Death of the Two-State Solution

"The framework for recognizing Palestine that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney set forth on Wednesday attempts to bring us closer to that goal [of two democratic states for two peoples, living in mutual recognition of one another], but suffers from several fatal defects -- with respect to the conditions it includes, the conditions it fails to include and, most importantly the fact that it gets the paradigm backwards, granting recognition before the necessary conditions are met, rather than after."

"If Canada moves forward with this framework, it will almost certainly be complicit -- however inadvertently -- in the creation of another authoritarian terrorist state in the Middle East, rather than a peaceful democratic one, thereby decreasing, rather than increasing, the possibility of securing a lasting peace in the region."

Irwin Cotler, international chair, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights

Noah Lew, director of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights 

 

 

Originally, when the United Nations offered up their Partition Plan in 1947 the intention was that two democratic countries would result, for two different groups of people living contiguously in peace, security and mutual recognition of the legitimacy of each other. Israel accepted the UN offer and from 1948 onward has represented the only true democracy in the Middle East, amidst an array of kingdoms, sheikdoms, dictatorships and theocracies.

 

As a Jewish state, albeit an inclusive one, giving citizenship and equality to other ethnic/religious group living amongst the majority Jewish population, Israel has been forced by the hostility of its neighbours to maintain a military presence with the intention of forestalling frequent attempts to destroy its presence on its ancestral Judean landmass, now shared by edict of the United Nations with religious/ethnic factions adamant that it has no place amidst majority Islamic states.

 

Assembled armies of the Middle East attempted time and again to extirpate Israel from its heritage land, to no avail. And while at the present time, some of those originally belligerent states now have forged cordial relations -- or at the very least, tolerate Israel's presence -- the Arab contingent naming themselves Palestinians, taking on the mantle of original dwellers on the land, which they are not, has remained violently hostile, losing no opportunity to lethally attack Israeli citizens. 

 

The Palestinians embarked on a decades' long propaganda of victimhood and slander, convincing an empathetic Western audience that Israel was an illegal intruder into the Middle East, oppressing the Palestinians and taking land meant for them. Their unrestrained and violent antipathy toward Israel, the school curricula teaching Palestinian children to hate Jews and to aspire to martyrdom by killing Jews, the program of the ruling authorities to pay financial rewards to killers of Jews and violence-prone imprisoned Palestinians has ensured that no accord between the two solitudes could ever result in two states, side-by-side. 

 

 

 

Israel has attempted to negotiate peace agreements that would lead to the establishment of an internationally legal and recognized Palestinian state was refused time and again by Palestinian leaders who adamantly refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state. But although the Palestinians' refusal to compromise to make it possible for the two-state solution to arise, nations that are considered allies of Israel, continue to insist that the 'two-state-solution' must be accomplished in justice to Palestinian aspirations, while setting aside the intransigence of the Palestinian insistence on Israel's destruction.

 

The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, represented by the Fatah faction of Palestinian denial of an Israeli presence interacts through their leader and the president of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, as a 'moderate' whose agenda remains that of challenging Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish State. The leadership of the Hamas contingent, a recognized terrorist group, is proudly overt about their intention to destroy Israel by any means possible. Time and again Israeli governments over the years have attempted to reason with both Hamas and Fatah to accept a peace accord and recognize Israel's right of existence.

 

The response has always been an Intifada, and the ongoing resolve to counter Israel's presence with unmitigated violent savagery. Yet France, Britain and Canada, among other nations of the world, insist that the Palestinians must have their recognized sovereign state bordering that of Israel's. While covertly the Palestinians in whose name the West and other geographic nations support statehood recognition, plot to attack Israel and its citizens endlessly.

 

None of the states that see it as imperative that the Palestinians have their state, are faced with the dilemma themselves of a neighbour dedicated to destroying their presence, yet they support the Palestinian entitlement to secure what they adamantly refused in 1947, and have ever since, when it would mean living in peace alongside Israel. Confoundingly enough, Muslim Arab states themselves have little real empathy at this point in the endless terror attacks against Israel for the Palestinian position. For while the West opens its welcoming arms to the presence of Palestinians, the states in the Middle East evade their presence.

 

Emigration, migration, and refugee status has seen a wide influx of Palestinians in democratic nations of the West. And there they continue their fulminations against Israel, spreading their viperous draughts of slanderous venom, reawakening historical levels of international antisemitism to fever pitch, in the process convincing those who now support their cause that Israel is the oppressor, the Palestinians are pitiable victims, in a reversal of reality, but one that resonates with the uninformed, the oblivious and the Jew-haters.

 

 

Israel vs Palestinian Terrorism

"We must deal with the threat just as we deal with the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever steps might be required."

"This is a war in every respect, and we must win it."

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz

The IDF said Thursday that it had completed its operation in the area around Fara'a, about 15 miles south of Jenin and near the city of Tubas  washingtonpost.com

 

Hamas, in the ten-month aftermath of the terrorist group's invasion of southern Israel leading to an orgy of chaotic mass rape, mutilations, burning of families in their homes, as they entered farming villages near the border with Gaza, has called on Palestinians in the West Bank to rise up. In spirit the general population of West Bank Palestinians has done just that; according to polls that conclude the majority of West Bank Palestinians have no problems approving of the savagery of the Hamas bloodbath that left 1,200 Israelis of all ages and mostly civilian dead, while taking 250 children, women, elderly hostage.

This week Israeli forces launched a considerable operation overnight in the West Bank targeting and dispatching ten Hamas terrorists, and sealing the city of Jenin off. The Israel Defense Forces are fighting a war with Gaza's terrorist governing body, Hamas which had experienced no compunction in their decision to invade Israel and target their border Kibbutzim for a bloody massacre. In the full and certain knowledge that conducting such inhuman carnage in Israel would draw its military into Gaza to hunt down the terrorist operatives which find refuge in tunnels, choosing to sacrifice the lives of ordinary Palestinians to protect their own.

Jenin itself is a hotspot of terrorist activity, proving itself a problem that sends out deadly tendrils of death toward Israel as spontaneous new terror groups materialize, vowing  unendingly to visit death and destruction on Israel and its Jews. With the IDF battling Hezbollah in Israel's northern border, Hamas in Gaza, and the PLFP/Fatah groups in the West Bank, this is a war with many fronts conducted by the proxies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, aided by Qatar's funding.

 

IDF Assault on city of Jenin, June 2023   AP Photo

 

Israel's purpose in Jenin is to root out and prevent attacks; the Palestinian leadership identifies the operation to its population as a strategy to broaden the war for the purpose of expelling West Bank Palestinians from the geography to deprive them of their aspirational state. Israeli military spokesman, Lt.Col. Nadav Shoshani described "large forces" as having entered Jenin, Tulkarem and the Al-Faraa refugee camp. 

