One of the first things that Nelson Mandela did after being elected president of South Africa in 1994 was visit a synagogue and preach against aliyah at Cape Town’s Green and Sea Point Hebrew Congregation on the Shabbat after his election.

Here is an excerpt from JTA’s report:

“The congregants heard Mandela make an appeal from the pulpit for Jewish expatriates to return to South Africa.

“Pointedly excluding aliyah by saying he understands the Jewish community’s commitment to Israel, Mandela said, ‘We want those who left (for other countries) because of insecurity to come back and to help us to build our country.’

“He added that those who do not return should contribute their money and skills to South Africa.

“Mandela thanked the Jewish community for its contribution toward the development of South Africa and assured Jews they have nothing to fear from a government of national unity.

“He said he felt an affinity with the Jewish community, since it was a Jewish firm that gave him an apprenticeship in the early days of his law career, when discrimination was rife.

“He also said that he had befriended his Jewish defense counsel during the treason trial which led to his imprisonment in the 1950s and that he was still in contact with the lawyer.

“He stated that he recognizes the right to existence of the State of Israel, along with the right of Palestinians to live in their own homeland.

“He noted that he considered it significant that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat last week signed an agreement in Cairo implementing Palestinian self-rule — the same week that South Africa elected its new leadership.

“At the reception following the service, some of the younger members of the congregation raised clenched fists in solidarity with the ANC, while the shul choir led in the singing of the country’s new national anthem, “Nkosi Sikelel’ IAfrika.”

Mandela often said Israel should be a “secure“ state, but on the other hand, his citing the Palestinian-Israel conflict as dating back to 1948 clearing showed his definition of “secure” as twisted.

He wrote Thomas Friedman of The New York Times in 1991, “You incorrectly think that the problem of Palestine began in 1967…. You seem to be surprised to hear that there are still problems of 1948 to be solved, the most important component of which is the right to return of Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not just an issue of military occupation and Israel is not a country that was established ‘normally’ and happened to occupy another country in 1967.

“Palestinians are not struggling for a ‘state’ but for freedom, liberation and equality, just like we were struggling for freedom in South Africa.”

Arabs in Judea and Samaria, who did not refer themselves as “Palestinians,” never ”struggled” for freedom under the Ottoman Empire, under the British Mandate and under the Jordanian occupation.

It was only when Jews re-established the modern State of Israel that they “struggled,” not for freedom but rather for the annihilation of Israel.

That explains how Mandela, more blind than the blindest American Secretary of State, could proclaim that Iran had no aggressive aims towards Israel. “We are indebted to the Islamic Revolution,” he one said while laying a wreath at the grave of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose idea of freedom meant a world free of Israel.

Mandela not only called Israel an “apartheid state” but also asserted that the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was not a terrorist group.

He publicly supported violence against Israel during a visit to Yasser Arafat in Gaza in 1999, when he declared. “All men and women with vision choose peace rather than confrontation, except in cases where we cannot proceed, where we cannot move forward. Then if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence.”

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s Sunday visit started out fine, with a visit to Yad Vashem (with yarmulke), but then was spoiled by a major disagreement between the Dutch and Israeli premiers over a new security scanner that was to be installed with great fanfare on the Gaza border.

Rutte expected to inaugurate the scanner at the Kerem Shalom crossing, on the border with the Gaza Strip, but that’s probably not going to happen.

“Installation of the Dutch scanner, which would have been used to verify the contents of containers from Gaza destined for export, was postponed after the Netherlands made unexpected demands,” an Israeli official told AFP.

“Technically, there is no problem about the scanner at the Kerem Shalom crossing, through which goods originating in Gaza pass,” the official said, explaining: “The Dutch suddenly imposed political conditions, notably on the percentage of merchandise destined for the West Bank or abroad. These are political issues that need to be resolved at the highest level, which will delay the start-up of the scanner.”

In a lengthy, face to face conversation, Prime Minister Netanyahu told his Dutch counterpart that, as much as he would like there to be normal relations between the PA and Gaza, with goods traveling in both directions, the Arabs “sometimes use this to negative ends.”

Netanyahu gave the example of how the Hamas used too tons of cement which Israel permitted through its border with Gaza, to dig a terror tunnel into Israel, for the purpose of kidnapping Israeli civilians, to be used later in exchange with terrorist killers held in Israeli jails.

Netanyahu conceded that security considerations should not come at the expense of the civilian population in Gaza, but on occasion there’s no avoiding it.

According to Ha’aretz, the past two weeks have been marked by hectic disputes between the Netherlands and Israel over the use of the scanner the Dutch donated for use in the Gaza border crossing. Israeli security officials told the Dutch they wanted a separation between Gaza and the PA, and so the scanner must be used chiefly for goods being exported abroad, and not going to the PA.

