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"Wretched Zionists, whom do you dominate? The miserable Arabs?"

News item:

One of the Six-Day War’s most famous landmarks, Ammunition Hill, was vandalized early Monday morning. This is the fourth related incident in less than a week, just days before Israel marks its Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism.

According to Army Radio, the vandals spray-painted anti-Israel slogans, including “Günter Grass was right,” [referring to the German Nobel laureate’s recently published poem in which the former SS officer said Israel was a danger to world peace] and “Zionism — the root of all evil” as well as “lame Zionists.”

Here is an excerpt from a description of the battle of Ammunition Hill by Yaakov Lozowick:

Between 1949 and 1967, while Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan, there was an Israeli enclave about a mile to the east of the border, in the Jordanian part of town. This was Mount Scopus, with the campus of the Hebrew university and Haddassh hospital. There was an agreement whereby every two weeks 200 Israelis would cross Jordanian territory to the enclave, and sit there until the next group replaced them two weeks later.

Throughout the whole period everyone knew that sooner or later the war would resume, and that when that happened Israel would try to reconnect the mountain with the city. To prevent this the Jordanians built a series of fortifications in that mile, and its centerpiece was Ammunition Hill, an apt name borrowed from the days after the British conquered the city in 1917 and General Allenby stored his army’s ammunition there…

On the night between June 5th and 6th 1967 the paratroopers, backed by a few tanks, made their attack, directly on the Jordanian fortifications. The section of the battle on Ammunition Hill raged from about 2am to 5:30, early next morning. It was face to face combat, between the best forces each side had. 71 Jordanians were killed, and 35 Israelis: most of the defenders died, as did a quarter of the attackers.

A story I heard not long afterward told that in the early morning the IDF troops gathered the fallen Jordanians into a pit and covered it, with a makeshift sign that read “Here lie 71 brave Jordanian soldiers”.

A few hours later the paratroopers were at the Kotel.

The perpetrators of the vandalism could have been anti-Zionist Haredim, Arabs or left-wing extremists. Judging by the content of the literate Hebrew graffiti, my guess is that in this case they are the former.

For example, the message in the photo above reads: “Wretched Zionists, whom do you dominate? The miserable Arabs? Zionism — mother of sin!”

It is simply impossible for me to imagine what would motivate Israeli Jews to desecrate a monument to men who died defending the Jewish state that protects and, in many cases, feeds them.

I would like to see the vandals, who spit on Jewish sovereignty, banished to a place where it doesn’t exist. They have made their statement, let them live by it.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Zionism, Ammuntion Hill

Anders Behring Breivik gives "right-wing salute" in court

As the trial of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik is about to go into its second week, some have asked why he has been given a public platform to air his grievances for almost a week, and to describe, in excruciatingly horrible detail, precisely how he murdered 77 people last July 22.

The much-discussed question of his sanity is paramount to determine what to do with him, whether to imprison him — the maximum penalty for his crimes is a surprisingly short 21 years — or institutionalize him. But while practically important, it depends on the Norwegian legal system’s conception of what is a legitimate insanity defense and is not interesting from a moral or political standpoint.

Mass murder to draw attention to a political issue — this is what Breivik himself claims to have been doing — is not common in Western society. And the effects of his actions — at which he ‘succeeded’ far beyond his own expectations — will be the exact opposite of his objective. Rather than mobilizing opposition to multiculturalism and unrestricted immigration, his point of view is discredited by association with his terrible crime.

Breivik is a social deviant, and highly irrational to boot. And if ‘evil’ has any meaning, it certainly includes causing pointless death and suffering to the degree that he did. Insane or not, it’s easy to characterize him: he is a monster.

So why was a monster allowed to speak at length? Here are some explanations:

Norwegian legal experts say it’s crucial that every part of the proceedings is conducted by the book so that Breivik cannot claim he didn’t get a fair trial. Many say it’s also important that the gruesome details are documented to make sure that Breivik is kept away from society for a long time, maybe for the rest of his life.

“When Behring Breivik at some point in the future goes to court and demands to be released — whether from a prison or from a psychiatric hospital — the judgment will the be most central document in that evaluation,” Inge D. Hanssen, one of Norway’s most experienced crime reporters wrote in newspaper Aftenposten.

But certainly his crime is well documented in the words of the police, etc. Wouldn’t a simple confession have been enough? Couldn’t he have signed a written statement?

