RUTHFULLY YOURS

At ALEH Negev in Ofakim, residents have severe disabilities and most cannot walk. When the sirens sound, it’s up to their staff to keep them safe

In Ofakim, a sand-choked, barren community minutes from the Gaza border, residents have just 30 seconds when they hear a red-alert siren to run and find cover. For able-bodied members of this impoverished community, that’s precious little time.

But what about those who can’t run?

At ALEH Negev, a state-of-the-art rehabilitative village for Israeli citizens with severe disabilities, it’s a serious question. Most of the residents at ALEH Negev, which gleams like a spaceship in the middle of Ofakim’s brown desert, are wheelchair-bound and cannot walk on their own. Many cannot speak, use their limbs or practice motor functions without assistance.

ALEH Negev is the largest of Israel’s four ALEH campuses, all of which serve the special-needs. There are 133 residents living here, ranging from young adults to 50-year-olds, with round-the-clock care provided by 150 trained staff members. Over the past week, as rocket fire from Gaza pounded Israel from north to south and border cities like Ofakim observed the brunt of the nonstop fire, daily routines here like physical therapy and arts and crafts were shattered by sirens and stress. When a red-alert siren rings in a place like ALEH, its threat has special fangs.

“The residents here really react to the staff,” says Masada Sekely, the village’s director. “If the staff is calm and knows how to handle the situation, then the residents are too. They work on feedback, and all their emotions come from the staff that works with them. We are actually more focused on keeping our staff strong than the residents.”

ALEH Negev’s full name is ALEH Negev-Nachalat Eran, and chaired by Maj. Gen. (res) Doron Almog, one of the most celebrated figures in the history of the Israel Defense Forces. In 1976, Almog helped lead the famed Israeli hostage rescue at Entebbe and for years after, as head of the IDF’s Southern Command, foiled countless attempts to launch terror attacks in Israel.

Almog bears a difficult and definitive family legacy, having lost his brother Eran, a tank commander, during the Yom Kippur War, as well as his son, also named Eran, to Castleman’s disease.

With deep angst, Hamas is watching their rocket-launching platforms, weapons caches, and terror tunnels fall ‘one after another,’ IDF spokesman says.

The IDF has discovered an “underground city” in Gaza filled with explosives, IDF Spokesman Brigadier-General Moti Almoz said Sunday.

He spoke to Channel 10 following the discovery of at least 36 terror tunnels in Gaza. Many of the tunnels were filled with rockets, explosives and other weapons.

“Hamas planned these tunnels for years, and planned to use them to kidnap soldiers. [Now] they see the tunnels collapsing one after the other,” Almoz declared.

Hamas “built an underground city full of bombs, meant to evade the IDF and to use in serious terrorist attacks,” he added.

Almoz said that the IDF has reached “significant achievements” in Operation Protective Edge, the defensive operation that began after Hamas launched amajor rocket assault on Israeli cities.

The operation expanded on Saturday night, he said. “We are continuing to work deep in the territory, with the goal of destroying Hamas’ capabilities,” he stated.

While the operation has been successful to date, “it’s impossible to hit 100% of the tunnels and to prevent 100% of the rocket fire,” he warned.

The rocket assault from Gaza has grown significantly weaker since the operation began, he noted. However, he called to “not talk about the bottom line yet.”

“We need to wait a few days to see if this is a trend. Only when the operation is over can we confirm success in destroying tunnels and frustrating Hamas – two strategic goals that we are making major progress on,” Almoz concluded.

Dr. Ari Babaknia discusses his new book, “Humanity, NOT” — and when silence is not an option.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/the-holocaust-and-mans-indifference-on-the-glazov-gang/

This Week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Dr. Ari Babaknia, an Iranian-born doctor who wrote and published a 4-volume book in Farsi “The Holocaust” (which in English is “Humanity, NOT”). He came on the show to discuss “Humanity, NOT,” which takes an in-depth look, in words and images, at the captured emotions of the victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and survivors of the Holocaust, told in their own words.

