Dire Threats Eluding Solution
"The more severe the acts of terrorism, the greater the amount of
funds [to be withheld from the Palestinian Authority]."
"[Payment]
to terrorists [through the PA providing monthly stipends to families of
Palestinian murderers and convicts in Israeli prisons in the guise of
welfare] and their families
constitutes incentive for murder."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
 |
| Palestinians cross Qalandia checkpoint between the
West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem on their way to attend the
last Friday prayers in Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque during Muslim holy
month of Ramadan at the , Friday, July 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Majdi
Mohammed) |
"[Hundreds of soldiers of the IDF will be deployed as] a physical barrier on the ground [between the West Bank city of Hebron and nearby settlements, representing the military's] most substantial steps [since 2014]."
Lt.-Col Peter Lerner, Israeli military spokesman
"This measure is meant to collectively punish our people."
Dawod Zatari, Hebron mayor
Is
there another alternative? When there is an ongoing menace of death
approaching from any direction by multiple means, whenever least
expected, at the hands of fanatics whose deranged state of mind has
resulted from lifelong exposure to hate, blame and vengeance seeking to
expunge the emotions skilfully engineered in a society whose leaders
prefer to use their population as a battering ram rather than negotiate
honestly for the purpose of settling claims between Jews and Arabs to a
final conclusion where each surrenders something so the other will agree
to agree.
The closure imposed by the Israeli army on the city of Hebron
with its 170,000 population, a West Bank city with an emotional
volcanic configuration that sends up bursts of sizzling lava in the form
of young Palestinians determined to martyr themselves through the
honour-restorative of killing a Jew, represents a desperate effort to
put a halt to the carnage that has taken the lives of both Jews and
Arabs over the past seven months.
Where psychotic events
leading some among the 170,000 Palestinians who view the death of Jews
from among the 850 Israelis who live in nearby settlements a solution to
their hatred, have roiled both populations in a dance of macabre death;
killing begetting killing. Close to Hebron exists a site claimed as sacred to both Jews and Arabs, and like the Temple Mount/Nobel Sanctuary, that site has become a flashpoint for rage. At both, the presence of Jews wishing to worship, motivates Arabs to attack them.
The
Tomb of the Patriarchs is a Judaic heritage site recalling antiquity
and the memory of antecedents and worship. Because, when Mohammad
constructed his version of a monotheistic religion geared to appeal to
Bedouin tribal Arabs he co-opted for his new religion many prophets and
significant other figures along with precepts for his Islam, contending
that Islam represented the finished product that Judaism and
Christianity represent, Muslims hold many Judaic figures in reverence,
claiming them to have been Palestinian in origin.
That
claim lends credence to them in asserting that there was never a Jewish
presence in the Holy Land, that the Noble Sanctuary was never the site
of the ancient Temples of Solomon, that Jerusalem was always a Muslim
city, and that the presence of Jews in the Middle East is that of
'foreigners' invading Arab territory. This is a particularly mendacious
Arab preferential version of history, irrespective of ancient texts
proving otherwise.
The latest prod to this latest move
to protect settlers from being murdered by their Palestinian neighbours
has resulted from yet another attack that took place yesterday ambushing
an Israeli family in their vehicle travelling in the West Bank
yesterday. The head of a Yeshivah in the Otniel settlement, 48-year-old Miki
Mark, a father of ten, was killed when an assassin in another vehicle
raked the Mark vehicle with gunfire, causing it to turn over, killing
the man, injuring his wife and two teen children.
And, again on Friday, a Palestinian woman of 27, Sarah Tarayreh,
a cousin of the 17-year-old who had a day earlier stabbed a 13-year-old
Israeli girl to death, had herself attempted to stab an Israeli officer
during a security check outside the Hebron shrine. Hebron,
as the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank, has been the source
of 80 attacks against Israelis since September. Which has led Mr. Netanyahu to impose a closure and reduce tax revenues forwarded to the Palestinians.
None
of these measures will be an aid to stifling the hatred. They represent
desperation, not the promise of any kind of solution. And as time goes
on, it begins to look as though a solution to the deadly relations
between Jew and Arab in the Middle East is destined to elude. Until such
time as both feel they cannot any longer live with the threat of
murderous dysfunction staining and straining their lives.
Israel is prepared to return to the bargaining table. It has previously agreed to most of the Palestinian demands, whereas the Palestinian negotiators refuse Israeli issues of non-negotiability, and respond by increasing their demands of the Israelis. Even so, when almost all their demands have been agreed to, the Palestinians pull back and back out. To the present time, where they continue to refuse to reopen negotiations. The Palestinian sense of entitlement is overbearingly futile yet unappeasable.
Labels: Conflict, Culture, Heritage, Israel, Palestinian, Security
The Stages of Conquest
"I went to the window and there was this guy with a kalashnikov firing.