To some foreign observers, Norway’s desire to do right has gone overboard, allowing the confessed mass killer just what he wants: a platform to promote his extreme political ideology. Print media can cover all parts of the trial. Norwegian TV broadcasts much of it live, including when he enters court, but isn’t allowed to show his testimony.

Unfortunately, I suspect that the answer lies here. Breivik is a monster, but he is a right-wing monster. And although he is a social deviant and ‘crazy’ in some sense, some are taking the opportunity to place the blame for his actions on those who oppose multiculturalism or worry about the effect of mass immigration of Muslims to European countries. For example,

BRUSSELS — Security services in Europe have neglected the kind of right-wing extremism which inspired Norway’s Anders Behring Breivik to commit mass murder, a UK-based rights group has warned.

“Post-911, all major authorities have themselves in the EU focused on the direct threat of Islamic terrorism while they took their eye off the ball on the radicalisation of Europeans,” Daniel Hodges, a campaigner for Hope Not Hate, a London-based NGO, told EUobserver on Monday (16 April).

“EU authorities have been lagging on radicalisation in Europe. They’ve been slow to grasp the power of the Internet and social media that encourages and helps co-ordinate the activities of the groups,” he added.

Hope Not Hate in a report out on Sunday said the ‘counter-jihad’ movement has become the new face of the far right in Europe and North America. The survey identifies some 300 disparate groups and individuals behind the trend.

Many of them say Muslims are a threat to Western cultural identity or values because old-fashioned racist language is no longer acceptable in mainstream politics and media. They also profess sympathy toward gay people and Jews…

Breivik – who is today standing trial in Oslo for killing 77 people on 22 July 2011 in two separate attacks — drew inspiration from some of the people cited in the Hope Not Hate study for his own 1,500-page manifesto. [my emphasis]

The article goes on to name names, including the David Horowitz Freedom Center, cited as financing counter-jihad groups, and various right-wing bloggers. The “Hope not Hate” website has a list of dangerous organizations, websites and individuals; the USA section includes such ‘extremists’ as Daniel Pipes, Brigitte Gabriel, M. Zuhdi Jasser, etc.

Of course no one in the Norwegian establishment, which is committed to multiculturalism, will admit that Breivik did them a favor by associating right-wing positions with vicious mass murder. But I believe that they are not letting the monster go to waste, and that is why he is allowed to speak so freely. This, they wish to imply, is the true face of the Right.

I am sure there are right-wing extremists that are capable of murder, although the only incident that I can think of that compares to Breivik’s act is the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. But murderousness does not characterize right-wing culture in general any more than it does the moderate Left, and far less than radical Islam. And it certainly is not legitimate to use Breivik to smear anyone who is not pro-Islam.

Need I add that there is one culture in which people like Breivik are considered heroes, in which they enjoy the approval of a majority of the population, and in which the leadership pays stipends to imprisoned Breiviks?

Of course that would be the Palestinian Arabs, whom Norway proudly supports!

Technorati Tags: Anders Behring Breivik, Norway, terrorism, Palestinians

Rabbi Miri Gold. What was she thinking?

What was she thinking?

Q. What kind of interactions or relationships do you have with Arab citizens of Israel?

A. Miri Gold (rabbi of Kehilat Birkat Shalom at Kibbutz Gezer; board member of Rabbis for Human Rights): … For 16 years, our two families have also thrown a yearly hafla (party), where as many as 500 family members and friends—Jews and Arabs—eat, drink, dance, and have fun. One year the party happened at the same time as the deadly terrorist attack on the Dolphinarium discotheque in Tel Aviv. A few young Arabs who’d left our hafla to party in Tel Aviv came back to tell us the news. We turned on the TV and realized that we were all equally vulnerable, angry, and sad. Had we been at the club, all of us could have been the victims. There was no distinction between Jewish and Arab lives. — Reform Judaism Magazine

If the people on the Bus of Blood had been Arabs, they would be dead. If the children of Ma’alot, or the Israeli athletes at Munich, or the customers of Sbarro’s Pizza, or the students at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva, or the Fogel family, or Asher and Yonatan Palmer had been Arabs, they would be dead.

It isn’t news that anybody’s flesh, Jewish or Arab flesh, can be penetrated by explosive-accelerated nuts and bolts, bullets or knives.

Anyone can be a victim. A harder question to ask Rabbi Gold is “who can be a perpetrator?”