There, Israeli forces eliminated a handful of terrorists in a Tulkarem airstrike, another few in Al-Faraa and similar numbers that were arrested, in raids that represent the initial stage of a larger operation in which Israeli forces confiscated weapons, ammunition and military equipment. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, Israeli forces blocked roads leading to a hospital with dirt barriers, while surrounding medical facilities in Jenin. The Palestinian penchant for using hospitals as military bases is hard to evade.

The IDF, on the other hand, gave assurance that their troops had not entered the hospital facilities, had disrupted nothing there, and the hospitals were open to people to enter or leave their premises. Forces loyal to the PA were called upon by Hamas to "join the sacred battle of our people". A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mamoud Abbas spoke of the raids as a "serious escalation", urging the U.S. to intervene.

The operations are described by Israel as a requirement in their intention to completely dismantle Hamas along with other organized Palestinian terrorist groups. Since the war's start in October of 2023, attacks on Israelis have risen.

Israeli soldiers stand near a military vehicle during an Israeli raid in Nour Shams camp in Tulkarm, in the West Bank, Aug. 29, 2024. (Reuters Photo)

 

Malicious Advice by Antisemitism-Embracing Progressives

"[Israel must] ensure accountability for ongoing acts of violence against Palestinians by extremist settlers, reverse the record expansion of settlements in the West Bank which are illegal under international law, and work towards a two-state solution." 

"Israel must listen to the concerns of the international community."

"The protection of civilians is paramount and a requirement under international humanitarian law. Palestinian civilians cannot be made to pay the price of defeating Hamas. It must end."

"We call on parties to the conflict to agree to the [proposed Biden] deal. Any delay will only see more lives lost."

Joint statement from Canada, Australia, New Zealand

"The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land -- not in our eternal capital Jerusalem and not in the land of our ancestors in Judea and Samaria."

"No false decision in The Hague will distort this historical truth and likewise the legality of Israeli settlement in all the territories of our homeland cannot be contested."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Protesters holding a banner "From the river to the sea" at European March organized by a coalition of organizations including the ABP to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, Brussels, Belgium, May 19, 2024. (Photo: Sophie HUGON / Hans Lucas)

The more often and more horrendously Israel is attacked by those whom the international community view as entitled, despite their inhumane, sadistic and savage atrocities, to 'share' geographic space with the very state those attacks target the more isolated Israel becomes. Needless to say, those in the forefront of encouraging Israel to restrain its response to barbaric onslaughts on its civilian population, have never themselves been forced by circumstances beyond their control to confront the reality of a savage neighbour for whom slaughter of innocents is viewed as a right by 'oppressed' people.

 

Oppressed simply as a result of the neighbour endlessly targeted for bloodshed, forced by those circumstances to maintain a military vigil to apprehend terrorist attacks in a never-ending effort to protect its population. A neighbour whose leaders have never missed an opportunity to spurn opportunities to have a state of their own which would call upon them to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state and an obligation to put a halt to assaulting it in efforts to pry the state loose from its geography.

 

For four thousand years evidence links Judaean life with the ancestral lands that have become a controversial international concern. The plan for Partition allotted both Jews and Arabs their own particular portions on what was traditionally Jewish geographic territory. Jewish leaders were willing to surrender their quest for the greater proportion of the land that represented their heritage, while the Arabs who took on the mantle of 'Palestinians' (nomenclature dating from the Roman Era to identify land dedicated to ancestral Jewish land) spurned the opportunity to accept their portion.

 

They have spurned it ever since. The West speaks of the solution inherent in the 'two-state' condition of Partition, as a fair division of land enabling two states to live side-by-side. Palestinians speaking to the West agree, while conspiring among themselves, adhere to a 'one-state' solution; envisioning Israel absent the land that would revert in its totality to their sponsorship as 'Palestine' engulfing both areas, with a Jewish state no longer a reality.

 

Yet the prime minister of Canada and his Australian and New Zealand counterparts feel justified in pressing Israel to agree to a 'compromise' reflecting their idea of a solution. In reality what they impress upon Israel is their agenda that the Jewish State set aside the horrors of October 7 in favour of supporting an official, internationally approved Palestinian State to be established as a neighbour, one which will inevitably return to its 'resistance' mode against the presence of Israel to fulfill its larger scheme of the one-state solution.

 

The International Court of Justice non-binding opinion representing condemnation of Israel's supervision of lands captured 57 years ago, handily neglects to consider that this was accomplished in defending the state from a series of  neighbourly military attacks to unseat it from the region, and all failed. In no other part of the world, by no other country, would it be seen as 'illegal' internationally when a country in defending itself from military aggression takes possession of disputed land; borders historically have seen alterations and have never been internationally challenged.

All three Western countries are adamant in their renewed calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. So in that event, Hamas can reconstitute itself, rearm, recruit, and repeat -- as it promised was its intention -- the Satanic acts of unrestrained inhumanity that it demonstrated on October 7, 2023 it was so capable of, and revelling in, an extent of bloodletting that was never sufficiently repugnant to satiate the terrorists' appetite for torture, mutilation, excruciating pain and ghoulish acts of sexual depravity before murdering their victims.

These three lily-livered leaders of once-credible countries outperform themselves in the depths of their concern for humanity expressed toward a nation whose dedication to human rights far exceeds their own, whose system of justice is more than fully capable of punishing miscreants of its own in the event of their civilly-unapproved actions, and whose military has done more to protect civilian lives than any other nation's military in history. 

"Israel will continue to defend itself against hostile attacks on seven fronts, all directed by Iran through its proxies in the region."

"We call upon Canada, as a nation that values international law and institutions that uphold it, to do all it can to prevent those who try to disrupt global order from achieving their goals."

Israeli Ambassador to Canada, Iddo Moed

Jewish Indigeneity

"We will not recognize Israel at all, because it is our land."

"At that moment [when two Hamas operatives dressed as ultra-Orthodox Jews before detonating two separate bombs to maximize Jewish deaths] I remembered what Israel did against our people."

"I say it's the fault of those who came from America, Britain, South Africa, to settle in my country, to settle in Palestine. They killed themselves."

"According to the Koran, Jews will be dismissed from Palestine and Palestine will be liberated by Muslims."

"An open-ended ceasefire is forbidden, because our land is occupied."

(Now deceased) Hamas political leader Dr.(MD) Abdel Aziz Rantisi

 

Jews, as it happens are not authentically indigenous to Poland or to Brooklyn. New genetic technologies confirm that Jewish origins are in the Middle East, going back to the Neolithic era. There has been, furthermore a permanent presence of Jews in the Middle East in all the millennia since then. Much, much predating the Zionist movement calling on the diaspora to re-assemble in their ancestral homeland, made urgent for survival of Judeans following the Holocaust. 

