RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://evelyncgordon.com/baby-layla-shows-whats

If there’s one thing Israel advocates agree on, it’s that Israel lost the PR war over May 14’s violent demonstrations in Gaza. Everybody from the U.N. Security Council to a New York public high schoolmourned the 62 Palestinians killed as innocent victims, even though 53 belonged to terrorist organizations. And with Hamas planning another demonstration on Tuesday, a battle has been raging over whether the PR war is inherently unwinnable or if Israel’s public diplomacy was simply incompetent.

The correct answer is both. And nothing better illustrates this than the story of the Palestinian baby allegedly killed by Israeli tear gas.

Israel’s critics immediately seized on the death of 8-month-old Layla Ghandour as proof of its malfeasance. As the New York Times wrote, “The story shot across the globe, providing an emotive focus for outrage at military tactics that Israel’s critics said were disproportionately violent.” The Times of Israel noted that “Her funeral was filmed and featured on global TV news broadcasts and newspaper front pages.”

Soon afterward, however, a Gazan doctor suggested that she most likely died of a congenital heart defect rather than anything Israel did (a theory later apparently accepted even by Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, which last week removed Ghandour from its list of people killed by Israel).

What happened next was surreal: The doctor’s explanation was immediately seized on and disseminated worldwide by both official Israeli spokesmen and Israel supporters overseas as if it somehow mattered whether Ghandour was killed by tear gas or a congenital heart defect. In other words, Israel and its supporters implicitly accepted the view of the anti-Israel mob. Had the baby truly been killed by Israeli tear gas, presumably Israel could legitimately have been considered culpable.

FROM MY FRIEND AND E-PAL DPS

Ben Gurion Airport – Sun-Monday 24 hours arriving from 85 cities

Source: http://www.iaa.gov.il/en-US/airports/bengurion/Pages/OnlineFlights.aspx#

Sunday 3 June 2018

Arriving from 85 cities: Addis Ababa, Amman, Amsterdam, Antalya, Athens, Baku, Bangkok, Barcelona, Basel, Batumi, Beijing, Belgrade, Bergamo, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Bucharest, Budapest, Cairo, Chisinau, Cluj, Craiova, Dnepropetrovsk, Dusseldorf, Eilat, Eindhoven, Frankfurt, Gdansk, Geneva, Hamburg, Heraklion, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Karpathos, Katowice, Kharkov, Kiev, Krakow, Larnaca, Lisbon, London, Los Angeles, Lyon, Madrid, Malaga, Malta, Manchester, Marseille, Milan, Minsk, Montreal, Moscow, Mumbai, Munich, Naples, New Delhi, New York, Newark, Nuremberg, Odessa, Palma, Paphos, Paris, Prague, Rhodes, Riga, Rome, Rostov, Rzeszow, S.Petersburg, San Francisco, Sochi, Sofia, Tashkent, Tbilisi, Thessaloniki, Tivat, Toronto, Varna, Venice, Vienna, Warsaw, Wroclaw, Yerevan, Zurich

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270344/anti-semitism-full-display-ben-gurion-airport-ari-lieberman

Holocaust imagery depicting man’s inhumanity to man generally evokes emotive responses that make us question the possibility of a repetition of such bestial behavior in the 21st century. It also evokes questions on how humanity can transform ignorance, bigotry and intolerance into murder and mass genocide.

A particular disturbing Holocaust-era photo, among the many that I’ve seen, left an indelible impression on me. It depicts a barefoot orthodox Jewish man donning a pair of tefillin (phylacteries) and a tallit (prayer shawl). The man, who was almost certainly murdered shortly after the picture was taken, is surrounded by a group of amused German soldiers, possibly members of the notorious SS Einsatzgruppen, who appear to be reveling in the man’s misfortune and humiliation.

An occurrence at Ben-Gurion International Airport this past week rekindled my memory of this image. The scene initially unfolded rather benignly with Rabbi Meir Herzl, the director of a Chabad house in the Jerusalem suburb of Pisgat Zeev, approaching businessman Gad Kaufman, and asking Mr. Kaufman if he would like to don tefillin and recite a short prayer.

This is a rather common occurrence. Chabad routinely performs spiritual community outreach. Some of those who are approached waive them off with a polite smile while others just ignore them. On occasion, those approached respond positively and oblige, and this was the case with Rabbi Herzl’s interaction with Mr. Kaufman.

As Mr. Kaufman donned the tefillin, a crazed woman lurched forward and began berating both Rabbi Herzl and Mr. Kaufman. Her bizarre rant, where she is seen alternating between harassing the rabbi and screeching uncontrollably was caught on video and has since gone viral. “Why are you doing this here?” she barks in Hebrew. “You’re bothering me, why don’t you do it over there?” she demands. At one point Mr. Kaufman begins to address her and Rabbi Herzl, who remained calm and composed throughout, tells Mr. Kaufman not to pay her any mind.

