Posts Tagged ‘Israel’

The Palestinians Losing the Culture War in Israel

Posted: July 16, 2014 by datechguy in Israel, middle east
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We’ve briefly talked about the revenge killing of Muhammad Abu Khdei who was murdered in response to the kidnapping and slaying of three Israeli teens, but what we haven’t talked about is the cultural significance in this.

I think it’s the sign of a cultural turn and one that our Palestinian friends should see as a huge warning sign.

One of the constant lies of Palestinian/arab propaganda is the idea of Jewish “ethnic cleansing” or Apartheid we’ve demolished this myth several times here but we never really talked about why it’s false.

Israel certainly has the power, the ability and the weaponry to wipe the Palestinians off the face of the earth. If the Jewish state choose, it could say half a mile into Gaza, totally destroy the existing housing there, create a kill zone and simply move the border accordingly. The arabs couldn’t stop them and would be subject to massive slaughter if they tried. They are in the position to take and displace the arabs en masse whenever they want. If they wanted to rebuild the temple, the dome of the rock would be gone and no arab army would react because to do so would invite slaughter.

So why doesn’t Israel do these things?

The answer is pretty simple, the western values that Israel has precludes those things but it’s more than that.

Israel was founded in the late 40′s and fought a full-scale war in the 40′s, 50′s 60′s and 70′s and 80′s to keep it. That generation goal was always the security of the Jewish state, simply to be left alone.

But time passes and that generation is dying.

Now Israel has a population where more than half of their people were born after the six-day war. Jerusalem and the west bank have been a part of Israel all their lives. They have not had to fight a full-scale war but have endorsed rocket & terror attacks regularly.

While the older generation might have accepted this as the price of the return to their ancient lands the younger generation is likely to have none of it. They did not flee from arab lands to Israel as their parents or grandparents did and do not have the memory of a time when they might have had friendly, or at least not hostile arab neighbors.

All they know is they are trying to live their lives and the Arabs are tying to kill them while they do so to make up for a war they lost and their failure to destroy them.

Furthermore they see those same arabs celebrating their deaths and they unlike the west, know what the Arabs are saying in arabic and know exactly what the Palestinians are being taught and what their goals really are. The best symbol of this?

Palestinian rioters in the Arab-Israeli town of Shuafat outside Jerusalem have completely destroyed a new light rail system built by Israel to improve travel in the city and connect it to other towns.

And that message has not been lost on those who saw it.

The total destruction of the modern light rail—which was seen as a symbol of coexistence between Israeli and Arab areas of Jerusalem—is evidence of mounting frustration among Israeli Arabs, who have increasingly clashed with Israeli police as tensions reach a boiling point following the murders.

“These are Arab-Israelis in Jerusalem, and they destroyed a multi-million dollar project that connected them to the rest of the city,” said Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). “This is apartheid, self imposed.”.

That leads to changing attitudes to a new generation of Israeli warriors and not one that bodes well for the Arabs:

Tamir Lion, an anthropologist who studies youth, said he was troubled by the changing attitudes among Israel’s young people. For many years, Mr. Lion interviewed soldiers about why they chose to enter combat units. “The answers,” he said on Israel Radio, “were always about the challenge, to show I could make it, the prestige involved.”

That began to change in 2000, he said. “I started to get answers — not a lot, but some — like: ‘To kill Arabs.’ The first time I heard it, it was at the time of the large terror attacks, and since then it has not stopped.”

A generation has grown up in a period of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with suicide bombs and military incursions, rocket fire and airstrikes. Young people on both sides may think about the other more as an enemy than as a neighbor.

Mr. Lion, head of research at the Ethos Institute, said he was troubled. “Today I can say, and everyone who works with youth will say it, Jewish youth in Israel hate Arabs without connection to their parents or their own party affiliation and their own political opinions.”

This represents a serious miscalculation for the arabs and their allies:

Those who blamed Israel for radicalizing Palestinian youth could do so freely because they never thought Israeli youth could be radicalized in sufficient numbers to expose their hypocrisy. They might now be wondering if they were wrong.

The 20 something who joined the Israeli army in 2000 is now the 30 something vet and or junior or middle officer in 10 more years they will be the General in charge of striking back and it 20 more years they will be the prime minister who says “enough”. Moreover that population will be augmented by Jews who have fled Islamic persecution in Europe.

While Seth Mandel doesn’t think Israeli youth may be resentful of the Palestinians who have tried to kill them I’m betting they not only resent it, but are getting damn tired of it and in a very few years those youth will be in government and will not be inclined to show restraint.

For decades the Arabs have wanted to exterminate the Jews but have not had the power, during that same time the Jews had the power to exterminate the Arabs but did not have the will or desire.

I predict that in a generation the Arabs will still not have the power to exterminate the jews but the jews will not only still have that power, but might also have the will to do it.

If I were the arabs I’d make a deal and make it NOW while the 1948 generation is still alive because any deal they will get once they’re gone will come from the barrel of a gun.

For it

Posted: March 30, 2011 by datechguy in middle east, opinion/news
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The AP reports the Palestinian authority is willing to give up US funding in order to get together with Hamas:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is making a heavy push for reconciliation with Hamas and is willing to give up hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid if that’s what it takes to forge a Palestinian unity deal, a top aide said Monday.

Good! I think our giving these guys $470 mil a year while they behead infants and cheer about it is an abomination.

Let’s cut to the chase, with an Egypt ready to support or at the very least no longer willing to restrain Hamas Abbas has decided he might as well take off the mask he has been wearing for years and join the side that he is actually on. I’m for that. Let’s stop pretending that the Palestinians of the west bank are any more peaceful than those in Gaza. the only reason why they haven’t launched regular strikes in Israel is because of the wall.