 

In Israel the majority of the population are primarily descended from North African and Middle Eastern Jewish communities who sought refuge in Arab communities after their forcible expulsion from Judaea, by the Roman occupiers of Judaic geography, after the cataclysmic Judean revolt and Roman response that levelled much of Jerusalem, along with the Second Temple of Solomon. The rest are comprised of the descendants of European Jewry returned to the homeland.

 

Hamas named their October 7 massacre in southern Israel after the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Operation Al-Aqsa Flood occurred as a savagely sadistic sacrifice to Islam by a theocratic fanatical terrorist group. The Al-Aqsa Mosque was built over the ruins of the Temple Mount which formerly sited the Temple of Jerusalem, erected in 515 BCE, its destruction by Rome dating from the year 70CE. The laughable fiction that Jews are not indigenous to the land that Israel sits on is a Palestinian fantasy.

In 1948 when the United Nations partitioned the British Mandate of Palestine with a Jewish portion and an Arab portion, the Jewish establishment in the region immediately accepted, while the Arabs refused, leading to a joint Arab-military invasion to evacuate Jews from their nascent state. An enterprise which failed, leaving the Arabs calling themselves Palestinians who had fled prior to the invasion, disappointed that their expectation of return to take possession of the land Israel sits on, was no longer possible.

Since that long-ago event, attempts to work out peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinian leaders negotiating on behalf of those whose interests they claimed to represent failed, time and again. Despite the fact that Israel offered concessions and compromises and the Palestinians offered none on their part, in the end refusing all conciliatory offers for peace. The latest such agreement, hosted by former U.S. President Clinton, saw Yasser Arafat in 2000 tell Bill Clinton that he would be risking  his life by agreeing to the peace offer. 

When Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005 from the Gaza Strip, forcibly evacuating settlers to leave the area to the Palestinians, Ariel Sharon thought that this would be an opportunity to convince the Palestinians that peace was possible. Philanthropic American Jews spent millions offering a vast greenhouse operation to the Palestinians in Gaza, who contemptuously destroyed it rather than develop it into a worthwhile enterprise and opportunity for employment. Palestinians destroyed all the synagogues after the withdrawal.

Lawlessness became the order of the day in Gaza, although the secular Fatah which also ruled the West Bank was in authority. With the arrival of Hamas, for whom Islam is paramount, the two factions faced off in a civil war of extreme brutality, with Hamas finally prevailing, killing and expelling Fatah from Gaza. Hamas's rule served to restore order, and it was an order based on ruthless autocracy, one that focused not on building a civil infrastructure but a military encampment to which the population's welfare was an afterthought.

"As Hamas took over the remnants of PA institutions in the strip, it established a judiciary and put in place authoritarian institutions. In theory, Hamas governs in accordance with the sharia-based Palestinian Basic Law, as does the PA; but it has generally been more restrictive than the law requires, including by controlling how women dress and enforcing gender segregation in public during the early years of its rule. The watchdog group Freedom House found in 2020 that the “Hamas-controlled government has no effective or independent mechanisms for ensuring transparency in its funding, procurements, or operations.” Hamas also represses the Gazan media, civilian activism on social media, the political opposition, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), leaving it without mechanisms for accountability."

Council on Foreign Relations

A parade for the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s militant arm, is held in Gaza. Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Incontrovertible

"The IDF has concluded an After Action Review and can confirm that the Islamic Jihad was responsible for the strike on the hospital in Gaza City."

"According to our intelligence, Hamas checked the reports, understood it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that had misfired -- and decided to launch a global media campaign to hide what really happened."

"They went as far as inflating the number of casualties. They understood, with absolute certainty, that it was a rocket misfired by Islamic Jihad that damaged the hospital." 

"Palestinian civilians pay the price."

"We want maximum transparency because we take any incident involving civilians very seriously. Unfortunately, many in the media immediately reported the statements coming out of Hamas-controlled Gaza, which blamed Israel."

"Instead of waiting for the examination of credible information from the IDF, some media outlets ran with Hamas's lies. Some of those headlines are still up and have not been corrected."

"I understand the desire to break news, but I hope you will all agree that accuracy and credible information comes before speed."

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, spokesman, Israel Defense Forces

The scorched parking lot of the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City after an overnight blast there, October 18, 2023. (Courtesy photo)

"The news coming out of Gaza is horrific and absolutely unacceptable."

"International humanitarian and international law needs to be respected in this, and in all cases."

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

 

"The attack on the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza is horrifying and against international humanitarian law."

Industry minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, Canada

Hamas is the terrorist body that invaded Israel on October 7/8 at the Gaza/Israel border, in a surprise attack that saw hundreds of Israeli citizens and soldiers slaughtered, Israeli girls and women raped, children and infants killed alongside their parents in towns and villages adjacent the border, hundreds more killed at a music festival, and hundreds of men, women and children taken into Gaza by the terrorist operatives to be held as sex slaves and hostages. And this is the group that has claimed Israel to be responsible for the bombing of a hospital in Gaza.

 

Evidently there were no second thoughts of caution considering from whom the accusations came, and legacy media in the West alongside media in the Middle East ran with the story that the Israel Defense Forces deliberately targeted a hospital and killed 500 innocent Palestinians, over half of which were children, according to statements issued by Hamas and the Gaza Medical Authority. The kind of claim that embarrassed even the director of the hospital who demurred, suggesting maybe half that number...?

 

But the word of a terrorist group was good enough for the prime minister of Canada and his cabinet who swiftly issued condemnations over the horrific event, not-so-subtly reminding Israel that an attack of that kind is considered a war crime, assuming without proof or even a decent period of deliberation and second thought, that it was Israel who committed the dread act. It wasn't hard to convince the Arab/Muslim street in the Middle East and across Europe and North America. Fresh 'protests' against Israel's depredations on Gaza erupted, synagogues were fire-bombed in Spain, Tunisia and Germany.  

The IDF, following a quick and thorough investigation and examination of evidence, provided among other things, a recording of a conversation that took place between Hamas operatives, confirming it was a failed Islamic Jihad rocket launch causing the blast. The rocket had been launched from the site of a cemetery located behind the hospital: "it misfired and fell on them", in the words of one Hamas operative.

And then there was aerial footage where the hospital was shown not to have been hit directly, damage confined to the parking lot beside the hospital. Footage was shown from a news camera in the southern Israeli city of Netivot where the video shows the rocket launched and immediately striking in the area of the hospital. A common enough occurrence as a byproduct of Gaza rockets fired toward Israel falling short of their target and hitting Gaza instead, including Palestinian citizens. 

