RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17519/israel-petitions-antisemitic

The bigots who promote these petitions, and the useful idiots who sign them, cannot possibly be motivated by a concern for universal human rights. If they were, they would focus on nations with really horrendous human rights records, such as Iran, which hangs gays, China, which imprisons Muslim dissidents, Russia, which murders dissenters, Saudi Arabia, which oppresses women, Syria, which gases its own people, as well as Palestinians, and many other nations that face no external threats.

Israel, on the other hand, faces existential threats, and acts in self-defense. It does more to protect innocent civilians than any country faced with comparable threats. Yet it is the only country that is subject to petitions by teachers unions, faculty senates, student bodies, and other groups….

“Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest.” — Thomas L. Friedman.

There is an old joke about a Hitler rally in which the Fuhrer shouts out a rhetorical question: “Who is to blame for all of Germany’s evils?” And before the crowd can shout “the Jews,” a man in the front row screams out: “The bicycle riders.” Hitler stops and turns to the man and asks him, “Why the bicycle riders?” To which the man responds, “Why the Jews?” …. There is no good response.

Therefore, let us stop pretending that these hateful, one sided and mendacious petitions are anything but what they are: anti-Semitic bigotry, pure and simple. History will judge the bigots behind them harshly. So should all decent people today.

Let there be no doubt that the recent spate of one-sided petitions singling out Israel for condemnation are motivated by hatred of Israel, precisely because it is the nation state of the Jewish people.

The bigots who promote these petitions, and the useful idiots who sign them, cannot possibly be motivated by a concern for universal human rights. If they were, they would focus on nations with really horrendous human rights records, such as Iran, which hangs gays, China, which imprisons Muslim dissidents, Russia, which murders dissenters, Saudi Arabia, which oppresses women, Syria, which gases its own people, as well as Palestinians, and many other nations that face no external threats. Israel, on the other hand, faces existential threats, and acts in self-defense. It does more to protect innocent civilians than any country faced with comparable threats. Yet it is the only country that is subject to petitions by teachers unions, faculty senates, student bodies, and other groups that seem to focus more on Israel than on their own mission to improve the lives of their members.

 Herut is everywhere in the media over the last week and before the July 4th holiday I wanted to share with you the below news links. 

BEFORE THE NEWS – Attached please find info on the Philadelphia area self-defense workshop sponsored by Herut later this month.

Dear American Jewish Mothers by Lisa Koenig (Lisa is the North East Director of Herut North America’s U.S. division)

https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/06/25/dear-american-jewish-mothers/

This op-ed also appeared in the Jewish Voice in New York: https://thejewishvoice.com/2021/06/dear-american-jewish-moms/

Yoni Netanyahu Proved Himself a Hero Before Entebbe by Moshe Phillips

https://www.sdjewishworld.com/2021/06/29/yoni-netanyahu-proved-himself-a-hero-before-entebbe/

How the Biden administration funds Palestinian terrorists by Moshe Phillips

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/how-biden-funds-palestinian-terrorists/ (lead featured op-ed)
This op-ed awas also syndicated by JNS https://www.jns.org/opinion/how-biden-funds-palestinian-terrorists/  and also is online at The Jewish Press website:
https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/how-biden-funds-palestinian-terrorists/2021/06/30/

Two-State Solution – A Bad Idea By Moshe Phillips

Letter in the July 2, 2021 issue of The Jewish Press

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/israels-high-powered-laser-system-breakthrough-hugh-fitzgerald/

Israel has once again reminded us that we should thank our lucky stars that the Jewish state is on our side. In the “What Have You Done For Us Lately” Department, Israel has just completed tests of its new high-power laser system that, installed on a civilian aircraft, can shoot down drones. It promises to be what is called a game-changer. The story of this remarkable advance is here: “Israel successfully downs targets using airborne laser system,” by Anna Ahronheim, Jerusalem Post, June 21, 2021:

The Defense Ministry has successfully carried out a series of interceptions to shoot down drones with a powerful airborne laser system installed on a civilian light aircraft….

