30-Jun-08: Vilnai versus the victims

The Jerusalem Post carries an article by one of This Ongoing War's blogsters-in-chief in today's print and web edition.

Jun 30, 2008 1:04 | Updated Jun 30, 2008 2:22
Vilna'i's primitive paternalism
By FRIMET ROTH

With his tongue-lashing of Sderot's beleaguered population two weeks ago, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna'i demonstrated a primitive mind-set common in Israeli politics.

"As for the residents (of Sderot), we here in Jerusalem suffered hundreds of casualties" he began, "hundreds dead. And you know this. Whether on exploding buses or other acts of madness in the heart of Israel. In our Jerusalem."

His tirade then slid into tantrum: "So did we say we can't sleep at night? Did we say we were helpless? Did we say we were abandoned? Would I, as a resident of Jerusalem, ever dream of saying such a thing?"

Like most Israeli politicians, Vilna'i clearly considers himself in loco parentis to his constituents and, as such, feels entitled to scold them freely whenever they are "naughty."

The near-silence that greeted Vilnai's supercilious attack was no less troubling. Israelis are so inured to this sort of paternalism that neither the media nor the public gave the deputy defense minister the dressing-down he deserved.

THE INCIDENT reminded American immigrants what it is they sorely miss. In the United States, an elected official is deemed indebted to the voters who gave him his job. If he forgets this basic tenet of democracy, the media and public waste no time in refreshing his memory.

In April 2007, Sen. Barack Obama committed a similar, albeit milder, gaffe to Vilnai's when he described working-class voters in Pennsylvania and Indiana thus:

"So it's not surprising that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who are not like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Fellow politicians and media pundits immediately accused Obama of elitism and of belittling the working class.

Obama initially refused to apologize for his remarks, but soon admitted they were ill-chosen.

"I didn't say it as well as I should have," he admitted at a campaign rally, later adding: "If I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that."

VILNAI'S FAR more brazen attack on victims of terror begs at least that level of apology.

First, it is disingenuous.

As a member of the government, Vilna'i gets a Volvo and a chauffeur at taxpayers' expense. It is highly unlikely he has ever risked his life riding Jerusalem's public buses. And as one of Israel's elite, it is equally fair to assume he does not frequent any of the other sites of most of Jerusalem's bloodiest massacres, such as pizza shops, cafes or promenades.

Second, the fact that Jerusalemites did not take to the streets during the Aksa intifada does not mean their inaction was justified. Vilna'i may praise Jerusalem's victims for their stoicism. But as one of those victims, I regret my silence.

Jerusalemites did not demonstrate the way Sderot residents have for various reasons. The casualty figures were so high that many had either lost a loved one, or knew someone else who had. The entire city was at once grappling with grief and post-traumatic stress. Organizing protest rallies is not exactly an option for people in that mental state.

Finally, we were all naive. Our leaders assured us that they were doing everything they possibly could to contain the terrorists, and we believed them. With hindsight, our gullibility seems astonishing.

WE FIRST realized our error a year-and-a-half into the second intifada. On Seder night March 2002, a massacre at Netanya's Park Hotel stirred our laconic government in a way that the scores of earlier terror attacks had not. One of those attacks, the bombing of Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant, took the life of my 15-year-old daughter, Malki.

Israel's sole response to the Sbarro massacre was to shut down Orient House, Fatah's Jerusalem headquarters. In contrast, it reacted to the Park Hotel atrocity by unleashing the fiercest offensive of the entire intifada, Operation Defensive Shield.

Subsequently, the number of suicide bombings in Israel decreased significantly; the drop between 2002 and 2003 was 50 percent. A poll indicated that 86% of Israeli Jews thought the operation had contributed to their security, and 90% considered it the correct decision. What the poll did not reveal was how many Israelis wondered why hundreds of Israeli civilians had to be murdered before the move was embarked upon.

A GOVERNMENT'S top priority must be the physical security of its citizens as they go about their normal daily activities. It is normal and natural for people to protest when their most basic civil right is violated.

However, far from apologizing after residents of Sderot conveyed their annoyance, Vilna'i dug his heels in: "Those who saw the full picture... will tell (them) that my statement followed another one saying that the nation is falling apart because of Hamas. I said that just as we handled the Syrian threat and the terror in Lebanon, so we will face the Gaza front."

He concluded his self-defense by adding salt to Sderot's wounds: "I did not mean to offend the residents," implying that anyone who had taken offense was just being petty.

Vilna'i also owes Jerusalemites, too, an apology, though we aren't holding our breath waiting for one. He hijacked our grief, our sacrifices and our docility for his own political gain.