Reports out of Gaza that led to universal outrage was that an explosion killed 471, injuring over 300. The images shown by the Gaza Health Ministry were of a blackened hospital parking lot with burned-out cars. The claim was that the parking lot and courtyard were full of hundreds of families seeking shelter. News out of Gaza that hundreds of injured civilians were rushed to the main hospital, doctors reporting treating the wounded on floors when bed availability ran out. 

Hamas is notorious for gloating with satisfaction over Palestinian civilian casualties, the more that can be claimed, the stronger its message to the world of Israeli inhumanity toward Palestinians. The original figure of 500 killed has, over the space of two days gradually  diminished to the point where perhaps it was a relative handful of truly unfortunate Palestinians whose lives were lost. 

 

An all-volunteer geolocation web group -- GeoConfirmed -- analyzed multiple videos of the minutes leading up to the explosion, concluding the hospital blast occurred immediately following the launch of a rocket barrage from northern Gaza; when one appeared to break apart soon after launch. Similarly a point-by-point analysis for the US.-based conflict researcher Tal Hagin noted the blast perfectly corresponded with announced rocket launches by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, with no reports of either Israeli shelling or airstrikes by Israel in the general vicinity.

"Shame on the media who swallowed the lies of Hamas and Islamic Jihad -- broadcasting a 21st-century blood libel around the globe."

"Shame on the vile terrorists in Gaza who wilfully spill the blood of the innocents."

Israeli President Isaac Herzog

 

J.Andres Gannon, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, in the US, says the ground explosions appeared to be small, meaning that the heat generated from the impact may have been caused by leftover rocket fuel rather than an explosion from a warhead.

Justin Bronk, senior research fellow at the UK-based Royal United Services Institute, agrees. While it is difficult to be sure at such an early stage, he says, the evidence looks like the explosion was caused by a failed rocket section hitting the car park and causing a fuel and propellant fire. 

Mr Gannon says it is not possible to determine whether the projectile struck its intended target from the footage he has seen. He adds that the flashes in the sky likely indicate the projectile was a rocket with an engine that overheated and stopped working.

BBC Verify

 

Jerusalem, Intersection of Three World Religions -- Palestinian Terrorism

"It's just a matter of time, and not much time, until we settle the score."

"We acted in Lebanon, we acted in Gaza, we beefed up forces in the field."

"[Israel's response will always] exact a significant price from our enemies."

Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu

 

"[IDF warplanes struck] terrorist infrastructures belonging to Hamas [in Lebanon]."

"The IDF will not allow the Hamas terrorist organization to operate from within Lebanon and hold the state of Lebanon responsible for every directed fire emanating from its territory."

Israel Defense Forces 

Many of the rockets fired from Gaza were intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome missile defence system  Reuters

Friday was a day dedicated to violence in the Middle East with Israel responding to attacks from Lebanon orchestrated by Hamas, leading the Israel Defense Forces to unleash airstrikes both on Lebanon and on the Gaza Strip. Bringing the area alarmingly close to a potential larger conflict following days of violence in East Jerusalem when Palestinian thugs began to put the anticipated Ramadan threats issued by Hamas and Hezbollah into action. 

Among the worshippers at the Al-Aqsa mosque were young Palestinians who had taken up the incitement urged on by the PA, Hamas, Jordan and Turkey.

Fortifying themselves in the mosque with a collection of stone projectiles and fireworks to challenge the Israeli Police stationed there to ensure an orderly and secure environment at a time when tens of thousands of Muslims customarily attend the mosque for prayers during Ramadan. Barricading themselves into the mosque, lobbing both fireworks and rocks at police, what was to have been peaceful gatherings in prayer during the sacred month was turned into a riot of violence.

Irrespective of the fact that the police reacted to restore order and maintain the safety of innocent people in arresting the thugs, the criticism for desecrating the mosque, Ramadan and those in attendance whose faith was mocked by the rioters, the Islamic world placed blame on Israel for disproportionate use of force in preventing further disruption and possibly severe injuries and death. 

Severe injuries and death did occur, however, at the terrorist hands of Palestinian jihadists targeting civilian Israelis in an ongoing series of violent attacks.

A person wounded in an attack is brought to a hospital in Tel Aviv on Friday. Israeli police said a car rammed into a group of people near a popular seaside park before flipping over. Police also said they shot and killed the driver of the car. (Gideon Markowicz/The Associated Press)

Fighting on Israel's northern and southern borders subsided allowing midday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque to pass peacefully until a Palestinian shooting attack in the West Bank killed two Israeli women, injuring their mother, all witnessed by the women's father driving separately behind them.  As well, a large barrage of rockets had been fired at Israel from southern Lebanon, bringing to mind Israel's 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In retaliation, the Israeli military sent warplanes to strike Hamas infrastructure after 34 rockets had been sent into northern Israel. The Israeli military pounded weapons production sites and underground Hamas tunnels in Gaza. Israelis living along the southern border were able to return home from safety taken in bomb shelters.Most of the missiles crossing into Israel hit open areas, with one landing in Sderot where shrapnel sliced a house.

After the cowardly attack on the three women driving in the West Bank a Hamas spokesman hailed the death of the two sisters as retaliation "for the crimes committed by Israel in the West Bank and the Al-Aqsa mosque". Over 130,000 Muslims poured into the Al-Aqsa site for midday prayers on Friday, ending without further provocation. 

Before dawn prayers, chaos had once again erupted at an entrance to the esplanade as Israeli police coped with Palestinian worshippers chanting slogans praising Hamas. Soon afterward people leaving the prayers staged a protest on the courtyard, raising fists and shouting imprecations against Israel. Security forces entered the compound after prayers, responding to masked suspects throwing rocks at officers at one of the gates.

The compound, administered by the Islamic waqf and Jordanian officials, condemn Israeli police, while having no comment about the rioters who violently confronted police in clear provocation to elicit a response, in the process trashing the mosque, setting off fireworks within the enclosed space, lobbing rocks from the sacred site, producing an unholy spectacle for Ramadan. 

Elsewhere in Jerusalem's Old City, pilgrims from around the world congregated. Christian faithful retraced the route Jesus is believed to have taken for Good Friday, while Jews celebrated the Passover holiday. The violence imposed on the ancient city by Palestinian terrorists in a sacrilegious display of violence led Israel to appeal to the international community to condemn the rocket fire from Lebanon and Gaza and Hamas's incitement to violence.

Masked militants from the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, perform Friday prayers in Jebaliya City, northern Gaza Strip, on Friday. (Adel Hana/The Associated Press)

 

The Holy Month of Ramadan in Israel

“Once again, extremists have hijacked the holy month of Ramadan. Once again, young thugs are shooting fireworks at police out of the third-holiest mosque in Islam. Once again, terror groups seek to leverage this into a broader confrontation with Israel."

