Day 49, A Different "Shavuot"

According to my friend Miriam's facebook update, this is the 49th day of this unending war with the Gazan Arab Hamas terrorists. Miriam lives in southern Israel and keeps people updated about real life there in her blog, Miriam's Words.

The number forty-nine when describing days has a lot of significance in Judaism. One of the three main, pilgrimage, holidays is Shavuot, שבועותת meaning weeks, more specifically seven weeks, and 7X7=49. Yes, it takes place forty-nine days after the beginning of the Passover Holiday. On Passover historically we escaped slavery in Egypt, and on Shavuot we received the Torah from G-d.

Grandparents at funeral of 4 year old
Daniel Turgeman, HaYa"D Flash90

That forty-nine day period has a beginning, middle and end, but this forty-nine does not seem to signify anything other than Israel's being attacked by Amalek enemies who have tasted blood and want more. As I've said many times, there's not way for us to negotiate a peace with psychopaths who aim to destroy us, so I'm not surprised that our appeasing words are just being met with more deadly rocket attacks.

Rocket fire on Ashdod, Facebook

The Israeli Government must change its mindset, its basic policy and officially recognize that the "two state solution" is off the books. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu himself must apologize to all of us for having supported it. It must be officially announced that it was a mistake, and that the State of Israel considers all supporters to be our enemies.

As Ruthie Blum put so well in her recent Israel Hayom article, we must stop censoring and cleaning up the news reports and pictures of Arab brutality.

...However, it is precisely the chilling depiction of the slaughter that provides the world ‎with a glimpse into the nature of the Islamic State group (ISIS), the Sunni terrorist organization that is trying to ‎take over Syria and Iraq, before turning the entire region (and then the world) into an ‎Islamic caliphate.‎Not that the group has been hiding its blood lust. On the contrary, it is proud of its ‎brutality and pedophilia. And tales of its raping, maiming and killing of Christians are ‎being told, albeit with far less gusto than the media reserves for Israeli air strikes in Gaza.‎.....But it wasn't until President Barack Obama watched the footage of Foley's murder, in ‎the video titled "Message to America," that the ostensible leader of the Free World was ‎forced to face what the West is up against......Publishing gruesome pictures was deemed by a majority of the editors to be out of the ‎question for a number of reasons, chief among them the dignity of the dead and the ‎privacy of their families. After all, who can bear seeing a child's bloody backpack on the ‎ground -- with its owner's name in plain sight -- next to an arm or a leg of someone else? ‎......The Palestinian press had a different approach. Any retaliatory action on Israel's part was ‎met with a media blitz of blood and gore for the world to see. Then, as today, many of ‎their photos were staged, stolen from previous wars in other countries and touched up for ‎both local and foreign consumption. ‎Then, as today, it has the desired effect. Israel looks like a vicious Goliath trampling a ‎helpless David...

We have been making this mistake of whitewashing Arab brutality for decades. This also happened during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the reports of what the Syrians did to our captured soldiers was censored from the news, so as not to upset their parents and grandparents.

So while the Arabs show over-dramatic graphic, bloody scenes reminiscent of black and white silent film but in bloody color, Israel shows the world some damaged middle-class livingroom furniture and keeps repeating the mantra that "the rocket fell in an empty field," "no serious damage."

Here we are at day 49, and the Israeli government is trying to reassure the public that next week school with start "on time." Yes, that may be very possible in places like Jerusalem and Shiloh, but how can those in Ashkelon, Ashdod, Netivot and the rest of Israel's south send their kids to school? Many are on extended "vacations" far from home, and others are barely leaving the fifteen second run to a shelter. When I was in elementary school and we were trained to hide under a desk from an atomic bomb, it was humorous, but since the chance of our being bombed was less than zero, it didn't matter. The children in the south of Israel are under a real danger. Some schools and preschools have already been damaged by Gazan Hamas terrorist rockets, so those need shelters not desks to protect them.

