Dear Family & Friends, Sad & tragic to see such things as the murder of a beautiful 21 year old girl, Hadar Buchris. When will we know no more pain? Tonight is almost a double whammy but, look for the rest tomorrow, G-d willing. Enjoy the almost full moon, have a safe day, All the very best, Gail/Geula/Savta/Savta Raba x 2/Mom Our Website is WinstonIsraelInsight.com

1.’If anything happens to me, bury me in Jerusalem’

2.Settlements are a defensive shield by Dror Eydar

3.Preserving the Jewish nation-state, Post-Paris imperatives? By Martin Sherman

5.Yes, Obama is also to blame by Boaz Bismuth

6.Who is being delusional? By Caroline B. Glick

7.Back-to-back terrorist attacks hit Judea & Samaria

8.Beware of Islamic terrorism by Yoram Ettinger

9.The New York Times continues its history of relegating news about Israeli victims of terror out of sight, while publicizing so-called Palestinian victims on the front page. By: Terri Nir, United with Israel

10.From-Rabbi Rachamim Pauli rachamim47@aol.com

11.Security cameras capture terror attack outside Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda

12.Surveillance cameras would show the world who is in fact responsible for desecrating the Al-Aqsa Mosque and for the violence on the Temple Mount.

Hadar Buchris, 21, who wanted to raise her family in Jerusalem Hadar Buchris, who wanted to raise a family in Jerusalem

The Gush Etzion Junction south of Jerusalem is becoming the favorite target of Palestinian terrorists: 21-year-old Hadar Buchris was murdered there on Sunday, three days after three people were murdered on the road leading to the junction from the community of Alon Shvut.

Sunday’s attack was carried out soon after 3 p.m. at a hitchhiking post on the side of the road leading south to Kiryat Arba. A Palestinian approached the spot where Buchris was waiting for a ride, & apparently aroused the suspicions of soldiers stationed at the junction, because he kept his hands in his pockets.

The IDF is seeking to clarify whether the soldiers, from the Shimshon Brigade, identified the threat and stopped the suspect for a security check, or instructed him to keep his distance and cross to the other side of the road.

Either way, the terrorist did not move away. He ran toward the hitchhiking post and attacked Buchris, stabbing her multiple times in the upper body. The soldiers responded rapidly and shot and killed the attacker, but it was too late for Buchris.

Magen David Adom paramedic Zaki Yahav, who was called to the scene, said, “A young woman was lying on the ground unconscious with stab wounds to her upper body.

“Civilians who were there had started to help stop [her] bleeding. We quickly put her into the ambulance & administered first aid while she was anesthetized & on a respirator while taking her to a hospital.”

Dr. Ofer Marin, head of the trauma unit at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, where Buchris was taken, said her chances of survival had been slim. “She sustained a great number of stab wounds, both to the head and in the chest and heart area, and arrived in critical condition, on a respirator, without a pulse,” Marin said. “The trauma unit made attempts to resuscitate her, but unfortunately we were forced to declare her dead. There was nothing we could do.”

Although Buchris’ father, Arie, lives in Safed and her mother, Sigal, in Netanya, Buchris will be buried in Jerusalem. Moments after hearing the bitter news, her family began making efforts to have her laid to rest in the capital.

“Hadar was born and raised near Jerusalem, it’s the city she loved most,” Buchris’ cousin Daniel said on Sunday.

Her grandmother Aliza said: “Right after [finishing] her national service, Hadar left for India, and when she got back she said she wanted to make a life in Jerusalem. She wanted to live in Jerusalem, work in Jerusalem, live her life, and build a family in Jerusalem. She said straight out that if, heaven forbid, anything happened to her, she wanted to be buried in Jerusalem.”

Buchris’ family was devastated by the killing. Arie Buchris, her father, closed himself in a room, crying, “They murdered my little girl, they murdered my little girl.”

His brother, Itzik Buchris, said Arie had called him and told him his daughter had been critically wounded and he needed to get to the emergency room in Jerusalem urgently.

“Two minutes later, I was at his house, but even before we left we heard that Hadar had died of her wounds,” Itzik Buchris said. “Arie is broken, totally destroyed and in shock. He can’t take in the catastrophe.”

Hadar Buchris had completed the theater track at the Nov religious seminary for girls on the Golan Heights. Her teacher, Ayala Eretz Hatzvi, described her as “a charming girl, bright, a truly righteous person whose friends could always go to her to talk in the middle of the night. A girl with a talent for theater, both drama and comedy. When the group didn’t have any energy, Hadar was always the one who manage to wake everyone up. The best of the best. She had two younger sisters in lower grades.”

After high school, Buchris did her national service as a youth coordinator on Moshav Hazorim in the Lower Galilee and on Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu in the Beit Shean Valley.

After completing her service, Buchris set out for a six-month trip to India. She returned just three weeks ago & began studying at the Bat Ayin midrasha (religious school) & moved to Kfar Etzion.

“Just a few days ago, we were at a brit milah [circumcision ceremony] together. She got to see the family’s first great-grandchild,” her brother Zohar said.

“My sister was murdered by an unjust [killer] whose goal was to kill her just because she was a Jew. Hadar was an amazing girl. We’re happy she got a chance to enjoy herself and have fun before her death.”

Hadar’s murder is not the first time the Buchris family has been struck by terrorism. Itzik Buchris said his sister Rivka had been “miraculously saved from the slaughter in Maalot in 1974. She was saved by having the presence of mind to jump out the window.”

On Sunday evening, as Buchris’ friends from the Bat Ayin midrasha gathered together to remember her, a few dozen local residents held a quiet protest at Gush Etzion Junction. Elsewhere, residents of the South Hebron Hills region blocked a number of major intersections in protest against the repeated terrorist murder attempts in the area. Etzion Brigade Commander Col. Roman Gofman issued instructions that on Monday Palestinian workers would not be permitted to enter Gush Etzion settlements.