The unhinged woman was later identified as Pnina Peri. Unsurprisingly, she is an academic in the humanities/social science field, and a visiting professor at the University of Maryland’s Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies. She is also listed as a faculty member of the sociology department at the American University in Washington D.C., though as of this writing, her name on the American University’s webpage connects to a broken link. Peri’s bio somewhat comically describes her as a “specialist on multicultural theory and cross-culture communication.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/the_israel_day_parade.html

With thirty thousand marchers in the Israel Day parade and one hundred thousand+ viewers, Sunday, June 3, was a glorious day. Jews and their well-wishers came from Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Israel, and colleges across the country to sing and dance their way up New York’s Fifth Avenue. It is an annual event that brings light and life to the Jews of the United States. Everyone was particularly happy because of the silly human tendency to prefer round numbers. This was Israel’s 70th birthday as a modern nation and was noticeably more rowdy and boisterous than last year’s 69th birthday celebration. Rain threatened but no one cared. More politicians came out and the amplified music had more bass notes and percussion. Marchers greeted bystanders and bystanders drew marchers to the side for hugs and good wishers. Baby carriages graced various groups as did some wheelchairs for the elders who insisted in participating. No one except the marching bands felt the need to move in lockstep. Some of the marchers danced their way up the avenue and then others took over. People who normally do not wear yarmulkes wore them proudly and no one was afraid — unlike Europe where Jewish leaders have urged Jews to wear hats to hide their identities.

Unadulterated happiness in the world is rather rare. The Israel Day parade was pure fun, full of politics, commercialism, national pride and universal values with only seconds of rancor and discord that you had to hunt and peck to find.

By the way, don’t bother trying to find coverage of the Israel Day parade in the MSM. No blood was spilled and so it was not a newsworthy event. Covering the joy of the Jews (or anyone) seems to be politically incorrect in this strange world we have fashioned.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/israel_versus_iran.html
Professor Emeritus (University of Virginia) S. Fred Singer was among the first prominent scientists speaking out against global warming alarmism. An atmospheric and space physicist, he headed the U.S. Weather Satellite Service (now part of NOAA). He founded the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

Persian and Jewish people have had friendly relations since biblical times. Emperor Cyrus liberated Jewish exiles in Babylon and helped rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. More recently, the Shah of Iran and Israel planned a pipeline from Eilat on the Red Sea to Ashdod on the Mediterranean to supply Iranian oil to Israel and bypass the Suez Canal.

Things have changed, and in dealing with the hostile regime in Tehran, Israel’s aim has been twofold: to interdict weapons transfers to Hezb’allah and to keep Iranian ground forces away from its northern border.

Several weeks ago, DEBKA, a military intelligence website based in Jerusalem, reported on an aircraft strike on 50 Iranian military installations in Syria. All this was accomplished in less than two hours. If true, this represents an important achievement in military intelligence and in operational planning and coordination.

We do not know how many planes took part in the operation, but presume they all returned safely. Somehow, they evaded the vaunted Russian S-300 anti-aircraft (AA) system. Not many Western news services took note of this event, which occurred in the early morning hours of May 11. According to a report in Al Hayat, a London-based pan-Arab newspaper, Russia was not altogether unhappy about the operation.

On May 1, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demonstrated another intelligence coup, exposing a truckload of material, consisting of reports, pictures, etc. revealing the continued nuclear activities of Iran. We do not know how Mossad stole all this well guarded material, nor how the operatives managed to transfer it to Israel, but they did.

A few days later, on May 8, President Donald J. Trump declared that he was pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. Secretary of state Mike Pompeo announced that severe sanctions will be applied to Iran; the aim clearly was to effect regime change, removing the present theocracy.

In a recent American Thinker article, Boris Gulko expressed his belief that the Iranian rulers will not last long. He speculates that the mullahs may not be around to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their revolution next year.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270324/why-international-farhud-day-stymies-invented-edwin-black

When International Farhud Day was proclaimed at a conference convened at the United Nations headquarters on June 1, 2015, its proponents wanted to achieve more than merely establish a commemoration of the ghastly 1941 Arab-Nazi pogrom in Baghdad that killed and injured hundreds of Iraqi Jews. Farhud means violent dispossession. The Farhud but the first bloody step along the tormented path to the ultimate expulsion of some 850,000 Jews from across the Arab world. That systematic expulsion ended centuries of Jewish existence and stature in those lands.