The so-called moderate Abu Mazen aka Mahmoud Abbas is threatening Israel with a "surprise" tactic.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen assured that in the coming week, there will be a new solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He claims that it is a diplomatic and political solution but not a traditional one. He is afraid the Americans won’t respond to the proposal.

We mustn't forget that Abbas has been a public political ally of Hamas even before this war/operation all started.

Sorry, but I can't end this on a positive note. This 49 isn't an end, a spiritual high-note. We seem to be in a long process which will take a very high level of leadership to end. The State of Israel needs strong Jewish leadership with faith in G-d Almighty, HaKodesh Baruch Hu. G-d willing they will rise to the challenge.

Send the Pope Packing!

Pope Francis touches the wall that divides Israel from the West Bank, on his way to celebrate a mass in Manger Square. Photograph:AP

I'm not surprised that the pope enthusiastically participated in the P.A."chairman" (is it?)  Mahmoud Abbas's media trick on Israel. I have been writing all along that the pope's planned "even-handedness" was an affront against Israel by equating the State of Israel with that band of Arab terrorists. Video from the Catholic News Service via Arutz 7.



He topped it off by insulting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, a political/diplomatic faux pas that shouldn't be ignored. The pope then invited Shimon Peres to meet with him and his buddy Abbas at the Vatican. Please remember that Abbas has been busy of late uniting his supposedly "moderate" Fatah organization with the unabashedly terrorist Hamas. And Shimon Peres's position as "President of Israel" is supposed to be a totally ceremonial one with less political, diplomatic and policy power than the Queen (or if there is ever a King) of England has in Great Britain. 

The fact that Shimon Peres has always been involved in sneaky, actually illegal contacts and "diplomacy" without government authority is something that should have been stopped decades ago. Sarah Honig has written an excellent article about the illegal (and treasonous would you say?) diplomatic escapades of Peres and other extreme Leftists, which is worth reading yet again. I linked and quoted from it in Treason? Could Be, Couldn't It?

• There is nothing Jewish in the principle of "turning the other cheek." It's a Christian thing which is used more to tell us Jews to shut up and take the insults and discrimination silently than anything a Christian would actually do.
• There is no such thing as a "joint Jewish-Christian heritage." We worship G-d, and they worship a man. 
• Their Bible denies the continued eternal legitimacy of the Jewish Bible. 

It's no surprise that the pope has been a very rude guest. The ultimate aim of his Catholic religion is the supplanting/replacement of Judaism aka identity theft. Actually Islam has the same aim. Now, here in Israel they are allied against us. In other parts of the world they are at loggerheads competing for power. The State of Israel should never have approved of the Vatican's itinerary for the pope. It was a political, diplomatic and theological mistake!

Israel's Enemies have United, and Now We Must Unite Against Them

As many of us have been saying for years and years that there's no real difference between Hamas and Fatah, we're not surprised that they are now a united front. We're just surprised that they have admitted it.

Hamas and Fatah leaders hold their hands after announcing a reconciliation agreement Photo: REUTERS

And we're even less surprised that Fatah aka read Mahmoud Abbas has admitted that his aims and ideology are no different from the unabashed Arab Hamas terrorists based in Gaza.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's official reaction is rather limp.

"I said this morning that Abu Mazen needs to choose between peace with Israel and an agreement with Hamas, a murderous terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and which both the United States and the European Union define as a terrorist organization.
This evening, as talks are still ongoing about extending the negotiations, Abu Mazen has chosen Hamas and not peace.
Whoever chooses Hamas does not want peace."

I'm hoping to hear that he's reassigning "Negotiations" Minister Tsippi Livni to Beach Cleaning or some other job that would suit her capabilities.

The reason I'm surprised that Fatah has so publicly allied itself with Fatah is that its separation had allowed foreign governments and international bodies to shtupp it with humongous amounts of money that isn't legally allowed to be given to terrorist organizations. The American Government is now in a bind, because it wants to continue supporting the P.A. which can't (shouldn't) be done if the leaders admit that they are the same as Hamas.