A Shin Bet investigation into Sunday’s attack discovered that the terrorist, Issam Thawabta — a 34-year-old single man from the village of Fajar near Hebron — had no criminal or security record.

Buchris’ funeral was scheduled to take place at 3 p.m. Monday at Givat Shaul (Har Hamenuchot) cemetery in Jerusalem. The Buchris family was urging the public to attend.

3.Preserving the Jewish nation-state, Post-Paris imperatives? By Martin Sherman JPost.com 11/19/15

Combating Israel’s Islamic Movement

“If Israel is to survive as the nation-state of the Jewish people, it will have to contend adequately with two fundamental imperatives: the geographic imperative & the demographic imperative.”

A member of the Israeli security forces runs past a Palestinian flag during clashes with Palestinian stone throwers in the West Bank town of Tul Karm. (photo credit:AFP PHOTO)

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: – attributed to Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, (1808 –1890, editor of Le Figaro). Translated “The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.”
Truth be told, the post-Paris imperatives for the survival of the Jewish state are, for all intents and purposes, identical to the pre-Paris ones. The only difference is that now they just might be more starkly evident.
Two fundamental imperatives: Geographic & demographic

After the Paris terrorist strikes over the weekend, just as before them, if Israel is to survive as the nation-state of the Jewish people, it will have to contend adequately with two fundamental imperatives: the geographic imperative and the demographic imperative.
Contending effectively with the former entails avoiding territorial concessions that will make any semblance of socioeconomic routine in the heart of Israel’s urban megalopolis, impossible to maintain. The latter entails avoiding the inclusion of large potentially fractious non-Jewish ethnic groups into the permanent population of the state, making its dominant Jewish character impossible to maintain.
The geographic imperative rules out the two-state solution , founded on the principle of “land-for-peace,” which would leave the nation’s parliament and only international airport within mortar range and much of the trans-Israel Highway 6 within tunnel reach.
The second rules out the one-state solution, based on the concept of annexing the territory across the pre- 1967 armistice lines, together with the Arab population resident in them, which, depending on which version is referred to, will result in either the Lebanonization or the Balkanization of Israel.
While these imperatives were always valid, even in the pre-Paris era, the carnage in the French capital has thrown – or, at least, hopefully, should have thrown – them in indelibly sharper relief.
Has ISIS concentrated minds?
The crucial question now is whether the Paris massacres have in fact concentrated minds of both the policy- makers and the public at large.
Indeed, the jury is still largely out on that question. Disturbingly, a number of maddeningly moronic insinuations by several EU politicians, including the Swedish foreign minister, that Israeli treatment of the Palestinians is to be blamed for everything – from the shrinking polar ice caps to the spread of AIDS in Africa, provide ample reason for avoiding premature optimism.
Yet despite these lamentable lapses, there can be little doubt that hearts and minds have been primed, at least potentially, for a positive change of sentiment in understanding Israel’s predicament and the nature of the enemy it faces.
After all, the brutal developments in the Arab/Muslim world, particularly in the last half-decade, and culminating in the indiscriminate slaughter last Friday, have radiated through, and resonated with, large segments of the Muslim population in the region and beyond. Indeed, there are disconcerting signs that they have had a perceptible impact on the Palestinians – on both sides of the pre-1967 Green Line. Accordingly, whether or not these regrettable circumstances are formally acknowledged, two things should be crystal clear to anyone not suffering from advanced intellectual rigor mortis.
The highly likely & the no less unlikely
The first is that it is highly likely, indeed virtually certain, that any land surrendered by Israel to any Arab interlocutor will fall, probably sooner than later, to extremist Islamist forces of one variant or another – as happened in Gaza and southern Lebanon, the former to Hamas, now being harassed by even more radical Jihadi elements, the latter to Hez’Allah, a proxy for Tehran’s theocratic tyranny.
The second is that it is no less unlikely, indeed virtually impossible, that Palestinian-Arab residents across the 1967-line could be incorporated into the permanent population of Israel, without creating an explosive potential of a society riven by unbridgeable interethnic schisms and irreconcilable national animosities.
To call on Israel to adopt either of these formats, in effect, is to gravely jeopardize its continued long-term survival, as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
The former will make Israel geographically untenable, with a mega Gaza-like entity, with an almost 500 km. front abutting Israel’s most populous urban areas, and dominating virtually all its strategic infrastructure installations – from which recalcitrant renegade terrorists could disrupt, even cripple, at will, the routine of daily life – armed with no more than the primitive weapons currently deployed in ostensibly “demilitarized” Gaza.
The second will make Israel demographically untenable – even if the optimistic demographers are right and Israel would still retain a Jewish majority of around 60 percent. For there is little chance that the country could maintain even a semblance of social stability without drastically diminishing & diluting its Jewish character if it included a Muslim minority of up to 40% of its population, who not only do not identify with, but vehemently reject its flag, symbols, anthem – even its very source of sovereignty as the Jewish people.
Myth of ‘managing the conflict’
Accordingly, both the territorial concessions implicit in the land-for-peace– two-state paradigm and the incompatible national allegiances implicit in the one-state-of-all-its citizens are inimical to the Zionist ideal of Jewish self-determination.
Thus, any policy proposal compliant with the preservation of the Zionist ideal and an enduring Jewish nation-state, must address both of these imperatives of national survival: defensible geographic contours and a sustainable demographic composition.
Trying to achieve one at the expense of the other will be just as disastrous as its equally perilous converse.
For anyone believing that the conflict can be “managed” or the status quo “maintained” by repeatedly “mowing the lawn,” a cursory glance at the late Yitzhak Rabin’s last Knesset address should suffice to dispel any such illusions. Indeed, were the much-reviled Benjamin Netanyahu to embrace – verbatim – the last publicly articulated vision of the much-lauded Rabin for a permanent resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians, he would be excoriated as an unrealistic and unreasonable extremist.
This illustrates dramatically just how severely Israeli positions have been eroded by trying to “manage the conflict” & “sustain the status quo” – aka “kicking the can down the road.”
Accordingly, the pressing – indeed existential – Zionist challenge is to devise a paradigm that offers a clear proactive path capable of adequately addressing the twin imperative of retaining the indispensable geography/ topography while maintaining a population with a minimally coherent and manageably compatible demographic composition.
Intellectual integrity for only Zionist-compliant alternative
If this challenge of meeting Israel’s geographic and demographic imperatives is indeed the point of departure for securing its long-term future as the nation-state of the Jewish people, then it follows, almost as an inescapable deduction, with virtually mathematical logic, that – since the geography/topography are largely – immutable, it is the demographic variable that must be addressed.
Consequently, all Zionist energies must be focused on reducing the Arab presence west of the Jordan River.
The only non-coercive – or at least, non-kinetic – method of achieving this is through economic inducements – by dramatically increasing the incentives for leaving, enhancing the economic rewards for doing so; and by commensurately increasing the disincentives for staying, intensifying – equally dramatically – the material penalties for doing so.
This would require the intellectual integrity not only to identify the Palestinians as what they really are – and what they themselves declare they are: an implacable enemy, but also to undertake a policy that reflects this underlying and undeniable truth.
As an implacable enemy, Israel has no moral obligation or practical interest in sustaining its economy or social order. On the contrary, an overwhelming case can be made – on both ethical and pragmatic grounds – that it should let them collapse by refraining from providing it with any of the goods or services it – perversely – provides it today: water, electricity, fuel, tax collection and port services to name but a few.
In order to extricate themselves from the inevitable crisis such measures will entail, non-belligerent individuals should be given generous relocation grants to allow them, and their dependents, the opportunity to seek prosperous and secure lives elsewhere.
Recalcitrant belligerents must be dealt with coercively – and, if need be, “kinetically.”
Who has the moral high ground?
It is perhaps understandable that, initially, some might feel a sense of discomfort – even aversion – to such a radical departure from conventional wisdom that has dominated the debate hitherto. However, I would urge anyone prone to such reaction to distinguish between initial reflexive distaste for the unfamiliar on the one hand, and considered, substantive dissent with the unpalatable but unavoidable on the other.
Indeed, to dislike an unpleasant remedy does not mean that one should – or can – disagree with it, or dispute the necessity for its application to effect a much needed cure or preserve a highly desired objective.
But beyond the question of initial adverse reaction, the crucial question must be forced into the debate: Who in fact has the moral high ground? Those who promote the establishment of (yet another) Muslim-majority tyranny, which will, in all likelihood, comprise the diametric and utter negation of the very values its advocates invoke for its establishment – gender discrimination, gay persecution, religious intolerance, oppression of political dissidents?

