RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-price-israel-pays-for-its-existence?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

April 25th  is Israel’s Remembrance Day. This is when the nation commemorates all those who have fallen in battle defending it against its attackers, and remembers also all those Israeli civilians who have been murdered by Arab terrorism.

Since the State of Israel was established in 1948, 24,213 men and women have been killed in military service and 4,255 men, women and children have been murdered in terror attacks. To put these losses in proportion, in 1948 Israel had 806,000 people; today, its population is approaching 10 million. In America, the population during that period has risen from around 130 million to 336 million, and in the UK from 50 million to 67 million.

Today is an emotional day for Israel. This morning, when the siren sounded at 1100, traffic in the streets came to a halt and people stood and bowed their heads. Thousands of Israelis have visited the cemeteries to remember slain family members, recite prayers and join in the nation’s collective mourning and respect.

This annual demonstration of solidarity in grief over the dreadful price paid by Israel’s never-ending struggle to survive always generates high emotion. Today, this has been heightened still further by the terrible divisions laid bare during the last four months of uproar over the government’s judicial reform programme — which today also produced a few protests at these most solemn events.

This evening, Israel will pass seamlessly from a day of extreme sadness to the start of Independence Day, when it celebrates the rebirth of the Jewish national home in Israel. For Israelis, rejoicing over that astonishing achievement is necessarily anchored in the awareness that is never far from the surface — that the price they have paid to be citizens of their own country has been agonisingly steep.

That price is still being paid, as Israelis continue to be regularly attacked and murdered and their young conscript soldiers continue to be sent into harm’s way to defend their country against enemies bent upon its extermination

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israels-75-year-odyssey-from-left-to-right-jabotinsky-begin-bibi-religion-zionism-3f63d8fe?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

How did Israel, a liberal cause at its founding 75 years ago, become right-wing? You could begin the tale in 1935, when a Jewish state was still far from assured. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the father of right-wing Zionism, despised by the socialist mainstream, made a promise and a threat to David Ben-Gurion, the Labor Zionist leader of Palestine’s Jewish community:

“I can vouch for there being a type of Zionist who doesn’t care what kind of society our ‘state’ will have; I’m that person. If I were to know that the only way to a state was via socialism, or even that this would hasten it by a generation, I’d welcome it. More than that: Give me a religiously Orthodox state in which I would be forced to eat gefilte fish all day long (but only if there were no other way), and I’ll take it. . . . In the will I leave my son, I’ll tell him to start a revolution, but on the envelope, I’ll write, ‘To be opened only five years after a Jewish state is established.’ ”

That Jabotinsky’s heirs kept his promise and threat allows us to trace the nation’s journey from left to right as the world’s most successful postcolonial state.

In 1944 right-wing Zionists revolted against the British, the colonial power blocking desperate European Jews from immigrating to Palestine. Ben-Gurion, focused on a postwar settlement, opposed the revolt. His forces betrayed hundreds of members of the Zionist underground to the British. This turned Jew against Jew and could have easily spiraled into civil war. But it didn’t. “There will not be a fratricidal war,” said Menachem Begin, successor to Jabotinsky. “Perhaps our blood will be shed, but we will not shed the blood of others.”

https://www.jns.org/key-voices-left-unheard-at-jewish-federations-annual-conference/

The General Assembly, featured only one session on judicial reform, with exclusively anti-reform panelists. Queried by JNS, JFNA president and CEO Eric Fingerhut explained that the panel—titled, “75 Years of Israeli Democracy: Understanding What’s Motivating the Largest Protest Movement in Israel’s History”—was about the protesters, not the reforms themselves.

While “dialogue” was a central theme of the “Israel at 75 General Assembly,” the annual gathering of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), held this week in Tel Aviv to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Israel’s birth, several of the key discussion topics appeared overwhelmingly one-sided.

This was especially evident when it came to the foremost political issue of the day—judicial reform—a topic that has consumed Israel’s political landscape for the past three months.

Federation told JNS that it strove to present “leaders from the opposition and coalition representing a diversity of views and opinions,” referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Knesset member Simcha Rothman, a key architect of judicial reform.