Shabbat shalom.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arabs

Reported number of violent, including deadly, crimes in Sweden, per 100,000, years 1975-2006

Ha’aretz reports,

Arkia has to stop flying to Stockholm because the Swedish capital’s international airport now refuses to allow Israeli methods of security inspections dictated by the Shin Bet security service … Thus, Stockholm’s airport joined those in Malmo, Sweden and in Copenhagen in refusing to allow Israeli security inspections, which involve ethnic and personal profiling, extensive questioning and selective inspections based on the perceived degree of risk to security.

Arkia, the only Israeli airline flying to Sweden, had to move its operations to Malmo and Stockholm this year after Denmark refused to permit Israeli security procedures at its airports last summer. Arkia elected to fly passengers to Sweden and take them by land to Denmark. Now this avenue is closed.

This could very well spread to other European countries:

“It seems from the international media that additional European countries waving the flag of civil rights and equality will refuse the Israeli security demands, which I’ve warned would happen,” said Arkia CEO Gadi Tepper. Arkia and other Israeli airlines would face serious difficulty if much of Europe is blocked to them, he said.

So Sweden, as usual a pioneer in politically correct insanity — this is the country that has invented a new pronoun equivalent to “he-she” to promote gender equality — finds the idea of profiling and asking intrusive questions so repugnant that they would prefer passengers on Israeli planes to accept an increased probability of getting blown to bits.

But that’s not just because they are anti-Israel. They are equally prepared to let themselves get blown to bits in various ways for the sake of political correctness. According to a 2006 cable from the US Embassy in Stockholm released by Wikileaks, Sweden granted 873,040 residence permits to immigrants between 1980 and 2004. The dispatch, apparently by  interim chargé d’affaires Stephen Noble, includes this:

¶2. (SBU) According to a report by the National Council for Crime Prevention published in December 2005, immigrants or individuals with at least one immigrant parent perpetrated about 45 percent of all crimes during the period 1997-2001. In regard to the most serious felonies — murder, manslaughter, assault and rape — the percentage was even higher.

¶3. (SBU) A National Council press release about the report focused on other findings showing immigrants are often wrongly suspected of crimes — possibly in deference to the politically sensitive nature of the crime statistics. The Council report cites failed government integration strategy as partly responsible for the over-representation of immigrants in criminal activity.

The situation is worse today. More than 14% of the population of Sweden is foreign-born. About 5% are Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the former Yugoslavia. Most recent immigrants (since 1990) have been Muslim asylum seekers.

The Swedish government knows there is a problem. The approach to solving it, however has been — what else is new? — politically correct:

The diversity policy [as opposed to encouraging assimilation] that was introduced in the 1990s did not result in any obvious improvements. Thus, the government set up a commission in 2001 to investigate migrant communities’ access to power and influence.

In 2003, however, two members of the commission’s scientific committee publicly criticized the commission, claiming it discriminated against its non-Swedish members. The government discontinued the commission and set up a new commission to investigate integration in relation to structural discrimination.

The new commission consists of two researchers and a secretariat, but above all, it has been in a position to engage a large number of independent researchers for specific studies and tasks. Most of the researchers are young post-docs in sociology, economics, anthropology, and political science; a large share are of immigrant background. One of the critics, University of Uppsala ethnic studies professor Masoud Kamali (born in Iran), was appointed chair of the new commission.

This new commission has clearly adopted a post-colonial theoretical perspective. In its report released in 2005, it proposed introducing affirmative action on a broad scale to counteract structural discrimination. Affirmative action, the commission stated, should not only apply to ethnic or migrant minorities but also to other social categories. The commission even proposed that categories of people in a low socioeconomic position (including native Swedes) should enjoy the benefits of affirmative action.

However, the commission has not been able to pinpoint the causes of structural discrimination. All the main trade unions and the employers’ association have jointly repudiated the policy proposal. Members of the non-socialist opposition parties, who on the whole are more favorably inclined to labor migration, have criticized the government for encouraging the production of ideological discourse rather than seriously determining the facts, analyzing the problems, and developing feasible strategies to deal with the shortcomings. [all emphasis mine]

Some have suggested that the Swedish government has put the fox in charge of the henhouse. Meanwhile, there has been a very large increase in crime, including violent crime. There has also been a spurt of antisemitism against the tiny Jewish population (20,000) — both of the Muslim variety and the left-wing “anti-Zionist” type — which has gone entirely out of control in some places, like Malmö.