Or those who advocate providing non-belligerent Palestinian individuals with the opportunity of building a better life for themselves elsewhere, out of harm’s way, free from the recurring cycles of death, destruction and destitution that have been brought down on them by the cruel, corrupt cliques that have controlled their lives and led them astray for decades?

Moreover, dissenting opponents must be forced to explain a glaring moral anomaly. After all, why is paying Jews to evacuate their homes to facilitate the establishment of said homophobic misogynistic tyranny, which, almost certainly, will become a bastion for Islamist terror, considered morally acceptable – even commendable; while the notion of paying Arabs to evacuate their homes to prevent the establishment of such an entity, considered morally reprehensible?
Depraved indifference of conventional wisdom
The received wisdom that has hijacked the agenda of the public discourse is clearly and irrefutably at odds with prevailing realities. Political correctness has eclipsed political truth and obscured factual correctness.
For anyone not willfully blinded by deceptive allure of its falsehoods, or intimidated by the brutal intolerance of its mind-control diktats, it should be painfully clear– particularly in light of the emerging realities regarding trends in Arab/Muslim society – that both territorial withdrawal, and territorial annexation, are fraught with grave – and eminently foreseeable perils: Either long bloody and recurring wars of attrition along torturous, and topographically inferior frontiers, or long bloody interethnic strife among irreconcilably inimical segments of the population.
The undeniable plausibility of these uninviting scenarios, and the very limited ability to prevent their occurrence, makes continued insistence on their implementation nothing short of “depraved indifference” – i.e. the wanton disregard for the harmful consequences of a clearly apparent risk.
For unless two-staters can provide a persuasive “Plan B” of how to deal with the clear and present danger of the territory allotted for a Palestinian state falling to an Islamic State-like affiliate; unless one-staters can provide an equally persuasive “Plan B” of how to respond to rebellion by irredentist segments of the Palestinian population, who refuse to resign themselves to permanent submission to Jewish sovereignty, such proposals are no more than irresponsible and perilous pipe-dreams.
Overriding intellectual imperative: A countervailing ‘New Israel Fund’
It is of course highly improbable that this radical abandonment of accepted molds of thinking will be initiated from within the current body-politic, which, sadly seems to possess neither the required intellectual depth nor the intellectual daring to contemplate, never mind, make, such a conceptual leap.
Accordingly, what is called for is the establishment, within civil society, of influential (read “well-endowed”) centers of intellectual endeavor that can lay down a new intellectual architecture for the discourse on the Arab-Israel conflict, in general, and the Israel-Palestinian one, in particular; infuse new perspectives on the possibilities and the constraints for policy into the debate; and impose a new agenda on the elected politicians – just as the “Left” did with the “New Israel Fund,” its affiliates, off-shoots and ideological fellow travelers…
For this to materialize, what is called for is a bold and imaginative private benefactor(s) to come forward, pick up the gauntlet and provide the wherewithal to spark a brave new wave of intellectual rebellion and national resurrection.
Given the urgency, we can only hope this does not take too long…
Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.org) is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. (www.strategic– israel.org).

November 3, 2015

November 2, 2015 was the 98th anniversary of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the letter that committed the British government of the time to the idea of establishing a Jewish home in Palestine / Eretz Yisrael.

