RUTHFULLY YOURS

One of the enduring mysteries of modern political discourse is the way in which smart people — who are not remotely anti-Semitic — impose curious, unworkable double standards on the nation of Israel. Let’s take, for example, the response of many on the left to the so-called Great Return March, an effort by thousands of Gazans to storm the Israeli border.

After all, the international legal standards are clear. A nation has the right to protect the integrity of its border, and that right is supplemented by an inherent right of self-defense in the face of a hostile foreign power. Hamas — which rules Gaza — rejects Israel’s right to exist and remains in a state of perpetual, declared war with Israel. Any reasonable person contemplating the consequences of a border-wall breach knows that chaos and bloodshed may result.

Moreover, every reasonably informed person knows that Hamas has a long history of using human shields, including women and children, to drum up international sympathy and deceive gullible foreign critics into believing that Israel is using lethal force against peaceful protestors who merely seek a peaceful resolution to an intractable conflict. Yet still yesterday we saw tweets and articles not just from the single-minded anti-Israel Left but also from far more thoughtful observers:

In apartheid Gaza, where the remaining less-than-one-percent of the Christian population lives uneasily among the 99%+ Muslim inhabitants with absolutely no Jews allowed, there is a peaceful protest against Israel. How do we know it is peaceful? Because the New York Times, CNN and the usual complicit media say so.

Bringing guns and babies to a conflict and arming children to a declared war to overrun another country and kill all its inhabitants is peaceful because the holy Hamas Covenant, which brutally runs Gaza, clearly states:

‘The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.’ (Article 6)

On the Destruction of Israel:

‘Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.’ (Preamble)

The Exclusive Moslem Nature of the Area:

‘The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Holy Possession] consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day. No one can renounce it or any part, or abandon it or any part of it.’ (Article 11)…

The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them.

Obeying their holy death wish covenant, Hamas operatives posted online instructions for their duped civilian followers promising them a bonus payment of $100 a day for the peaceful privilege of killing Israelis and holy martyrdom for being killed.

But hey, as usual, Trump and the Jooos are to blame.

“The dedication of the embassy is a leap of faith. Faith in building rather than destruction. Faith in life instead of death.”

Hamas supporters in Gaza held the world’s first peaceful protest with hand grenades, pipe bombs, cleavers and guns. Ten explosive devices were peacefully detonated. There were outbursts of peaceful gunfire and over a dozen kites carrying firebombs were sent into Israel where they started 23 peaceful fires. And Israeli soldiers peacefully defended their country leaving multiple Hamas attackers at peace.

“We will tear down the border,” Hamas Prime Minister Yahya Sinwar had peacefully vowed. “And we will tear out their hearts from their bodies.”

But the only hearts his terror thugs tore out were already bleeding with sympathy for Islamic terrorists.

The Hamas mob chanted, “Allahu Akbar” and the genocidal racist threat of, “Khaybar Khaybar, ya yahud,” a reference to the primal Islamic massacre of the Jews. While IDF soldiers held back the invaders, the jets of the IAF targeted the snake’s head striking Hamas compounds and outposts. By 5.30 PM, the Hamas organizers changed course and began urging the thugs away from further fence attacks.

Hamas had offered $100 to every rioter. During previous violent assaults back in April, the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group had been offering $200 to anyone shot by Israelis, $500 for severe injuries and $3,000 to the dead.

The United States opened an embassy to Jerusalem today at the order of President Trump, who finally fulfilled a promise former presidents made for decades.

“We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem,” Trump said. “Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise they failed to deliver. Today I am delivering.”

President Bill Clinton said in 1992 that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, despite the U.S. embassy being in Tel Aviv. “Jerusalem is still the capital of Israel and must remain an undivided city accessible to all,” he said.

George W. Bush promised 18 years ago, “As soon as I take office I will begin the process of moving the U.S. ambassador to the city Israel has chosen as its capital.”

“I continue to say that Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel, and I have said that before, and I will say it again,” President Barack Obama said at an AIPAC conference. “And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

The protests aren’t spontaneous and they aren’t’ peaceful.

hey, of course, didn’t begin today. This New York Times article from a couple of weeks ago is a pretty good guide to what we’ve seen.

The protests aren’t spontaneous:

For weeks, Palestinians protesting along the fence between Gaza and Israel have conjured up the idea of swarming across the barrier, a mass of tens of thousands of people too numerous for Israeli soldiers to arrest or even to shoot.

They aren’t peaceful:

Hamas has called the protests peaceful, despite the Molotov cocktails thrown at Israeli soldiers and firebombs attached to kites that are routinely sailed over the fence, setting fires to Israeli farmland. Israel, defending its use of deadly force, has described the protests as riots that could turn into an invasion at any time.

Israeli communities are close to the border, and Israeli forces can’t just allow them to be stormed by armed rioters:

For the first time in five weeks of protests, some reached the second barrier — a sensor-laden fence that marks the edge of Israeli territory — and tried to climb it or pull it down. A few hundred yards beyond it lies the Israeli farming community of Nahal Oz.

JERUSALEM—The U.S. cemented its ties to Israel by opening a new embassy in Jerusalem, as clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israel’s military left dozens dead and added to the Trump administration’s challenges in the Middle East.

The ceremony, held in a large tent beside the new embassy site, was attended by top Israeli and U.S. officials. “This is a great day for Israel, it’s a great day for America,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel told the attendees. “I also believe it’s a great day for peace.”