"And once again, such behavior has gone uncriticized by moderate Arab states like Jordan. This pattern brings the region to the brink of war each year, with Ramadan wielded cynically as the predicate.”  Jonathan Schanzer, Senior Vice President for Research, Federation for Defence of Democracies

 

“Palestinian extremists are once again inciting to violence at sensitive religious sites during Ramadan and Passover."

"They seek to take advantage of a pre-established media and political narrative that refuses to acknowledge a clear causal connection between the violence and reasonable Israeli security steps to constrain it."

"This framing not only misleads readers but fans the flames, with dangerous consequences for the people of the region.” 

Mark Dubowitz, CEO, Federation for Defense of Democracies

Police respond to Palestinian riots on Temple Mount, Israeli officer injured

"Several law-breaking youths and masked agitators [fortified the mosque] in order to disrupt public order and desecrate the mosque."  

"After many and prolonged attempts to get them out by talking to no avail, police forces were forced to enter the compound in order to get them out with the intentions to allow the Fajr [dawn] prayer and to prevent a violent disturbance." 

"When the police entered, stones were thrown at them and fireworks were fired from inside the mosque by a large group of agitators." 

Israeli Police report

Scores of Palestinians were arrested at Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli police early Wednesday in Jerusalem's Old City. Stun grenades were fired while Palestinians hurled rocks and fireworks, a burst of violence not entirely surprising given the tensions built up over the past months with Palestinian random attacks against Israelis increasing in numbers as a lead-up to Ramadan. In Gaza Palestinian terrorists attacked southern Israel with rocket fire, and repeated Israeli airstrikes ensued.

 

Muslims are marking their holy month of Ramadan, a time for introspection, prayer and sobering thought. It has also become a month of threats against Israel followed by violence, a ritual not entirely in keeping with the purpose of the holy month. Just as Jews in Israel and around the world were preparing for the onset of Passover, incitement to violence by Palestinian leadership led to frenzied activity on the Temple Mount around the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

 

Young Palestinian men were once again assembling rocky projectiles within the mosque, along with fireworks with the intention of attacking the Israeli Police whose function is to maintain calm and security during this time when thousands of Muslim worshippers are expected to throng to prayer at the mosque. The Palestinian militants barricaded themselves in the mosque while throwing rocks and fireworks at the police, preventing peaceful Muslims from either entering or exiting the mosque.

 

Al-Aqsa Mosque interior, Reuters

By morning, calm prevailed on the compound and shortly afterward it was reopened to worshippers. Dozens of Palestinians have time and again attempted to remain overnight in the mosque, barricading themselves within, stockpiling projectiles. Nightly, police entered to evict them. Palestinian terrorist groups gave warning of additional confrontations on the way. 

 

Medics of the Palestinian Red Crescent described 50 people having been injured at the mosque, while Israeli police spoke of 350 arrested. Most of those arrested from Al-Aqsa were released by early afternoon, while 50 remained in detention to have their cases heard on Friday. 

 

Smoke rises above buildings in Gaza City as the IDF launches air strikes on the Hamas-operated Palestinian enclave late April 6, 2023   Mohammed Abed/AFP

 

An Israeli soldier was shot and moderately wounded in the West Bank. A total of 34 rockets were fired by Palestinians, with air raid sirens sounding in the region just as residents prepared for the weeklong Passover holiday."We don't want this to escalate, [but] we will respond very aggressively", stated Lt.Col. Richard Hecht, an army spokesman, referring to the intercepted rockets to which the IDF responded with airstrikes hitting Hamas weapons storage and manufacturing sites.

Defending Israel

Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system fires to intercept a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israel near Ashdod, Israel August 6, 2022. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

"This was a very narrow tactical operation with limited targets and a huge tactical success. But there is no real change in the situation in Gaza and it did not relieve the problems of the Palestinian system which is controlled by the Hamas terror group. The lack of strategy and vision for a solution of the conflict has still not changed and this is the challenge that Israel is facing."

"We saw the capabilities of the PIJ — one of the weakest terrorist groups surrounding Israel — which don’t really match the defense capabilities of the Iron Dome"

"The military capabilities of PIJ are now dramatically beneath the level of the capabilities of Hamas."

 Tamir Hayman,  Managing Director, Institute for National Security Studies

 

"[It will take some time for the PIJ to rebuild its leadership structure and train the next generation]. That said there is a risk that there could be a hydra that grows in its place."

"A more centralized leadership structure could follow. One could potentially imagine multiple nodes that would sprout up in its place with multiple cells and with multiple leaders which would make it harder for Israel to dismantle it."

"The primary funder, trainer and provider of arms is Iran, and its ability to provide all of that to Islamic Jihad, as well as Hamas and others, has not diminished in the least. This means that future clashes are a foregone conclusion."

"Israel’s near-total intelligence dominance over the last week probably sent something of a stark message to both Hamas, and perhaps Hezbollah and maybe Iran as well, that Israel has the ability to strike at the top leadership and to do significant damage without a lot of protracted battle."

"Whether that changes their calculus is another story, but it’s the thought that all proxies could bog Israel down in a painful conflict — I think they learned that the opposite was true."

Jonathan Schanzer, Middle East scholar, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants gather at a mourning house for Palestinians who were killed during Israel-Gaza fighting, as a ceasefire holds, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, August 8, 2022. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

Israeli intelligence had firm information that Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a proxy militia of Iran's hoping to become as influential and lethal and as useful to the Islamic Republic as Hezbollah has been and continues to be, was planning another attack on Israeli military units or on an Israeli border town. The IDF and the Israeli government have been anticipating a violent response of some kind from PIJ following the arrest of one of its top leaders, in the West Bank.

Following days of tense expectation, a convoy of PIJ trucks making its way to the border inspired the IDF to a preemptive strike, one targeting yet another leader of the Islamist group. A series of rockets from Gaza followed, hundreds aiming for Israeli  towns and villages. In Sderot, a constant PIJ and Hamas target, a family escaped death when a rocket levelled their home. The IDF bombed identified PIJ munitions sites and buildings.

When an apartment building came under target, all residents were first instructed to vacate the building. Palestinian journalists gathered to watch the precision targeting of the building. While the IDF and Gaza's secondary terrorist group were engaged in combat, Hamas made no effort to intervene or to join the conflict. Although Hamas rules Gaza, the PIJ competes with them for influence and power, no doubt leading Hamas to leave the PIJ on its own. Any major losses sustained by PIJ is a win for Hamas.

As for teaching terrorist groups through the IDF's swift and unequivocal action to defang the threat of a terrorist group with clarity, dispatch and accuracy, even to the extent of pinpoint targeting of their leaders, the unfortunate truth is that terrorist groups are inflamed with the passion of hatred of a designated enemy balanced with love of violence and the meting out of death in the delusion of martyrdom; that they might take a reasonable lesson in caution from the event is unlikely.