That Palestinians in Gaza marked the anniversary by burning British, Israeli and U.S. flags is not surprising but was covered by the Daily Mail.

The history of the Middle East can be baffling to the uninformed reader, particularly if the subject matter dates back to the early 1900’s and still resonates even today. That’s why the Daily Mail has a responsibility to ensure that the historical background is presented in context.

Instead, we read this:

It’s hardly surprising that the myth of an existing historical Palestinian state that was ‘colonized’ by European Jews continues to circulate if this is the sort of lazy historical background being fed to media consumers.

Nowhere in the article does it mention that Palestine, as it was known as then, was a part of the Ottoman Empire and there had never existed an independent Palestinian state.

· Nowhere in the article does it mention that indigenous Jewish communities had lived in the Land of Israel going back over 3,000 years and there existed a continuous and uninterrupted Jewish religious and national connection to that land.

· The article mistakenly writes that the Balfour Declaration gave instructions “to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.” In fact, the Declaration supported a Jewish homeland, and not necessarily a state. The Balfour Declaration was but one step on the way to the fulfillment of the Zionist program of restoring Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish people’s ancient homeland.

· Indeed, to talk of Palestinians in those days referred to both Jewish and Arab residents of the land. When the Daily Mail refers to “without prejudicing the Palestinian communities already there,” it is not clearly stating just who those communities are, instead working on the presumption that Palestinian communities were Palestinian Arabs.

· This is compounded by the statement that “The Palestinians are furious that their land has technically been promised to the Jewish people.” In 1917 at the time of the Balfour Declaration, there was no national Palestinian identity – the non-Jewish residents of the land considered themselves to be part of the wider Arab nation and Arab nationalists sought an independent Arab state not in Palestine per se but as part of the Ottoman Arab Middle East as a whole.

· So it was not at that time “their land” that the Palestinians are allegedly furious that it had been promised to the Jewish people.

By missing out any historical context, the Daily Mail has erased legitimate Jewish rights that existed even before the Balfour Declaration and has constructed a Palestinian national identity that did not exist in 1917. (Note: this does not mean that a Palestinian identity did not emerge in later years.)

Read more about Pre-State Israel, particularly during the World War One period, in the Jewish Virtual Library and the Balfour Declaration itself, here.

6.Who is being delusional? By Caroline B. Glick

JPost.com 11/19/2015 23:25

Combating Israel’s Islamic Movement

“Abbas is not interested either in peace or in Palestinian statehood.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas speaks with journalists at his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah. (photo credit:AFP PHOTO)

