IDF rescues abandoned pets, exotic birds and even a lion from Gaza

 Coverage of the Israel-Hamas war often focuses on humans affected by the conflict. Still, many of the IDF’s heroic efforts may go unnoticed, including the rescue of abandoned animals from Gaza.

Since the ground war in Gaza began, the IDF has rescued cats, dogs, parrots, owls, and even a neglected lion from the Gaza zoo.

Lieutenant Lihi Agiv, a communications officer in the 12th Division described rescuing a puppy while serving on the front lines.

Lt. Agiv told Ynet: “I was touring with the division commander when I noticed a skinny, scared little puppy that ran to us. She was shaking. I have a dog at home so I’m very sensitive to animals. I picked her up and took her with me.”

After Lieutenant Lihi fed the puppy and gave her water, she knew that Beit Hanoun was no place for such a vulnerable creature.

The puppy was sent to her new owner, and all of the soldiers gave her a warm welcome.

“As soon as I took her, all the soldiers wanted to pet her. People were so crazy about her that they gave her their food. The 12th Division is filled with incredible decency and humanity that you don’t see everywhere,” said Lt. Lihi.

Towards the end of one of the Shaked Battalion’s missions in Gaza, Platoon Commander Lieutenant Eran Admoni found a white fluffy cat that had been abandoned.

He said, “They gave her a kind of shelter. When the mission was over, they took her back to Israel. The fighters searched for people to adopt her and finally found an adoptive family.”

The cat wasn’t the only animal the Shaked Battalion rescued in Gaza; Major Tal Attias and Lieutenant Yoav Sander shared the privilege of walking with a large, colorful parrot on their shoulders.

The troops rescued the parrot which was trapped under the rubble in Gaza’s Palestine Square, a place that holds special significance for the current war because it was the first location in Gaza where the hostages were brought.

When the Israeli navy was sailing off the coast of Gaza, an injured owl landed on the deck. The sailors fed the owl and made a small cage for him.

Lieutenant Jonathan, an Israeli Navy officer, reports that when they reached Haifa, they placed the owl in a wildlife hospital and since then, the owl has made a full recovery and was released back into the wild.

Perhaps the most astounding and heart-rending rescue is still in process and involves saving a malnourished lion from a Gaza zoo.

The Nature and Parks Authority is in communication with the IDF to determine how and when to rescue the lion from Gaza safely.

Myth: Hamas doesn't represent the Palestinian people

(With thanks for this data from IDSF) 

Figures show that an extremely significant portion of the Palestinian populace favors the Hamas terror organization and would even elect it in a landslide if Palestinian elections were held today, both in the Judea and Samaria area and in the Gaza Strip. Support in the social media, in the Palestinian street, and even in student elections at the Palestinian universities in Judea and Samaria — ostensibly the academic and intellectual stronghold of the social elite — along with immense outdoor demonstrations of support in Gaza and Ramallah, empirical figures, and qualitative analyses of Palestinian public opinion, leave little room for doubt: support for Hamas among everyday Palestinians is significant, and that painful truth must be faced.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), based in Ramallah and headed by Dr. Khalil Shkaki, finds Palestinian support for Hamas steady and consistent both in the Judea and Samaria area (“West Bank”) and in the Gaza Strip. In a survey held between September 6 and 9, 2023 — a mere month before the October 7 massacre – 44% of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip replied that they support Hamas, along with 24% of Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. 

The IDSF Research Department examined the results of Dr. Shkaki’s public-opinion polls covering the past five years, rather than merely the results of a single survey, and found a consistent, stable trend of decisive support for Hamas, with a landslide for any Hamas candidate against any other candidate if Palestinian elections were to be held. In almost every public opinion poll, Hamas won against Fatah on the question of “Who would be suitable as the true representative of the Palestinian people?” From May 2018 to September 2023, Hamas maintained its strength at 42.75% support among Palestinians in Gaza as against 30.6% support for Fatah.

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"