That didn’t work out in reality. Netanyahu decided not to attend, and Rothman was drowned out as activists interrupted his talk.

https://bit.ly/3L1ejAZ

The U.S. does not give foreign aid to Israel — the U.S. makes an annual investment in Israel, giving US taxpayers a return of several hundred percent.
 
While Israel is a grateful recipient of U.S. military systems, it also serves as a battle-tested, cost-effective laboratory for the U.S. defense and aerospace industries, (employing 3.5 million Americans). This enhances U.S. performance on the battlefield and the U.S. economy, national security and homeland security. 
 
Here are a few examples.
 
In defense: The Israeli Air Force flies the U.S.’s Lockheed-Martin’s F-16 and F-35 combat aircraft, providing both Lockheed-Martin and the U.S. Air Force with invaluable information on operations, maintenance and repairs, which is then used to manufacture a multitude of upgrades for next-generation aircraft. Just the F-16 itself has been improved by several hundred Israeli-driven upgrades, sparing Lockheed-Martin 10-20 years of research and developments, which amounts to billions of dollars.
 
Israel is the Triple-A store for Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, G.D., Northrop Grumman, and many other U.S. defense and aerospace companies. This enhances the image of these companies abroad and multiplies their export markets, because other countries assume that if Israel — with its unique national security challenges — uses these companies’ products, they must be of high quality.
 
The U.S. is also trained by Israeli experts in neutralizing car bombs, suicide bombers and IEDs, and US combat pilots benefit greatly from joint maneuvers with their highly experienced Israeli counterparts.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19604/palestinians-human-rights-violations

When Palestinians commit human rights violations against Palestinians, the European Union and the UN are beyond indifferent. It is only when Israel takes a decision to defend itself against terrorism that we hear their supposedly righteous cries.

The Europeans and the UN seem to be more concerned about the rights of organizations that are affiliated with terrorism than the rights of organizations that speak out against human rights violations perpetrated by Palestinians.

The PFLP, in fact, has long been a headache for Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority (PA). That is why the closure of PFLP-affiliated organizations in the West Bank actually serves the interests of the PA: it weakens its political rivals.

Recently, even Abbas himself decided to punish the PFLP, which is part of his own Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). He cut off all funds to the organization.

While he has been accusing Israel of targeting Palestinian NGOs, he has ordered his security forces to crack down on Lawyers for Justice, an independent Palestinian group of lawyers based in Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinians.

Lawyers for Justice works to support Palestinian human rights activists and political prisoners detained by the Palestinian Authority. It also monitors and documents human rights violations committed by the PA security forces.

In one of its recent reports, Lawyers for Justice revealed that the number of Palestinian political activists arrested by the PA has significantly increased, while peaceful demonstrations and assemblies were being suppressed.

It is no wonder, then, that Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are trying to get rid of Lawyers for Justice.

Palestinian leaders do not tolerate any form of criticism. They do not want to hear complaints about human rights violations committed by the Palestinian security forces. They do not want any human rights organizations that challenge them in public and demand an end to the suppression of freedoms.

The only human rights organizations Palestinian leaders want to see are those that direct their hate against Israel, or those that are affiliated with terror groups such as the PFLP, or those that focus their time and energy on defending the rights of terrorists who carry out attacks against Jews.

According to Lawyers for Justice, there is no Palestinian Authority law that prohibits lawyers in their individual capacity or within a framework of a civil company from providing free legal services. The new measure against the group is unlawful…

“This will impede its [Lawyers for Justice] work by blocking its ability to enter into contractual agreements with local or international organizations, or have a bank account. The efforts of the Palestinian Authority to hinder the human rights work of Lawyers for Justice has been ongoing for multiple years. The group has been subjected to different forms of targeted harassment [by the Palestinian Authority], including judicial harassment and defamation campaigns.” — Front Line Defenders, an Irish-based human rights organization. Global Analysis, 2022.

Without valid registration, Lawyers for Justice will not be able to access its bank accounts and could have its offices shuttered and staff arrested. — Muhannad Karajah, head of Lawyers for Justice, hrw.org. April 13, 2023.

By staying silent about the human rights violations committed by the Palestinian Authority, the UN and many Western countries are doing a terrible injustice to the Palestinians, who will continue to suffer repression and suppression under the PA while the international community, obsessed only with defaming Israel, looks the other way.