What the violence did succeed in revealing was the presence within Israel itself of a third column of Israeli Palestinian citizens who cheered wildly when PIJ rockets managed to reach central Israel. 

 

All together a dozen PIJ members were targeted and put out of commission, two senior commanders included. The Israeli army destroyed a number of PIJ military emplacements, destroying underground tunnels across Gaza, in the process. Reality? The tunnels will be rebuilt. The military sites will be reestablished.

Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system fires to intercept a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israel August 6, 2022. REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg

Over 1,100 rockets were fired by PIJ toward Israel throughout three days of fighting. 990 of the rockets crossed into Israel; 200 misfired, ending up within Gaza, causing a number of civilian casualties, including the death of Palestinian children. The Iron Dome defence missile system shot down 380 missiles for a 96 percent success rate.

 

All of this, with thousands of Gaza residents given work permits to enter Israel for gainful employment. Israel's Friday strike of the Islamic Jihad leader followed by its Saturday targeted strike on a second leader should amply demonstrate the vulnerability of terrorist leadership to Israel's intelligence capabilities coupled with its capacity for pinpoint-accuracy strikes. 

Khaled Mansour the second PIJ commander killed was hit in an airstrike in the Rafah refugee camp in southern Gaza where two other terrorists were killed as well. The three-storey building was flattened when struck by the missile, but some deaths of Palestinians during the three-day round of fighting were caused by rocket fire that went awry, a not-uncommon occurrence with rockets lobbed off by both PIJ and Hamas.

PIJ lost its two most senior commanders on the ground, Tayseer Jaabari and Khaled Mansour, as well as sites used to manufacture and store missiles, command headquarters and outposts. The IDF says it hit 170 PIJ targets.  Reuters

Good Fences Make Good Neighbours?

In 2013, Israeli labourers were put to work repairing the security fence that separates Gaza from Israel. A sniper killed one of the workmen and Israel retaliated by bombing Gaza at a number of Hamas sites and where the sniper shot the fence repairman from. Hamas issued a statement condemning Israeli 'aggression'. This is the security fence necessitated by countless suicide bombing incursions from the West Bank and Gaza into Israel that left 900 Israelis dead in the last several decades, young and old, wounding many more.

Israeli army soldiers carry a labourer shot near the Israel and Gaza border to a helicopter.

 

The Israeli workman who was shot dead that day was a civilian contractor who worked for the Israeli Defense Ministry. The day previous, an Israeli police officer had been stabbed and wounded at a West Bank junction. And a few days on, a bomb exploded on a bus in Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv. Minutes before, passengers were warned to exit the bus, a quick appraisal that worked to prevent casualties. 

 

Israel responds ... A Palestinian inspects a Hamas training camp after it was hit by an Israeli air strike in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

There was a wholesale reduction of Palestinian terrorist incursions from the West Bank and Gaza Strip into Israel after the controversial security fence was built. In a sense, the fence, while protecting Israelis and saving countless lives, gave impetus to the slander of Israel as an 'Apartheid State'. The usual Palestinian contortion of reality, where no Jews are permitted to live in the West Bank governed by the Palestinian Authority, while 20 percent of the Israeli population is comprised of Israeli-Palestinians with full citizenship.

The fence has, since its building, fallen into disrepair with gaps and breakages occurring here and there. Upkeep to the fence is ongoing. Recent deadly incursions into Israel by Palestinian terrorists resulted within a two-week span of attacks, in 14 Israelis being killed, knifed or shot to death, as well as vehicular homicide. This led to damaged areas of the fence having to be repaired once again to restore its integrity as a deterrent to deadly violence.

View of a hole in the the security fence, near Mevo Horon, March 30, 2022.

(photo credit: YOSSI ALONI/FLASH90)

Where, on the occasion of the murder of five Israelis by a 29-year-old Palestinian from Jenin, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was heard to condemn the violence, calling for a "permanent, comprehensive and just peace", he and his Fatah party have never stopped inciting Palestinians to violence against Jews. From primary school curricula up to high school and through social media the PA, Fatah and Hamas glorify martyrdom, teaching Palestinian children to view Jews as the enemy.

The only 'permanent, comprehensive and just peace' that the PA's Abbas will countenance in reality is to see Israel defeated in conflict, and the country and its Jewish inhabitants disappear, to enable Palestinians to claim the entire geography as their own, 'from the river to the sea'. More recently, during the confluence of Passover, Easter and Ramadan, violence has once again flared up at the Temple Mount over which the Noble Sanctuary of Islam was built, with the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque.

The Temple Mount, the most sacred place in Judaism where the two Temples of Solomon sat, the second ruined by the Romans during their occupation of Judea, has been ruled off limits to Jewish worshippers to satisfy the monopoly claimed by the Jordanian Islamic Waqf authority to whom Israel signed over authority with the peace agreement it signed with Jordan. Mahmoud Abbas has railed against 'filthy Jewish feet' soiling the Noble Sanctuary when Jews have appeared on the Temple Mount.

During this Passover week, Israelis were given permission by the Israeli government to approach the Temple Mount, while Israeli Palestinians who call it the Noble Sanctuary prayed at the Al Aqsa mosque. Palestinians assaulted Orthodox Jews and they rained rocks down on Jews gathered at the Wailing Wall to pray. The Palestinians gathered rocks, placing them within the mosque, and lobbed them along with incendiary devices at Israeli security.

Attempts to restore peace and security saw hundreds of rioting Palestinians injured. Smoke bombs and tear gas was used, as well as truncheons wielded by the Israeli Security. Hundreds of rioters were arrested. The Arab Muslim world reacted, insisting on cautious moderation in response to the riots where, if they were themselves faced with the savagery of violent riots, would have used more forceful means to disperse and arrest the rioters.

Avishai Yehezkel, one of the victims, was buried in Bnei Brak   Reuters

The recent murders of Israelis by Palestinians, outwardly condemned by the PA's president, rings hollow on many fronts, not the least of which is that the Bnei Brak attack that killed five Israelis was carried out by a Fatah militant, earning praise from senior Fatah members who are part of the West Bank governing party. Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza as well as Fatah, celebrated the murders, handing out sweets and adding incendiary threats for further deadly attacks. 

These are the neighbours that the international community, the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, the UN Security Council, the Arab League -- whose member states never allowed Palestinians to settle in their own countries as citizens -- all insist that Israel must negotiate for a peace accord with. A neighbour against whose malevolence and thirst for the murder of Jews necessitated a security fence. 

In Israel's case, good fences did not make for good neighbours.

Declaring 'Victory'

"Hamas can't hide anymore. That's a great achievement for Israel."

"We eliminated an important part of Hamas's and Islamic Jihad's command echelon."

