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Report From Israel – Sunday, November 1, 2015
JERUSALEM, Israel – Several terror attacks hit Israelis on the 13th of this month as Palestinian Arabs declared a “Day of Rage.” The attacks in Jerusalem and Ra’anana, a city in central Israel, left at least two dead and more than 20 wounded. And the attacks have continued daily.
CBN News reported live from a terror attack against passengers on a city bus in the latest and largest terror attack in the recent wave of violence. What began as an ordinary bus ride suddenly turned violent and deadly.
Israel Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told CBN News two terrorists, one armed with a handgun and the second with a knife, carried out the attack.
“What took place here in Armon HaNatiz in a relatively quiet neighborhood, two terrorists carried out an attack on a bus,” Rosenfeld explained. “One of them was armed with a pistol, the second one with a knife. They injured five Israelis. What we confirmed is that our police units arrived on the scene and shot and killed one of the terrorists; the other terrorist was apprehended.”
Israeli first responder Aaron Adler was one of the first to arrive at the attack.
“When I arrived on the scene there was actually still shooting on the scene on the bus right there behind us, with multiple gunshot wound(s) (to) victims inside the bus,” Adler told CBN News. “Together with other crews we pulled them out and started life-saving treatments, whatever we could do to try saving their lives.”
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat blames Palestinian incitement. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas began the incitement last month when he said the al-Aksa Mosque was in danger and that the Israeli government was changing the status quo on the Temple Mount.
“Which is not true; which is a lie. It’s a filthy lie,” Barkat said. “However, the residents — some of the residents — believe those lies and those incitements are sending people to kill innocent people.”
“We’ve just seen in the past few days, children, high school children that are incited, that go and try and terrorize and kill policemen,” he said. “They don’t return home. They themselves get killed. Incitement kills on both sides.”
Some Israelis are concerned they’re on the verge of a third intifada, a word that means uprising. The first intifada took place in the late 80s and early 90s and the second from 2000 to 2004.
The latest wave of violence has shaken Israelis.
“We are terrified. And the world thinks that we do, we are not justice with the Arabs,” an Israeli woman named Rosa told CBN News. “They have ID like I do and they kill us.”
“It’s hard. It’s not a good situation, but we do what we can,” Adler explained. “We believe in what we do and we know the purpose behind it. We understand the calling.”
Meanwhile, Barkat says this is a wakeup call for the nations.
“Now the experience we are going through in this city will haunt the rest of the world in a few years from now,” he predicted. “You have to understand that terrorism, this kind of terrorism, is not just a Jerusalem problem. It’s not just an Israeli problem. It’s an international problem,” he said.
“And if you don’t understand and support us in fighting terrorism here, the phase will happen everywhere else in the world,” Barkat said.
Meanwhile, The Islamic State aired its first Hebrew-language video on social media Friday morning. Entitled, “A message to the Jews, the first enemy of the Muslims,” the narrator, with his face hidden under a black mask with only slits for his eyes, begins.
“To all the Jews who conquered the land of the Muslims, the real war has not yet started. All that you had before this was child’s play compared to what is going to happen to you in the near future, Allah willing,” he says, according to a YNet translation.
Some Israelis noted that his thickly Arab-accented Hebrew probably means he’s an Israeli Arab or a Palestinian Arab who spent time in Israel either working or in jail.
“Do whatever you want in the meantime until we reach you. Then we will make you pay back 10 times for all the crimes you’ve committed, and we assure you that soon there will not be a single Jew in Jerusalem and throughout the country and we shall move on until we eradicate this disease worldwide,” he says.
“Look what happened to you after several vehicular attacks carried out by our Palestinian brothers. You flipped out after the first one and you feared all fast drivers. You even feared anyone carrying something in his hand. This is just your level,” he continues.
His claim that Israelis have “flipped out” falls short of the reality, where day-to-day life continues despite the attacks.
With each terror attack, the Israel Defense Forces provides details as soon as they’re confirmed.
The latest upsurge in violence is not by any means the country’s first experience with terrorism, and most are handling it much better than the narrator would like. Instilling fear is part and parcel of Islamic terrorism.
“Think even for a few seconds what will happen to you when tens of thousands, Allah willing, come after you from all over the world to slaughter you and throw you into the trash for good. Aside from the vehicles and bombs, the smallest child is ready to get on this car and send you straight to hell,” he says in typical Islamic rhetoric.
In rhetoric reminiscent of Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, he promises that ISIS will wipe Israel off the map.