Dr. Babaknia focuses on the evil of genocide and when silence is not an option:

This is a revised version of an article that first appeared in Palestinian Manipulation of the International Community1
• The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is today one of the largest UN programs. It remains the only UN agency whose area of operation is not global but regional, and that deals with a single group of people. The vast, quasi-governmental machinery into which UNRWA has evolved has made itself susceptible to political manipulation, in particular by extremist groups, in a way that might overshadow its humanitarian accomplishments. The Agency has become an active agent in reaching out to international actors and audiences, and a powerful tool within the anti-Israel propaganda campaign.
• The educational services provided by UNRWA, particularly in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, propagate a non-peaceful point of view, upholding a political vision of a continued struggle against a delegitimized Israel. The Agency’s significant influence on Palestinian educational activities, as well as the fact that more than half of its general budget is dedicated to education, highlight UNRWA’s problematic educational role in the Middle East conflict.
• The acceptance by UNRWA’s leadership of the mission to enhance the political rights of Palestinians has become a key trend characterizing the Agency’s activity. UNRWA’s so-called “protection mandate” has allowed the Agency to become a fierce advocate for Palestinians in its dealings with Israel, although it remains nearly silent when Arab governments in host countries violate or restrict Palestinian civil rights.
• UNRWA is regularly involved in political speeches and public pronouncements. The unfettered freedom of speech enjoyed by UNRWA’s leadership defies the fundamental norms of objectivity and neutrality to which UN officials are obliged as international civil servants. In large part, this is the outcome of the fact that UNRWA lacks outside controls over its chief executive, who receives hardly any political guidance from any of the relevant international bodies that are in a position to provide direction.
• UNRWA has entrenched the idea of “return,” as well as its misconception as a legal right. Also, it has generated an exponential increase in the number of Palestinian refugees. As was stated recently in a report presented to the US Senate Appropriations Committee, UNWRA’s practice in this regard is artificial and misleading, and undermines any possibility of resolving the refugee issue in future peace negotiations.
• In July 2014, some 20 rockets were found in a school in Gaza, operated by UNRWA.
• Within the last few years there has been a growing awareness within international political, diplomatic, and academic circles regarding UNRWA’s policies. It testifies to the fact that UNRWA’s position as a stabilizing, “peace servicing” factor in the region and as a guardian of refugee interests is no longer taken for granted. It also reflects the growing quest for accountability and an acknowledgement of the responsibility of donor countries to scrutinize UNRWA’s policies to ensure the strict application of their tax-payers’ money toward relief and humanitarian causes.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-we-fight/

If you live somewhere other than Israel, I know what you’re thinking. I get it. I’ve seen the TV reports that you’ve seen, and I’ve read the slanted coverage that you’ve surely read by now, painting Israel as the aggressor. I understand why you think Israel is overreacting. So let me make it personal for you:

What is the first thing you do when you step off the bus in a new city? Pull out a map to get a sense of your surroundings? Perhaps ask a fellow passenger where you might find a nice place to have lunch? When you get off the bus in Sderot, Israel, the first thing you do is locate the nearest bomb shelter. When a rocket is fired at Sderot from Gaza, just over a half-mile away, the siren sounds, as it has thousands of times in the past decade, at which point you have 15 seconds, at most, to find cover. I say fifteen seconds at most because after speaking to several Sderot residents during Monday’s visit, I learned that many times the missile lands before the siren goes off, or as little as seven seconds thereafter. Seven seconds to run for your life. Accompanying the sound of the blaring siren is the terrifying sound of the rocket launching, a loud, explosive, hissing that always seems as if it’s heading directly towards you. Imagine, for a moment, what your life might be like if you lived in Sderot.