It was at the corner and he was firing in all directions. Then a car
came and he entered the car and it went away. There were three guys who
were not killed by this killer. I did not expect such a terrifying
situation. I saw... people going to a body on the ground and I called
the police. I went down to the street and realised that in a bar there
were four or five more bodies. There were cars where the driver and the
passenger were dead. The police told everyone to go home. I stayed at
home without lights. A few minutes later there was a knock on my door
and the police asked if they could use my apartment. I stayed in the
bathroom because it was the safest place and I did not want to distract
the police. I think they stayed at the window, they were fully armed."
Paris atrocity eyewitness as told to the BBC
Paris
is under attack. So too is Jerusalem under attack. French citizens
targeted for slaughter because they are French citizens, and likely
their attackers are other French citizens. The difference between them
is that the assailants are Islamic jihadists
and the victims are not. In Israel, Jewish citizens have become a
target because they are Jewish Israelis, and their attackers are often
Muslim Israelis. As Palestinians they have been taught from the cradle
that the Jews are their oppressors.
Israel has become
an 'occupying' power over the West Bank and the Gaza strip for the
simple reason that terror stalks Israel out of the West Bank and the
Gaza strip. Palestinians would far prefer to live in an orderly, civil
environment with a state representing their interests. The problem for
them is that no leaders have yet arisen that comfortably fit the task of
engaging civilly with the Jewish state to bargain for the land that
will represent them.
This problem is of long-standing.
Back when the United Nations offered their plan for partition of
Palestine. Even the claims of Arabs to be "Palestinians" is false, just
as their claims of always having lived in the region are false, since
they originate from Egypt and from Jordan. During the Second World War
years when Jews were being rounded up for extermination in Europe and
before, epithets from Poles identifying the Jews who had lived among
them for a thousand years were that they should 'return to Palestine'.
When
Israel leaped at the opportunity the United Nations offered, the
surrounding Arab neighbourhood launched a collective military assault to
drive them out of the Middle East, and it failed, and so did the
succeeding military assaults over the years from allied Arab armies.
Until finally in the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel proved conclusively
that it meant to stay and no force on Earth would budge it from its
historical heritage.
And that included Jerusalem. When
the Palestinians spurned the offer to establish their own state, they
set the stage for the 65 years of declared victimhood
as 'refugees' whom the world has since supported, unwilling to
themselves muster the energy to embrace the dignity of independence.
They dreamed of destroying Israel, of pushing the Jews out of the Middle
East, and that dream solaced those who hated, and never questioned the
motives of their leaders.
One wave of violent hatred
after another led the Palestinians to 'demonstrate' and 'resist' the
occupation, an 'occupation' that results from a need to defend against
carnage. Another 'resistance' is currently taking place with random
episodes of young Palestinians, nurtured on murderous hatred, attempting
to kill Jewish men, women and children in surprise knife and vehicular
attacks. The world is silent.
But the world comes alive
when the issue of settlements arise. And when, from within those
settlements, consumer products are produced for sale on the world
market, the issue of provenance arises. The Palestinian penchant for
slander and their skills in manipulating European public relations
within a background of anti-Semitism
works wonders for them. The European Union has ruled that goods
produced in places Israel gained after 1967 be labelled as coming from
Israeli settlements.
This is an 'administrative' and
not 'political' issue the EU hastens to add. Certainly not
discriminatory irrespective of the fact that many other countries also
have jurisdictional disputes very similar to Israel's, yet no such
action is taken to distinguish them in similar fashion. Of course, there
is the issue of a large and steadily growing Muslim population in
Europe, and their growing political influence.
So Gaza,
administered by a terrorist organization dedicated to destroying
Israel, is looked upon with favour, and Israel with disfavour. Arabs may
be Semites, but Jew-hatred is pointedly special. From labelling to
boycotting and divestment is no great distance; it's a start, and one
led by a smug sense of righteousness.
After all, goods
such as fresh fruits, vegetables, cosmetics, wine, honey, olive oil,
eggs, poultry and organic products are all singularly contaminated and
as such must present a threat to the health of those consuming them
outside of the Jewish community, since they're produced on land that the
international community condemns Israel for winning in a series of
wars, enabling them to settle on their ancient Biblical lands.
Europe,
which appears to have little sympathy for Israel's plight of being
encircled by Arabs who have such a low regard for Jews -- and for the
incessant attacks that Israel's Jews are exposed to, while absorbing
into its population Palestinian Arabs among other non-Jews, all with
entitlements not given them elsewhere in the Middle East -- has absorbed
quite a population of migrant Muslims. And among that demographic there
are those who espouse violent Islam.
And it is from among that finite number of violent Islamists
that Europe finds itself under siege, its culture and heritage
disappearing down a wormhole of the black hole of sucking energy
representing Islam's prioritization of conquest. And when matters do not
move sufficiently rapidly and the Islamist jihadis become impatient, they take matters into their immediate hands by staging atrocities in places like Paris.
What do jihadi violence,
Allahu Akbar! and the labelling of Israeli West Bank products have in common? Everything.
Labels: Boycott/Divestment, Europe, European Union, France, Islamism, Israel, Palestinian
