Ray Cook - As I See It

Israel, Zionism and the Media

Tag: Itamar

Partners for peace? What Palestinians think about the the Itamar murders

08/04/2011 / / 0 Comments

There is a view held by the wishful thinkers, the ideologues, politicians seeking their place in history and the downright malign Israel- and Jew-haters that somehow, if Israel were to withdraw from Judea and Samaria/the West Bank a Palestinian state would be possible, based on the 1949 cease fire lines, the so-called 1967 borders.

ynetnews reports that a recent poll reveals that no less than 32% of those Palestinians questioned believe that the murder of 5 family members in Itamar last month, including a baby and two children, was justified.

I have been told that we should be stressing that 63% did not support these murders and that to emphasise the minority that did is unworthy.

I beg to differ.

Here are the highlights of the report:

A team of Israeli and Palestinian pollsters says a third of Palestinians surveyed said they supported an attack last month that saw five members of the Fogel family stabbed to death in their home in the West Bank settlement of Itamar.

…

The poll found 63 percent opposed the attack and 32 percent backed it. Pollsters from Hebrew University and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research surveyed 1,270 Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. The margin of error was 3 percentage points.

The poll was published Wednesday.

Is it a negative spinning of these results to highlight that 1 in 3 questioned actually supported cold-blooded murder?

What if 1 in 3 ‘settlers’ interviewed said that they agreed that it was OK to murder Palestinian children to liberate Judea and Samaria?

Would the Arab world spin this as 63% of settlers do not believe it is right to murder innocents, including children? Oh, Ok, those Jews aren’t that bad after all.

Or would they already be demonstrating on the streets of every capital in the Islamic world, in Europe, on US campuses?

Would they not be falling over themselves in the UN General Assembly to censure the Zionist entity for its bloodthirsty immorality?

Would not Ahmadinejad be orchestrating Jew-hatred on the streets of Teheran?

And of course, if it were the case that 63% of ‘settlers’ believed this, they’d be right, for a change, to so demonstrate and to condemn.

So what is it about Palestinians that renders them immune from such worldwide censure?

Where are the demos in Tel Aviv and Haifa?

Why aren’t the Jews of Europe on the march in Oslo and Rome?

Where is Ban Ki Moon? Or has he his dark side turned to the Palestinians whilst he bathes the Israelis in the bright lunacy which makes the English rendering of his name so apt?

H/T Ami Isseroff

Itamar – an apology

23/03/2011 / / 1 Comment

In a previous article I was grievously misleading when I said of the murderer of baby Hadas, one of five family members of the Fogel family slaughtered in Itamar 10 days ago:

You grab the baby Hadas. You don’t know her name. She is just a Jewish baby. Something inhuman. Less than human. Of less worth than a dog or even a rat.

You have her by the head and you draw your knife across her throat and watch the lifeblood spill out on her pillow and bedclothes.

However, CiFWatch reports:

The three-month old baby [Hadas] was underneath the father.  The baby was killed with one stab wound to the skull.

I am so sorry to have misled you all. In fact, it was another of the children who had received the wound I had attributed to Hadas:

…found the 11-year-old[Yoav] who had been butchered, his throat was sliced so deep that his head was nearly detached from the body.

How remiss of me to suggest that the murderer could cut the throat of a baby.

Throat-cutting starts at the age of 11 in Judea/Samaria, apparently.

And the indefatigable Adam Levick finally tells us this:

I then asked Sgt. Itelman if he treated any Palestinians shortly after the attack in Itamar, and, if so, whether he had any particular thoughts he wanted to share about the experience.

His reply:

“The very next day, after the attacks in Itamar, I treated a suspect arrested on suspicion of participating in the planning of the attack in Itamar.  When in custody, the suspect had very severe bronchitis attack, which could have killed him, and the only thing I could do is be as detached and professional as possible. I treated him well and he survived.

I’m an IDF professional, and that’s what we’re trained to do.”

So vengeful, these Jews.

Itamar – an inspiring story

16/03/2011 / / 0 Comments

h/t to Elder of Ziyon for this heart-rending and inspirational story of human dignity and love in the face of appalling tragedy.

From A Soldier’s Mother blog:

For now, the Fogel family is sitting Shiva, the hardest, most intense part of the mourning. People come to visit and usually, food is put out somewhere. Some people spend hours sitting and talking – and many try to encourage the family to eat something. You talk of the loved ones, you see pictures. People come and tell you stories you had never heard before about how special they were. Your heart breaks a thousand times, and then a thousand times more.

Quietly, over the last few days, a man has been coming to the house bringing food and stocking the kitchen. His name is Rami Levy and he owns a chain of supermarkets. I’ve heard amazing stories about him in the past but this one beats all I have ever heard.

Every day, Rami Levy comes by the shiva house to the Fogel family and fills the cupboards and refrigerator himself with food for the family and guests. Today, one of the relatives thanked him for this incredible kindness and his response brought me to tears,”You will get used to my face,” he told this family in mourning, “I have committed myself that every week I will deliver food and stock your home until the youngest orphan turns 18 years old.”

The youngest orphan of this tragedy is a young 2 year old boy…

What Rami Levy has done is commit to 16 years of kindness. If this was a week in which the Palestinians should be ashamed, and it was, than this is a week in which we Jews have the right to be so proud.