On Tuesday night, Channel 10 broadcast an interview with PLO chief and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in which Abbas admitted publicly for the first time that he rejected the peace plan then prime minister Ehud Olmert offered him in 2008.
Olmert’s plan called for Israel to withdraw from the entire Old City of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, and from 93.7 percent of Judea and Samaria. Olmert also offered sovereign Israeli territory to the Palestinians to compensate for the areas Israel would retain in Judea and Samaria.
Abbas said his rejection was unequivocal. “I didn’t agree. I rejected it out of hand.”
For years, the story of Abbas’s rejection of Olmert’s 2008 offer has been underplayed. Many commentators have insisted Abbas didn’t really reject it, but just failed to respond.
But now the truth is clear. Abbas is not interested either in peace or in Palestinian statehood.
Abbas’s many apologists in the Israeli Left insist that he didn’t reject the plan on its merits. Rather, they argue, Abbas rejected Olmert’s offer because, by the time Olmert made it, he was involved in criminal investigations that forced him to resign from office eight months later.
Hogwash, says former AP reporter Mark Lavie.
Following the interview’s broadcast, Lavie countered that if Abbas were truly interested in establishing an independent Palestinian state, he wouldn’t have cared about the political fortunes of the Israeli prime minister. He would have taken the offer and run, knowing that, as Olmert said, the likelihood that he’d get a similar offer in the next 50 years was nonexistent.
The most notable reaction to Abbas’s admission was the reaction that never came. The Israeli Left had no reaction to his interview.
Abbas is the hero of the Left.
He is their partner. He is their moderate. He is their man of peace. Abbas is the Palestinian leader to whom every leftist politician worth his snuff, from opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog to the Meretz Knesset faction make regular pilgrimages to prove their devotion to peace.
Their man in Ramallah received the most radical offer ever to see the light of day. Rather than accept it, he rejected it out of hand & refused to meet with Olmert ever again, & he openly admits it.
The Left’s non-response is not surprising. Abbas’s decision to end all speculation about whether or not he is a man of peace is merely the latest blow reality has cast on their two-state formula.
The Left’s policy of land for peace failed more than 15 years ago when Abbas’s boss, Yasser Arafat, preferred war to peace & initiated the worst campaign of terrorism that Israel had ever experienced.
Yet for the last 15 years, the Israeli “peace camp” has never wavered in its view that, despite it all, Israel must rid itself of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.
Rather its members have grown angrier and angrier at their own people for abandoning them & less & less willing to agree that there is anything – including Israeli statehood itself – that is more important than giving up Jerusalem, Judea, & Samaria.
The Left’s reactionary position was on full display last Thursday at the annual “peace conference” hosted by the far left Ha’aretz newspaper.
Last year, the conference’s audience attacked Bayit Yehudi Party leader Naftali Bennett both verbally and physically when he presented his plan to apply Israeli sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria. This year it was Tourism Minister Yariv Levin’s turn to be assaulted.
Levin was subjected to constant catcalls from the audience, whose members called him “Goebbels” for arguing that the two-state formula has no chance of bringing peace and that the time has come to consider other options.
But Levin’s claims were simply common sense.
This week the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion published its most recent survey. The results were no surprise. Indeed, they were more or less consistent with historical survey results.
According to the PCPO data, 63 percent of Palestinians oppose holding peace talks with Israel.
58 percent think Mahmoud Abbas, whose term of office ended in 2009, should resign. A majority of Palestinians support a new assault or “intifada” against Israel and 42 percent of Palestinians support the use of terrorism against Israel.
Also this week, ahead of the Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference on Wednesday The Jerusalem Post published a new poll of Israeli public opinion.
According to the data, 46 percent of Israelis support a policy of separating from the Palestinians through the establishment of a Palestinian state. 35 percent of Israelis support applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria. For Israelis under 45, the numbers are reversed.
Today a majority of Likud Knesset members & all members of the Bayit Yehudi’s Knesset faction oppose Palestinian statehood & support applying Israeli law to all or parts of Judea & Samaria.
Rather than deal with the fact that neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis support their two-state model, the Left has decided to ignore both.
The Haaretz conference last week hosted a panel discussing whether the two state paradigm remains viable. In his remarks, Prof. Shlomo Ben-Ami, who served as foreign minister in 2000 during the failed Camp David peace summit, explained that given the Israeli and Palestinian publics’ rejection of the two-state formula, (but especially the Israeli rejection of it), the UN Security Council determine Israel’s final borders. In other words, from Ben-Ami’s perspective, withdrawing from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is more important than maintaining Israel’s independence and governing in accordance with the will of the people.
When the panel’s moderator expressed concern that the mass expulsion of Israelis from their communities in Judea and Samaria which the two-state formula requires would cause a civil war within Israeli society, Ben-Ami just shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t delude myself. I never deluded myself that this would be a boy scout trip,” he said. “You can’t do this through consensus….Consensus is the great enemy of leadership.”
Ben-Ami continued, “War unites, peace divides…A leader who wants to make peace will always have a split nation behind him.”
MK Meirav Michaeli, who serves as the Zionist Union’s Knesset faction head, said for her part that the greatest obstacle to peace is Israel. Ever since Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Israel hasn’t had a leader willing to do what it takes to make peace.
In Michaeli’s view, when the Left next forms a government, it will need to adopt – as is opening position in negotiations – the position that Israel shares responsibility for the fate of the so-called “Palestinian refugees.”
Michaeli explained, “Israel needs to be part of a coalition that will find a solution,” for the descendants of the Arabs that left Israel during the 1948-1949 pan-Arab invasion of the nascent state of Israel.
Michaeli also insisted that Israel needs to stop demanding that the Palestinians recognize the Jewish state’s right to exist. Israel should suffice instead with a Palestinian acknowledgment that it does indeed exist.
It goes without saying that there has never been, and there never will be a majority of support in Israel either for Ben-Ami’s position or for Michaeli’s position. This is the reason that they prefer to ignore the Israeli people and wait for “the world” to save “the peace” for them.
This brings us to the 46 percent of Israelis who would like to separate from the Palestinians and let them have a state.
The only reason that a plurality of Israelis still supports a policy that has failed continuously for the past 15 years is because the Israeli Left has blocked all discussion of alternative policies.
Over the past 20 years, the Left has implemented three policy initiatives: the peace process with the PLO from 1993 to 2000, the unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 and the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. These policies never enjoyed the sustained support of the majority of the public.
To the extent they ever mobilized the temporary support of bare majorities of public, they did so only because the media campaigned continuously on behalf of these initiatives. Not only did all the key mass circulation newspapers and all major broadcast media outlets support these plans, they blocked all debate about them. Opponents were demonized as extremists.
This brings us to the 35 percent of Israelis who support applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea & Samaria.
It is this virtual blackout on coverage of opposing views that makes the results of the Post’s opinion poll remarkable. In the absence of almost any public discussion of the possibility of applying Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria aside from the self-generated publicity of advocates of the position, more than a third of Israelis overall, and a plurality of young Israelis support it.
Over the past week, Netanyahu has been asked his opinion of the prospects for unilateral Israeli actions toward the Palestinians three times, once in Washington and twice in Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s responses have been enigmatic. But collectively they lend the clear impression that the premier does not support unilateral Israeli withdrawals from Judea and Samaria and at least in principle, does not oppose the sovereignty model.
In his remarks at the Post’s conference Wednesday, Netanyahu said cagily, “There are all sorts of unilateral moves in all sorts of directions. Wait & see. They are not necessarily in the direction you think.”
Speaking to the Likud’s Knesset faction on Monday Netanyahu clarified his remarks on the subject last week in Washington saying, “I didn’t say unilateral withdrawals. I said unilateral steps. You can imagine what I mean – states are disintegrating and we will protect our interests.”
Sitting next to Ben-Ami at the Haaretz conference was the lone non-leftist on the panel. Halachic expert Malka Puterkovsky said that, in her view, Israel should apply its sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria. Doing so, she argued, will not risk Israel’s future as a Jewish state.
Both the audience and her fellow panelists reacted to her statements with the same extreme hostility with which they responded to Bennet and Levin.
When Ben-Ami – the man who thinks it is more important for Israel to expel some 100,000 Israelis from their homes than avert a civil war, and prefers borders forced on Israel by the UN to Israeli democracy and independence – was asked his opinion of Puterovsky’s position, he called the notion of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria “delusional.”
We need to take Netanyahu’s coy responses to questions about unilateralism as an invitation to begin a serious public discussion of the option.
The public wants this discussion and we need this discussion.
As for how the peace camp will respond, well, there are worse things than having reactionaries call you “delusional.”

Palestinian woman run over by former Samaria council head after trying to stab hitchhikers • Taxi driver tries to run over Israelis near Kfar Adumim then stabs one victim • A day earlier, Palestinian terrorist stabs four Israelis in Kiryat Gat. By Gadi Golan, Maytal Yassur Beit Or, & Israel Hayom Staff

tredit: Reuters

A 16-year-old Palestinian girl tried to stab a group of women at a bus stop in Samaria on Sunday but was stopped when former Samaria Regional Council head Gershon Mesika ran her over with his car. She was later shot dead by a civilian and a number of soldiers at the scene.