“We are advancing toward you from the north, the south, Sinai and Damascus. From all over the world we will come after you to finish you off,” he says, ending the tirade in Arabic with a daggar in hand.
In related news, the IDF lifted a gag order Sunday morning on a 23-year-old Israeli Arab from the town of Jaljulya in Samaria who used a hand glider to cross into Syria from the Golan Heights on Saturday, presumably to join ISIS.
The Golan Heights is a popular spot for hand gliding so it was unclear initially if someone had gone off course. As soon as the hand glider was spotted, the IDF began a search-and-rescue operation using helicopters, drones and ground troops.
On Sunday, the IDF confirmed their findings and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) launched an investigation to determine if ISIS’ newest recruit had ties with other Islamic terror groups.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly recommended revoking his Israeli citizenship
JERUSALEM, Israel — A United Nations body declared two Jewish biblical holy sites to be Islamic and accused Israel of mistreating Palestinians on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Israel says UNESCO is helping Palestinians to rewrite biblical history and transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a religious one. UNESCO has become an instrument in the hands of the Arabs and the Palestinians.
The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization passed a resolution Wednesday declaring the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem are an integral part of Palestine. Earlier, they claimed both as mosques.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said the declaration helps Palestinians promote their political narrative.
“It is an attempt by the Arab side, and by the Palestinians, to change history and pretend as if those places, which are holy places for Judaism, which have been holy places for Judaism for thousands of years, are actually Palestinian or Muslim holy places,” Nahshon told CBN News.
Historical evidence indicates that the biblical forefathers — Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — were buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs, along with their wives.
The site of Rachel’s Tomb is believed to be the burial place of the biblical matriarch, Rachel, the favored wife of Jacob.
The resolution stopped short of including the Western Wall as part of the al-Aksa compound, as Palestinians had hoped. It would have renamed the Western Wall Plaza “al-Buraq,” after Mohammed’s winged horse.
“Even such an organization — such as UNESCO, which has become a puppet in the hands of the Palestinians — there is a limit to what you can do. But I have no doubt that they will try again,” Nahshon said.
The resolution also accuses Israel of “aggression” on the Temple Mount. Yet Palestinians have repeatedly attacked police and visitors to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.
The current wave of terrorism is a reaction to what they say are Israeli attempts to change the status quo. Israel denies any changes there.
“This Palestinian initiative is certainly related to what we live here on the ground — Palestinian violence, Palestinian incitement — and also the attempt to transform a conflict into a religious conflict,” Nahshon explained.
Earlier, Palestinians set fire to the tomb of the biblical patriarch Joseph. Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas condemned that arson attack, but Nahshon said it’s a sign of what would happen if Palestinians were in charge.
“The Palestinian arson of Joseph’s Tomb demonstrates very clearly what would be the fate of Jewish holy sites if they were under Palestinian control,” he said.
Dr. Cornelius Bekker, from Regent University, said Christians should care because it’s their history, too.
“The history of Israel is about God’s choice,” Bekker explained. “God chose Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, the very tomb here that’s now been set on fire. And so we feel a kinship with Israel because it’s about God’s choice and it’s our history. Jesus was a Jew, Paul was a Jew, [members of] the early Church were all Jewish.”
JERUSALEM, Israel — Thousands of Jewish worshippers gathered at Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem Friday and many more are expected throughout the weekend to mark the anniversary of the biblical matriarch’s death.
Israeli authorities will deploy hundreds of extra police and security forces to the site in view of the surge in attacks by Palestinian terrorists. The rise in attacks began on the eve of the Jewish New Year and continued throughout the fall holidays and afterward.
Troops placed a concrete barrier near Rachel’s Tomb on Thursday to provide additional protection ahead of the weekend pilgrimage.
Israel’s Security Cabinet approved more stringent measures to protect its citizens against the recent surge in terror attacks.
A new website has been launched which vividly illustrates the relentless nature of the ongoing Arab terrorist campaign against Jews in Israel, by charting in real time the amount of time since the last terrorist attack.
The site, IsraelHasBeenTerrorAttackFreeFor, went live Wednesday). Its creator says his aim is to “demonstrate the impossibility of maintaining a normal life in Israel these days, where terror attacks take place in every city and town, and where Palestinian hatred and incitement are aimed towards Israeli civilians – men, women and children.”
Inspiration for the site was based on the IsraelHasBeenRocketFreeForsite, which similarly charts rockets fired against Israeli civilians from Gaza.