Shame on him, any way you look at it.

The author, a freelancer based in Jerusalem, frequently writes on terrorism and on special-needs children. She and her husband founded, in their daughter's memory, the Malki Foundation ( www.kerenmalki.org ), providing concrete support for Israeli families of all religions who care for a special-needs child at home.

29-Jun-08: Crossings

At some stage, it's going to be said that the 'truce' held more or less.

But the reality in the south of Israel is quite different. Last night, the Palestinian-Arab terrorists of Gaza fired more mortars into Israel, this time directing their efforts at the Karni crossing on the Gaza-Israel border. It's a diabolical choice, given the humanitarian conditions that mark the lives of the Gazans. Karni is the crossing that is due to be reopened by Israel today, to allow the transfer of goods into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. All the crossings were closed a week ago following repeated truce violations (i.e. rocket firings and shootings) by the Palestinians.

27-Jun-08: Observing a 'truce'

Though we've been too distracted with life and personal issues to report on it before now, a ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas Gaza regime came into effect in Gaza a week ago, at six in the morning of Thursday 19th June.

To the surprise of no one with brains and a sense of what goes on here, there has been a steady stream of civilian-seeking rocket attacks on Israel since that time.

Even the voices of Israel's left have expressed a fairly consistent degree of doubt whether ceasing fire while your house, farms, towns and cities remain under active attack makes any sense. Yoel Marcus puts it this way in his Haaretz column: this ceasefire may lead to further problems for everyone in the region by letting Hamas regroup, which they're doing right now. And a large-scale police-style incursion into Gaza might yet be needed, given the history and proclivity of the thugs running things across Israel's southern border.

It makes Marcus and those for whom he speaks feel better knowing Israel has done whatever it can to avoid the lengthy stay and multiple Israeli and Palestinian Arab casualties that will follow. He sees (they see) a ceasefire with all its risks as bringing on the chance of calm and a respite from death and destruction. As he writes: "Hamas will take advantage of it to stockpile arms, but it is doing that anyway. It already has tens of thousands of missiles. "

This is plainly true. Marcus writes that "an imperfect calm is better than an imperfect military campaign". Michael Oren ("Israel's Truce With Hamas Is a Victory for Iran" in the Wall Street Journal) thinks not.

The ceasefire, concludes Oren, is a victory for Hamas and for its Iranian sponsors. Hamas won simply by not losing in the face of Israeli efforts to stop the rockets and mortars, and the ceasefire represents a confirmation of its victory. The danger, a view we share, is that this "ceasefire" will allow Iran, through its proxies, to completely encircle Israel with enemies. It's a process they have pursued for some years. Blind Freddie can see they're pressing forward and achieving it.

"As the primary sponsor of Hamas, Iran is the cease-fire's ultimate beneficiary. Having already surrounded Israel on three of its borders -- Gaza, Lebanon, Syria -- Iran is poised to penetrate the West Bank. By activating these fronts, Tehran can divert attention from its nuclear program and block any diplomatic effort. The advocates of peace between Israelis and Palestinians should recognize that fact when applauding quiet at any price. The cost of this truce may well be war."

This morning, a week into this ceasefire, the terrorists fired two more mortar shells into southern Israel. One landed near Kibbutz Kfar Aza in Israel's Sha'ar Hanegev region. The other hit an open area. Yesterday, Thursday afternoon, a Qassam rocket fired from Gaza struck the Sderot industrial zone and exploded next to a gas station. The Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades immediately claimed responsibility. (They're the thuggish gang connected with the Abbas/Fatah regime, purportedly the losers in last year's power struggle in Gaza.)

This past Tuesday, three more jihadist rockets were fired into Sderot, sending two Israeli women into shock and severely damaging a house. Though the Gaza cargo crossings were then shut down by the Israeli authorities, industrial fuel was transferred into Gaza today, according to the Jerusalem Post, ensuring that the Hamas regime can continue to run its power stations. Food shipments into the Gaza Strip were already reinstated as of Tuesday.

This is how it is to live next door to a terrorist regime, and to have a government that responds first to the criticism and advice of foreign governments; second, to the needs of its own beleagured and endangered citizens. Israel's civilian victims of terror are double victims.