The civilian who shot the terrorist told Israeli media that “I stopped for a hitchhiker and the terrorist approached from across the road. Several meters away from me she pulled out a knife and started chasing hitchhikers. By the time I got out of my car, Gershon came up behind me and ran her over. I got out and fired two bullets, and then a soldier came and fired two more bullets. That’s how I started my morning.”
Less than an hour later, a Palestinian taxi driver tried to run over a group of Israelis near Kfar Adumim, and, upon failing to hit anyone, got out of his vehicle and stabbed an Israeli man, wounding him lightly. The terrorist was killed at the scene.

On Saturday, an 18-year-old Palestinian who stabbed and wounded four Israelis in an attack in the southern city of Kiryat Gat was apprehended after a manhunt that lasted several hours.

Shortly after 6:30 p.m., the suspect stabbed two women, a teenage girl and a man, inflicting moderate to serious wounds, then fled. Security forces discovered him hiding in a nearby private yard. Initial questioning revealed that the alleged attacker was residing in Israel illegally and apparently worked in the city. Two other illegal residents suspected of helping him were also arrested.

In a briefing after the incident concluded, commander of the Southern District Police Maj. Gen. Yoram Halevy said that the suspect, named as Hebron-area resident Muhammad Tarada, had been caught with the knife he had used to stab the victims and that his clothes were bloodstained.

Batya, a resident of Kiryat Gat, was a few dozen feet away when the stabbing took place: “I saw his back. He was running, holding the knife, and started stabbing people in the street. From where I was I heard the victims scream. I managed to see the terrorist with blood on his hands and then he ran away. I was hysterical.”

Magen David Adom paramedic Efraim Yanko recounted: “When I arrived, there was a huge fuss. Three of the wounded, a man and two women, were lying about 150 feet away from each other. They were given lifesaving treatment in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.”

The Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon reported all four victims were hospitalized and listed in stable condition.

One of the wounded was Zion Hayon, 51. Hayon’s son Shalom recounted his father’s account of the attack: “Dad said that when the terrorist passed him, he thought it was just a passerby, but then he stabbed him in the back. The knife, thank God, didn’t hit the lungs or the heart. It’s a miracle.”

Sharona Negev, 44, had planned to go to a movie and was dropping her young daughter off at her mother’s house when she was stabbed. “As she went downstairs, she heard the screams of the older woman who was hurt. She went to call for help, and the terrorist, who was probably hiding between cars, hit her on the head and stabbed her twice,” Negev’s brother Yuval Reuveni said.

The stabbing took a personal turn for one first responder. Shai Malka has been volunteering with Magen David Adom for a year and a half, but never dreamed he would have to treat a family member — until his mother, Nurit Malka, 56, was wounded in Saturday’s attack.

“My mother was on her way from her friends’ and was stabbed just a few meters away from home,” Malka told reporters outside the operating room at Barzilai Medical Center.

“My brother sent a friend to call me. When I got there, medics were already there and I helped them treat [the wounded.] I wasn’t easy, and my adrenalin was pumping. You do what you have to in a situation like that. You don’t think a lot. There are feelings and everything, it’s your mom. You work with everyone. It could have ended much worse. It was a miracle,” Malka said.

Haim Malka, a relative of Nurit’s and also a resident of Kiryat Gat, said, “We feel like sitting ducks. The kids don’t go to school on their own or come back on their own. They don’t go to extracurricular activities. We don’t let them out of the house. The government is completely detached from what’s happening out here. There’s a sense we’ve been abandoned — and how — by the people we elected.”

Another man, a 40-year-old Israeli Bedouin resident of Segev Shalom who is employed at a construction site near the scene of the stabbing, was also taken to Barzilai Medical Center for treatment after an angry mob mistook him for a terrorist and attacked him.

According to the victim, “They stabbed me in the back. I told them I was Israeli, not a terrorist, but they kept stabbing. A police and a civilian stopped them. It lasted about five minutes. Even now, my family doesn’t know anything about it. I don’t want them to know.”

Dr. Yuri Manuskin, head of the trauma unit at Barzilai, reiterated Saturday night that all five of the people wounded in the stabbing or its aftermath were in stable condition.

Meanwhile, at the scene of the attack, police and special forces set up roadblocks and scrambled a police helicopter to help find Tarada and prevent him from attacking any more people.

Southern District Police spokesman Chief Supt. Doron Benamo said that the police had not received any intelligence about a possible attacker. All school field trips and special activities scheduled to take place in Kiryat Gat on Sunday were canceled.

A spokesman for the Hamas headquarters in Qatar praised the attack, calling it a “natural, legitimate response to the crimes of occupation against the Palestinian people.”

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9ews 9.The New York Times continues its history of relegating news about Israeli victims of terror out of sight, while publicizing so-called Palestinian victims on the front page. By: Terri Nir, United with Israel terror a US citizen, Ezra Schwartz, an 18-year-old American murdered

Palestinian rioter in Jerusalem. (File, Hadas Parush/Flash90)

The New York Times continues its history of relegating news about Israeli victims of terror out of sight, while publicizing so-called Palestinian victims on the front page.

Ezra Schwartz, an 18-year-old American spending a gap year in Israel, was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist on Thursday along with two other innocent victims. A student at Yeshivat Ashreinu in Beit Shemesh, where studies and community service are combined, he had just delivered food packages to IDF soldiers in Gush Etzion, where the shooting occurred.

In July 2014, American-Palestinian Tariq Abu Khdeir was beaten up by an IDF officer while participated in an anti-Israel riot in eastern Jerusalem.

The New York Times (NYT) – and, for that matter, most mainstream media outside of Israel – apparently did not consider the murder of an innocent American Jewish teenager in Israel to be of major importance. As reported on FirstOneThrough, a site of Israel analysis, the story was placed at the very bottom of page A6, with no accompanying photo and no indication that Schwartz was a “victim of Palestinian Arab barbarity.”