The new site’s creator, Ofer Zelig, a Melbourne-Australia based software developer, grimly noted just how often he has reset the timer in the short period since its launch.
“I’ve created this web site hoping that I will never need to update it with new terror attack reports,” he said. “Woefully, since putting it online it has already been updated with new terror attacks several times.
“I’d like to note that I only update it with terror attacks that end with Israeli casualties. Other attempts, that don’t incur casualties, are usually not even mentioned in the media – there are dozens of them every single day.”
Facebook claims to act quickly to take down objectionable material, but the plaintiffs say the social media giant isn’t doing enough. (Screengrab)
Thousands of Israeli Jews took legal action against Facebook in a New York court Monday, alleging it allowed jihadists to openly recruit and train terrorists and plan terror attacks on its pages.
Some 20,000 Israelis, organized by the Israel-based non-profit Shurat HaDin -The Israel Law Center – joined a civil lawsuit filed Monday in the Supreme Court for the State of New York, seeking an injunction against Facebook.
The law center wants to force Facebook not only to remove the terrorists’ pages, but also to better monitor and block users who post videos glorifying and encouraging terrorist attacks, and publish messages with instructions on how to carry out an attack.
“The terrorists do not come on their own; they write posts and encourage their friends to kill Jews,” said Israeli attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of Shurat HaDin. “Facebook has been transformed into an anti-Semitic incubator for murder.”
While Facebook is accused in the suit of “intentionally disregarding the widespread incitement and calls for murder of Jews posted on its web pages by Palestinians,” a spokesman for Facebook said the lawsuit is without merit.
“We want people to feel safe when using Facebook. There is no place for content encouraging violence, direct threats, terrorism or hate speech on Facebook,” the company said in a statement to FoxNews.com. “As a community of nearly 1.5 billion people, we have a set of Community Standards to help people understand what is allowed on Facebook, and we urge people to use our reporting tools if they find content that they believe violates our standards so we can investigate and take swift action.”
The company maintains it encourages users to report inappropriate or dangerous messages linked to pages, profiles or individual content and a team of safety experts prioritizes investigations by reviewing the most serious first.
But Israelis involved in the lawsuit believe more needs to be done, especially on the heels of a “wave of terror” that resulted in seven Israelis being brutally murdered and several dozen others victims of stabbings.
They point to lead plaintiff Richard Lankin, 76, who was shot in the head and stabbed multiple times Oct. 13, 2015 by Palestinian terrorists armed with guns and knives from East Jerusalem as he rode on a crowded Jerusalem bus.
Lankin, in critical condition, is being treated for life-threatening injuries in a Jerusalem hospital.Two other Israelis were murdered and more than 20 were wounded in that bus attack.
The lawsuit, filed by attorneys Robert Tolchin of New York, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner the director of the Shurat HaDin civil rights organization, and Asher Perlin of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, claims the plaintiffs “have been living in the crosshairs of a murderous terrorist rampage carried out by killers who attack people with knives, axes, screwdrivers, cars and Molotov cocktails for no reason other than that the attacker perceives the victims to be Jewish.
“Many of these murderers were motivated to commit their heinous crimes by incitement to murder they read on Facebook—demagogues and leaders exhorting their followers to ‘slaughter the Jews,’ and offering instruction as to the best manner to do so, including even anatomical charts showing the best places to stab a human being,” the complaint states.
Since Facebook uses algorithms that match users with personalized ads and connect them to potential “friends,” the company should have the ability to monitor and block such postings, the lawsuit said.
U.S. based software company GIPEC has developed software to monitor illegal activity on social media, which is used by law enforcement to identify terrorist-related pages and track piracy, counterfeiting and pornography.
A GIPEC company spokesman said there is no excuse for social media companies not to be pro-active in removing terrorist-related content immediately.
“Terrorist organizations are spending time and money and using American social media platforms to recruit and incite sympathizers and ‘lone wolves’ here in the United States and Israel and around the world,” said the GIPEC spokesperson. “The social media companies supported by advertising revenue have a moral responsibility to make their platforms safe from these horrific and directional posts that call for terrorist behavior that we have been witnessing over the past months.”
Hanan Yadin, an Israeli whose Texas-based company, Instinctive Shooting Int’l, LLC, trains military and law enforcement about terrorism related conflicts, said combating terrorism, both on the ground and virtually, is an ongoing challenge.
