As the Jewish state of Israel becomes the 21st century's NAZI regime…

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

Israel wrecked my home. Now it wants my land.

By NUREDDIN AMRO | Friday, July 31, 2015


Nureddin Amro at his East Jerusalem home, which was partially demolished this spring. — Photo: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Washington Post.

EAST JERUSALEM — The world is watching Susiya to see if Israel will demolish the community of 340 Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills. The Supreme Court here has refused to delay the forced removal of structures where 55 families have lived since they were displaced by state-sponsored archaeological digs that helped expand a nearby settlement. Living under the threat of demolition is a horrible experience. The Palestinians of Susiya probably feel disoriented, unstable and scared that their way of life could be dismantled at any minute. I know, because I’m in a similar situation. In my neighborhood, the destruction has already started.

Just before dawn on March 31st, dozens of Israeli soldiers and police officers blocked off the streets and surrounded the one-story house where my older brother Sharif, his family of six, our 79-year-old mother, my wife, my three children and I live. We had gone to bed looking forward to a picnic the next morning, but we were awoken by the frightening sounds of jeeps and heavy machinery. Israeli security forces banged on the doors, shouting in Hebrew that we had to get out at once. They had come to demolish our home.

I was born in Jerusalem. My parents were born in Jerusalem. Their parents were born in Jerusalem. Their parents were born in Jerusalem. Our modest house is approximately 70 years old — older than the state of Israel. I have lived here in al-Sawana, a neighborhood between the Old City and the Mount of Olives, not far from the Gethsemane Valley (where the Romans caught Jesus), for more than 40 years. It is near a commercial area, hospitals, Muslim and Jewish cemeteries and precious religious sites for the three big monotheistic faiths. In other words, I live on strategic land.

In December, city planners, civil engineers and workers from Israel's Nature and Parks Authority began walking up and down the neighborhood. They ordered people on my block to clean up things like broken furniture and wood outside our houses (we complied), measured the area with surveying tools and spray-painted footpath markings for hikers. Eventually they told us that we lived on “public land” inside something called the Jerusalem Walls National Park (established in 1974), where they warned us they have plans for further work. Government documents suggest that they will connect the Tzurim Valley National Park and the Beit Orot settlement, below the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Mount Scopus, where I studied, to the City of David archaeological site and Jewish settlement in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan — ultimately putting a Jewish belt around the eastern, Muslim side of the Old City. The parks authority has already boasted of beautifying this area, through which many Jewish pilgrims and hikers cross on Jewish holidays.

Israel employs numerous policies to push Palestinians out of East Jerusalem, including house demolitions, often ostensibly because homeowners lack the proper building permits. Human rights organizations argue that these “administrative demolitions” are illegitimate because Israel usually refuses to issue home-construction permits to Palestinians and because the permit regime is one-way, driving Palestinians out of areas Israel wants to control. (Tear-downs can also be collective punishments for violent acts carried out by individual Palestinian family members.)

All this helps explain what happened early that March morning. At first, the officials who showed up said they had come just to raze the eastern wall near the street, although they did not have a demolition order. I went through the house to my brother Sharif's side to tell him, but when I got there, the officials said we were standing in a room they planned to demolish. They roughly pulled us outside, injuring Sharif's leg. Meanwhile, they began tearing down the two outer rooms on my side of the house without my knowledge. My wife shouted, “They've already begun demolishing our house!”

Police and soldiers — many of whom were masked — pushed us back inside and kept us there so they could work unimpeded, and when I went outside again, they were knocking over a big tree. When it fell, it collapsed part of the garden wall, a piece of which injured the leg of my 12-year-old son, Mohammed. My family documented the damage with our camera phones, even as they cut our electricity and destroyed the sewage pipes.

By the time the soldiers left, less than four hours later, they had destroyed the kitchen and three other rooms, the wall that separates the house from the street, the chicken coop and the garden that we loved. Trees felled by the bulldozer were pushed to the side of the property. The place where my children — the others are 9 and 5 — used to play under the shade of those old trees was now covered by piles of rubble.

It wasn't easy living in a house surrounded by rubble, especially since my brother and I are both blind. Still, I found myself unable to throw away the crushed concrete, which was mixed with fragments of my entire life. Each uprooted plant and broken piece of furniture was a part of our story. While it was hard to walk over and around the rubble as we tried to live, it was just as hard to imagine tossing it into a dumpster.

For weeks, the detritus was a source of confusion. Some Palestinians in our situation are told to remove it or face high fines. Others who clean it immediately fear that they have erased the ugly testimony to Israel's act. I didn't want to take any action that would undermine my legal position, and I didn't want to do anything to invite further demolitions. At the same time, I wanted to restore some amount of normalcy to our daily lives and provide a safe play space for my kids by putting up a fence between us and the road that passes by our home.