During the trials that were carried out over the sea, the high-powered laser fired from a civilian Cessna plane destroyed the unmanned targets at differing ranges and altitudes.

According to the Defense Ministry, Israel is perhaps the first country in the world to have been able to use such laser technology on an aircraft to intercept targets in an operational simulation….

The fully automated energy system uses the laser to destroy a target while flying above the clouds, he said, adding that the “powerful and precise system” can intercept the target “regardless of weather conditions.

Once a target passes through the area of interest, the system can be directed at any part of it with very high accuracy. It locks on and remains locked on until the target is downed….

The ground system will also be able to destroy targets at a range of eight to 10 km. with a 100 kW laser, Rotem said. The ministry is aiming for an operational system by 2024 to be deployed at the Gaza border area for shooting down rockets, he said.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz congratulated MAFAT, Elbit and the IAF on the technological breakthrough.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17515/palestinian-police-state

These [Palestinian] leaders have turned the Palestinian Authority-controlled areas of the West Bank into a police state where political opponents are beaten to death, arrested, tortured and intimidated.

The crackdown was almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media in the West — until the death of Banat. It was ignored because the perpetrators were not Israeli policemen or soldiers. It was ignored because the media could not find a way to blame Israel for the fact that the Palestinian government was harassing, intimidating and torturing Palestinians.

The silence of the international community and media towards the human rights violations by the Palestinian Authority has prompted Palestinian journalists to make a direct appeal to the European Union to provide them with protection.

The protests… are mainly directed at the Biden administration, whose representatives have recently been courting and searching for ways to cozy up to Abbas and his Fatah cohorts. The message Palestinians are sending to the Biden administration: Stop empowering our brutal, corrupt leaders.

Will the Biden administration and the Western world actually legitimize — and reward with millions of dollars and possibly even a state – political leaders who brutalize, torture and murder their own journalists and citizens? To gain what? A legacy of America championing a regime like that?

Earlier this year, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas enacted a decree-law on boosting public freedoms ahead of the Palestinian parliamentary and presidential elections, which were supposed to take place on May 22 and July 31.

Article I of the law provides for “establishing an atmosphere of public freedoms in all the territories of Palestine, including the freedom to practice political and national action.”

Article II provides for “banning the detention, arrest, prosecution of, or holding to account, individuals for reasons relating to the freedom of opinion and political affiliation.”

https://www.jns.org/opinion/lapid-dont-count-on-courting-democrats/

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid seems pleased about his meeting on Sunday in Rome with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Like his American counterpart, he belongs to the self-described “center” of a political camp pressured by a far-left minority.

What this means is that while neither is openly hostile to either country, both cling to failed premises about the nature and purpose of international relations. More specifically, Blinken believes that the best way to prevent the powers-that-be in Tehran from building the bomb is through a return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or some version of it.

Lapid, who was gung-ho for the JCPOA when it was negotiated in 2015, now says he has “serious reservations” about resuming its current iteration. Still, he hastened to reassure Blinken that the new Israeli government “believe[s] the way to discuss [Israeli-American] disagreements is through direct and professional conversation, not a press conference.”

This was a not-so-veiled reference to Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, whose tenure as the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history ended on June 13. Less than a month earlier, the now-former prime minister ostensibly embarrassed Blinken during a joint talk with reporters in the wake of the ceasefire that ended “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” Israel’s 11-day war against Hamas and terrorist infrastructure in Gaza.
“I hope that the United States will not go back to the old JCPOA, because we believe that that deal paves the way for Iran to have an arsenal of nuclear weapons with international legitimacy,” said Netanyahu unabashedly, despite sharing the stage with Blinken.

“Whatever happens, Israel will always reserve the right to defend itself against a regime committed to our destruction, committed to getting the weapons of mass destruction for that end,” he declared.