YNet points out that the Israeli government refusal to include Gilad Shalit's release in the ceasefire agreement is a violation of a promise made to his family just a few days ago by senior figures in the Olmert administration. The Israeli service-man's parents were quoted speaking this week, exactly two years after the day he was snatched by the Pal-Arab terrorists:

His mother, Aviva, says:

"We have to forge on. We can't allow ourselves the luxury of looking for something to make it easier. It's all about Gilad and he's having a worst time of it than I am. I'm not the problem here. I just keep thinking of ways we can bring him home... It's been 700 days too many and nothing is happening. Of course we're disappointed. I feel helpless because there's nothing I can do to push the process forward... Hope is the only thing we have left, so we have to hang on to it."

Says the father, Noam Shalit:

"We try to remain optimistic, even though we don't have anything concrete to hold on to... We're trying to stay realistic. Not to be too euphoric or too pessimistic. That's not an easy thing to do."

They speak for the entire country.

6-Jun-08: 10 rockets so far today

Ten rockets have been fired into southern Israel so far this morning. One struck Sapir College, on the outskirts of Sderot, causing damage to six cars, and shock. Three mortar shells were also fired into the vicinity.

Israeli towns and homes are the direct and deliberate daily targets (not cross-fire, not collateral damage) of terrorists serving jihadism. They're encouraged and funded by a democratically elected 'government' - the government of Hamas, with the close backing of the Iranian regime.

Which self-respecting government would tolerate, as Israel does, such daily bombardments? And the thousands of rockets? And the billions of dollars in incurred expenses to protect Israeli lives and property?

6-Jun-08: A mathematical miscalculation

The article below, written by one of this blog's two authors, appears in today's international edition of Haaretz. Also online on the Keren Malki website.

A mathematical miscalculation
By Frimet Roth

Prof. David Mumford is exceptionally talented. The fact that he received the Wolf Prize for mathematics in the Knesset last week is testimony to that. It is the second most prestigious honor in the field after the Nobel Prize and was presented to him by President Shimon Peres.

But when Mumford, professor emeritus at Brown University in the United States, announced what he intends to do with his share of the prize money, he left me wondering about his other attributes. He will hand over his award of $33,333 to Bir Zeit University (BZU) in Ramallah, and to Gisha, an Israeli organization that advocates easing travel restrictions on Palestinian students.

Mumford professed familiarity with BZU, owing to a visit there four years ago. Yet that was apparently not followed up by the sort of research you would expect from a mathematician. Had that been done, facts would have surfaced that I hope would have sent Mumford searching elsewhere for beneficiaries.

Mumford justified his choice thus: "I am very grateful for the prize, but I believe that Palestinian students should have an opportunity to go elsewhere to acquire an education." He added, "Students in the West Bank and Gaza today do not have an opportunity to do that." He claimed that this situation contrasts "strikingly" with conditions in Israel where students are able "to travel freely to meetings and graduate students go wherever they please.

That may be true for some, but Mumford seems unaware that many Israeli students have not only been denied a higher education overseas; they have been denied any higher education at all.

My daughter, Malki, for example, did not even graduate high school. She was murdered on August 9, 2001 along with 14 others in Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant. Malki was a gifted flautist and might have become a serious musician. She was devoted to children with disabilities and was considering a career as a physiotherapist.

The loss of my child causes me pain that has not subsided, and never will.

The very university Mumford wants to nurture played a pivotal role in shattering Malki's beautiful life and dreams. Two of the perpetrators of the Sbarro massacre, Ahlam Tamimi and Mahmud Wail Daglas, were from Bir Zeit University. They equipped, enabled and instructed the suicide bomber, Izz al-Din Al-Masri, who detonated an explosives-filled guitar case enhanced with nails, bolts and shrapnel.

Daglas, a Fatah militant, was a communications student. He provided Al-Masri with a safe haven the night before the attack. But Tamimi, a communications student as well as a television news reader for the Palestinian Authority, was the linchpin of this atrocity. She carried Al-Masri's guitar case with her in a taxi. Aged 23, in Western-style dress and chatting in English, she aroused no suspicion as she passed freely through the Qalandiyah checkpoint into Jerusalem. Thus Al-Masri, who exited the taxi a little earlier, was able to approach the checkpoint empty-handed. He sailed through Israeli security.

In this region, the freedom of movement Mumford is advocating has spelled the murder of hundreds of Israeli children in the past eight years.

After the checkpoint, Al-Masri got back into the taxi and rode with Tamimi to the walls of the Old City. From there they walked to the center of West Jerusalem. At the main intersection of Jaffa Road and King George Avenue stood Sbarro's. It is obvious why Tamimi had selected that location as the target: It was filled mostly with women and children on that sweltering summer afternoon.

Tamimi is now serving 16 consecutive life sentences. She was captured on film recently, smiling prettily on learning that among her victims were eight Jewish children. This was three more than she had presumed.