Life for Palestinians in Jerusalem is complicated. Laws favor the Israeli authorities and Jewish citizens, especially settlers, and are interpreted unevenly and unpredictably. As the principal of a school for visually impaired and sighted children, I have supported hundreds of families as they have tried to stay on their ancestral land. Now my family is among them. We live in daily fear that the soldiers will come back and that nobody will protect us.

Several weeks later, after I paid to fix the electricity and the sewage pipes, they did come back. I was at work running the school’s end-of-the-year party. My brother called to tell me that soldiers and municipal officials had showed up at our house and said they wanted to clean up the rubble. We had already been advised by other Palestinians in Jerusalem who had gone through the same experience that if the city hauled the wreckage, it would charge us exorbitant fees for the job and might later claim rights to the land. So I told my brother to prevent them from doing any work. After several hours of arguing, they gave us two hours to remove the mess. We explained that this was clearly impossible, and they agreed to give us two days.

The next day, I found a bulldozer company willing to work on promise of future payment, and we started the job. On May 30th, a Saturday morning — the Jewish Sabbath, during which Israeli public offices are closed — officials returned with the police. They threatened to fine or arrest us for cleaning up the rubble without a permit.

We didn't know if we should laugh or cry. They had themselves demanded that we clean up the debris and had given us a permit the previous day! Then they threatened to fine us if we disposed of the rubble illegally, and they reminded us that the legal disposal sites were closed until Sunday. Workers from the bulldozer company, who were busy cleaning up the rubble, promised to keep it in their trucks until the dump reopened.

Many people know that more than 600 Palestinian villages were depopulated in the years during and after Israel's founding and that most of them were demolished. Some people also know that tens of thousands of structures have been torn down by Israel since the 1967 war, some 500 homes in East Jerusalem alone since 2004. Fewer know that there are more than 11,000 open demolition orders against Palestinian structures just in Area C of the West Bank. This means that Israel can raze them at any moment, without further warning; Palestinians in those homes live in constant fear.

There are so many demolition orders, in fact, that Israel has sought more efficient ways to get all the work done. So it often recommends that Palestinians knock down their own homes at their own expense, freeing Israel of the hassle and risk. Some do. It seems this isn't enough for Israel, though, because authorities continue to experiment with new and creative ways of dispossessing Palestinians. My own home seems to have been demolished using a municipal ordinance related to cleanliness of public areas in order to avoid judicial scrutiny, according to a Palestinian legal clinic that is challenging the operation. Indeed, in the three months before the demolition, I received two orders to clear away broken and old objects outside my house; I did as they asked. Demolition is not listed as a punishment for violating these orders, but human rights lawyers told me they have identified other recent cases in which Israeli municipal authorities cited the ordinance as a pretext for flattening homes.

Living under the threat of demolition is nerve-racking, as the residents of Susiya know, and it seems impossible to win against the legal and physical force Israel commands. My family is unsure about what to do next. Still, we do not intend to give up. If they completely demolish our homes, we will rebuild.

• Nureddin Amro is the founder and principal of Siraj al-Quds School for Integrated Education, a Jerusalem school for visually impaired, poor, orphaned and emotionally troubled children.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/israel-wrecked-my-home-now-it-wants-my-land/2015/07/31/79808fca-36cf-11e5-9d0f-7865a67390ee_story.html

[reality]

Yes..its very sad that alot of the people who govern his country are terrorists

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Netanyahu is a WAR CRIMINAL and a HYPOCRITE who is leading by example and showing rightie extremist terrorists in Israel how to do it whenever he uses the Israeli military to carry out terrorist acts and war crimes on his behalf. The people are “learning by example” from the MASTER of the 21st century's NAZI regime.


from The Washington Post....

Israeli leaders propose harsh new measures to fight ‘Jewish terrorism’

By WILLIAM BOOTH and RUTH EGLASH | 4:02PM EDT - Sunday, August 02, 2015


Israelis take part in a rally August 1st, 2015 in Tel Aviv's Meir Square in solidarity with the victims of an attack on six participants
of a gay pride march in Jerusalem a few days earlier. — Photo: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images.

JERUSALEM — Israeli leaders proposed harsh new measures on Sunday to curb “Jewish terrorism,” following a wave of extremist violence that left Israeli and Palestinian children dead in knife and arson attacks.

An Israeli teenager, described by her parents as a sweet and magical child, succumbed to her wounds Sunday after being stabbed by a Jewish extremist at a gay pride parade last week.

Hours earlier, thousands of Israelis held anti-violence rallies across the country protesting attacks by Israeli assailants against gays and Palestinians.

Israelis were reeling from the fast-moving violence of recent days that included Jewish settlers clashing with government forces at a West Bank settlement, the knife attack at the gay pride parade in Jerusalem, and a lethal arson attack in a Palestinian village that saw a toddler burned to death.

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon on Sunday said Israeli authorities should be allowed to employ the same heavy-handed measures against Israeli terrorism suspects as the state uses against Palestinian suspects in the occupied West Bank, freeing the military to seek “administrative detention” against suspects, which would enable them to hold detainees for months, and sometimes years, in prison without presenting charges.

