Israel Attacked by Hamas 2023/5784, War Musings #2 Off With the News

 

For a news junky like myself, such a decision can be called sacrilegious for sure. To be honest, I do check in periodically to get an idea of what's actually happening, but I don't think watching/listening to the "news" is a good idea. 

For one... I find myself yelling:

STUPID! 

THAT'S IDIOTIC

YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS

WHY SHOULD YOU BELIVE THAT CLOWN etc.

Another thing is that I miss the more innocent time pre-cellphone and social media. During the rather devastating 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israeli television was in its infancy and we didn't have one. Many Israelis didn't even have telephones. Computers, tablets and cellphones were from the world of science fiction, definitely make-believe. That innocence kept us saner than today. 

We barely heard accurate news of casualties. There were quick burials and then after the war was over the dead soldiers were reinterred. Only during that difficult postwar time did we discover what really happened. The disadvantage was that instead of celebrating our victory, people mourned. 

Now we're burying, mourning and fighting all at once. In addition there are the stories of soldiers taken from the front to attend their own weddings. It's all rather insane and schizophrenic. I guess it suits the mentality and culture of the day, but it's hard for me.

I think that there's too much said in public, on the news and in private conversations. 

Lastly, too many tv and radio shows are like "backseat drivers." Everyone's so smart, smarter than the government and generals. I also am, but I don't think all this talk should be in the media. You know what they say about loose tongues.

May we listen to Gd and not the Americans! The last time they won a real war was seventy 70 years ago, and they've never even fought a war for their survival. We're the experts and Gd Almighty.

We need Gd's help for sure, and we must work hard to deserve it.

Shabbat Shalom U'Mevorach

Israeli TV News Campaigning Against Bibi

If you watch Israeli television news, you'd think that Israel was the worst country in the world. There seems to be street protests and riots all over all the time.

According to the news:

• You'd think that Israel was the most racist country in the world.
• The Israeli Government hires cruel, sadistic childminders.
• Price of real estate can be controlled by the government.
• Everything can be remedied by the government if the correct people are elected to the Knesset.
• OBVIOUSLY IT'S BIBI'S FAULT!

I am using pictures of the so-called anti-racist protests to illustrate this post, because it's very clear that white agent provocateurs have been leading the movement/riots. They began with the death of an Israeli of the Jewish Ethiopian community by an off-duty policeman. The media has been ignoring the fact that all the evidence shows is that the policeman and his family had been in danger, and the death was totally accidental. The orchestrated violence, anti-police and anti-government acts did not come initially from the community. They are being led by white Leftists. Follow the money.

Although early childhood care, daycare centers have their problems, the solution is far from simple. Who's going to enforce better workers? Those loud, nasty-mouthed demonstrators? Around the country there's a terrible shortage of people willing to work as caregivers. It's hard work, and the pay is low. Even if there are cameras all over, how could that help? Who's going to look at the films? Men hoping to see breastfeeding mothers? And no matter how carefully the "authorities" are in supervising official daycare centers, there will still be people who prefer sending to the unofficial ones.

And lastly, for now, about the high price in housing. The principle is Supply and Demand, which exists all over the world. Some of the repeated news items I caught on television told of hard to believe housing rip-offs in Tel Aviv. In one case, what must be a humongous apartment was divided into fifteen 15 rooms, which people rented individually for an outrageous sum. To make it even less believable, they share the one kitchen. I can't really imagine anyone living like that; maybe this is office space. Besides that, nobody forces anyone to shell out large sums for small spaces, unless the people have the money and don't care about the space. That's what Supply and Demand is all about.

Every day and night, newscasts concentrate on how terrible it is to live here in Israel. Considering that we're having elections again in a few weeks, and it's no secret that the media hates Bibi, I'm convinced that they're working hard to galvanize the votes for anyone but Bibi.

Deja Vu, Why This Blog has Quieted Down

אין חדש
Nothing's new
Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, is 100% correct.
Rivers run into the seas.
There's a time for everything.

Should we be surprised that The European Union supports the Arabs, the Arab terrorists over Israel?
No. Don' t you remember their quiet as European Jewry was exterminated? Genocide? The Holocaust? And centuries before the Inquisition and how until well into the 19th Century Jews weren't allowed to live freely as Jews in most countries there.

And don't ignore that a requirement for political success is an oversized ego, which has its problems when it comes to honesty, etc.

I've written about all that. Recently, I feel that I'm writing the same articles, with a change in name or date.