What would wear if you lived in Sderot? Sandals in the summer, or running shoes, which might spell the difference between reaching shelter before the rocket hit or not? How would you sleep at night? Would you ever know the relief of resting your head on a cool pillow, burrowing under the covers, and falling into a deep, peaceful slumber after a long day at work? If you had young kids, would you ever have intercourse with your spouse? All married couples are entitled…right? Not if you live in Sderot. The time you would spend getting dressed if the siren went off would cost you the time you needed to grab your kids from their rooms and take them to the bomb shelter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaLjLfT6Pl8&feature=youtu.be

From Berkeley to Boston and from Paris to Sydney, the season is upon us again. Hipsters twirl Keffiyahs from some Shanghai factory around their necks, don army surplus jackets and Decembrist t-shirts and head to the nearest Israeli embassy to scream about a new Holocaust.

Shiites and Sunnis temporarily put aside their blood feuds and entire families of Syrian Alawites and
Turkish Sunnis stand in London or Berlin screaming “Death to the Jews”.

Joining them are elderly Trotskyists and aging Stalinists, normally as mutually hostile as Shiites and Sunnis, who put aside their differences to feebly wave cardboard signs about the Zionist war machine.

Fake blood is everywhere. Aspiring art students who can’t draw try to figure out new ways of intersecting a Swastika and a Star of David. Latuff cartoons are printed out along with bloody photos of dead people from Syria, Hollywood horror movies and on the rare occasion, Gaza, and shoved in everyone’s faces.

The organizers take a break from submitting angry Truth Dig articles about Brazilian cocoa exploitation and dive headfirst into a rally that, unlike all their other rallies, the media will actually cover. They prowl the police barriers like hungry hyenas looking for a reporter.

Any reporter.

On the last few struggling Pacifica affiliates, Amy Goodman invites Noam Chomsky to talk about the war. Chris Hedges phones in to promote his new book, which is only 90 percent plagiarized from a Hemingway novel he thought he once read. Max Blumenthal shows up to lead a Students for Justice in Palestine protest while shouting about colonialism. Then he tags himself on Instagram.

At the Israeli embassy, the hipsters imagine that they’re guerrilla fighters. They scream themselves hoarse about oppression, duck into a Starbucks, come out with a few cinnamon lattes and then begin screaming again. Recruiters for the International Socialist Organization, the World Revolutionary Front, the International Workers Fourth Front Uprising and the always popular Brotherhood of Revolutionary Workers and Peasants push smeared pamphlets into their pockets hoping for a bite.

Once again, Islam takes centre-stage, while the West watches anxiously on. From Brussels to Beijing, terrorists are still slaughtering civilians. Across Africa, from Libya to Nigeria and Kenya, fragile states are falling apart under the Islamist assault. In the Middle East, the Syrian civil war has now spread to Iraq and threatens to destabilise other states.

Further East, Pakistan is under Taliban attack even before Afghanistan is evacuated by Nato. We are now seeing the results of President Obama’s premature withdrawal from Iraq, his encouragement of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, his irresolution in Syria, his appeasement of Iran and his failure more generally to grasp the scale of the Islamist challenge to the West.

Elliott Abrams and Alexander Woolfson show how the world is paying a heavy price for a US administration that lacks a coherent strategy and a Nato that is not fit for purpose.

In Britain, the dispute between Michael Gove and Theresa May over the infiltration of schools by “extremists” has overshadowed the equally alarming consequences of such indoctrination. Hundreds of young Muslims emerge from the schools and mosques of cities such as Birmingham and Bradford, volunteer to fight for the Islamist cause in Syria, then return to bring jihad back to Britain.

The attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels was the work of just such a jihadist from France, and it may only be a matter of time before horrors perpetrated in the name of Islam on the road to Damascus are repeated on the streets of London.