On July 7, 2014, however, the NYT featured Khdeir in a photo on the front page, in which he was surrounded by Israeli police.

NYT front page, July 7, 2014. (rs21.org.uk)

“Tariq led the world news, on a day when over 100 people were slaughtered in various attacks,”FirstOneThrough noted. “The beating of an Arab American who participated in a riot got front page attention, while the murder of a Jewish American who was simply riding in a car got nothing.”

According to FirstOneThrough, “The New York Times has a long history of ignoring Israeli deaths and highlighting Palestinian injuries… The New York Times has extended its bias against American Jews as well.”

In fact, the “bias” or, more accurately, seeming decision to withhold news about victimization of Israel and American Jews extends beyond those borders and back to the time of the Holocaust, when the NYT failed to report prominently the persecution and murder of millions of Jews.

The lack of reporting on this urgent issue at the time was documented by a number of historians, including Northeastern University Professor Laurel Leff, a veteran journalist, who recounted the paper’s consistent downplaying of news about the Holocaust in a book she authored, titled Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

A scholarly work, it recalls how news of Hitler’s Final Solution was hidden from the readers and, because of the Times’ influence on other media, hidden from the majority of the American public.

“No American newspaper was better positioned to highlight the Holocaust than the Times, and no American newspaper so influenced public discourse by its failure to do so,” Leff wrote.

In the age of social media, the news is more readily available than in the World War II era. Nonetheless, the majority relies on mainstream news reports for information on current events. On Facebook and Twitter, many among those who are more aware of the situation beyond the regular TV and online reports have expressed frustration at those outlets, especially at the NYT, for promoting anti-Israel activists as victims while leaving Schwartz and others like him out of the news.

The Obama administration has also largely ignored Ezra Schwartz, although it has taken an interest in the well-being of Abu Khdeir.

By: Terri Nir, United with Israel

Israelis are Under Attack. Do You Support Israel?

10.From: Rabbi Rachamim Pauli rachamim47@aol.com

Four attacks on Monday an 80 year old Arab and another man injured and then a man murdered at a cheap gas station in the other direction a woman was injured by a stray soldier’s bullety also a hit and run terror attack in the Shomron. Another terrorist was killed in the Shomron. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4729699,00.html

This was the attempted stabbing attack mentioned above. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/203817#.VlMeI_krKM8

While one store chain returns Golan Wine from their shelves fear engulfs Europe: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4728361,00.html

Later the chain store apologized as Golan Wines are labeled Golan all the time. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/203765#.VlH7UPkrKM8

I don’t know if Ezra Schwartz was even buried in Boston when this young woman was murdered by a knife. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4729473,00.html

Video of attack http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/WATCH-Security-cameras-capture-terror-attack-outside-Jerusalem-market-435043

The post about Boko Haram gassing 105 Nigerian Soldiers may have been their Propaganda Blog which I picked up from a Jewish Group so I removed it.

11.WATCH: Security cameras capture terror attack outside Jerusalem market – Machane Yehuda By Daniel K. Eisenbud JPost.com 11/23/2015 Israeli woman killed on day of three separate West Bank terror attacks 2 female teen terrorists attack Jewish and Palestinian men with scissors outside Jerusalem shuk

The footage shows the two Palestinian teenage assailants attempting to stab passersby with scissors before being shot by security forces.

Security camera footage emerged Monday of the earlier terror attack near the Jerusalem outdoor market [Machane Yehuda] in which two people were injured.
One female teenaged Palestinian terrorist was killed, and her female teen accomplice is in critical condition, after attacking a Jewish and Palestinian man with scissors outside the Mahane Yehuda Market Monday morning, in the heart of downtown Jerusalem.
A puddle of blood on Jaffa Road, a few meters outside the open market’s main entrance, marked the scene of the attack, where dozens of police and medical personnel worked feverishly to evacuate the wounded and secure the area.
Light rail cars, which run down the bustling thoroughfare, grounded to a halt, as hundreds of concerned bystanders and journalists looked on from behind police lines.
At 11:30 a.m., roughly 15 minutes after the attack, Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the two unidentified Palestinian teens, aged 14 and 16, carried out the stabbing while thousands of pedestrians were shopping in the market, or walking down Jaffa Road.
“Two female terrorists carried out the stabbing using scissors,” he said. “Both of the terrorists were shot by police officers who responded at the scene; one of them was killed and the other one was taken to the hospital.”
A guard who responded to the attack also sustained a light wound to his hand in the resulting crossfire, police said.
“The area has been cordoned off, and forensics teams are looking at the scene while we look for the identities of both the female terrorists, and where they came in from,” Rosenfeld continued. “We have confirmed that they are Palestinian.”
Rosenfeld added that heightened security is continuing across the capital to prevent other attacks from taking place.

12.Surveillance cameras would show the world who is in fact responsible for desecrating the Al-Aqsa Mosque and for the violence on the Temple Mount. By Khaled abu Toameh. This article first appeared in The Gatestone Institute. Nov 5, 2015

Khaled abu Toameh

Why is the Palestinian Authority (PA) opposed to Jordan’s proposal to install surveillance cameras at Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif (Arabic for “noble sanctuary”), sacred to Christians, Muslims and Jews?

This is the question that many in Jordan have been asking in light of the recent agreement between Israel and Jordan that was reached under the auspices of US Secretary of State John Kerry. The idea was first raised by Jordan’s King Abdullah in a bid to ease tensions at the holy site in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Shortly after Israel accepted the idea, the Palestinian Authority rushed to denounce it as a “new trap.” PA Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki and other officials in Ramallah expressed concern that Israel would use the cameras to “arrest Palestinians under the pretext of incitement.”

During the past two years, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and other parties, including Hamas and the Islamic Movement (Northern Branch) in Israel, have been waging a campaign of incitement against Jewish visits to the Temple Mount. The campaign claimed that Jews were planning to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Temple Mount, Har HaBayit in Hebrew, is Judaism’s holiest site.