So, I'll still write on occasion, when I find something worth writing about or when I'm in the mood. Today I'm not in the mood, not at all.

I've been keeping up with my other blog, A Jewish Grandmother, so please read that.

Shabbat Shalom U'Memevorach,May You have a Peaceful and Blessed Shabbat

"Suspected," "Allegedly," Media Idiocy Against Israel!

Here are a few of recent headlines in the Jerusalem Post:

Yahoo news

Border Police officer critically wounded in suspected car ramming attack near Hebron
Israeli man allegedly attacked by Sudanese Muslim on flight to Ethiopia
Masked assailant reportedly stabs off-duty Hatzolah worker in New York

The emphasis (bold and italics) is mine.

Honestly, I don't understand these wishy-washy adverbs used to cast doubt on simple to prove facts.

French Hill, Givat Hamivtar, Jerusalem
location of "my" Arab terror attack.
I was injured along with about twenty others,
and a woman was murdered.

• For close to twenty years, Arab terrorists have used their cars/vehicles as weapons to kill, maim, injure and terrorize innocent Israelis. I know this too well, since I was injured in the very first one just under twenty years ago. After being attacked, David Bar Illan, who was then Editor-in-Chief of the Jerusalem Post, had me interviewed, posted an op-ed I wrote about it and used my information in a double-long editorial supporting my claim, later verified by the police, that it was a terror attack. Recently this method has become very popular  for Arab terrorists attacking Jews. It offers them protection they won't get as suicide bombers, and is much less intimate than stabbing.
• There were many witnesses of the attack on Arik Zanuda, an Israeli on the flight from Chad to Addis Ababa, so why cast doubt on the story by using the word "allegedly?"



photo credit:HAREDIM 10

• With pictures of the stabbed Hatzolah worker David Katz, and the simple fact that the article even says that Katz is hospitalized for stab wounds, why is the Jerusalem Post using the phrase "reportedly stabbed?" He was stabbed.

The Jerusalem Post is editorializing to cast doubt on the attacks on Jews, whether terror attacks here in Israel or attacks on Jews abroad. The vocabulary it uses gives the impression that there is a reasonable uncertainty as to whether or not the attacks actually took place.

It's very hard to get accurate unbiased news!

A Popular Free Newspaper, What's the Problem?

Typical Left Wing Hypocrisy, Quashing Opposing Opinions

For many of us, the closing down of the arutz 7 radio station was a blow to democracy, freedom and true liberal life in Israel.

The Israeli Left claims to be "liberal," but they're not. They are strict ideologues totally intolerant of other opinions.

One of the reasons I always refer to the political Liberals as Liberals with a capital "L," is because their ideology is a fanatic, close-minded religion. It bears absolutely no resemblance to the dictionary meaning of the word "liberal."

lib·er·al

ˈlib(ə)rəl/

adjective

1. 1.

   open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.

   "they have more liberal views toward marriage and divorce than some people"
2. 2.

   (of education) concerned mainly with broadening a person's general knowledge and experience, rather than with technical or professional training.

   synonyms:

   wide-ranging, broad-based, general "a liberal education"

The followers of Liberalism are basically messianics who consider themselves as having all of the answers to the world' problems and are highly critical of all other opinions.

In the twentieth century, a viewpoint or ideology associated with free political institutions and religious toleration, as well as support for a strong role of government in regulating capitalism and constructing the welfare state.

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition

Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

They tend to be as close/narrow-minded as is humanly possible, because accepting the legitimacy of other opinions means that their Liberalism is a faulty god. In Israel, the political Leftists claim to be Liberal.

Today's rant is because deja vu the Leftists are at it again. This time, and remember that the Likud was also in power when Arutz 7 Radio was declared illegal, the Leftist Knesset is after Israel Hayom, a very popular free newspaper which is printed in Hebrew and online in both English and Hebrew.

Israeli print newspapers, like most (or all) commercial print newspapers in the world, including the most prestigious, like the New York Times, have been suffering financially, because fewer and fewer people read paper newspapers. I'm constantly getting email offers to sign up for full email editions of various newspapers. Nowadays very few are totally free even on the internet. The Jerusalem Post, for instance, has some articles free and others in their pay for "Premium." The NYT limits the amount of articles a non-subscriber can see.

