The Myth of 'Settler Violence'

 

By the end of October some 1900 journalists had descended on Israel to “cover” the war, “Swords of Iron”. However, as time has gone on, they have got fed up with the routine reporting and have decided to look for “other subjects” to write about. The top subject on their agenda is “settler violence”.

 According to police statistics, the number of these alleged attacks had fallen by 50% in the period Oct 7^th to Nov 7^th. However, they all ignored the fact that in June alone before the war started there were 3640 attacks of one form or another by Arabs in Judea and Samaria. So by selectively picking the statistics they want, these reporters present a totally one sided biased view of what is actually happening.

How many violent incidents between individuals in a foreign country warrant the attention and repeated mention of the American State Department, the secretary of State, and the president of the ,nited States of America? To warrant attention from the highest and most powerful people of the world these incidents must be so heinous and so frequent that by their nature they alter the course of global events. 

It’s curious how the “settler violence,” rare and infrequent especially in relation to the daily Palestinian terrorism which occurs in the same region – justifies the attention and repeated mention of the US president. 

There are more than 500,000 Jews who live in the region of Judea and Samaria, the area global nations, media, and activists prefer to call “The West Bank.” The overwhelming majority of these Jews choose to live in these areas for comfort, convenience, or economic advantages. They aren’t ideologues and they’re not violent. They believe they have a right to live in this area just as much as Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. 

Like any population, the Jewish community in Judea and Samaria has its small numbers who are detached from mainstream thought, (outliers), and some can be extreme and violent. This is no different than any other community in the world. Most communities are peaceful and contribute to their cities and countries. Although every community has its criminals, they are outliers. It would be racist to make assumptions about an entire community and claim it has a crime problem because of the few outliers in its community. The same is true of the settler community. It is a peaceful community that contributes to Israel and the world. To claim there is a “settler violence” problem is to vilify an entire community based on the actions of their outliers. 

 

Revisiting Gaza Again

 Cross posted from Grandma's Army

From the burning of the fields in 2018 in kibbutz Be’eri, 
 to burning families in kibbutz Be’eri on October 7th, 2023.

In 1978, when Simcha my oldest daughter got married, she and her husband went to live in the second moshav (agricultural settlement), Gannai Tal, to be established  in Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip. Since the houses had not yet been built, the other married members lived together as bachelors in one building, in order to work on their farms. On weekends they went to their respective homes.

Simcha and her husband, Gideon, were newly-weds so they started their married life living in Gush Katif in an old caravan, which was too small for Gideon’s long legs. Their next “home” was an ancient bus from the time of the British mandate, which Gideon picked up from the Tel-Aviv old bus station. There was still a notice stuck up from that time “beware of pickpockets”. It happened to be in the makeshift shower stall and toilet, which Gideon had constructed. When they finally moved into their permanent two-bedroom home it was just in time for their oldest boy to be born.

Gideon grew flowers and red peppers for export, but his main source of income was working for the army, erecting and fixing fences around settlements all over the country for defense purposes.  He hired a 16 year-old bare-foot Bedouin youth from Khan Yunis (the second largest town in Gaza), who worked for him in his greenhouses - until the moshav was destroyed in 2005. Working for Gideon enabled this worker - who was treated like one of the family - to eventually “buy” a wife and build a large home.

In those days, the settlers in Gush Katif had a good relationship with the Gazan Arabs. They did their shopping in Khan Yunis.  The worker’s father came for a visit, riding on a donkey! Simcha learned to drive, in the Gaza Strip, with an Arab male teacher. She took the oral driving test when pregnant - the only woman in the room, together with at least fifty Gazan Arabs!

I remember Gideon taking us to Gaza City to look at  all the evidence of a past thriving Jewish community. On one pillar of the great mosque was the inscription of the name of a well-known Jewish sage from the 2nd century CE. Above was a menorah, with a shofar  on one side and an etrog on the other. But the biggest attraction were the mosaic tiles, part of the floor of a synagogue, which probably served the Jewish community in the days of the Talmud. The name "David" in Hebrew can be seen very clearly.