Yihye Ayyash is another BZU alumnus about whom Mumford probably learned nothing on his visit to the university. Ayyash demonstrated electrical and mechanical talent as a child. In 1991 he graduated from BZU with a degree in electrical engineering. He proceeded to fabricate the bombs used in a string of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror attacks which killed 90 innocent Israelis. As a side-line, he advanced the technique of suicide bombings.

After topping Israel's most-wanted list for three years, Ayyash was assassinated by the country's security forces in 1996.

It is no accident that BZU has produced at least five terrorists. During student elections there in 2003, Hamas candidates reenacted suicide bombings by blowing up models of Israeli buses, while in a campus debate one of them boasted: "Hamas activists in this university have killed 135 Zionists."

Mumford purports that his gift dovetails with the aims of the Wolf Prize. "I felt very much that I was really carrying out the spirit of Wolf's own wishes," he said, "to further education in all the areas of Palestine."

Really? According to its Web site, the Wolf Prize endeavors to advance "friendly relations among peoples." The track record of BZU offers little evidence of "friendly relations" with Israel. Terrorism is its cup of tea. And Prof. Mumford is its newest financier.

...
Frimet Roth is a freelance writer in Jerusalem. She and her husband founded the Malki Foundation (www.kerenmalki.org) in their daughter's memory, which provides support for Israeli families of all faiths who care at home for a special-needs child

6-Jun-08: "Against all law and nature that Jewish state should exist..."

Far, far from where the world's attention is focused, Israeli Jews are dying at the hands of the agents of Arab jihadism as they have for decades in this ongoing war.

Yesterday's victim (Thursday 5-Jun-08) is Amnon Rosenberg, a man of 51, a kibbutznik (at Kibbutz Nirim), a father of three children and a supervisor in the Nirlat paint factory on the small kibbutz of Nir Oz in southern Israel, just across the way from the barbarian strongholds of Hamas. Hamas, responsible for carrying out thousands of mortar and rocket attacks into civilian areas of Israel in the past several years of war, wasted no time in claiming 'credit' for the attack.

Four other Israelis were injured. One has serious wounds to his back, another suffered moderate shrapnel-induced chest wounds and two men were treated for superficial injuries.

A photo of Amnon Rosenberg is below.

Since 2004, sixteen other Israeli civilians have been murdered at work, or at home, or nearby, in attacks by the the Iranian-funded, Iranian-supported, Iranian-supervised terror organizations that border Israel's south, as UPI pointed out this morning.

These are numbers worth remembering when facile, idiotic news reports playing down the dangers of so-called home-made weapons appear in the media.

Of course, these attacks by lethal weapons are a perfectly understandable response to Israeli occupation and settlement, right? Yes, if you're hopelessly confused. No, if you have any idea of the history of this ongoing war.

Robert F. Kennedy was a journalist in this neighbourhood right after World War II, in the months before the State of Israel was created. That's not widely known or remembered because the paper for whom he was a correspondent at the time - the Boston Post - went out of business in the fifties, along with its database of stories. But this week, in honour of the fortieth anniversary of RFK's murder at the hands of a Palestinian Arab terrorist called Sirhan Sirhan, exactly forty years ago today, some of his published observations at the time of his visit were republished. (Many thanks, Lenny Ben-David.) For people like us, living here and living through the dynamic and the day to day reality, it's compelling reading. For people far from here, ignorant (as most people are) of history, it must seem like science fiction.

A couple of quotations from the Kennedy articles:

• “The Arabs in command believe that eventually victory must be theirs. It is against all law and nature that this Jewish state should exist. They... promise that if it does become a reality it will never have as neighbors anything but hostile countries, which will continue the fight militarily and economically until victory is achieved.”
• “The Jews on the other hand believe that in a few more years, if a Jewish state is formed, it will be the only stabilizing factor remaining in the Near and Middle East. The Arab world is made up of many disgruntled factions which would have been at each other’s throats long ago if it had not been for the common war against Zionism.”
  

Bobby Kennedy's words, written at a time when there was no such thing as a Palestinian state, no such thing as the "occupied" territories, no Palestinian "refugee" camps, no UN Resolution 242, no PLO, no Hamas, are a reminder of why this blog is called "This Ongoing War".

They're also another reminder that when Hamas, Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, Ahmedinajad and the entire jihadist enterprise and their naive and dangerous co-conspirators speak about eliminating the Zionist state, they should be taken literally. Our struggle here is, was and evidently will continue to be a matter of life and death. Ours.

Our deep sympathy goes out to the Rosenberg family of Kibbutz Nirim.