"And whoever was not killed knows today that our long arm can reach him anywhere, above ground or underground."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

 

"We will rebuild what the occupation [Israel] destroyed and restore our capabilities."

"And we will not abandon our obligations and duties to the families of martyrs, the wounded and those whose homes were destroyed."

"[We are grateful to Iran] which has not given up on providing the resistance with money, weapons and technology."

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh

Palestinians wave national flags in front of the Dome of the Rock in the al-Aqsa mosque complex in Jerusalem, Friday, May 21, 202, as a cease-fire took effect between Hamas and Israel after an 11-day war. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

 

Israel is determined and prepared to defend itself against any and all violence perpetrated by state actors or terrorist groups against its sovereignty and its population. This is a country which, since its return to its heritage geography 73 years ago, has been forced to build and to weaponize a military for the sole purpose of defence. A country surrounded by neighbours for whom irredentism is as much a part of their shared culture of the Middle East, as striving for peace is for Israel. Israel has been forced time and again to mount defences against armies of its neighbours joining in a military offensive to destroy its presence.

And while following one decisive battle after another where Israel has won its defence, or seen fit to withdraw when it was given little option but to pursue those who constantly challenged its sovereignty and killed its people, its purpose has always been defence, never offence. Those successful defences finally delivered the message to its tormentors that the Jewish state was entrenched for good where it belonged, and no amount of military conflict forced upon it to defend itself would serve to extricate it from its inheritance in the Middle East.

It is no longer the purpose of Arab Muslim countries in the Middle East to destroy Israel. That goal is left only with Aryan Muslim Iran, where its theocracy continues to conspire, threaten, and launch attacks against Israel through its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza. The Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas (along with other terrorist Palestinian/Arab militant groups such as Islamic Jihad and Fatah) whose charters specify directly that their goal is the destruction of Israel and its Jewish population, dream of 'victory' over the Zionist state; a pejorative in their sense, a point of pride in Jews.

 

Palestinians pray by the bodies of members of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas movement, who died in Israeli bombardment of a tunnel, during their funeral in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Friday, May 21, 2021.  (AP Photo/Yousef Masoud)

 

Israel speaks with the relief of having, in the tribal, sectarian, clan and ethnic-sect language of the Middle East, demonstrated amply that it will not absorb the violence meted out by the vicious trifecta of Iran/Hezbollah/Hamas. Attack Israel and there's a steep price to pay. Israel's attackers, on the other hand, know nothing beyond the crude, barbaric violence of threat and assault to gain the advantage they seek to destroy Israel. For Israel it is survival motivating its action, for the others it is a wargame of death delivery to those they deem an enemy.

A resident of Gaza, surveying the damage done to his neighbourhood by aerial bombardment when Israel responded to the barrage of thousands of missiles and rockets shot from neighbourhoods exactly like his, and his included, comes the rhetorical question: "How can the world call itself civilized?" Far more to the point were he to mull over the reality that the terrorist group that rules his neighbourhood uses his crowded civilian enclave and all others as convenient shields behind which it mounts its attacks clearly inviting a response in kind precisely where civilians in Gaza live; their schools, hospitals, their mosques.

 

People walk by a residential building covered with Israeli flags last week after it was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ramat Gan, central Israel, Friday, May 21, 2021.  (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

 

The death toll during the destructive air attacks is greater in Gaza than it is in Israel because this is how Hamas plans their strategy; the higher the Palestinian death toll the more sympathy can be extracted from the international community over the dire fate of Palestinians, in the line of fire of the Israeli Defense Forces. A death toll of 243, resulting from one thousand air strikes and buildings bombed is nothing short of miraculous, since it also includes largely the number of Hamas 'fighters' Israel managed to target. The civilian toll would have been far higher had Israel not, at every opportunity, forewarned people to evacuate buildings it meant to bomb because of links with Hamas.

Hamas builds networks of extensive underground tunnels. There are no bomb shelters built by Hamas to protect the population of Gaza whom Hamas constantly places in direct danger. Israel, the recipient of Hamas violence and well over four thousand rockets and missiles in the past eleven days, builds bomb shelters everywhere because it must, to protect its population; Jews, Druze, B'hai, Arabs, Muslims, Christians and any others who live in the country, including foreign workers.

U.S. President Joe Biden declared his intention that humanitarian aid would be sent to Gaza coordinated with the Palestinian Authority which governs the West Bank "in a manner that does not permit Hamas to simply restock its military arsenal". An interesting statement when in reality it is Israel and Israel alone to which the task of prevention of restocking of military arms prevention for Hamas rests with, along with some assistance from Egypt. Both Israel and Egypt know the tunnel network Hamas so diligently constructs carries smuggled weaponry along circuitous international routes from Iran through to Egypt and into Gaza.

Of the 4,350 rockets fired at Israel from Gaza, an estimated 640 fell short of their targets, landing back into the Gaza Strip, while 90 percent of the remainder that crossed the border were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defence system. Of the 640 that fell back into Gaza, a number were involved in killing Palestinians and wounding many others. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are guilty of war crimes, firing weapons purposely at civilians, both in Israel and indirectly in Gaza itself. With the ceasefire, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards issued a warning to Israel to expect "deadly blows".

Rubble of the al Jalaal building in Gaza, after a ceasefire   AP

Unravelling Israeli Sovereignty

"Real sympathy with the Palestinian people means searching for solutions for an actual and practical peace that guarantees their safety, security, and development. The solutions should also stop those [Hamas] who are ready to burn Palestine and its people."

"[The Hamas terrorist group] was well prepared for this war by building trenches in which its members can take shelter, while innocent Palestinians were being killed. Hamas likes to play the role of victim and kill Palestinians to win Arab, Islamic and international sympathy."

"Some ask, is this the right time to present the crimes of Hamas.? This is precisely the best time to do so. The reader can conduct a quick search on the Internet to learn about the crimes that Hamas has committed against the Palestinians. Hamas has the right to destroy its homes with its own hands, but it has no right to destroy the homes of Palestinians and underestimate their blood and the blood of their children."

"Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood patrons do not care about the suffering or interests of the Palestinians. They only care about demonizing those who stand against them. Hamas is saying: Let the Palestinians die for the sake of a Muslim Brotherhood victory."

Saudi writer/researcher Abdulah Bin Binjad Al Otaibi 

"Abbas wants to cover up for this decision to postpone the Palestinian elections so that he can continue to sit on the presidential chair at the expense of Palestinian blood. Hamas aspires to increase its popularity and drain the pockets of those who see it as a resistance movement by launching futile missiles that harm it more than doing any good."

"A few months ago, we were very happy with the signing of the Abraham Peace Accords [with Israel], which the people rely on to create peace that benefits everyone politically, economically and socially,"  "But the extremists are working to kill this dream. It is sad that some are working hard for peace, while others are working hard for the sake of war and the continuation of the conflict."

