Israel Matzav

Pass the Bamba: Israelis infiltrate Galloway's 'Israel free zone'

George Galloway MP has declared Bradford an Israel Free Zone, where no Israeli services, goods, scholars or tourists are welcome. This is what happened next.

Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Lahav Harkov).

Labels: British anti-Semitism, George Galloway, humor, Israeli Jews

Yaalon: 'Palestinians' see destruction of Jews as realistic possibility

At an event marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Defense Minister Moshe "Boogie" Yaalon complained that the 'Palestinians' see the destruction of the Jews as a realistic possibility.

"In the Palestinian Authority, whose leadership presents itself as one that is striving to reach an agreement with us, the brutal, insufferable incitement against the State of Israel and the Jewish people continues," Ya'alon said.

"This incitement is manifest in the education system and the media, where the hatred and poison ought to be an affront to any human," he said. "It is creating another generation of Palestinian children who are taught to look at the expulsion and destruction of the Jews as a realistic possibility instead of educating them toward a culture of peace and co-existence alongside Israel."

Given that for the last 20 years, we have continued to trip over each other in efforts to give them land and a reichlet, why shouldn't they see our destruction as a realistic possibility? For that matter, if we continue in the direction that our Prime Minister is following at the behest of Obama and Kerry, the destruction of the Jews - at least in Israel - IS a realistic possibility, God forbid.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Israel is a Jewish state, Israeli Jews, Moshe Yaalon, Palestinian incitement, self-hating Jews

What's another word for 'Israeli'?

Hat Tip: I Acknowledge Anti-Semitism.

Labels: Israeli Jews

Not Right v. Left, but Israeli v. Jew

Moshe Feiglin argues that the real divide in Israel is not between Right and Left but between Israelis and Jews.

After the Pillar of Defense cease fire, many now understand what we understood after the Zo Artzeinu demonstrations: The Israeli crisis is not on the continuum between Right and Left. It is on the continuum between Israelis and their Jewish identity.

We knew exactly where the Oslo Accords would lead. The huge amount of people who answered Zo Artzeinu's calls and blocked traffic in the entire country understood the reality. Ultimately, we succeeded in electing the Right to rule - against all odds. But Zo Artzeinu refused to politically "cash in" on the tremendous public credit that it had accrued. We understood that the Right also had no solution and that it was also incapable of getting off the Oslo track.

Everyone is angry at Netanyahu now for signing the cease-fire. But Netanyahu's predicament is a precise reflection of post-Oslo Israeli society. If Netanyahu had ordered a ground invasion of Gaza, soldiers would have been killed. After a short period of time he would have pulled the troops out of Gaza without significant achievements. After all, he had no intention of remaining. The retreat after many more fatalities would have ignited much more virulent criticism.

To remain in Gaza, we first have to renounce the very essence of the idea of partitioning this Land. We have to internalize that this is our Land – exclusively. We must - on a national scale - return to the Land of Israel and our Jewish identity. We must beg the forgiveness of the Jews expelled from Gush Katif and rebuild their towns and villages with the forces that destroyed them – and bring them back to their rightful place with an honor guard.

We must vote with our feet, declaring to all that this is our Land, proving to our enemies that this is NOT their land. Most important: We must expel the Moslem wakf from the Temple Mount and restore exclusive Israeli sovereignty over the Mount – Judaism's most holy site. We must encourage Jews to ascend the Temple Mount after the proper halachic preparations and to actualize their sovereignty over the beating heart of the Jewish Nation.

If we do not take all these measures, there really is no reason to endanger our soldiers just so that they can go into Gaza and retreat again. Every round of this type of fighting only proves the enemy's claim that we are colonialist conquerors and not liberators in our own Land. Security and pragmatic claims don't convince the world anymore. The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial no longer does the work for us. It can't be a replacement for the true justice of our cause. Just a short time after a hypothetical ground invasion of Gaza, international public opinion would come down squarely on the side that talks about justice: the very justice that we, with the cursed Oslo handshake, deposited into the hands of Arafat.

Is Israeli society ready for this type of return to ourselves?

Read the whole thing.

I disagree with him about the Temple Mount because my own rabbis do not permit ascending it. I would leave it empty until Messiah comes.

I also think there would have been value and Jewish lives to be saved by sending the soldiers into Gaza. God forbid, I fear that we will one day pay a higher price in civilian lives than we would have paid now in soldiers' lives.

But other than that, we're on the same page. Most of the country is schizophrenic.

Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Gaza, Israeli Jews, Moshe Feiglin, Operation Pillar of Defense, Oslo accords

Not worthy of our names

Dan F forwarded this email from an Israeli friend (an American who made aliya many years ago) who responded to the news that the Netanyahu regime has apparently decided not to interfere with President Obama's reelection campaign by attacking Iran.

Of course.
Who on his or her sane mind expected anything else?
We are collectively a sick puppy, sorry. Long winded losers.
Thousands of times I said it only to be abused by pansies.
ISRAELIS ARE UNFIT to lead the Jews and we as a collective are pathetic dummies that keep electing that excrement or tolerating it.

And I will say it again.
They will NOT defend Jews, they will consistently ATTACK Jews, not their "partners", just Jews and they will surely allow Iran to make its bombs because we do not have what it takes to be a nation and take to the streets and sweep the unJews, JINOS and other such.

Sam

I can't say I disagree with him. He's right.

Labels: Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli Jews

American hiker detained in Iran has Jewish Israeli parent

Now that US hikers Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer have been released, US and Israeli media are spilling a secret that they kept for the last two years out of fear of endangering his life: Josh Fattal is the son of a Jewish Israeli father (Hat Tip: Zvi S).

Josh's father, Jacob Fattal, was born in Iraq and moved to Israel before ultimately settling in the United States. Josh Fattal became a Bar Mitzvah at Rodeph Shalom's suburban campus. He traveled to Israel several times, the last time just before meeting up with his friends in Syria and going on to Iraqi Kurdistan, where they crossed the border to Iran and were arrested.

It's no accident that the Jewish side of the story has largely been kept under wraps, according to family friend Brian Gralnick and others familiar with the situation.

And it doesn't take much imagination to guess the reasons why: The Iranian government is virulently anti-Israel and has a history of charging Jews with spying for Israel.

While it stands to reason that Fattal's captors knew his religion or learned it during interrogations, his family did not want to take any chances and risk having information get out into the public sphere that could endanger their son even further.

And, since the families of the three captives worked so closely together, forming a united front, the idea was to keep the focus on three American citizens who were wrongly imprisoned, rather than single out one because of his Jewishness.

So, despite the fact that Laura Fattal appeared frequently in the media as she and the other families waged a public campaign for their children's release, she and other family members declined to be interviewed by the Jewish Exponent. The family also rejected offers of several Jewish organizations to intervene.

The Jewish Exponent chose to refrain from reporting on the story altogether, let alone detail Fattal's Jewish connection, until the hikers were freed.

"When it comes to someone's physical safety, we'll always err on the side of caution, even if it means suppressing such a dramatic and important story," said Lisa Hostein, the Exponent's executive editor.

Read the whole thing.

YNet adds:

"It's the best gift we could have received for the (Jewish) New Year," Fattal's father told Yedioth Ahronoth.

His aunt, who lives in Israel, said: "We've prayed for his safety for the past two years. We went crazy. We talked to him and were able to notice he was very thin. He promised to come visit Israel, but now he's going to undergo a rehabilitation process."

If only we could channel some of this Jewish activism into activism on behalf of Jews and Israel.

/sigh

Labels: hiking, Iran, Israeli Jews, Jewish activism