The Dutch were making the case that the scanner was fool proof and should offer the guarantee Israel needed to accept shipments from Gaza to the PA. But the Israeli defense ministry stuck to its guns.

Prime Minister Rutte met with Israeli-Palestinian peace organizations Monday morning, and expressed his disappointment of the Israeli stubbornness.

“I don’t understand this decision,” he said. “The scanner was donated by Holland and positioned at Kerem Shalom precisely because of the Israeli security concerns.”

There was also a diplomatic spat Sunday concerning Judea and Samaria, where Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans, who is traveling with Rutte, cancelled a planned event rather than accept an Israeli military escort, a Dutch foreign ministry official said.

Timmermans had planned to visit Palestinians in Hebron.

“It was the minister himself who decided to cancel that part of the visit,” Ahmed Dadou, a spokesman for Timmermans, told AFP in The Hague.

“It’s normal to be accompanied by the Israeli military in the part occupied by settlers but it’s not usual in the Palestinian part,” he said.

“Other foreign ministers have previously visited the city unaccompanied by Israeli soldiers in the Palestinian sector and Mr. Timmermans did not want to accept this new condition in order not to set a precedent.”

Netanyahu said that he had not been aware of the planned visit.

“These are not political directives,” he said, according to a statement by his office. “I do not know how we guard foreign dignitaries on visits. We have security details that do what is necessary. Minister Timmermans is a welcome guest.”

Timmermans instead visited a Palestinian dairy in another part of Hebron.

Finally an area of life a Dutchman fully comprehends.

The Palestinian Authority continues to operate on the back of Israeli consumers, whose rates for electricity constantly rise while PA Arabs simply don’t pay to the extent that their debt to the Israel Electric Corp. now stands at $750 million.

In the past, Israel simply used Value Added Tax revenues, collected for the Palestinian Authority, to pay off the debt.

That no longer is feasible diplomatically because it would punch another hole in the Obama administration’s cherished peace talks.

Globes business newspaper noted that the Palestinian Authority could reach energy self-sufficiency if it were to take advantage of off-shore natural gas fields, which Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ha offered to help develop for the regime.

“Information indirectly obtained by the media indicate that the Palestinians are largely responsible for the problem,” the left-leaning Globes wrote this week. “Their conduct, according to this partial information, has been amateurish, if not actually childish, and is mostly defamatory and slanderous.

The PR folks at the pro-Hamas movements have come up the gimmick of using children to win attention in their effort to stop Israel from preventing terrorists and arms to enter Gaza by sea.

After numerous failures of the Free Gaza organization to win more than a day or two of sympathy in the headlines by sending boats to Gaza ports with unneeded food and medicines, which are freely shipped in by land from Israel, the so-called Free Palestine Movement organization has announced a “mini-Ark” flotilla to be launched on Saturday. “Free Gaza” endorses the stunt.

The idea is to let hundreds of children sail to bring “attention to the devastating conditions for children living inside the Gaza Strip, as fuel to run their society and other essentials have been denied to them… Children can’t study at night, because there is no electricity, and many of them are reading by candlelight.”

The organizers forgot to mention that most of Gaza’s electricity is run with fuel that is sent by Egypt.

Israel used to ship fuel to Gaza, but Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas put an end to that by ending its subsidy to fuel from Israel. The Palestinian Authority justified its move with the reasoning that offering cheap fuel to Gaza “was unfair” to Arabs in Judea and Samaria.

Free translation: Let’s make Gaza residents suffer enough so they will overthrow Hamas.

Hamas used to bring in approximately a quarter of million gallons of diesel into Gaza from Egypt through smuggling tunnels, but the military regime in Egypt shut them down.

It wants to make sure the smuggling tunnels are not used for other commodities, such as explosives, anti-aircraft guns and other humanitarian aid.

Regardless of the Palestinian Authority and Egyptian moves against Hamas in Gaza, the pro-Hamas champions always can count on Jews like Noam Chomsky to give them a sympathetic ear and earn a couple of headlines while exploiting children as weapons for a pro-terrorist agenda.

Chomsky stated, “It was incredibly moving, and inspiring, to learn about the Mini Arks that are to sail from Gaza on November 30. The courage and heroism of the people of Gaza, enduring shocking crimes and torture, is one of the wonders of the age. I hope that the arks that the children are sending forth will at least reach the conscience of the world, and help bring these horrors to an end.”