                                                                            

On January 12th, 2005, our beloved son, husband, and father Gideon z”l, was murdered by terrorists in the Gaza Strip. To compound the tragedy, in August of the same year, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip became Judenrein.

My daughter and her five children were left homeless. Simcha is still in touch with their Arab worker, who was left with no regular work. She does her best to help him out from time to time.

Islamic fanaticism is a fast growing cancer, not only confined to Israel, but spreading relentlessly over civilised society. Unless we kill this cancer now, it will continue to metastasize, as it has been doing for decades. Global jihad has declared war on the “infidels”, and Israel is yet again the canary in the coal mine.

U.N. Teachers Celebrate Hamas Massacre

As war wages on between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, a watchdog group is releasing a new report that reveals how UNRWA teachers in the enclave, funded largely by the U.S. and EU, indoctrinate Palestinian children and promote terrorism and antisemitism.

Entitled “UNRWA: Hate Starts Here,” today’s report uncovers 20 UNRWA teachers and other staff members who celebrated the October 7th Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians on their social media accounts, collected by the non-governmental organization UN Watch, an independent human rights monitoring group based in Geneva.

The new cases are in addition to 133 UNRWA educators and staff who were exposed for promoting hate and violence in UN Watch’s last report, released in March 2023.

UN Watch today submitted the report to EU foreign affairs commissioner Josep Borrell, and U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, whose governments are among the top funders of UNRWA, as well as to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini. UN Watch is calling on the agency’s major funders—including the U.S., Germany, the UK and the European Union—to ensure that none of their combined $1.2 billion of donations to UNRWA will fund teachers of hate, and to hold the agency accountable to its own standards and commitments.

Among the educators who used their personal social media channels to propagate hate and celebrate the Hamas terror attack on October 7th:

• UNRWA Gaza teacher Osama Ahmed posted “Allah is Great, Allah is Great, reality surpasses our wildest dreams” as the massacre was unfolding.
• UNRWA school principal Iman Hassan justified the massacre as “restoring rights” and “redressing” Palestinian “grievances.”
• Director of the UNRWA Khan Younis Training Center Rawia Helles, who is featured in and UNRWA campaign, glorified one of the terrorists as a “hero,” “raider,” and “prince of Khan Younis.”
• UNRWA English teacher Asmaa Raffia Kuheil excitedly posted “7th, October, 2023! Sculpture the date!” adding a heart emoji.
• UNRWA school administrator Hmada Ahmed posted “welcome the great October.”

The report only examined a sample of Facebook users who publicly identified themselves as UNRWA employees, and therefore UN Watch estimates that the number of UNRWA staff who incite violence and hatred includes hundreds if not thousands among the agency’s 30,000 staff.

Western Countries Fund UNRWA’s $1.6 Billion Budget

The teachers of hate at UNRWA are largely funded by Western countries who contribute the lion’s share of UNRWA’s $1.6 billion-dollar budget. Amounts pledged for 2022 included $344 million from the United States, $122 million from Germany, $107 million from the European Commission, $61 million from Sweden, $17 million from the UK, $24 million from Switzerland, $32 million from Norway, $28 million from France, $24 million from Canada, and $15 million from the Netherlands.

Comment by UN Watch  

“We call on the governments that fund UNRWA to declare that they will stop enabling a system that teaches new generations of Palestinians to hate and murder Jews.”

 “Let us be clear: the problem is not the social media posts, but rather the unconscionable employment of teachers who preach antisemitism and terrorism.”

“The hate that led to the October 7th massacre did not appear out of thin air. It was inculcated at UNRWA schools over many years. One of the Hamas terrorists who carried out the massacre on Israeli families was even found to be carrying his UNRWA diploma on him as he butchered innocent civilians.”

“The U.S., EU, Germany, UK, Canada and other donor states cannot morally send more money to UNRWA until it shows a genuine commitment to basic norms of education in its schools. This means the agency must publicly condemn UNRWA employees who incite terrorism and antisemitism, remove them from their positions, and create an independent and impartial investigation of all of its staff,” said Neuer.