The world is still reeling from one of the periodic waves of fundamentalism that have expanded the Umma since the days of the prophet. Looking back to the first rise of Islam in the 7th century, Gibbon reflects on the secret of its success in Volume the Fifth of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

“Mahomet was alike instructed to preach and to fight, and the union of these opposite qualities, while it enhanced his merit, contributed to his success: the operation of force and persuasion, of enthusiasm and fear, continually acted on each other, till every barrier yielded to their irresistible power.”

Paris in Flames as Pro-Palestinian Rioters Clash with Police

Despite a first-of-its-kind-in-Europe ban on demonstrations in Paris, pro-Palestinian protestors gathered to demonstrate against Israel on Saturday. When police tried to break up the protest, rioters threw rocks and other debris while chanting “Israel, assassin.”

Protests in Paris were banned following the demonstration last weekend that ended up threatening two synagogues.

The government of President Hollande has come under fire for the ban, as far-left groups accused Hollande of favoring Israel while far-right groups criticized him for policies they say encourage lawlessness among immigrants.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The clashes underscore a dilemma facing France’s Socialist government. President François Hollande has faced searing criticism in France—home to Europe’s biggest Muslim minority—for what pro-Palestinian groups say is his failure to take a stand against Israel’s incursions in the Gaza strip.

At the same time, Mr. Hollande is under pressure from even broader swaths of the French public, which blames minorities and immigrants for a perceived rise in violent crime and delinquency. The far-right National Front is garnering support by accusing Mr. Hollande’s ranks of being soft on crime and illegal immigration.

Saturday’s clashes occurred at the tail end of a large rally that had been called by several French political organizations, including the far-left New Anticapitalist Party, despite a French government ban.

The rally had been banned on Friday after government officials expressed concern that it could turn violent. Last Sunday, a similar rally in Paris sought to steer the march toward two synagogues and clashed with riot police, and eight arrests.

The irreplaceable basis for a prosperous and decent society is property.
There is not very much good to say about the life and career of Vladimir Lenin, but give the pickled old monster this much: He cut through more than two centuries’ worth of bull and straight to the heart of all politics with his simple question: “Who? Whom?” Which is to say: Who acts? Who is acted upon? Even here in the land of the free, meditating upon that question can be an uncomfortable exercise.

The foundation of classical liberalism, and of the American order, is not the rule of law, a written constitution, freedom of speech and worship, one-man/one-vote democracy, or the Christian moral tradition — necessary as those things are. The irreplaceable basis for a prosperous, decent, liberal, stable society is property. Forget Thomas Jefferson’s epicurean flourish — John Locke and the First Continental Congress had it right on the first go-round: “Life, liberty, and property.” Despite the presence of the serial commas in that formulation, these are not really three different things: Perhaps we should render the concept “lifelibertyproperty” the way the physicists write about “spacetime.”

But we do not have any property.

The governments of these United States, from the federal to the local level, have managed to insinuate themselves between citizens and their property at every point of significance. In that, our governments are very much like most other governments, liberal and illiberal, democratic and undemocratic. We have allowed ourselves to be in effect converted from a nation of owners to a nation of renters. But while medieval serfs had only the one landlord, we have a rogue’s gallery of them: the local school board, the criminals at the IRS, the vehicle-registry office, etc. Never-ending property taxes ensure that as a matter of economic function, you never really own your house — you rent it from the government. Vehicle registration fees and, in some jurisdiction, outright taxes on automobile ownership ensure in precisely the same way that you never really own your car: You rent it from the government. Stock portfolio? Held at the sufferance of politicians. A profitable business? You’ll keep what income they decide you can keep. Your own body? Not yours — not if you use it for profitable labor.

A Who down in Whoville? You should be so lucky: Welcome to Whomville, peon.

Good government is a constable — it keeps the peace and protects property. Parasitic government — which is, sad to say, practically the only form known in the modern world — is at its best a middleman that takes a cut of every transaction by positioning itself as a nuisance separating you from your goals. At its worst, it is functionally identical to a goon running a protection racket.