RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-anybody-but-bibi-camps-bluster/

When Tzipi Livni and her ilk try to promote the idea that Netanyahu is a greater danger to Israel than Islamist missiles and butcher knives covered in Jewish blood, most of us just sigh and yawn.

In a typical tirade against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu on Tuesday, Hatnua Party chair Tzipi Livni said, “No leader in Israel has the right to destroy everything we have built here for his own personal needs.”

Referring to Netanyahu’s televised address to the nation on Monday evening, Livni—still stinging from her sudden ouster by Labor Party leader Avi Gabbay as head of the Zionist Union opposition bloc—added, “That’s what he does on prime time.”

Livni was not alone in lambasting Netanyahu for causing the country to spend three hours speculating about the “dramatic announcement” he was going to deliver, and then treating viewers to a complaint that he is not being given a fair shake by the legal system.

It was a disappointing display. Rumors had been rampant of imminent war, the possible release of Israelis in Hamas captivity or potential U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. The letdown, then, was enormous.

More importantly, it provided “anybody but Bibi” politicians and members of the media with the perfect opportunity to accuse Netanyahu of hijacking the airways to make a case for his innocence in a number of corruption cases for which he is being investigated. Channel 10 went as far as to cut off the prime minister’s remarks in the middle and resume its regular news broadcast.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13531/palestinians-shopping-mall

“Rami Levy does not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, gender, or religion when hiring and promoting employees. All employees, Palestinians and Israelis, are treated equally and receive equal benefits. Salaries are based solely on one’s position and performance. My goal for all Rami Levy employees is to have the same opportunity to succeed.” — Rami Levy, owner of Israel’s third-largest supermarket chain, half of whose 4,000 workers, he says, are Palestinians and Israeli Arabs.

Palestinian investors, according to Fatah official Hatem Abdel Qader Eid, could have prevented Rami Levy from building his new mall had they invested in the construction of a Palestinian shopping center. “It’s true that there are wealthy Palestinian businessmen…”

Now that the campaign has failed to prevent the opening of the mall, Fatah and its followers have turned to outright threats and violence. The threats are being directed toward Palestinian shoppers and Palestinian merchants who rented space in the new mall.

If a Palestinian who buys Israeli milk is a traitor in the eyes of Fatah, it is not difficult to imagine the fate of any Palestinian who would dare to discuss compromise with Israel. If he is lucky, he will have a close encounter with a firebomb. If he is not lucky, he will be hanged in a public square.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction is angry. It seems a Jewish Israeli businessman has just built a shopping mall in east Jerusalem and most of its workers and customers are Arabs.

Fatah leaders have called for boycotting the mall.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272465/how-palestinian-schoolbooks-indoctrinate-students-david-bedein

The think tank that I run, the Center for Near East Policy Research, has completed a four-year research activity in which all 364 schoolbooks for grades 1-12 that were published by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the years 2013-2018 were examined. The chief researcher whom we hired to examine the texts used by the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools was Dr. Arnon Groiss, a scholar of Middle Eastern studies. The goal of this research project was to check the Palestinian attitude toward the Israeli-Jewish “other” and to the possibility of solving the war with the “other” in a peaceful manner, in the spirit of the peace agreements known as “the Oslo Accords” that were signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel in 1993-1995. The project yielded three studies which demonstrate that Palestinian students are learning that a peaceful resolution of the war with Israel is not an option. Instead, the theme that runs through the PA curriculum is that “Palestine” must be liberated from “Zionist occupation” by way of an armed struggle titled “Revolution [Thawrah],” which involves terrorist actions styled as “self-sacrificing operations [‘amaliyyat Fidaiyyah].”

You can see this in the context in a PA schoolbook reference in one of the books to the “1972 Munich operation” in which 11 members of the Israeli team at the Olympic Games were massacred (History Studies, Grade 11). Those who carry out such actions are called “self-sacrificing ones [Fidais]” and those among the liberation struggle are called on to liberate the Muslim holy place of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and removing it from the Jews’ sway.

Palestinian pupils are taught that “struggle for liberation” is not limited to the areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but rather the whole country from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, as Zionist occupation is said to have started in 1948 in what is termed “the Catastrophe [Nakbah]”, and not in 1967. Israel’s pre-1967 territory is termed “the Palestinian territories that were occupied in 1948” (Management and Economics, Grade 11). Pre-1967 Israel is never presented as a legitimate sovereign state nor does it appear on the map where it is replaced in its entirety by “Palestine.”

https://worldisraelnews.com/15-year-old-girl-stabbed-in-jerusalem-attack/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=push_notification&utm_campaign=PushCrew_notification_1547013665&pushcrew_powered=1

A teenage girl was stabbed and wounded in the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood in Jerusalem on Wednesday morning.