It’s ironic that Sweden had a highly restrictive immigration policy before and immediately after WWII, so very few Jews found refuge there. Today, political asylum is easy to get. I’m sorry that Israelis will find it hard to visit Sweden now, at least on Israeli aircraft. But one wonders why they should want to.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Sweden

IDF officer striking Danish ISM protester

Many of you have already seen this video of an IDF officer striking a Danish International Solidarity Movement (ISM) ‘protester’ in the face with his weapon. The incident occurred when the activists blocked a road near Jericho on Saturday.

The injured protester after the incident

IDF authorities have suspended the officer, Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner, and have ordered an investigation. Unsurprisingly, the media — including the left-wing Israeli media — have jumped all over this example of Israeli ‘brutality’.

We should keep in mind that the edited video, produced by the ISM, shows only a few seconds of the incident, which took place over a period of two hours. And Lt. Col. Eisner says that the same protester had previously struck him with a stick or bicycle pump, fracturing his fingers. Nevertheless, it’s likely that he will be severely punished for his action.

Those who sympathize with the officer say that the video does not show the context of the incident, which includes the two hours prior to it. But there is a lot more context than just this that needs to be taken into account.

The ISM was created in order to support the Palestinian project to eliminate the Jewish state. It sees ‘nonviolent’  — that is, without guns or explosives — protest as part of the overall struggle, which also includes violent ‘resistance’.  In a 2002 essay called “Why Nonviolent Resistance is Important for the Palestinian Intifada: A Response to Ramzy Baroud,” ISM founders Huwaida Arraf and Adam Shapiro explain,

The Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics – both nonviolent and violent. But most importantly it must develop a strategy involving both aspects. No other successful nonviolent movement was able to achieve what it did without a concurrent violent movement – in India militants attacked British outposts and interests while Gandhi conducted his campaign, while the Black Panther Movement and its earlier incarnations existed side-by-side with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

Nonviolence, as they argue, can be effective in achieving goals that violence alone cannot, such as “changing the image of the Palestinian struggle,” and involving foreigners:

Additionally, more foreign civilians would be encouraged to come to work with Palestinians in their legitimate struggle against occupation and injustice, thereby internationalizing the Intifada and bringing more resources to bear on pressuring Israel and the international community to establish a just peace.

And what is the ultimate goal? Is it a peaceful two-state solution? No.  One of ISM’s objectives is to secure the ‘return’ of Arab refugees and their descendents (between 4-5 million) to Israel, which would effectively end the Jewish state. They directly support Hamas and other terrorist groups, sometimes as human shields.

ISM has chapters all over the US and Europe from which they recruit naive activists, whom they bring to Israel to participate in their actions. If these people are injured or, better, killed, they provide great propaganda value. In this particular case, the Danish government has already made inquiries regarding the treatment of its citizen.

Nonviolent does not mean non-hostile. Nonviolent actions in war, especially when it is an asymmetric war in which public opinion is one of the fronts, can be very effective tactically, sometimes much more so than violent acts.

Just because nonviolence is associated with good causes like the US civil rights movement does not mean that it cannot be used for evil ones. The tactic itself is morally neutral.

These people are in effect combatants in the Arab war against Israel, albeit without guns. They do their best to disrupt operations and protect terrorist fighters, who do have guns and explosives. Although there are leftist or anarchist Israelis who take part in demonstrations, the international activists are in the majority and the most effective as propaganda tools.

Democratic countries like Israel seem to believe that as long as  a ‘tourist’ does not use an actual weapon when he participates in anti-state activities, he must be treated as an honored guest. While I don’t think Israel can adopt the methods used by Arab countries, Russia, Turkey, China, Iran, etc., there is more that can be done.

There should be zero tolerance for these enemy soldiers. ‘Internationals’ who enter military zones or disobey orders from soldiers or police should be arrested immediately, deported, and prevented from reentering Israel. Like the “Flightilla” participants, anyone identified as having a connection with ISM should be barred from entering the country.

Frankly, I cannot sympathize with the slightly injured protester. He came to Israel in order to help destroy the Jewish state and replace it with another Arab dictatorship, resulting in the dispersion and/or death of its Jewish population. In effect, he was trying to kill Lt. Col. Eisner’s children, and it’s tragic that Eisner will be punished because he gave him a split lip.

Update [18 APR 1847 PDT]: For more about how the ISM operates, read this fascinating piece by investigative journalist Lee Kaplan.

Technorati Tags: Israel, ISM