After speaking out against attacks by Jewish extremists and saying he felt shame the violence had come “from my own people,” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin was deluged with threats on social media, leading his security detail to file a complaint with Israeli police because of fears that the leader's life was in danger.

Rivlin was called a “traitor” and a “terrorist” on posts written in Hebrew on Facebook and was depicted wearing a kaffiyeh, a Palestinian checkered headdress.

During a period of similar tumult two decades ago, a right-wing Jewish extremist shot and killed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 as he departed a Tel Aviv peace rally attended by more than 100,000.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the government will have “zero tolerance” for Jewish extremists, vowing that Israel is committed to fight “hate, fanaticism and terrorism from whatever side.”

Netanyahu then went on the offensive, applauding Israeli leaders who condemned Jewish extremists but asking why Palestinian leaders praise acts of terror on their side.

“We deplore and condemn these murderers. We will pursue them to the end,” the prime minister said. “They name public squares after the murderers of children. This distinction cannot be blurred or covered up.”

Palestinian officials countered that it is Netanyahu and his government who have been peddling incitement.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who ordered his security forces in the West Bank to combat violent protests against Israel over the weekend, said Netanyahu wants to see violence flare in the West Bank.

“Why does Netanyahu say there is no partner for peace?” Abbas said, according to the Jerusalem Post. “Is it because he has no interest in peace? His best weapon is the intifada,” a reference to the surge of suicide bombings by Palestinians in the early 2000s.

The spiral of violence began Wednesday when Israeli soldiers and police clashed with Jewish settlers at the West Bank community of Beit El.

The Israeli authorities were attempting to demolish two illegal structures at the Jewish settlement on the outskirts of Ramallah that were built without permits on private Palestinian land. Two building were leveled but only after Netanyahu said 300 housing units would be built in their place.

On Thursday, Israel's gay community came under attack as a Jewish extremist stabbed six people at the annual Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem.

On Friday, arsonists set fire to two homes in the Palestinian village of Duma in the West Bank, burning a toddler alive and injuring three others. The investigation is under a gag order but it appeared that no arrests had been made.

The assailants signed their work with a spray-painted message that read “Revenge!” in Hebrew, next to scrawled image of a Star of David. Authorities say the attack was most likely carried out by Jewish extremists in reaction to events in Beit El.

The stabbing at the gay pride parade was carried out by a man who appeared to be an ultra-Orthodox Jew, Yishai Schlissel, recently freed after 10 years in prison for committing a similar assault.

One of those injured, Shira Banki, 16, died of her wounds Sunday.

“Our magical Shira was murdered because she was a happy 16-year-old — full of life and love — who came to express her support for her friends' rights to live as they choose. For no good reason and because of evil, stupidity and negligence, the life of our beautiful flower was cut short,” said her family in a statement, according to the Israeli news Web site Walla.

The teenager's death came just a few hours after rallies staged to protest the recent surge in violence committed by Israelis on their own citizens and Palestinians.

Rivlin, the Israeli president, told crowds in Jerusalem on Saturday night: “The flames are spreading in our land, flames of violence, flames of hatred, flames of false, distorted and twisted beliefs. Flames which permit the shedding of blood, in the name of the Torah, in the name of the law, in the name of morality, in the name of a love for the land of Israel.”

Rivlin said the attacks should be a “wake-up call” for all Israelis.

“An atmosphere has been created here that has allowed leniency toward what is naively called ‘weeds’,” said the president, referring to continuing attacks by Jewish extremists against the Palestinian population, both inside Israel and in the occupied West Bank, that have largely gone unchecked by authorities.

In Tel Aviv on Saturday night, Nasser Dawabsha, the uncle of the toddler Ali Dawabsha, who died in the firebombing in Duma, addressed a Jewish Israeli crowd, speaking in Arabic with a Hebrew translator, and asked, “When will this stop?”

“I want to ask Netanyahu, and I want an answer, why was Ali murdered? Eighteen months old. He's innocent. What did he do to the army and the settlers? Ali is a martyr. We ask and hope that this will be the end of the suffering of our people,” he said.

Former Israeli president Shimon Peres also spoke at the Tel Aviv rally, saying that he was “ashamed” of what had happened and could not believe “we have reached such dark depths.”

In response to Friday's attack in Duma, Palestinians launched violent protests, clashing with Israeli settlers and soldiers throughout the West Bank on Friday and Saturday.

One Palestinian youth, 17-year-old Laith al-Khalidi, from the Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah, was shot by Israeli forces, who said the teen threatened them with a gasoline bomb.

The attack in Duma was condemned by most in Israel, although some right-wing politicians were prevented from speaking at the anti-violence rallies Saturday. Others, including infrastructure and energy minister Yuval Steinitz, a close Netanyahu ally, were booed by the crowds.