The victim, 15, was was stabbed several times including in her neck. She was evacuated to Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem and is reportedly in light-to-moderate condition.

The teenager said she was standing at a bus stop when an Arab man attacked her. She told the security forces who arrived at the scene that she did not know her attacker.

Security forces launched a manhunt for the assailant.

The Armon Hanatziv neighborhood is situated adjacent to Arab neighborhoods and has been the site of several terror attacks, some of them deadly.

Most recently, a knife-wielding terrorist scaled the fence at a police station in the neighborhood and attacked four officers. He was shot and killed.

Two years ago on this day (Dec. 9), an Arab terrorist rammed his truck into soldiers waiting at a bus stop in Armon Hanatziv, killing four and wounding 13.

One of the most deadly attacks in the area took place in October 2016 when two Arab terrorists boarded a bus and shot and stabbed passengers, murdering Alon Govberg, Haim Haviv and Richard Lakin, the latter of whom was also an American citizen.

Another 17 Israelis were wounded in that attack.

https://freebeacon.com/blog/the-gamble-of-israels-new-right/

“Boom!” read the headline of a supplement in Israeli weekly Makor Rishon, after two leading politicians, Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, announced on December 29 that they were jumping ship from the Jewish Home Party to create the New Right Party. The question Israeli pundits are trying to answer now is whether that boom—or “blast” as most of the press characterizes it—is an explosion or an implosion. Will it strengthen the national camp or will it bring it to its knees?

The ruling Likud Party wasted little time in slamming the New Right as a threat to the entire right. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “It will break the right into slivers of slivers. Parties won’t make it past the electoral threshold.” Netanyahu referred to the 3.25 percent of the vote a party must win in order to enter the Knesset. Passing that threshold gives a party four seats. Failing to pass means the loss of all the votes that had gone to that party.

Netanyahu counts on those slivers to build his government. In Israel’s parliamentary system, a government must have a majority of at least 61 votes in the 120-seat Knesset. How does Likud fare in the polls? Much better than the others, but still with only 30 seats.

Netanyahu has repeatedly raised the specter of 1992, when a plethora of right-wing parties caused two of them to fail to make it into the Knesset, wasting their votes. The result was a Labor government led by Yitzhak Rabin, which brought about the Oslo Accords, long viewed as a disaster by the right. (It’s a view now held by most of Israel’s electorate, judging from the fact that no party outside of the extreme Meretz wants to be identified with it.)

Likud fears are more than mere scare-mongering. Polls place two to three right-wing parties perilously close to the abyss, and some analysts estimate that even the loss of one right-wing party is enough to hand the reins of government to a center-left coalition.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13502/palestinians-hamas-fatah-conflict

The biggest losers from this internal bloodletting are the Palestinians living under these leaders in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas-ruled Gaza.

The dispute between Hamas and Fatah is not over who will bring democracy and a better economy to the Palestinians. They are not fighting over who will improve the living conditions of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by building new schools and hospitals. They are not fighting over who will introduce major reforms to the Palestinian government and end financial and administrative corruption. They are not fighting over the need for freedom of expression and a free media.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Hamas leaders correctly argue, is not a rightful or legitimate president. If Abbas were to sign a deal with Israel, people could come along later and say that he lacked the legal authority to do so; they would be right.

In order for any peace process to move forward, the Palestinians first need to stop attacking each other. Then, they need to come up with new leaders who actually give a damn about their people.

The Palestinians’ major ruling groups, Fatah and Hamas, are now saying they are done with each other: that the divorce is final.

Recent days and weeks have witnessed the two groups maligning each other beyond anything previously seen. Fatah and Hamas have reached a new level of mutual loathing. At times, it even seems as if Fatah and Hamas hate each other more than they hate Israel.

Many in the West say they would like to see Israel and the Palestinians return to the negotiating table. They want Israelis and Palestinians to resume the so-called peace process. They are hoping that Israel and the Palestinians will manage to reach a historic agreement that would end the Israeli-Arab conflict and bring real peace to the Middle East.

The region, however, does not need a “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians. It needs one of a different type. The “peace process” that the Middle East is crying out for is one between Palestinians and Palestinians, one that would end their bloody, internecine war.