The children indeed are suffering, but it will be difficult to convince the foreign press, which has run out of excuses to blame Israel for Gaza’s woes. Even The New York Times this month cited the facts for a change and reported, “Egypt’s new military-backed government closed the smuggling tunnels that were used to transport around one million liters (about 260,000 gallons) of diesel here each day. Hamas has refused to import Israeli diesel because of taxes imposed by the Palestinian Authority.”

The Free Gaza movement ran out of steam with the IHH flotilla in 2009, when the IDF faced club-wielding terrorists when soldiers in the Navy tried to board the Mavi Mamara ship that was headed for Gaza.

The IDF soldiers, three of whom had been kidnapped on board and brutally beaten, overcame the terrorists, nine of whom were killed. If you listen to people like Free Gaza co-founder Mary Thompson, it was “Zionist pirates” who attacked the ship “resulting in the murder of nine unarmed passengers.” Metal clubs and knives apparently olive branches and not weapons

A U.N. investigation noted that the maritime embargo was legal.

The clincher that showed the flotilla movement as being a farce was that there was no humanitarian aid aboard the Mavi Mamara.

The schizo anti-Zionist Neturei Karta sect, with the help of Norwegians, has bought a fully equipped ambulance and has shipped it to Hamas as a “gift for the Gaza children,” it announced on its Facebook page Wednesday.

Their belated Halloween trick is their biggest PR gambit since 2006, when one of the cult’s factions visited Iran and praised Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for calling for the Zionist regime to vanish and then later in the year returned to Tehran for a conference that focused on Holocaust denial.

It is nice to know that there are Jews who are so caring of others, even if they are non-Jews.

The Hamas regime in Gaza now has another vehicle which can transport explosives and terrorists through Rafiah and then east to the border with Eilat. With a moaning terrorist disguised as a pregnant woman, laying on a stretcher, a pillow stuffed under his shirt and the ambulance shrieking its sirens and flashing its lights, Israel certainly would let it across the Taba crossing and into Eilat rather than be accused of denying humanitarian assistance.

And when, God forbid, the suicide ambulance blows up at the hospital, Neturei Karta can start looking for God.

The Hebrew language Kikar HaShabbat website wrote Thursday, “The representatives of the extremist organization [meaning Neturei Karta, not Hamas] were invited to a festive ceremony to receive a certificate of honor where they were photographed with Palestinian leaders as a souvenir.”

The website must have meant that the Neturei Karta crazies “were to be photographed” with Hamas crazies because there are no pictures showing officials of the two extremist groups together, and there is no way the IDF would have let anyone from Neturei Karta or any other Jews, nutty or not, into Gaza.

The ambulance has not even arrived yet, according to the Neturei Karta Facebook page.

It said the vehicle was shipped to Gaza via Alexandria, Egypt and “is now to be transported by road along the Sinai coast to Rafiah, located on the border with Palestine, and further into Gaza.”

Neturei Karta launched the campaign to raise funds for the ambulance last May. “People in Norway, in co-operation with American anti-Zionist Torah Jews, have collected money and bought and outfitted an ambulance which was then sent to the people of Gaza,” it stated. ”On the occasion of departure from Oslo, Al-Quds Day earlier this autumn, there was a large popular demonstration in support of the project.”

Egypt is not letting Neturei Karta officials accompany the ambulance. ”The Egyptian Embassy in Oslo also warned that the Jewish donors would not be issued visas to Egypt,” Neturei Karta said. Egypt also did not issue visas for the “Friends of Jerusalem (Al Quds)” to escort the vehicle.

Neturei Karta added, “The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) of Egypt gracefully took it upon themselves to arrange for transport to Rafiah, where their Palestinian counterparts will assume responsibility and later represent the donors as well as themselves at a formal reception in Gaza, thanking both the Norwegian donors and the American anti-Zionist Jews.”

Before we get all upset about this latest gambit to mock Israel, let’s look at this as a win for the Zionist entity.

If Iran and Hamas need friends like Neturei Karta, the terrorist organization really are on their last legs.

Extremists usually disappear by melting into the Establishment or isolating themselves into oblivion.

That is what will happen to Hamas and the radical Muslims in Iran and elsewhere, but for better or worse, the Jews, even the extremists in Neturei Karta, know how to survive and will look for another way to do other big mitzvahs.

Once Hamas disappears, they can always ship an ambulance to the Ku Klux Klan.

Palestinian Authority Arabs on popular service committees in U.N.-run villages, commonly known as refugee camps, are shutting down UNRWA offices and programs  in northern Samaria Wednesday and Thursday in protest of “systematic reductions” in services for residents, the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency reported.

Similar protests have occurred in Gaza where UNRWA is the dominant influence outside of the Hamas terrorist organization.