The concept of free newspapers isn't new, and it's actually the most profitable in many cases. This was explained to me and a friend many years ago by the legendary "renaissance man," David Bar Illan, then Editor in Chief of the Jerusalem Post, whom we consulted with when we dreamt of starting a paper promoting the Israeli Right, pro-Land of Israel for Jews etc. This was after Counterpoint closed down. I got my writing start in Counterpoint, for which I wrote my humorous "Baile Rochel" column, which got me the moniker of "the Israeli Erma Bombeck."

Bar Illan explained that a publication got advertising by proving its circulation numbers. If a paper or magazine is dependent totally on subscriptions and sales, it's very hard to inflate these numbers to attract advertisers. And it's the money the advertisers pay that supports the publication, not the subscribers and sales.

After that talk with Bar Illan I developed a respect for the free newspapers/publications. 

Now, what has really been bothering the Israeli Leftists about the free Israel Hayom? They don't like its popularity. They don't like that the papers are grabbed from their distribution points all over the country. They don't like the fact that the writers are from the Right and are writers who aren't accepted by the old Left wing papers.

They claim that it's  not fair and that the free papers take away customers from the paid papers.

That's capitalism. That's freedom. Maybe if the Leftist papers offered articles and writers that people want to read, they'd have more people willing to buy their publications.

One of the reasons I blog, actually the main reason, is that I realized that I'd never get a regular paid column in the Jerusalem Post, which is the only English language newspaper in Israel.

I highly doubt if the Israeli public, Left, Right and Center agree with the MKs who support the tailor-made law to stop Israel Hayom. But obviously public opinion isn't the criteria for the MKs' vote.

Check out Israel Hayom, and find out more of the story.

10 reasons to reject anti-Israel Hayom bill

Israel, Facts Not Fiction

Shouldn't news be objective?  It's much too easy to slant news turning what's supposed to be a simple factual article into an insidious biased piece of fiction.  When I was growing up, the only newspaper we ever saw at home was the New York Times, and as I've reminisced before, for me the "Sunday funnies" were the political cartoons in its "News of the Week in Review."  And in elementary school when we learned about newspapers, we only used the NYT.  So it's rather ironic that as an Israeli I've discovered that that's the newspaper once should be most suspicious of.  Journalists and bloggers from all over are kept busy writing expose`s about the inaccuracies and intentional slanting of their "news" articles and biased op-eds.

Among the many Israeli sources of irritation for The New York Times, none is more persistently aggravating than Jewish settlements. August has been an especially difficult month for the Times. In rapid succession, its Jerusalem reporter Jodi Rudoren, Pulitzer-prize winning columnist Thomas Friedman, and editorial board contributed factual errors about settlements that not only  revealed  falsehoods but blatant bias. Algemeiner

So I have my own way of finding the news.  I'm a long time fan (and friend) of Ruthie Blum, who's very upfront about the fact that she writes op-eds from the Right point of view.  Here's her latest:

The Palestinians' two-faced solution

Last week, while the first batch of Palestinian terrorists was being released from Israeli jails, the Palestinian Authority was too busy condemning Israel to express satisfaction. This is because the Israeli government had approved the construction of hundreds of new houses in east Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

The plans to build these new units were made public well before the start of the current pre-negotiation discussions, brokered by the United States. Furthermore, the additional housing is slated for areas that the Palestinian Authority ostensibly agreed would remain in Israel after a "two-state solution" was reached.

Nevertheless, the Palestinian Authority and its apologists, both in Israel and abroad, did what they always do when faced with "settlement expansion" -- they raised a stink, accusing Israel of provocation, at best, and violation of international law, at worst...  Israel Hayom 

It's also a good idea to subscribe to the IDF's youtube page.



Seeing is believing.  I must admit that sometimes it works too ahrd to be PC-politically almost Leftist correct, but they do show some valuable videos.

The Jewish Press's site also gives real news and isn't afraid to tell the truth.  This isn't the same Jewish Press I first read when visiting my then future in-laws forty-five years ago.

There's also Arutz 7 which was a pioneer site telling the truth.

In terms of today's political cartoonists, there's Dry Bones.


Egypt's Turn

The current drama of the Middle East is that every Arab state seems to be under attack by one bunch of Islamists or another ...and the countries are crumbling.
Years ago, I encouraged his creator to blog them.

And now there's a new guy on the block, i24, hat tip Tablet Magazine.  I don't know how accurate and objective they will end up being, but we'll see.

As a blogger, my aim is more editorial than hard news. That's my choice, and I don't hide it.

Where do you find your most objective news? Please answer in the comments, thanks.