“I am not sure that anyone can stop this completely,” Yadin said, noting as one terrorist page is pulled down, another goes up. “This is a warfare game, psychological warfare – to instill fear and intimidation among the targets. It is also an effective and cheap tool to instigate and to recruit.”
Veryan Khan, editorial director of Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC), said Facebook is just one of many social media outlets being utilized by terrorists to spread their message of hate.
Others allegedly include YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, Instagram, Pinterest, Ask.FM, Tumblr, SendVid, Dump.to, Just Paste.it, Nasher.me, Scribid and a new web site, Telegram.
Terrorists have used these networks to release 19 different videos since Friday calling for attack on Jews in Israel, she said.
Khan believes Facebook is doing its best to monitor dangerous activity, but the challenge is that like playing the game “whack-a-mole,” as soon as one account is taken down, another opens.
Darshan-Leitner told FoxNews.com that Facebook is just the first of several social media companies that may be targets of future lawsuits by her group unless they begin to better counter terrorist postings and activities.
And here’s a surprise from Breaking Christian News in Jerusalem: The US is cutting aid to the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria and in Gaza by $80 million, which top Democrats in Congress have called a message to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee voted unanimously Oct. 22 on a resolution condemning Abbas and the Palestinian leadership for “incitement” to violence against Jews in Israel with false statements accusing Israel of planning to change the status quo on the Temple Mount, and for systematic hate-mongering in Palestinian education and media. The resolution complements a State Department Sept. 25 announcement of cutting economic aid for to the Palestinians by 21.6%, from $370 million to $290 million in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to Al-Monitor.
The vote came while Israel was in the midst of battling a rash of stabbing, stone and Molotov cocktail attacks, as well as shooting, on the part of Arabs in Judea as well as Samaria and inside green line Israel. Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee stated: “We need to dial up pressure on Palestinian officials to repudiate this violence.”
The author of the resolution, Middle East Subpanel Chairwoman , R-Fla., called on both the Palestinians and Jordan to help defuse the tensions. “Instead of inciting violence and promoting hatred, [Abbas] needs to call for calm and work with the Israelis to restore the peace,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “The king of Jordan also has an important role to play as the guardian of Jerusalem’s Islamic holy sites.”
Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., and Kay Granger, R-Texas, wrote a letter to Abbas warning him that US aid would be “severely jeopardized” if he continues to refuse direct peace negotiations with Israel.
House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., said before the Oct 22 vote that “given that about one-third of the Palestinian Authority‘s budget is financed through foreign aid, international donors have leverage. They could follow the lead of the US Congress — and make direct funding of the PA off limits until the incitement stops.”
I conclude with this from the October 29 issue of Israel Today:
Israel’s security situation continues to be precarious. Citizens stabbed, soldiers stabbed, people killed and wounded. There is no quiet.
But we would like to take the time to talk a little about the good things of “war in Israel.”
Israeli soldiers are the soft underbelly of us all. They are, after all, our children that we raised with love and affection. And, as they reached the age of 18, are drafted into the army, not by choice but out of a sense of duty.
During these difficult days, as terror surrounds us on all sides, our soldiers are working day and night. We see them at each bus stop as they ensure civilians safety, checking buses, checking bags at the entrances to malls, performing guard duty at border checkpoints checking almost every vehicle. All this to prevent the next attack! You need to understand that this is not a normal state of affairs.
In most countries soldiers are occupied with the security of the state and NOT security within their state! But we are in the situation where the war against us affects every facet of life. Whether on buses, in the malls, bus stations on the streets, we face threats everywhere!
During these difficult times we see how Israeli citizens overwhelm our soldiers with appreciation. Mothers prepare home cooked meals for them and distribute them to our soldiers at checkpoints, to our children! Civilians stop and distribute packages of goodies to our soldiers out of thanks. Various organizations and donors adopt IDF units and treat our soldiers with lacking equipment so our troops can feel more comfortable and pleasant.
Everyone behaves as if each soldier is his own child and wants to express their thanks in their own special way. These things are the “good things of war in Israel.” Differences are set aside and we are united as one nation.
These difficult days are both crazy and heartwarming. “… out of the strong came forth sweetness.” Judges 14:14, is an expression that literally means out of a difficult situation good arises.
And we believe that it is in our power to hate the evil that is caused by our enemies and take this opportunity to build up and to love.
Report From Israel – Sunday, November 1, 2015
Report From Israel – Sunday, November 1, 2015