• William Booth is The Washington Post’s Jerusalem bureau chief. He was previously bureau chief in Mexico, Los Angeles and Miami.

• Ruth Eglash is a reporter for The Washington Post based in Jerusalem. She was formerly a reporter and senior editor at the Jerusalem Post and freelanced for international media.

__________________________________________________________________________

Read more on this topic:

 • Jewish extremists torch Palestinian homes, killing toddler, authorities say

 • Man stabs six at gay pride parade in Jerusalem, critically wounding one

 • 1995: Israeli Prime Minister Rabin is killed

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israelis-hold-anti-violence-rallies-after-attacks-against-palestinians-gays/2015/08/02/c3df0fdc-9a6a-4922-ae60-7d2e2ecd5214_story.html

[reality]

yes...Palestine is a terrorist state

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Whenever Palestinians go to war with Israel, they tend to kill members of the Israeli military more often than not.

Whereas when Israel goes to war against Palestinians, they tend to kill mostly kids.

In other words, the Israelis are kid-killers on a vast scale.

Which is why they are guilty of WAR CRIMES.

Obviously you are too stupid (or too sick) to comprehend that it is better to kill military personel when indulging in war than kids.

The Israelis go for the kids while the Palestinians go for the military personel.

Or perhaps YOU actually get off on killing kids?

After all, you are in favour of torture (as you have already posted on this group), so perhaps you whenever the IDF kills kids?

It wouldn't surprise me at all if you do.

[reality]

kj..."In other words, the Israelis are kid-killers on a vast scale."

..what even a larger scale as the baby killers in NZ?


..and yes ..it is sad that the Palestinian terrorists use kids as human shields.....

but the first principles of combat is that if you shoot at someone..they are within their rights to shoot back...and if they have more accurate and  powerful weapons than you...that makes you very stupid...perhaps there are alot of rail workers there...i dont kinow

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

The military operation in Gaza that
still haunts Israel one year later

By WILLIAM BOOTH | 12:01AM EDT - Tuesday, August 04, 2015


A young Israeli officer was abducted August 1st, 2014, shattering a 72-hour cease-fire in the middle of the Gaza war. After the soldier
disappeared, Israel fired thousands of bombs into densely populated civilian areas, Amnesty International says in a recent report.

RAFAH, GAZA STRIP — It all began at a hole in the ground in a field of melons, when an Israeli reconnaissance squad surprised Hamas militia near a tunnel entrance. A vicious firefight erupted, just a few bursts long, but enough to leave two Israeli soldiers and one Hamas militant dead.

After a quick body count, it was discovered that a young Israeli officer was missing, dragged down the tunnel — a nightmare scenario for Israel, whose military doctrine enshrines “force protection” and vows never to leave a soldier, dead or alive, behind.

The abduction took place one year ago on a day both Palestinians and Israelis have come to call “Black Friday”, August 1st, 2014, when a 72-hour cease-fire in the middle of the Gaza war was shattered.

It was one of the deadliest and most controversial days in last summer’s Gaza war. And it returned to the spotlight with the release last week of a report by Amnesty International, which asserts that Israel’s use of one-ton bombs and heavy artillery shelling in civilian neighborhoods was a disproportionate, indiscriminate, even vengeful, response to the abduction of a single soldier.

Amnesty said it found “strong evidence” of war crimes.

After the disappearance of the soldier, Amnesty says, 2,000 bombs, missiles and artillery shells were fired into densely populated areas.

Israel denied it used excessive force and said its soldiers were not only seeking the return of a kidnapped soldier but also fighting Hamas militants who attacked them from behind “human shields”.

The Amnesty investigation comes on the heels of a June report by the Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza Conflict for the United Nations, which concluded that the Black Friday events might amount to war crimes.

The same U.N. report also found that Hamas may have committed similar violations of international law by indiscriminately firing rockets at Israeli civilians and shielding combatants in schools, mosques and hospitals.

Human rights groups say that between 135 and 200 Palestinian civilians were killed over four days in early August; most died on Black Friday, according to Amnesty.


Rateb Bilbisi, of the al-Tannur neighborhood, said Palestinians from east Rafah were seeking shelter from the sun under the
trees and awnings when huge explosions toppled the building across the street, leaving more than 16 dead, all of them civilians.



A man sits in front of his shop, which opened right after the conflict.



Yussef Abed, a surgeon at the al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, said he arrived at work at noon by ambulance that day.
He was too scared to drive his car because Israelis had ordered everyone off the streets.



Ambulance driver Nawal Abu Amra was on duty during Black Friday.

Israel called both the United Nations and Amnesty investigations biased. It had denied access to the Gaza Strip to both groups.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a rebuttal to the Amnesty report, calling it “fundamentally flawed in its methodologies, in its facts, in its legal analysis and in its conclusions.”

The Israeli government also charged that Amnesty had a “compulsive obsessiveness towards Israel.”