Jews had thrived in Iraq for 2,700 years, a thousand years before Mohammad. But all that came to end when the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, led the broad Arab-Nazi alliance in the Holocaust that produced a military, economic, political, and ideological common cause with Hitler. Although Husseini spearheaded an international pro-Nazi, anti-Jewish Islamic movement from India to Central Europe to the Middle East, it was in Baghdad—a 1,000-kilometer drive from Jerusalem— that he launched his robust coordination with the Third Reich.

In 1941, Iraq still hosted Britain’s Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which controlled the region’s oil. Hitler wanted that oil to propel his invasion of Russia. The Arabs, led by Husseini, wanted the Jews out of Palestine and Europe’s persecuted Jews kept away from the Middle East. Indeed, Husseini persuasively argued to Hitler that Jews should not be expelled to Palestine but rather to “Poland,” where “they will be under active control.” Translation: send Jews to the concentration camps. Husseini had visited concentration camps. He had been hosted by architect of the genocide Heinrich Himmler, and the Mufti considered Shoah engineer Adolf Eichmann not only a great friend, but a “diamond” among men.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270320/conflict-beyond-advocacy-dr-shmuel-katz

Reprinted from IsraelNationalNews.com.

Who would have believed that within certain communities, there could be more supporters of the radical Arab Palestinian agenda than supporters of the free, democratic and altruistic State of Israel. The relentless Arab Palestinian deceitful and well-organized propaganda, with the irrational support of many in the Western Media, may be a part of this transition.

The Democratic Party in the USA used to be a staunch supporter of the just cause of the State of Israel, but a recent Pew Research Center report showed a dangerous shift in this attitude. Within the more radical liberal branch of the Democratic party, about 38% will be anti-Israeli while the supporters of Israel will be only about 26%. When you look at the overall numbers as they relate to the Democratic party, you find that about 31% will be anti-Israeli and only 33% will be pro-Israel. On the other hand, within the Republican party, about 74% will be pro-Israel.

If one wants to know what the intentions of the Radical Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are, one should just listen to them. They are not bashful.

Despite an absolute bipartisan support for moving the USA Embassy to the legitimate Capital City of Israel, Jerusalem, there were no Democratic members of Congress in attendance at the opening ceremony of the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Even more surprisingly, Chuck Schumer, who voted in Congress against the Iran Deal, criticized President Trump bitterly for exposing the bad intentions and the lies of the Iranians, and for withdrawing from the originally ill-conceived Iranian Deal, implemented by President Obama via an executive order, without the ratification by Congress.

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/what-are-islams-claims-to-jerusalem/

An Islamic preacher who recently appeared on official Palestinian Authority television made all the usual angry remarks that Muslims often make concerning Israel’s right to exist, particularly in the context of its claim to Jerusalem. His comments may suggest to the casual Western listener that “by rights,” and as a matter of universal justice, Jerusalem belongs to Muslims. However, the comments are laden with religious and historical references and observations that only Muslims might understand, and of which none accord with Western notions of universal rights and justice.

This is especially evident in the cleric’s assertion that Jerusalem “is a religious, Sharia, and historical right of the Muslims, and of no one else but them.”

Why is Jerusalem a “religious” right for Muslims? Because Islamic tradition teaches that one night in the year 610, Muhammad — miraculously flying atop a supernatural horse-like creature (al-Buraq) — visited and prayed in it.

Why is Jerusalem a “Sharia” — or legal — right for Muslims? Because according to all interpretations of Islamic law, or Sharia, once a territory has been “opened” to the light of Islam, it forever belongs to the House of Islam, or Dar al-Islam.

This leads to the third, and most telling “right”: that Jerusalem is a “historical right of the Muslims” because in the year 637, Muslim Arab armies “opened” — that is to say, conquered — Jerusalem.

After raiding the Eastern Roman Empire’s Syrian territories for years, Emperor Heraclius mustered a massive army that met and fought the Muslims near the Yarmuk River in August 636 (this pivotal battle is featured in Chapter 1 of my new book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West). The Muslims defeated the Christian army, and by November were at and laying siege to the Holy City. The preserved sermon of its holed up patriarch, Sophronius, captures these times:

Why are the troops of the Saracens attacking us? Why has there been so much destruction and plunder? Why are there incessant outpourings of human blood? Why are the birds of the sky devouring human bodies? Why have churches been pulled down? Why is the cross mocked? Why is Christ … blasphemed by pagan mouths? … [T]he vengeful and God-hating Saracens, the abomination of desolation clearly foretold to us by the prophets, overrun the places which are not allowed to them, plunder cities, devastate fields, burn down villages, set on fire the holy churches, overturn the sacred monasteries, oppose the Byzantine armies arrayed against them, and in fighting raise up the trophies [of war] and add victory to victory.