The sooner we face these facts the more clear our choices will be.

Israel’s strong response to the murder of Israeli children: Saving Palestinian children

Posted: March 17, 2011 by datechguy in middle east
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If you want to know the difference between barbarians and civilized people here it is:

IDF forces and local paramedics helped save the life of a Palestinian woman and her newly born infant Wednesday, at the settlement where Fogel relatives are sitting Shiva for the five Israelis brutally murdered last week.

Just as IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz arrived in Neve Tzuf to offer his condolences, a Palestinian cab raced towards the community’s entrance. In it, soldiers and paramedics discovered a Palestinian woman in her 20s in advanced stages of labor and facing a life-threatening situation: The umbilical cord was wrapped around the young baby girl’s neck, endangering both her and her mother.

The quick action of settler paramedics and IDF troops deployed in the area saved the mother’s and baby’s life, prompting great excitement and emotions at the site where residents are still mourning the brutal death of five local family members.

Talk about a hopeful sign. I wonder if Palestinians will be giving out cakes over this? Likely not.

Meanwhile how is the left is reacting to the previous murders, I’ll let Elder of Ziyon tell the tale:

Compare this article to how a Mondoweiss writer named Max Ajl describes what he think the left’s reaction should be to the Itamar murders:

You want my condemnation? You will not have it. No one should respond to such demagogic moral blackmail. We killed those children. There are those who will warp my words. Good luck. I do not want children to die, no child deserves to die or deserves such parents or deserves to be born into such a society or such a state.

It is amazing that the Jewish anti-Israel left is less sympathetic to the Itamar victims than the neighboring Arabs whose land is supposedly being stolen. And to these sickening leftists, Jews who want to live in Judea and Samaria do not have the right to life.

I suspect the MSM isn’t going to be big on this story either.

A tiny sign of hope in the middle of slaughter

Posted: March 16, 2011 by datechguy in media, middle east, opinion/news
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On the right the outrage over the slaughter of the Fogel family continues:

The mainstream media is trying to whitewash the whole thing by dehumanizing the murdered family while neglecting to reveal the motive behind the killings (jihad & killing Jews for jihad). And just as they did after the islamic terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Palestinians celebrated in the streets over the death of innocents who were killed in the name of allah, holding carnivals and handing out sweets.

Why is the MSM keeping it quiet, I suspect they understand the decapitation of infants doesn’t sit will with the general public.

Israellycool notes that Glenn Beck managed to cover it:

And notes the celebrations by Palestinians.

The 12 year old survivor words to the prime minister when he visits should fill us with shame:

Even those of us who do not speak any Hebrew can catch the word “America” in the only sentence uttered by the tearful child, in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s presence: “Ma yikreh im taaseh mashehu, az America taaseh lecha mashehu!?” (What will happen if you do anything, America will get at you!?). In other words, this child has concluded that Obama’s America would not permit her prime-minister to “do anything”

Perhaps its because the first response of the administration was to hit Israel for building:

The U.S. Embassy said Monday it was “deeply concerned” by Israeli plans to build hundreds of new homes in West Bank settlements, calling the Israeli enclaves “illegitimate” and an obstacle to resuming direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

In a defiant response to a deadly attack on a settler family over the weekend, Israel swiftly approved the construction of between 300 and 500 new homes in major West Bank settlement blocks. Jewish settlement construction is at the crux of the current impasse in peace efforts.

Yeah why should the Obama administration be deeply concerning about beheading infants, he doesn’t even give the lip service that is offered in Libya. Meanwhile Hamas being Hamas has two different messages, one for those reading in English:

Palestinian National Movement Hamas official Ezzat Al-Rashak said that the movement is not responsible for the murder of the five family members from the Itamar settlement.

Al-Rashak confirmed that harming children is not part of Hamas’ policy, nor is it the policy of the resistance factions.

He also confirmed that the possibility that the incident was carried out by settlers for criminal motives should not be ruled out. [emphasis added]

And one for those reading in Arabic:

But on the Arabic section of the website, an article was published praising the attacker as a ‘mujahid’ and deriding the slain Jews as “Zionist usurpers.” What’s worse, at the time I checked there were 34 comments on the article posted by readers, all praising the attack and the attacker (I translated the first 17 or so). Curiously, while the Hamas statement in the English article raised the possibility of the act being carried out by settlers, in the Arabic article there’s no doubt that the attacker was a Palestinian ‘mujahid’.

And the comments left by readers in Arabic are even worse.

Yet among all this gloom, a tiny glimmer from a reporter on the scene:

I went to Shchem today, and was very surprised. People on the street were willing to condemn the murder unequivocally, in Arabic and in Hebrew, with no embarrassment, in front of the camera, and even identify themselves. [He shows some examples]. I’ve been covering the Palestinian territories for years, but this I’ve never seen before. In the middle of town, publicly, people had no compunctions openly to condemn the murder of children.

The post gives several possible reasons for the change and ends with this:

This is all speculative, and possibly wishful thinking. Yet I’m not certain. Over the past few months, perhaps a year, I’ve been wandering a lot through East Jerusalem, and occasionally through parts of the West Bank, and the calm and normality have been striking. I’ve also had more simply normal human interactions with Palestinians than in many years. Something may be happening – unreported in the media, in a dynamic which contradicts the endless chatter of the diplomats – but potentially very important.

If so, it needs to be carefully and warily nurtured. Carefully, warily, and nurtured. And patiently.

If this is ever going to change the Arabs have to change. I’d like to think this can happen.

Update: Jeff Jacoby on the topic in the Globe. What is says is not as interesting as the number of comments deleted by the Globe, if you read the comment and responses around then it tell an interesting story. Nothing is more dangerous to the left’s public image than their uncensored opinions.

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