Hanukiah in Gaza

 

When Jews tell you “Chabad is everywhere,” they’re

not kidding. Chabad Chassidic emissaries have

made a point of finding their way into Gaza to

accompany IDF troops as they battle for Israel’s

existence against the enclave’s barbaric Hamas

terrorist organization — and now they have also

made certain to “publicize the miracle” of Hanukah

as Jews are told to do. Chabad makes a special

point of placing public menorahs in as many places

as possible in Israel and around the world. Now

they have extended that mandate to Gaza. Behold!

Media don't like the truth, you get cut.

 When the truth comes out in an interview then 

it is suddenly cut as being "out of time"

The outcry of an Israeli woman, a peace activist

The letter below is from a friend, a peace activist who for many years headed MASHAV, the Israeli development agency, and was involved many UN agencies in the international arena dealing with human rights and specifically human rights. She feels betrayed and ignored by former "friends".

This is an abridged version and i can send the full letter on request.

===============

For more than 25 years, I was a true militant of peace, creating dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian women, believing strongly in peace-education and in building bridges between communities! What a terrible wake-up I had!!! How could I be so naïve? Peace???   With whom??? With Hamas ??? -  A terrorist group that doesn’t value the lives of its own brothers, maintaining them as refugees for more than 75 years for political purposes; taking the billions of dollars provided by the EU, US and other generous donors, to buy weapons and to build underground tunnels, instead of investing in education, health and economy, and using civilians as human shields, and then accusing Israel of the killing of innocent people in Gaza.  

For the information then of those who prefer to ignore the truth: Israel is apparently the only country in the world to have liberated territories, gained during a defensive war, for the purposes of achieving peace.   And what has it received in return?  Years of more and more terrorist attacks against innocent civilians!...

Wake up, dear world!  Can’t you see the reality? How dare you judge us when you ignore true facts and rely on lies and false information? Why don’t you take the time to check the information you get before sharing fake news, and before rushing to join demonstrations against Israel, adding your voice to all those antisemites who were just waiting for the “right” moment to express their hate against the Jews and against Israel, with slogans such as “Free Palestine from the river to the sea”.

I furthermore wonder how the UN which is responsible for the “Child Rights Manifesto”, signed by most of its Member countries in 1989, does not take a minimal initiative with the International Red Cross organization to protect the rights of dozens of children who were so taken as hostages; and who are being held in despicable conditions? How can the UN not act for their immediate release?  And where is the Red Cross??

The world must realize the magnitude of the tragedy we are facing, and must understand that this war is a matter of good vs evil, civilization vs. barbarism…  For us, the Jews, this is a second Holocaust, and it must be recognized as such.  

Where are my own rights, and the rights of my children and grandchildren, to live a normal life?  I realize though and with much sadness that I am asking a stupid question!!  Who really cares??

This is a question of moral compass, and choosing not to unequivocally condemn the inhumane crimes committed by Hamas on that tragic day of 7 October is not OK.

Today, I have decided to stop trying to explain to some of my colleagues from women’s organizations, regionally and internationally, from the human rights’ associations around the globe, and from colleagues from UN WOMEN and UN specialized agencies with whom I have cooperated for decades, contributing to the empowerment and well-being of women in the developing world, that silence on their part cannot be an option.  I had expected them to stand-up in full solidarity with the women in Israel.  I had expected them to take a very clear stance against terror… I had expected them to call for the immediate release of the hostages…  I know, all of them consider rape in a war zone as a crime, but that seemingly is only as long as the victims are not Jews!

I had expected the UNWOMEN to comprehend the enormity of the tragedy, to recognize the fact that what happened on the 7 of October was a mass feminicide, since women were violently raped, tortured, humiliated before being savagely murdered.

UNWOMEN your silence regarding the war crimes committed by Hamas against Israeli women is UNFORGIVABLE!  Your organization will go down in the history books sitting idly by…

Furthermore, I just heard that the UN has appointed Iran’s Ambassador to chair the Human Rights Council!  To laugh or to cry??

 We have no choice but to defend ourselves from a murderous terror organization, and its allies, that seek the annihilation of the Jewish people and the destruction of Israel.   Nobody can convincingly deny that this is their final objective.   So, what do you expect us to do?  To let them exterminate us? However, we will win! We will win because we have no other alternative if we want to survive as a nation.   As Golda Meir once said, “we will win because we have no other place to go”.