It’s worth noting that the majority of descriptions of the invaders written by contemporary Christians portray them along the same lines as Sophronius: not as men, even uncompromising men, on a religious mission, as later Muslim sources claim, but as godless savages come to destroy all that is sacred. Writing around the time of Yarmuk, Maximus the Confessor (b. 580) described the invaders as “wild and untamed beasts, whose form alone is human, [come to] devour civilized government.” Due to the Muslims’ penchant for desecrating churches and “trampling on, mocking, setting on fire, and destroying” every cross, icon, and even Eucharist they came across, Anastasius of Sinai (b. 630) described them as “perhaps even worse than the demons.”

After several months of being holed up and reduced to starvation and plague, Jerusalem capitulated in the spring of 637. The conquest of the Holy City was enough for Caliph Omar to pay it a visit from Medina. There he saw the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a massive complex built by Constantine (c. 331) over the site of Christ’s crucifixion and burial. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270310/four-takeaways-latest-round-gaza-clashes-ari-lieberman

It began with an attempt by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) to plant an improvised explosive device on the security fence separating Israel from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, and ended with a near full-scale conflagration on a scale not seen since the summer of 2014. Tensions for the time being have tapered off but the recent fighting demonstrates why the Israeli Army (IDF) maintains a constant state of readiness along its volatile borders.

On Sunday, security forces monitoring the Gaza border detected an object attached to the border fence. Upon closer examination, it turned out to be a bolt cutter of the type used by Palestinian rioters to breach the fence in weeks prior. A remote controlled robot was sent in to inspect and remove the object utilizing a long cord. During the course of removal, the bolt cutter exploded. Fortunately, no one was injured but the situation could have just as easily resulted in casualties.

PIJ terrorists who planted the IED were then spotted manning a nearby observation post. An Israeli Merkava IV tank fired at the OP instantly killing two PIJ operatives. A third was mortally wounded and died soon after. Islamic Jihad swore vengeance.

Two days later, southern Israeli border towns and communities came under intense indiscriminate rocket and mortar bombardment. A kindergarten was hit but fortunately, the children had not yet arrived. Over the course of 22 hours, Hamas and PIJ fired over 100 rockets and mortars, 25 of which were shot down by Israel’s anti-rocket defense system, Iron Dome. According to military sources, the system also succeeded in intercepting incoming mortar rounds, a first in the annals of warfare. There were no fatalities but there was some property damage and three IDF soldiers were wounded, two lightly and one moderately. A civilian was also lightly injured.

The unprovoked attacks inevitably drew Israeli retaliatory strikes which came in two waves. Some 65 Hamas and PIJ positions were targeted including a U-shaped, two-kilometer long tunnel that extended into both Egypt and Israel. It was to be used for smuggling contraband as well as for facilitating terrorist attacks. Rocket and weapons storage facilities were also hit and destroyed. A Hamas naval armory which the army said contained “advanced, unmanned submarine vessels, capable of maritime infiltration and carrying out maritime terror attacks,” was hit and destroyed as well.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12416/palestinian-illegal-building

The real story is the land. Building on it was key to taking possession of an otherwise unattainable piece of territory, and making this possession appear irreversible.

The basis of “The Fayyad Plan” (Official title: “Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State”) was, and remains, the creation of a de facto state — without the need for negotiation with Israel — through facts on the ground in areas under full Israeli administrative and security administration.

Jahalin West would offer services that these Bedouin have never had — services the Palestinian Authority has never offered them: running water, electricity, permanent homes they themselves are free to design, health clinics, public transportation, schools, access to employment, and more.

What the Palestinian Authority, the European Union, Israel’s High Court of Justice, three Israeli towns, and the Jahalin tribe have in common is the Bedouin settlement of Khan al-Akhmar.

The battle for this Arab settlement has been waged in the international media and the Israeli Supreme Court for more than a decade, and its story is a microcosm of the Arab-Israel conflict, complete with alternative narratives, shifting alliances, unclear lines of responsibility and murky vested interests.

The first problem is that Khan al Akhmar is located in an area, unpoetically named Area C, where, according to the United Nations, “Israel retains near exclusive control, including over law enforcement, planning and construction.”

This small cluster of Bedouin homes is actually sitting on land in an Israeli township, Kfar Adumim, at a strategic crossroads between Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and the outlying Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, making it crucial both to the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Until fairly recently, the residents of the Arab settlement — a branch of the Jahalin tribe of Bedouin — had lived in southern Israel. At some point in the 1970s, a feud broke out between different branches of the tribe, and the Jahalin fled northward, and arrived in the Maaleh Adumim region in the late 1970s, where they have remained ever since.