The very different message that Lapid wanted to convey to Blinken was that Washington could count on his tact and obeisance—traits that Netanyahu supposedly has been incapable of exhibiting towards Democrat-run administrations. It’s an accusation that Lapid and his “center-left” compatriots have been hurling at Netanyahu for years, both when Barack Obama was in the White House and during Donald Trump’s term in the Oval Office.

https://www.jns.org/could-palestinian-protests-lead-to-the-ouster-of-mahmoud-ab

Hamas is also turning up the heat, hoping to one day seize control of the West Bank from Fatah as it did in Gaza.

As unrest continues in Ramallah and Hebron, questions have arisen surrounding the future of Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas.

For the fifth straight day Monday, protesters called for the ouster of Abbas following the death of activist Nizar Banat. PA security forces forcibly removed Banat from his home last Thursday near Hebron. He was beaten with iron rods by two dozen officers, taken for questioning and pronounced dead a few hours later, according to his family, Reuters reported. Banat was a vocal critic of Abbas.

Large-scale protests ensued. Videos uploaded to social media show Palestinian forces, some in riot gear, others in plainclothes, firing tear gas at protesters, hitting them with fists and clubs and targeting reporters. Journalists on the scene expressed their anger, with one tweeting, “Abbas will fall, the authority will fall, and the security coordination dogs will fall.” Hundreds also protested on the Temple Mount.

“These protests are almost unprecedented in their intensity, in the number of people participating in them,” Arab-Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh told JNS. “For the first time you see large numbers of people chanting ‘Down with Abbas’ … It’s no longer about Nizar Banat only. It’s about people demanding regime change.”

Last Friday in Hebron, thousands attended Banat’s funeral, with mourners arriving from across PA-controlled territory.

“Abbas has completed the 16th year of a four-year term. Under him, things seem to be going in the wrong direction for the Palestinians,” Toameh said, noting divisions within Fatah, the loss of the Gaza Strip to Hamas, lack of freedom of speech and the recent crackdown on activists.

He added, “The feeling on the Palestinian street is that the Palestinian leadership is on a different planet, that it’s insensitive to demands regarding elections, regarding reform, regarding corruption. If you take all these things into consideration, you see how serious it is. The Palestinian people feel they’re not part of the Palestinian decision-making process and Abbas has turned it into a private fiefdom. People are saying enough is enough.”

https://www.jns.org/the-biden-administration-turns-to-unrwa-in-its-rush-to-rebuild-g

“UNRWA is a very problematic organization. It is fully controlled by Hamas. Hamas uses the facilities of UNRWA for weapons storage and to launch rockets. All of the local employees of UNRWA are Hamas people. Nobody’s allowed to work in UNRWA without the permission of Hamas,” said Kobi Michael, senior researcher at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies.

Following the recent war between Israel and Hamas, the Biden administration has put an emphasis on rebuilding the Gaza Strip, promising the terror group won’t benefit. Some experts say Washington’s approach will fail to bear fruit.

Rebuilding Gaza was the first agenda item U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken mentioned when he met Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid in Rome on Sunday. It’s a recurring theme for Blinken, who brought up reconstruction of Gaza at every stop during his two-day visit to the Middle East in late May, days after the last bombs fell in “Operation Guardian of the Walls.” He stressed that rebuilding Gaza must be done in such a way that Hamas, which runs the coastal enclave, won’t redirect the aid to its military effort.

Blinken was echoing President Joe Biden, who shortly before a May 21 ceasefire said the U.S. would seek to quickly rebuild Gaza “in a manner that does not permit Hamas to simply restock its military arsenal.”

The administration is funneling money to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In April, it had announced it was restoring $150 million to the U.N. agency. Following the Gaza conflict, Blinken said the U.S. would inject almost $33 million for “UNRWA’s emergency humanitarian appeal,” again ensuring “Hamas does not benefit from these reconstruction efforts.”

Asaf Romirowsky, executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, who has studied UNRWA for two decades, said, “UNRWA is a case study of the client hijacking the service provider because the majority of UNRWA employees are Palestinians.” (UNRWA employs 28,000 Palestinian staff members, according to its website.)