Amnesty researchers, however, say their report will probably guide prosecutor Fatou Bensouda at the International Criminal Court in her decision on whether to advance from the current “preliminary examination” of Israeli behavior in Gaza to a full “investigation”, a much more serious matter that could lead to indictments against top military and political leaders on both sides.

Black Friday began in the flat fields east of the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah, where Israeli troops were searching for a tunnel to destroy when they were ambushed by Hamas fighters. Lietenant Hadar Goldin was pulled into a hole in the ground.

Radio communications, alongside video mounted on a soldier's helmet, portray the chaotic events, with Israeli commanders initially not sure who was dead or alive.

Within minutes, senior Israeli commanders shouted the order to declare a “Hannibal Directive”, a classified protocol understood by many Israeli troops to mean “better a dead soldier than a captured soldier.”

Israeli soldiers dropped grenades into the tunnel and then went searching for their comrade in the darkness, firing bursts into the gloom.

Lieutenant Eitan Fund, 24, rushed forward to thwart the capture of his friend. “If I'm not back in five minutes — I'm dead,” he said, according to Israeli accounts. He did make it back, and was later awarded a medal for heroism.

Fund found bloody pieces of Goldin's uniform; Goldin was declared dead the next day based on the forensic evidence found in the tunnel, even though his body is still missing and still sought by Israel and his family.


Walid Abdel Mohsein, a nurse, recalls the shelling on Black Friday.



One year ago, the hospital’s emergency room was full of dead and injured people caught in the attack.



The hospital morgue, where bodies were stacked in a single room of the hospital on Black Friday.



Ambulance driver Nawal Abu Amra looks at a picture of the workers who died during the shelling.



The hospital walls bear paintings representing Palestine and Gaza. The paintings hide blood and damage from shrapnel.

Colonel Ofer Winter was the commander of the Givati Brigade who issued the Hannibal Directive, which led to multiple strikes on tunnel openings, crowded intersections and a central hospital, all to stop Hamas from spiriting Goldin away, according to Amnesty.

The Amnesty report suggests that Winter also wanted to teach Hamas a lesson, and the group quoted the colonel telling an Israeli newspaper: “Anyone who abducts should know that he will pay a price. This was not revenge. They simply messed with the wrong brigade.”

Palestinian witnesses to the events on Black Friday describe chaos and terror — as civilians returning to their homes during the cease-fire were suddenly subjected to intense shelling.

Yussef Abed, a surgeon at the al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, said he arrived at work at noon by ambulance that day. He was too scared to drive his own car because Israelis had ordered everyone off the streets.

In his office, the window glass exploded as an Israeli bomb destroyed a home a few hundred meters away. The hospital was packed with wounded; the morgue was filling with bodies. Frightened residents crowded into the hallways, hoping the hospital was safe.

“It was like the last scene in that movie about the Titanic before the boat sinks,” Abed said. “Then people began to panic.”

Doctors' cellphones began to ring with calls from Israeli soldiers from intelligence units, warning the staff not to leave and threatening them, saying that Israel suspected Goldin was being treated or held captive in the hospital, Abed said. “Then everyone went nuts.”

An ambulance crew that left earlier was struck by a missile, the medics incinerated, Abed said. Patients fled the hospital, still attached to intravenous bottles.

Abed said that Goldin never arrived at his hospital and that the shelling around the building kept the wounded from being treated.


A man living in the Shuka neighborhood walks across the rubble of a destroyed house.



Oum el-Abadia walks along the street where her house once stood.Today, she lives with her 10 children in a tent.



Damage in the al-Tannur neighborhood, which was hit by bombings that toppled buildings.



In Rafah, Gaza, the destruction left after Black Friday is in full view.



A photo taken from inside the house where Lieutenant Hadar Goldin was abducted. Goldin was declared dead a day later,
even though his body remains missing and is sought by Israel and his family.

Nearby, according to the Amnesty report, Israel dropped one-ton bombs in the al-Tannur neighborhood.

Rateb Bilbisi, whose family owns the grocery there, said Palestinians from east Rafah were seeking shelter from the sun under trees and awnings when huge explosions toppled the building across the street, leaving more than 16 dead, all of them civilians.

“We found a head a block away,” Bilbisi said. “That's how big the bomb was.”

He said bodies remained on the streets for a day because no ambulances could enter the area.

In its rebuttal, the Israeli Foreign Ministry defended the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and said, “Amnesty builds a false narrative — claiming that four days of military operations by the IDF were in direct response to the killing and kidnapping of one IDF soldier.

“It seems that Amnesty forgot that there was an ongoing conflict — during which the IDF was operating to stop rocket fire and neutralize cross-border assault tunnels, and Palestinian terrorist organizations were actively engaging in intensive conflict against the IDF from within the civilian environment,” the Israeli report states.

Today the scene of the initial fighting doesn't look like much. Donkeys pull carts; melons grow fat in the fields; a lone white farmhouse is pockmarked with bullet holes.

There are still patrols here by armed factions from Islamic Jihad and Hamas, but the year-long truce has mostly held.