We need to make sure that the civilized world will prevail in the war against evil and terror.  For our struggle is also the struggle of democratic and civilized societies.

Yesterday, I heard with horror and immense pain that my friend and colleague, Vivian Silver, was declared dead after her remains were found at her home in Kibbutz Be’eri, among the tortured innocent victims of October 7 massacre.  Vivian, a lifelong feminist, a fearless leader who has devoted her entire life to the cause of peace and to Arab-Jewish partnership, who was one of the founders of the Israeli movement Women Wage Peace!  

Another friend and colleague of mine who had been kidnapped from her house by Hamas, together with her grandchildren, is Dr. Shoshan Haran, a woman who, through her humanitarian organization “Fair Planet” has dedicated her career to the wellbeing of the poorest of the poor in Africa, ensuring food security and helping local women farmers to overcome their hardships. Shoshan’s husband, her brother and sister-in law, have been found murdered in kibbutz Be’eri.

My soul and my heart are broken…

However, despite my hard “wake-up” from many years of naivety and blindness, during which I did not want to believe that there exists an incredible hypocrisy, a lack of integrity and a double standard when the issue involved is about Israel and the Jews, I refuse to lose my humanity - even in the grip of the trauma caused by the Hamas horrendous carnage…  And so, I will continue my own battle for women’s rights and social justice, whenever and wherever it is necessary.  This engagement is due to the support and sympathy I personally received during this dark period from true friends, whom I salute for their courage and humanity. Their solidarity is particularly appreciated in this time of adversity, where the global waves of antisemitism that we are watching play out on social media can make Jews feel alone.

Reports of Palestinians Torturing Israeli Mothers and Childen Emerge

Despite the attempts of Hamas and its PR flaks to show a humanitarian face to the terror group, and to portray Palestinian civilians as victims, the truth is coming out as the returned captives tell their harrowing stories. It is becoming clear that the local residents were part and parcel of the brutalizing, beating and torture by the Palestinians of other kids.

At first it was just hints, as elderly returnees swatted away the hands of Hamas handlers “helping them” from jeeps and ambulances, or Israeli teenagers dismissing with disgust attempts to induce them to wave as if bidding farewell to a kind host.

 But now the horror stories are being reported of torture, mental and physical, to which Israelis were subjected. Eitan Yahalomi, 12, was according to his aunt, in an interview to French television, subjected to unending blows from Palestinian civilians as he was snatched and taken on a motorbike to Gaza captivity. That was just the beginning. Eitan was forced to watch, again and again, films of his neighbors being slaughtered and dismembered on October 7. He was threatened at gunpoint if he cried or made sounds.

 Other children were kept in total isolation for 12 or 13 days. They were covered with lice and received no treatment. Mothers were separated from their children and told their daughters were gone. Despite assurances that mothers would not be separated from children, Raia was just taken away just before her daughter was released.

Thomas Hand, father of 9-year-old Emily, says the little girl thought she had been held hostage for a year and now cries herself to sleep. “The most shocking, disturbing part of meeting her was she was just whispering, you couldn’t hear her. I had to put my ear on her lips. She’d been conditioned not to make any noise.” “Last night she cried until her face was red and blotchy, she couldn’t stop. She didn’t want any comfort, I guess she’s forgotten how to be comforted. She went under the covers of the bed, the quilt, covered herself up and quietly cried.” When she met her older sister, she was unable to show emotion.

Meanwhile, Israel is up in arms at the refusal of Hamas to deliver as promised the red-haired Bibas children, Ofir 4 years and Kfir 10 months old, and their mother Shiri. Hamas reported that these hostages had been handed over to other Palestinians and that they could not located them.

 

There is also the case of 84 year old Alma Avraham, returned to Israel in near-death condition, with a very weak pulse and body temperature of just 24 degrees Celsius (75 degrees Celsius), denied essential medication, and refused visits by the Red Cross, which apparently is unwilling to demand basic humanitarian rights to Israelis. They even refused to pass on essential medications to the prisoners. Today there is reported to be slight improvement in Alma’s condition, although her life remains in danger.