, located just behind the University of Haifa, was supposedly
puffing on a nargila waterpipe near a garbage dump. There is
widespread public suspicion that the Israeli government is covering up
a grand act of Arab arson in order to avoid Jewish anger at the perps.
Even if the government’s explanation is correct, the widespread
public disbelief is directly due to the fact that there have been so
many cases of Arab arson in Israeli forests in the past. Throughout
the large fire last week, the Israeli police repeatedly claimed that
it was started as arson, before changing their line. The Druse member
of the Israeli parliament, Ayoub Kara, also stated his belief that it
was arson.
Whatever the real cause of the Mt. Carmel inferno, there could be no
doubt whatsoever about the countless other fires being set all over
the country while the international team of firefighters was busy
battling the main blaze. These were all, or nearly all, arson attacks
by Israeli Arab terrorists. For many years, forest fires in Israel
have been set deliberately as acts of ecological terror, including
more than one on Mt. Carmel itself. The government prettifies the
arson and claims that the fires might just have accidental causes. No
one in Israel believes them.
While the international crews were fighting the Mt. Carmel fire,
scores — perhaps even hundreds — of fires were deliberately being set
by Israeli Arabs all over the country. In many cases, one knew that
it was arson because a fire would start in a single area at 5 or 6
different points all at the same time. That is one humongous nargila
waterpipe. Just as often as the police and media confirmed that arson
was the cause of these fires, the Israeli Minister for Minority
Affairs, leftist Avishai Braverman, denied it and demanded that
Israelis stop laying blame. I guess he sees magical waterpipes going
berserk all over the place. This is the same Braverman who served for
many years as the President of Ben Gurion University and — as such —
turned it into Israel’s worst center of anti-Zionist extremism and
tenured treason.
Whether the large Mt. Carmel fire turns out to have been set
accidentally or deliberately, Israel has for years been the victim of
Arab ecological terror. The world media reports every single incident
in the West Bank when Arabs claim that Jewish “settlers” have burned
or vandalized Palestinian olive trees (while ignoring when the trees
belonging to the “settlers” are vandalized). They do so even after
the many cases where leftists, foreign “anarchists,” and
Palestinian-Arabs have been photographed by the mainstream media
vandalizing the trees themselves to make it look like “settlers” were
responsible. Yet nary a word in the mainstream media about the
countless acts of Arab arson against Israeli forests.
These are the very same Arabs who are deemed by their apologists to be
so attached to the holy land of Palestine that they desperately need
to be given their own homeland there. People who adore their sacred
land so deeply that they cannot part with a single blade of grass,
even if that is what it takes to allow the Jews to have their own
state. Well, now the whole world can behold the real nature of Arab
love for the Holy Land, manifested in a campaign to torch it. This is
a full-fledged ecological terrorist assault against Israeli Jews,
conducted by Israeli Arab terrorists and their collaborators. Haifa
Radio reported that Arabs in the nearby town of Faradeis were dancing
in joy at the sight of Jewish homes going up in flames. Much of the
rest of the Arab world was cheering the devastation.
***
The Bulgarian firefighters take a breather and rest under a tree that
has survived. A sudden breeze makes a small smoking stack of leaves
near us emit some flames a few inches high. For the Bulgarians it is
not worth bothering with. I decide to contribute my own effort to
this international fight against the Mt. Carmel fire, and extinguish
the little flames the way Boy Scouts put out campfires. The
Bulgarians smile and applaud, every last one of them.
Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com
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