Farmers in Rafah say Palestinian armed factions are busy constructing combat tunnels again. A Washington Post reporter saw evidence of generators and winches moving soil in one location. Hamas earlier confirmed that it is digging.

Both sides say that without a permanent truce, another round of war is likely.

• Hazem Balousha contributed to this report.

• William Booth is The Washington Post’s Jerusalem bureau chief. He was previously bureau chief in Mexico, Los Angeles and Miami.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the-military-operation-in-gaza-that-still-haunts-israel-one-year-later/2015/08/03/915859a8-3480-11e5-b835-61ddaa99c73e_story.html

[reality]

Yes...I agree...the good people of Palestine need to remove their terrorist leaders...who cause much hardship for their people, by picking fights with powerful nations

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Someone needs to SHOOT DEAD the terrorist prime minister of the NAZI state of Israel.

That will solve a lot of problems.

[reality]

Keep a good lookout for drones near your house

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Keep a good lookout for drones near your house

Unlike you, I'm not a gutless RAT constantly shitting myself about the imaginary bogeyman in the shadows and beneath the bed.

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

‘We are the tip of the spear’ that protects Israel, right-wing settlers say

By WILLIAM BOOTH | 11:33AM EDT - Friday, August 07, 2015


Jewish Israeli laborers work at a construction site in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Yitzhar, south of Nablus, on August 5th, 2015.
 — Photograph: David Vaaknin/The Washington Post.

YITZHAR, WEST BANK — This Jewish settlement of zealots on a stony hilltop has been branded by fellow Israelis as one of the most extreme in the West Bank, the vanguard of past violent confrontations with both the Israeli military and Palestinian neighbors.

The settlers of Yitzhar admit they are hard-core, but they say they are the tip of the spear that protects Israel — not baby-killers.

“You won't hear even my most radical neighbors say that Duma was a good thing, at least out loud,” said Ezri Tubi, the newly elected resident spokesman for Yitzhar, referring to the Palestinian village where a toddler died last week in arsonists' flames.

The Jewish settlers of the West Bank say they are being persecuted by hypocritical Israeli politicians and the international community, which are condemning “Jewish terrorism” after a wave of extremist violence that has killed Israeli and Palestinian children in knife and arson attacks.

“We're the most demonized people on Earth,” said Tubi, a guitar-strumming, 45-year-old YouTube maven (see video below), who has lived in Yitzhar for 13 years with his wife and children in a tidy wooden house he built with his own hands.



Tubi said members of his community had nothing to do with the recent violence.

“Puncturing tires? That might be another thing,” he said, referring to weekly acts of vandalism against Palestinians, acts that also include destroying olive trees and blocking access to springs, farm fields and religious sites. These deeds are often met by Palestinians throwing stones or sometimes gasoline bombs, or shooting at cars.

Ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers in the West Bank and their supporters, who insist that they have a right to biblical lands promised to them by God and who are represented by top ministers in Israel's new government, are again under the microscope after the spate of violence.

This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government approved harsh new measures to curb “Jewish terrorism” after an ultra-Orthodox Jewish Israeli attacked marchers in Jerusalem's annual gay-pride parade with a knife, killing a 16-year-old Israeli girl. A day later, unknown arsonists torched two Palestinian homes in the West Bank village of Duma, burning a toddler alive, and signing their handiwork with a spray-painted Star of David and the word “Revenge!” in Hebrew.

Tubi took Washington Post reporters around his hilltop settlement of modest homes with stunning views, where in the heat of August, kids in water wings splashed in the local swimming hole beside dads with holstered weapons. He said Jewish settlers are now under assault not just by the usual critics — the foreign media, the United Nations, the Israeli left and Arabs — but by the right-wing government they elected to advance their cause.

Tubi denied that adult Jewish settlers were to blame for “the crazies” who burn Palestinian children. He did not rule out that gullible teens from the hilltops of the West Bank might have been involved. But he questioned the idea that it was an organized effort by Jews. “I'm not ready to call it a conspiracy,” he said.

Tubi said that when Jews are shot, run over or stabbed by Palestinians, the world shrugs and that his own government considers Jewish lives “cheap”.

He promised that someday, the leaders of Israel would be ideologically driven Jewish settlers and not members of the moderate middle or the secular left.

“We are the tip of the spear,” he said. “We are the shield.”

Cracking down on extremists

The Netanyahu government's threat of a crackdown allows for Israeli terrorism suspects to be held for months, even years, in “administrative detention” without charges or a trial, just like Palestinian terrorism suspects in the occupied West Bank, who face secretive military tribunals instead of civilian courts.

Palestinians and Israeli center-left critics say that the authorities will make a few token arrests, which probably will not lead to convictions, and that the status quo will continue.

There are more than 350,000 Jewish settlers now in the West Bank, on lands that Palestinians hope to have for a future state.



The United Nations reports that 17 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces in 2015; three Israelis have been killed by Palestinians.