Some 50 miles away, Israeli military used warplanes to hit targets belonging to Gaza rulers Hamas and fired live ammunition, tear gas and rubber bullets at Palestinian protesters as many of them attempted to breach the fence dividing the Gaza Strip with Israel.
Deadly Move
As the U.S. opened its new embassy in Jerusalem Monday, about 50 miles away more than 50 Palestinian protesters were killed in clashes with the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip.

Protesters used explosive devices, firebombs and flaming kites, according to the Israeli military. Numerous shots were fired, and Gazans burned tires and threw Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers.

Gaza officials said 52 protesters were killed—among them a 12- and a 14-year-old—and more than 2,400 were injured. That marked the largest single-day death toll since the Israeli army fought a conflict with Hamas in 2014.

The unrest followed months of tension over President Donald Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, where it has resided since soon after Israel’s 1948 founding. It coincided with a host of anniversaries that Hamas has used to rally support for its cause. The U.S. Embassy opening in Jerusalem—in a city that Palestinians also claim for a future capital—offered a focal point for their anger.

An Israeli military spokesman said Monday that the demonstrations by 40,000 Gazans were larger and more violent than those of the past month and a half of protests on the strip.

In the runup to the U.S. Embassy opening, Hamas has helped organize weekly protests and threatened to break through the fence dividing the strip with Israel. Fearing a mass infiltration of Israeli territory, Israel has responded with live fire, killing about 100 people since March 30. CONTINUE AT SITE

“In a long overdue move, we have moved our embassy to Jerusalem. Every nation should have the right to choose its capital,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement. “I sponsored legislation to do this two decades ago, and I applaud President Trump for doing it.”

What he didn’t say is that while Mr. Schumer talked up his legislation at fund-raising time, he muted his support during the Obama years. The embassy would never have moved without Mr. Trump’s willingness to defy political convention.

The embassy transfer is also a symbolic reaffirmation of U.S. support for Israel. Ties between the two countries frayed during President Obama’s two terms, as Mr. Obama made concluding a nuclear deal with Iran his top—really, his only—Middle East priority. One of Mr. Trump’s projects has been to restore better relations with U.S. allies, and in the Middle East that has meant Israel and the Sunni Arabs in Egypt and on the Arabian peninsula.

This is already paying dividends in confronting Iran’s attempt to build an anti-Israel front in Syria with missiles and Hezbollah militia on the northern Israeli border. Israel struck back hard last week at Iranian positions in Syria after Iran launched missiles toward the Golan Heights. The missiles were intercepted, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the provocation to do significant damage to Iranian bases.

Exactly 70 years ago – on May 14, 1948 – Israel’s founding father David Ben-Gurion brought together members of the Jewish People’s Council in the Tel Aviv Museum.

The Zionist movement to rebirth a Jewish state had already been at work for decades. That day Ben-Gurion stood underneath a portrait of the pioneer of that movement, Theodor Herzl, and affirmed the historic right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.

“The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people.Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

Hamas’s use of actual smoke and mirrors to conceal its aggressive manoeuvring on the Gaza border is the perfect metaphor for a strategy that has no viable military purpose but seeks to deceive the international community into criminalising a democratic state defending its citizens.

The UN and EU, NGOs, government officials and media — primary targets for Hamas — have been willingly taken in. For example a Guardian headline, ‘The use of lethal force to cow nonviolent demonstrations by Palestinians’, blatantly misrepresents the violent reality that has been plain for all to see. Likewise the NGO Human Rights Watch claims that we are seeing a movement to ‘affirm Palestinians’ internationally-recognised right of return’.

In reality these demonstrations are far from peaceful and do not pursue any so-called ‘right of return’. Rather they are carefully planned and orchestrated military operations intended to break through the border of a sovereign state and commit mass murder in the communities beyond, using their own civilians as cover. The purpose: to criminalise and isolate the State of Israel.

Hamas are planning to achieve maximum violence at the Gaza border on either the 14th or 15th May, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the declaration of the State of Israel, the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem and the start of Ramadan — a perfect storm.

Since 30th March Hamas has been orchestrating large-scale violence on the border between Gaza and Israel. The major flare-ups have generally occurred on Fridays, following mosque prayers, when we have repeatedly seen concerted action involving crowds of up to 40,000 people in five separate areas along the border. Violence and aggressive actions, including specific acts of terrorism involving explosives and firearms, have also occurred at other times during this period.

The new law, known as the Palestinian Cyber Crime Law, comes in the wake of the PA and its supporters continuing falsely to accuse Israel of targeting Palestinian journalists. The PA leadership’s goal is to ensure that leaders are immune from journalistic critique.

Now journalists and Palestinian human rights organizations will not be able to say that the crackdown on public freedoms and freedom of the media is illegal.

The silence of the international community and human rights groups allows Mahmoud Abbas and his allies to get away with assaults on public freedoms and move forward towards creating a dictatorial regime for the Palestinians — one funded with American and European taxpayers’ money.

The last thing the Middle East needs is another repressive Arab regime. It is also the last thing the Palestinians want.

In a move that has angered Palestinian human rights organizations and journalists, the Palestinian Authority (PA) on April 17 approved a new law that restricts freedom of expression and the media. The move is seen by Palestinians in the context of the PA’s effort to silence its critics and suppress public freedoms. Palestinian journalists call it a declaration of war on the media.