Emirati writer Al-Sheikh Wuldalsalek

Air Strikes in Gaza   EPA

Geographically, Israel is a tiny sliver of a country. As such it wasn't too much to ask for, for the remnants of world Jewry following World War II when the total number of diaspora Jews was reduced by six million men, women and children. And the singular event of the Holocaust convinced Jews that there was no country where Jews had residence, whether for a thousand years or a hundred, that would bother itself to give security to its Jewish civilian population (with rare exceptions).

Throughout history in the millennia of the diaspora, Jews became accustomed to keeping a low profile, hoping not to bring attention to themselves. They lived in Europe and throughout most of the world where happenstance took them, sometimes tolerated, sometimes not, but always vulnerable to a fallback scapegoat position of a tiny ethnic, cultural and religious minority among majority population of different heritage, culture and religions and often visceral hatred of Jews.

That tiny sliver of a country has produced miracles. As a nation dedicated to the preservation and safe security of Jews it has also absorbed, as a democratic state, people of other ethnic, cultural, social and religious groups as citizens of a Jewish state. In that state pioneering breakthroughs of another kind regularly take place in various areas of science and technology. Discoveries that render service to the world at large, from medical advances to agrarian and technological discoveries.

This country of great accomplishment whose science, medical research and allied breakthroughs give it recognition, has also in its over 70 years of existence, never started a war, though it has fought many, for its survival. It has some admirers and many critics. Who never tire of challenging the reality that is Israel's existence. From the horror of the immediate Holocaust years when the world witnessed the liberation of death camps and became knowledgeable of the hideous strategy to exterminate the Jewish identity and people, empathy has returned to the viral pathology of anti-Semitism.

In 1948 Israel was given permission by the great United Nations to form a sovereign nation out of that sliver of land representing a mere fragment of its ancestral heritage geography. Arabs, identifying themselves as 'Palestinians' (when the original Palestinians were in fact Jewish inhabitants of the land), refused the land they were offered under the UN's Partition Plan of equal opportunity. When combined Arab armies marched on the nascent Israel to destroy it, half of the Palestinians, some 700,000 people, left with plans to return once victory was assured.

At the very same time, a like number of Jews, Sephardic and Mizrahi who had lived for thousands of years in Arab lands were summarily exiled, becoming stateless refugees, and were welcomed to Israel where they found haven. Neither the Arab/Muslim nations in the Middle East nor the Palestinian Arabs themselves would give recognition to a Jewish state in the  geography; ongoing hostilities led to a number of wars until the final one that saw Israel take the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, east Jerusalem and in fact the Palestinian Territories in its defence from its enemies.

An Israeli soldier looks on as Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system intercept rockets launched from the Gaza Strip  Reuters

Returning the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians did nothing to convince the Palestinian leadership that it would be in their best interests to live in peace, side by side, and to attain their own sovereignty through a mutual agreement with a fellow-nation it would give recognition to. The Palestinian Authority speaks of 'occupation', but it is one forced upon Israel by constant violence afflicting its people from incited Palestinians who are taught that 'resistance' (violence) against the 'enemy' (Israel), results in martyrdom for which they can anticipate financial rewards and/or Paradise.

During the First Intifada in 1987, the Palestinian uprising, conflict saw 1,200 Palestinians  and 150 Israelis die. And when the Palestinian leadership identified Palestinian collaborators with Israel they executed over 800 of their own people who preferred to live in peace with Israel rather than kill Jews and die as martyrs to the Palestinian 'cause', thus setting an example that other Palestinians with such dangerous ideas would be certain to avoid.

Of those Palestinians who remained in Israel, a number equal to those who fled, this 700,000 has swelled to 1,900,000, representing 21 percent of the total 9.2-million Israeli population. Not the 'apartheid' government that Israel-haters are so fond of declaring, but one that accepts its Palestinian population as citizen-Israelis. A month ago, before this current round of attacks between Gaza/Hamas and Israel, the Jewish People Policy Institute released an annual study on Israeli identity. 

The overwhelming majority of the 1.9 million the world knows as Palestinians, refer to themselves as Israeli-Arab (51 percent), or just Israeli (23 percent), with those who identify as Palestinians amounting to roughly 7 percent.

Yet in the West Bank and Gaza the Palestinian Authority (Fatah/PLO) and Hamas, celebrate the 'Naqba' (Catastrophe) which identifies the establishment of Israel in 1948. They could be celebrating 'Palestine' from that same date forward, had they not refused categorically to even consider accepting half the disputed territory as their own. In fact, the land originally envisaged as being offered to Israel was much greater in size, but was handed over to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan which had been ensconced there as compensation when the British Mandate helped the Saudis to claim Arabia as their own, displacing the Hashemites contesting Arabia as theirs.

There's a certain hypocritical similarity in the two situations which no one ever seems to linger on, all the more so when Jordan illegally occupied part of Jerusalem, the Judean city of antiquity, the Old City called Eastern Jerusalem where Judaism's most sacred symbol sits, under an Islamic shrine and mosque built on the twice-ruined Temple of Solomon. Under Jordan's rule, the Jews who had lived in East Jerusalem since time began were forcibly displaced and no Jews were permitted to enter the area,much less to pray at the Wailing Wall, the remnants of the Eastern Wall of the Temple.

Even before that Jews were massacred in Hebron, Sefad and a dozen other ancient Jewish communities in the 1920s by rampaging Arab/Muslim mobs in what is now Israel. And the Jews exiled in 1948 from Morocco, Iraq, Syria, Algeria, Yemen and Libya among other Arab states where Jews lived for thousands of years, might consider those events their own 'naqbas'. The designs of the Muslim Brotherhood in their alignment with the Nazis helped entrench anti-Semitism throughout the Arab world in the 1940s.

And what brings the situation to the present, is the break-away group from the Muslim Brotherhood that became Hamas with its charter outlining its intention to exterminate Israel, with their links to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the al Quds Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the great patrons of Hezbollah, Hamas and Yemeni Houthis, all happily conspiring toward the destruction of Israel, with the complacent disinterest of the West other than its instant recoil of disapprobation when Israel has the unmitigated gall to defend itself.

Palestinians inspect damage to buildings in Gaza City on May 20, 2021.  Fatima Shbair/Getty Images

"What’s different about this round is the fact that Hamas has managed – not just to fire missiles in the direction of my house or to bash Ashkelon with lots of rockets – but they have made Jerusalem, and Arab and Muslim claims and complaints about Jerusalem, into a focal point."

?They have incited Arab citizens of Israel to attack Jews, who attacked Arabs in return. They have helped start a conflict inside Israel, while inciting a mini-intifada in the West Bank and also sympathy rockets fired from Lebanon."

Yossi Alpher, former Israeli intelligence officer