In recent days Israeli authorities have arrested several alleged extremists, including Meir Ettinger, 23, grandson of the Brooklyn-born Rabbi Meir Kahane, who advocated a Jewish state based on Torah law and the expulsion of Palestinians. Kahane was elected to the Israeli parliament, but his political party was later banned for alleged racism. He was assassinated in New York in 1990 by an Egyptian American.

Israel's domestic security agency, Shin Bet, alleges that Ettinger is a leader of an underground Jewish terrorist movement that may be to blame for recent attacks on Muslim and Christian targets, including the firebombing of the church marking the mount where worshipers believe Jesus performed His loaves-and-fishes miracle.

Ettinger, a popular figure among the “hilltop youth”, wrote on Facebook before his arrest, “There is no terrorist organization, but there are lots and lots of Jews, much more than what they think, whose values are completely different from that of the High Court of Justice or the Shin Bet.”

Vandalism against mosques and churches in Israel sometimes includes spray-painted graffiti reading “Kahane was right”, as in a November arson attack at the only Hebrew-Arabic bilingual school in Jerusalem. Two members of the group Lehava, brothers Shlomo and Nachman Twito, pleaded guilty last month in the case. At their sentencing, they sang hymns to God and declared, “The price was worth it.”

Lehava activists oppose the mingling of Muslims and Jews and warn Arab men to stay away from Jewish women.

On social media, the arsonist brothers were hailed as “heroes” with the promise of a parade upon their release.

‘What real Israelis think’

At the Yitzhar settlement this week, crews of tanned hilltop youth with long side curls were constructing a new kindergarten. No Arab workers are allowed here, and the 240 resident families pride themselves on being “Hebrew labor”, unlike less-ideological, or “lifestyle”, settlers who employ Palestinians to build and maintain their homes.

Also unlike other Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Yitzhar residents decided not to have a fence. “A fence means we need one,” Tubi said. “A fence means we have something to fear.”

Even so, Tubi said: “I sleep with a pistol under my pillow. I keep a dog. I lock the doors. There’s my wife's gun, my gun, and I fear the choice I might have to make if we are attacked. Do I grab the children first or the gun?”

Tubi said he was once more radical (he was ordered out of the West Bank for incitement to riot), and so was Yitzhar. “But we decided to calm things down,” he said. “We decided no more clashes with the army.”

A year ago, the Israeli army commandeered the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement, saying the religious school and its rabbis were inciting violent acts of retribution, known as “price tag” attacks, against soldiers and Palestinians. The army withdrew from the yeshiva a month ago.

This week, a family of home-schoolers in Yitzhar was packing whole-wheat flour at their mill; a contractor was tending vineyards of cabernet grapes for wine; tricycles lined the streets. Many families have many children — six is the average. One of the Yitzhar mothers is called “M-16”, for her 16 children (and a sly allusion to the military assault rifle).

“This is considered a radical settlement, and you're here talking to me,” Tubi said. “The Israeli media show us as vicious.” But “we have clear lines: no guns” against soldiers or Palestinians, except in self-defense.

Tubi called the arson attack at the Palestinian village “terrible.”

Why? “It does damage to Israel,” he said.

“Lunatics are everywhere, but judge a society by what it says about its lunatics. Israel condemns them. Jews are almost on their knees begging for forgiveness.”

“Palestinians make their terrorists into heroes,” Tubi continued, echoing remarks by Netanyahu, who praised the Israeli response to the Duma attack while condemning Palestinian silence when Israelis are killed.

Many Israelis, however, are drawing a line between Jewish terrorism and right-wing incitement in the media and politics.

Opposition leader Tzipi Livni charged that Netanyahu and his allies encourage extremists by their own rhetoric. “It’s the easiest thing to come and say: ‘It’s the extremists. We have no part in this’,” Livni said.

“Extremists exist only when there is a clear line between them and the mainstream. This line was blurred long ago, with the help of those here,” she said at an emergency session of the Israeli parliament after the recent attacks.

After speaking out against the attacks and saying he felt shame that the violence had come “from my own people,” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin was deluged with threats on social media calling him a “traitor” and depicting him in mock photographs as a Nazi with a Hitler mustache.

In another post, Gilad Kleiner, the son of a former Israeli parliamentarian, wrote on WhatsApp that he was “very pleased to hear this past hour about the passing of the stabbing victim from the abomination march held last Thursday,” a reference to the Israeli teenager who died after being attacked at the gay pride march.

Tubi said Israeli politicians would do well to read what is said on social media instead of in the news media. “If you want to know what real Israelis think, look at Facebook,” he said.

It doesn't show politically correct statements in English designed for foreign consumption, he said. “It's what we really believe.”

• Ruth Eglash contributed to this report.

• William Booth is The Washington Post’s Jerusalem bureau chief. He was previously bureau chief in Mexico, Los Angeles and Miami.