The Americans, the Europeans and the international community in general are constantly demanding the implementation of a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. For example, when French President Francois Hollande spoke at the Knesset recently, he stated, “We need a compromise through a two-state solution.” He emphasized that Jerusalem should be a shared capital city of both the Jewish and Palestinian peoples and stressed that settlement construction should come to an end. Statements by US President Barack Obama, US Secretary of State John Kerry, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, and Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron are very similar to Hollande’s.

However, any political analysis of the current situation on the ground in the Holy Land would suggest that such models are an obsolete way of thinking. For starters, the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority are not controlled by the same political entity. The Gaza Strip is controlled by the Hamas terrorist organization, who to date refuses to reconcile with the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority. By refusing to sign a reconciliation agreement with Fatah, Hamas has essentially ensured that there can be no united Palestinian leadership. If there is no united Palestinian leadership, there can’t be a unified Palestinian state.

History is full of examples of entities that broke up because they were separated by geographic distance and cultural differences. Bangladesh used to be East Pakistan. However, the culture in Bangladesh is very different from the Pakistani mentality. In Pakistan, they primarily speak Urdu, while the language in Bangladesh is Bangla. The Bangladeshi people felt oppressed by Pakistan. Some Bangladeshis accuse them of committing genocide against them. Furthermore, Pakistan was geographically disconnected from them and so they decided to break off to become a separate country.

The situation is quite similar in regards to the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip. Fatah supporters in the Gaza Strip feel oppressed by Hamas and Hamas supporters within the Palestinian Authority view the Fatah leadership with disdain. Furthermore, the populations in Gaza and Judea and Samaria are very different from each other culturally speaking. The Arabs living in Judea and Samaria are more liberal and cosmopolitan than the ones living in the Gaza Strip. To add insult to injury, the two territories are geographically disconnected from each other and the two populations rarely intermarry with each other.

The Fatah-Hamas divide in itself should have killed the idea of a two-state for two peoples’ paradigm. This should be the case especially given the fact that Hamas refuses to recognize the existence of the Jewish state as well and states specifically in their charter that they are opposed to all peace negotiations. They support waging a violent jihad until Israel ceases to exist. For them, it is war until either Israel vanishes or they cease to exist.

Even if Fatah recognizes Israel’s right to exist, in the absence of a military defeat of Hamas, two-states for two peoples living in peace is a fairy tale for children. Yet interestingly enough, even Fatah remains committed to destroying Israel in phases, refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and views the two-states for two-people’s paradigm merely as the first phase towards liberating all of Palestine. Given this reality, it is time for the international community to consider other models for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the absence of paradigms that have been proven to be unworkable.

The Israel Air Force bombed a weapons manufacturing factory and two terror tunnels Tuesday evening in retaliation for a mortar shell attack on soldiers who were “engaging in a counter-terrorism activity,” according to military spokesman  Lt. Col. Peter Lerner.

“The IDF maintains the right to combat terrorists abusing the Gaza Strip as a springboard for such attacks against Israeli civilians and its forces,” he added.

Reporting by Palestinian Authority media, often quoted without verification by foreign media, illustrates why Palestinian Authority Arabs cannot be expected to believe that Israel acts in self-defense.

Gaza sources said the aerial strikes hit “two chicken farms” and a Hamas tunnel, accord to the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency.

It also said a fourth strike bombed an empty Islamic Jihad “training site.”

Earlier in the day, The Jewish Press reported here that a Hamas terrorist was killed and four others were wounded in a “work” explosion.

Hamas has renewed escalation of attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers the past month after several weeks of relative quiet, a possible sign of weakness to divert its residents’ attention from poverty and economic pressure from Egypt in the form of occasionally shutting down the crossing into the northern Sinai from Rafiah.

Last Friday, Hamas marked one year since massive rocket fire on Israel that sparked the IDF’s Pillar of Defense counter-terrorism operation.

Terrorist commanders came out from underground to join a military parade.

Hamas commander Raed Sa’as, appearing in public for the first time in years, said, “Next time you [Israel] will not enjoy security in any spot on our occupied land. Our fighters are more capable, ready and trained. Our plans are more comprehensive and our arsenal is more developed.”

The military parade and escalation in rocket attacks, mortar shelling and planting of bombs near the IDF patrol road draws the attention of Gaza residents away from streets flooded by sewage following a power outage at a treatment facility.

Although Egypt has closed down smuggling tunnels that are a big income source for the Hamas regime as well as a source of goods and merchandise for residents, Palestinian Authority media both in Ramallah and Gaza blamed Israel for the “siege.”