In an attempt to prevent Jews from entering the approximately 37-acre site, the Palestinian Authority and the Islamic Movement in Israel hired scores of Muslim men and women to harass the Jewish visitors and the police officers escorting them. The men are referred to as Murabitoun, while the women are called Murabitat (defenders or guardians of the faith).

Palestinian Muslim women from the ‘Murabitoun’ group protest against Israeli police entering the Temple Mount. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

These men and women have since been filmed shouting and trying to assault Jews and policemen at the Temple Mount. This type of video evidence is something that the Palestinian Authority is trying to avoid. The PA, together with the Islamic Movement, wants the men and women to continue harassing the Jews under the pretext of “defending” the Al-Aqsa Mosque from “destruction” and “contamination.”

The cameras are also likely to refute the claim that Jews are “violently invading” Al-Aqsa Mosque and holding prayers at the Temple Mount. The Palestinian Authority, Hamas and the Islamic Movement have long been describing the Jewish visits as a “provocative and violent incursion” into Al-Aqsa Mosque. But now the cameras will show that Jews do not enter Al-Aqsa Mosque, as the Palestinians have been claiming.

Another reason the Palestinians are opposed to King Abdullah’s idea is their fear that the cameras would expose that Palestinians have been smuggling stones, firebombs and pipe bombs into Al-Aqsa Mosque for the past two years. These are scenes at the PA, Hamas and the Islamic Movement do not want the world to see: they show who is really “contaminating” the Haram al-Sharif. Needless to say, no Jewish visitors have thus far been caught trying to smuggle such weapons into the holy site.

By rejecting the idea of setting up 24-hour surveillance cameras at the Haram al-Sharif, the Palestinian Authority has found itself on a course of collision with Jordan. Jordanian politicians and columnists have voiced outrage over the stance of the PA, and have dubbed it harmful to Palestinian and Islamic interests.

The Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad, which is close to the government, quoted Jordanian politicians as denouncing the opposition of the Palestinian Authority to the cameras as “inappropriate, clumsy, tasteless and unfair.”

A Palestinian Arab riots in Jerusalem during current wave of terror. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

Sources in Ramallah explained last week that the PA’s opposition to cameras should also be seen in the context of the power struggle between the Palestinians and Jordan over control of the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem. The Jordanians have long been seeking to preserve their status as “custodians” of Al-Aqsa Mosque and other Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem. This is a status that some Palestinians and the Islamic Movement in Israel have been trying to change during the past two decades, especially after the signing of the Oslo Accords between the PLO and Israel in 1993. The Palestinian Authority’s opposition to the installation of cameras is seen as an attempt to undermine Jordan’s status at the Islamic holy sites. Many Palestinians argue that they, and not the Jordanians, should be in charge of the Haram al-Sharif. Members of the PA are opposed to the cameras because it is a Jordanian proposal and reinforces Jordan’s role at the holy site.

As such, the Palestinian Authority’s position could be seen as an attempt to change the status quo at the holy site by driving the Jordanians out of the area. King Abdullah is obviously aware of the Palestinian attempt to prevent him from playing any role at the holy site; that is why he was quick to reach a deal with Israel about the installation of cameras. The PA, meanwhile, will continue to work against having cameras in the hope of preventing the world from seeing what is really happening at the site and undermining Jordan’s “custodianship” over Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem.

It now remains to be seen how US Secretary of State John Kerry, who brokered the camera deal between Israel and Jordan, will react, if at all, to the latest Palestinian Authority attempt to continue escalating tensions at the holy site. If Kerry fails to pressure the PA to stop its incitement and repeated attempts to exclude the Jordanians from playing any positive role at the Temple Mount, the current wave of knife attacks against Jews will continue.

The author, an Arab Muslim, is a veteran award-winning journalist who has been covering Palestinian affairs for nearly three decades. This article first appeared in The Gatestone Institute.

· THE TOWER MAGAZINEMidEast

13.Dozens Confirmed Dead in Mali Hotel Attack

Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako, Mali by TheTower.org Staff | 11.20.15 10:14 am

Malian special forces stormed the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako after gunmen affiliated with the Islamist terrorist group al-Mourabitoun took 170 people hostage on Friday, Reutersreported. Seven hours after the attackers entered the hotel, Malian authorities declared that the siege was over and all hostages were freed. A preliminary body count by United Nations peacekeepers following the rescue effort confirmed that at least 27 people were killed. Two of the gunmen were also reported dead.

The terrorists took over the Radisson in the early morning hours, shouting “Allahu Akbar” and spraying the entrance with bullets. “Some people were freed by the attackers after showing they could recite verses from the Koran, while others were brought out by security forces or managed to escape under their own steam,” Reuters wrote.

According to The Washington Post, State Department spokesman John Kirby said that about a dozen American citizens were rescued, including a number who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Bamako.

Reuters noted that several French nationals were present at the hotel during the assault, which came just a week after jihadists carried out a series of lethal attacks in France. None were reported killed.

The raid on the hotel, which lies just west of the city center near government ministries and diplomatic offices, came a week after Islamic State militants killed 129 people in Paris, raising fears that French nationals were being specifically targeted.

Twelve Air France (AIRF.PA) flight crew were in the building but all were extracted safely, the French national carrier said.

Al-Mourabitoun, the terrorist group behind Friday’s assault, has previously claimed responsibility for a number of attacks. In August, the Islamists led a siege on a hotel in Sévaré, a town situated a little under 400 miles northeast of Bamako, which claimed the lives of 17 people, including five UN personnel. Mokhtar Belmokhtar, one of the group’s leaders, orchestrated a 2013 attack on a gas facility in Algeria, where at least 37 hostages were killed.

[Photo: BBC News / YouTube ]

Dozens Confirmed Dead in Mali Hotel Attack