RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gaza-militants-fire-mortars-into-israel-1527591761

TEL AVIV—Israeli jets launched airstrikes against targets in Gaza in response to militants firing mortar shells and rockets into the country, ramping up tensions after weeks of deadly clashes at the border fence.

More than 60 targets were hit in total in two waves of airstrikes, including a munitions manufacturing site, military compounds, munitions warehouses and a tunnel that extended into its territory, which belonged to Gaza ruler Hamas and militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Israeli military said.

The Israeli strikes came as militants in Gaza fired mortar shells and rockets into Israel through the day, setting off sirens in several border towns that continued late into the night, in what Israel’s military called the largest such attacks from the Palestinian territory since the 50-day war known as Operation Protective Edge in 2014.

“We are the closest to war we have been since Operation Protective Edge.…If a war breaks out that we are not interested in and that they aren’t interested in—it depends solely on them,” Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz told Army Radio.

The Israeli military said late Tuesday that militants in Gaza launched a total of about 70 mortars and rockets into Israel in several barrages by 8 p.m. local time, including some that were Iranian made.

Three Israeli soldiers were injured and were receiving medical treatment, but the Iron Dome defense system intercepted most of the projectiles, the Israeli military said. One of the mortar shells from the morning volley landed in the playground of a kindergarten before children arrived and no one was injured, it said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which Israel says is backed by Iran, for the attacks.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s armed wings issued a joint statement claiming responsibility for the attacks on Israel. They said the attacks were a response to Israel’s recent attacks that have killed Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants as well as for violent clashes during recent protests.

The groups faulted Israel for this week’s violence, citing events “48 hours ago.” and said they won’t “not let the enemy impose a new equation killing our people for free.”

Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on Tuesday called for an emergency Security Council meeting to respond to attacks on Israel from Gaza. CONTINUE AT SITE

It is no wonder, then, that the classified State Department report’s findings — showing that billions of taxpayer dollars have been funneled over the years into an organization that has seems to have been perpetuating a fraud — that the Obama administration kept its content a secret from the American public.

UNRWA is anything but a humanitarian organization interested in the welfare of the Palestinians whom it claims to have spent the past nearly 70 years assisting. It is, rather, a self-serving political body that has bolstered Arab/Palestinian rejectionism and perpetuated Palestinian suffering, thereby preventing peace and prosperity.

Its dissolution is long overdue.

In early 2018, President Donald Trump froze a large portion of the funding that the United States provides annually for UNRWA (the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees a in the Near East). Prior to imposing the $125 million freeze, Trump tweeted: “[W]e pay the Palestinians HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect.”

The president’s move came in response to the fact that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his henchmen yet again were rejecting American and Israeli peace overtures. Yet it was both welcome and necessary for reasons well beyond Palestinian intransigence. UNRWA not only has an abominable record of ties to terrorism, which makes a mockery of its mandate to ” provide relief, human development and protection services;” but its entire existence is based on a false premise — a special UN definition of “refugee” for Palestinians that sets them apart from other people in the world categorized as such. It thus has been able for decades to keep cash flowing freely into its coffers, providing “humanitarian services” for millions of Palestinians who are not refugees by any measure. As the ZOA’s Morton Klein and Daniel Mandel recently wrote:

“All this stands in stark contrast to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the international body that deals with all refugee problems other than the Palestinian Arabs. UNHRC observes a universal definition of refugee status, one that applies solely to those who actually fled their country during hostilities, civil war, natural disaster, or other disturbances. UNHCR works to resettle refugees quickly and dismantle the temporary refugee camps housing them. Nor does it count descendants as refugees.

-Israel relations have surged commercially and militarily since Israel’s establishment in 1948, and Israel enjoys a 74% favorability rating according to the 2018 annual Gallup poll of favorability (compared to 21% for the Palestinian Authority). This positive state of relations has been achieved despite the systematic pressure by all US Presidents – from Truman through Obama – and in spite of persistent criticism of Israel by the Department of State, the New York Times and the Washington Post (all three opposed the 1948 establishment of the Jewish State) and other representatives of the “elite” US media.

US-Israel relations have dramatically expanded in defiance of conventional common sense, but consistent with – and nurtured by – the 400 year old ideological, moral, cultural, religious and historical foundations of the United States, which have enriched the US-Israel saga, featuring a unique people-to-people, bottom-up relationship, with elected officials representing the wish of most constituents.

For example, on March 5, 1891 – antedating Theodore Herzl and the 1897 First Zionist Congress – US President, Benjamin Harrison, received the William Blackstone Memorial, which called for the reestablishment of the Jewish State in the Land of the Bible: “Palestine for the Jews.” The Memorial was signed by over 400 distinguished Americans, such as the Chief Justice, additional Supreme Court Justices, future President William McKinley, senators, congressmen (including the Speaker of the House and the Chairmen of the Ways and Means and International Relations Committees), Governors, mayors, university presidents, businessmen, clergy and media editors.

The signatories of the “Blackstone Memorial” were overwhelmingly Christian movers and shakers, who signed the document well before the emergence of the Jewish political lobby, reflecting the Biblical, Judeo-Christian roots of the USA.

‘Israeli soldiers do not thrive on shooting innocent Palestinians or even Hamas activists’
http://freebeacon.com/culture/israelis-respond-biased-coverage-gaza-riots/

TEL AVIV, Israel—A couple of weeks before the Gaza riots began, the pro-Israel media watchdog CAMERA put up across from the New York Times building a massive billboard: “The New York Times At it AGAIN: Defaming Israel with distorted ‘news.'” Although its strategic location made it impossible to miss, Israelis nearly universally agree that the Old Gray Lady didn’t get the message—and that the Times is but one of a slew of global media outlets copying from the same script, according to which IDF soldiers randomly kill peaceful protesters.

While the Israeli public is accustomed to anti-Israel bias in the international media, coverage of the Gaza riots appears to have a struck a nerve, perhaps because foreign coverage of “peaceful protests” is so at odds with what Israelis see on their local TV. On Israeli TV they see swastika-painted kite bombs setting alight Israeli fields, bullets lodged into the window sills of nearby Sderot homes, Hamas fence-cutting units crying “Khaybar, Khaybar”—a battle cry referring to the Muslim massacre of Jews in that Arabian town in 628 A.D. When these aspects of the story don’t make it to Western media outlets, Israelis are understandably aggrieved.

Nizar Amer, a deputy spokesperson at Israel’s foreign ministry, says that from the Israeli government’s point of view, most of the coverage in the international media fails to provide the full picture. “You didn’t see many media outlets saying that Hamas led and organized this campaign. There’s a gap between what’s happening on the ground and what the media is reporting.” A pundit on Israel’s Channel 20, a news channel with a nationalistic bent, argued that the country should start ejecting journalists who print falsehoods about Israel. Amer says given the importance of freedom of the press, he doesn’t see Israel doing that.