Itamar and the redefinition of evil

14/03/2011 / / 1 Comment

The story of the murder of five members of the Fogel family in Itamar in Samaria, or, if you insist, the West Bank, should be known to you. If not, then here is a short description of what happened from the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

At least one terrorist infiltrated the West Bank settlement of Itamar, southeast of Nablus, late Friday night (11 March) and stabbed to death Udi (36) and Ruth (35) Fogel, and their children Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and 3-month-old Hadas.

The killings occurred shortly after 10 p.m., when one or two attackers jumped the fence that surrounds Itamar and broke into the home of Ruth and Udi Fogel. The attackers went from room to room, first stabbing the parents and their 3-month-old baby girl, Hadas. They proceeded to the next room where they killed the two sleeping boys, Elad, 4, and Yoav, 11.
Two other boys – Ro’ie, 8 and Yishai, 2 – were sleeping in another room and were not attacked.

The family’s oldest child, 12- year-old Tamar, was out of the house at the time and alerted neighbors when no one opened the door for her.

I don’t know what your views on Israeli settlement activity in Judea/Samaria are.  If you are an anti-Zionist,  that’s fine. If you don’t like Jews, then I think you are a bigot, but never mind. If you don’t agree with Israel’s policies in Judea and Samaria, ok, I’m not a big fan myself.

If you dislike Israel and/or Jews and/or Zionists BUT you want peace and you want two peoples to be able to live together despite your dislike of one of them, then please read what I am about to write.

Just to be sure. I don’t care what your politics are or which side you support or who you hate or dislike but I do want you to think about this incident.

I am especially keen that those of you on what’s known as the ‘hard left’ who are very fond of demonising Israel and Israelis read this.

If you are a supporter of Palestine and somehow think that this family deserved this, then I want you to read what I am about to write.

If you think that these actions are a valid form of ‘resistance’, then read this.

If you love life, Israel, Jews, Zionism, humanity in all its forms and with all its terrible faults and contradictions, then I would guess you are already outraged and don’t need to read this; but please spare me a few more minutes of your time.

Look at the picture of 3-month old Hadas Fogel above. Now imagine that you are about to break into her bedroom and find her in her cot. You have a knife, a very sharp knife, in your hand. You are fired up with hate and anger and, no doubt, jihadi passion. Maybe you have seen friends killed by Israelis. Maybe you have been fed hatred of Jews your entire life. Maybe life is hard for you and your family because of Israeli checkpoints and restrictions. Maybe some Jew has torn out your olive trees.

Maybe you have a 3-month old sister or niece or daughter. You love children and babies. They are the future. They are innocent, are they not?

Nevertheless, you find the sleeping baby (and you have already killed her parents whilst her young brothers wait for your knife in another room). Maybe the the baby has woken with the commotion. Maybe she is crying for her dead mother whom you have just slaughtered in her bed, stabbing her many times.

You grab the baby Hadas. You don’t know her name. She is just a Jewish baby. Something inhuman. Less than human. Of less worth than a dog or even a rat.

You have her by the head and you draw your knife across her throat and watch the lifeblood spill out on her pillow and bedclothes.

You do not feel remorse. You feel jubilation. You have committed an heroic deed. You can’t wait to get back home and show them your bloody clothes and your hands still drenched in Jewish blood. But there are still two young boys to despatch. Did one watch as his brother was stabbed to death awaiting his fate? Or were they still sleeping as your knife did its deadly work?

And what do your friends and your parents and your community think of you? Do they alert the police? Do they scream bloody murder?

No. They rejoice. They could not be happier.

When the news reaches Gaza, Hamas hands out sweets/candies to children of a similar age to those just murdered.

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas calls Israeli president Netanyahu to express his sorrow at the deed and then continues with his never-ending slanders, blood-libels and dehumanisation of Jews.

No doubt Abbas is happy that Netanyahu has retaliated. Did this retaliation take the form of a massacre of Palestinian innocents? No, it took the form of approving 500 new housing blocks in West Bank ‘settlements’, for which he was condemned by the USA. Another notch is tightened on the rack of Israeli delegitimisation. The assassin has done well.

So, I ask you, you who approve or at least ‘understand’ how such things can happen, or, rather then condemn, reel off a long list of Israeli ‘crimes’ which justify the ‘resistance’, I ask you to explain your moral position. Or maybe you’ve come out with some platitudes about how sorry you are, but…

Yes, it’s that ‘but’ which says it all.

There are no ‘buts’.

Any person who can perform such a depraved act is no person. They are not members of any human race that I can recognise. No-one, however angry, however repressed, however poor and certainly however ‘religious’ can ever, ever, ever justify or minimise or excuse or explain, let alone rejoice, at such an act.

And any people, which wants to take its part in the family of nations, which bases its national aspirations on the demonisation and dehumanisation of another race or nation or group is not, nor deserves the name of, a ‘nation’ or ‘people’.

And before you start to tell me about the atrocities Jews perpetrated against Arabs and the British and bring up Deir Yassin and Gaza and Lebanon and Sabra and Shatila, then read again the sentence above.

All I hear is the deafening silence or mealy-mouthed ‘explanations’ coming from the Arab world and the hard left.

At the Fogel home there is also deafening silence.

© 2024 Ray Cook – As I See It

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