Washington sends about $500 million to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority each year. Frustrated members of the U.S. Congress, who are generally strong supporters of Israel, said that money could be cut off.
"Not only does this action potentially derail any hope of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, it puts in jeopardy future U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority," Republican U.S. Representative Kay Granger, the subcommittee chairwoman, said in a statement.

Recognizing, admitting that the P.A. is really just a well-dressed front for Gazan Hamas terrorists makes the United States President Barack Hussein Obama's Middle East policy a disastrous mistake. It's based on a lie.

Yesterday, at my shiur by Dr. Yael Ziegler in Matan, The Divided Kingdom and the Story of Elijah, I kept feeling Déjà vu. I could have had been reading the newspapers. She was discussing the fire challenge between Elijah and the prophets of Baal (IKings Chapter 18.) We learned how the followers of Baal actually knew that their god was a fake, but they continued shouting to it regardless.

כו  וַיִּקְחוּ אֶת-הַפָּר אֲשֶׁר-נָתַן לָהֶם, וַיַּעֲשׂוּ, וַיִּקְרְאוּ בְשֵׁם-הַבַּעַל מֵהַבֹּקֶר וְעַד-הַצָּהֳרַיִם לֵאמֹר הַבַּעַל עֲנֵנוּ, וְאֵין קוֹל וְאֵין עֹנֶה; וַיְפַסְּחוּ, עַל-הַמִּזְבֵּחַ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה.	26 And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying: 'O Baal, answer us.' But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they danced in halting wise about the altar which was made.
כז  וַיְהִי בַצָּהֳרַיִם וַיְהַתֵּל בָּהֶם אֵלִיָּהוּ, וַיֹּאמֶר קִרְאוּ בְקוֹל-גָּדוֹל כִּי-אֱלֹהִים הוּא--כִּי שִׂיחַ וְכִי-שִׂיג לוֹ, וְכִי-דֶרֶךְ לוֹ; אוּלַי יָשֵׁן הוּא, וְיִקָץ.	27 And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said: 'Cry aloud; for he is a god; either he is musing, or he is gone aside, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.'
כח  וַיִּקְרְאוּ, בְּקוֹל גָּדוֹל, וַיִּתְגֹּדְדוּ כְּמִשְׁפָּטָם, בַּחֲרָבוֹת וּבָרְמָחִים--עַד-שְׁפָךְ-דָּם, עֲלֵיהֶם.	28 And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with swords and lances, till the blood gushed out upon them.
כט  וַיְהִי, כַּעֲבֹר הַצָּהֳרַיִם, וַיִּתְנַבְּאוּ, עַד לַעֲלוֹת הַמִּנְחָה; וְאֵין-קוֹל וְאֵין-עֹנֶה, וְאֵין קָשֶׁב.	29 And it was so, when midday was past, that they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening offering; but their was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded.

It so reminded me of all of those who have been trying to convince Abbas to say the "magic words" which would force the State of Israel to release convicted terrorists and give him our precious Land in the name of their false "peace."

Abbas and his Fatah have no admitted that he and his followers have been conning the world.


Latma

Now it's up to us Israelis and Jews all over to unite and build and settle all of the Land we hold. Make it sovereign Israel! That is the only way we will enjoy true peace!!

Latma's Bibi Twists Himself in Knots Trying to Get Abu Mazen to Negotiate

This week's Tribal Update has a fantastic, but embarrassingly sad, pathetic and embarrassing  skit showing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and American Secretary of State John Kerry together.  Bibi continuously contorts himself according to instructions Kerry gets from Abu Mazen on the phone.



There are some really good skits in this week's edition of Latma's news parody. I think the show is getting better every week.

Here's a message from Caroline Glick:

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