__________________________________________________________________________

Read more on this topic:

 • The military operation in Gaza that still haunts Israel one year later

 • Israeli leaders propose harsh new measures to fight ‘Jewish terrorism’

 • A year after the Gaza war, good times are back on Tel Aviv’s beaches

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/we-are-the-tip-of-the-spear-that-protects-israel-right-wing-settlers-say/2015/08/07/37905bee-3aef-11e5-b759-e3c43f009486_story.html

[reality]

Israel is a democracy.....Palestine is led by terrorists....who like to pick fights against a strong military....silly really

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Jews burning babies alive.

That sounds just like ISIS.

Interesting to note you support baby-torching sicko despots, eh?

[reality]

The murdering of babies in NZ by kiwi men is a big problem...how can we stop it?

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Question: What do Jooooos and ISIS have in common?

Answer: They both have a history of burning human beings to death.

[reality]

kj....."Question: What do Jooooos and ISIS have in common?"


....like kiwi males...they all kill babies...

...we are in an elite club

[reality]

hey..check this out

ISRAELI TECHNOLOGY REASSURES PANICKED FRENCH CITIZENS
by SB on November 19, 2015 at 4:00pm
Israeli technology did its bit to help reassure panicked French citizens that their loved ones were safe in the wake of the Paris terror attacks

“During the 24 hours after the terror attack, 4.1 million people checked in with friends and relatives using Facebook Safety Check, a technology developed by Facebook Israel’s research and development department,” said a spokesperson for Facebook Israel. “A total of 360 million people received messages that their loved ones were safe.”


 
Safety Check is a feature that Facebook has activated a number of times in the past, usually for natural disasters. The Paris terrorist attacks are the first time it has been used to enable people to “check in” and let others know they were safe in a terrorism situation.

Remind me again of all the wonderful inventions to help society that were created in Palestine?

Oh yeah, that’s right. One invention and one invention only, the Qassam rocket.


The Qassam rocket gained notoriety as the best-known type of rocket deployed by Palestinian militants, mainly against Israeli civilians…According to Human Rights Watch, Qassam rockets are too inaccurate and prone to malfunction to be used against specific military targets in or near civilian areas, and are mainly launched for the purpose of “harming civilians.”[12] Basil Collier has compared the Qassam rockets to the V-weapons of Nazi Germany, which were used for terror bombing civilian populations during World War II.[13][14]

-wiki

Eight Qassam launchers, seven equipped with operating systems and one armed and ready to launch, were uncovered during a counter-terrorism operation in northern Gaza. Had it been launched, this Qassam would have targeted Israel's civilian population.
Eight Qassam launchers, seven equipped with operating systems and one armed and ready to launch, were uncovered during a counter-terrorism operation in northern Gaza. Had it been launched, this Qassam would have targeted Israel’s civilian population.

…Safety Check is a feature that Facebook has activated several times in the past, usually for natural disasters. The Paris attacks were the first time it was used to enable people to “check in” and let others know they were safe in a terror attack scenario. Facebook made that announcement in response to widespread criticism in the blogosphere about how the service had not been used in previous terror incidents in places like Baghdad, Beirut, and Kabul.

According to Alex Schultz, Facebook’s vice president of Growth, “We chose to activate Safety Check in Paris because we observed a lot of activity on Facebook as the events were unfolding. In the middle of a complex, uncertain situation affecting many people, Facebook became a place where people were sharing information and looking to understand the condition of their loved ones… This activation will change our policy around Safety Check and when we activate it for other serious and tragic incidents in the future. We want this tool to be available whenever and wherever it can help.”

For Facebook Israel’s top staff, Adi Sofer-Te’eni and Ro’i Tiger – the heads of Israeli market affairs and of research and development, respectively – Safety Check is part of the company’s commitment to using the Internet for good.

“It’s a concept that Mark (Facebook CEO Zuckerberg) has talked about. For us, it’s a great thing to be able to get up in the morning and not only do a challenging job, but one we know is helping people around the world,” said Tiger. “Facebook has become like a public square, used by over a billion people, so being able to leverage the platform to enable people to receive reassurance that their loved ones are safe is something we are very proud to be a part of.”

At a recent press conference in Facebook’s Tel Aviv R&D center, Sofer-Te’eni and Tiger discussed Safety Check and other projects the Israeli R&D center had worked on. An early version of Safety Check was used in Japan in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. An enhanced version was then developed in Israel, and the app was officially released in its current form in October 2014. Since then it has been activated in several natural disasters, including the May 2015 earthquakes in Nepal, and an earthquake in Afghanistan in October.

“It’s a positive project that makes us proud to come to work each day,” said Tiger. “For us, the idea of taking technology and giving it a moral aspect is important.”

Among the “doing good” projects Facebook Israel is concentrating on is Facebook’s Internet.org project, which provides access to basic Internet services for free in the developing world.

-timesofisrael.com
http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2015/11/israeli-technology-reassures-panicked-french-citizens/

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]