An IDF military court decided to go with a modified plea bargain agreement for Lt. Colonel Shalom Eisner, who had been set to be kicked out of the army.

Eisner had hit a foreign anarchist in the face, who was trying to block Highway 90 in the Jordan Valley. During the 2 hour altercation that preceded Eisner’s actions, one of the activists broke the fingers in Eisner’s hand.

The activists had filmed the April 2012 incident and disseminated a selectively edited video showing Eisner striking uncooperative anarchists with his rifle – something a lot of soldiers probably wish they could do to these foreign provocateurs.

What the film did not show was that before Eisner hit the foreign leftists, other anarchists had broken two of the officer’s fingers, and the scenes of the anarchists using their bicycles to hit and push the soldiers were also mostly cut out.

The court ordered Eisner to serve two months of public service, after which he can remain in his position for a year, instead of being dismissed right away which is what the original plea bargain had stipulated. Eisner was supposed to head up the prestigious Bahad 1 officer’s school in the Negev.

High ranking army officers, as well as the mother of a fallen soldier who was brought to burial by Eisner, praised Eisner for his sensitivity and character.

Hagit Rein, whose son was killed in the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and was brought to burial by Eisner, burst out into tears as she told the military court of Eisner’s sensitivity and involvement with the burial of her son.

At the time, no one was able to retrieve her son’s body which was trapped in the middle of a combat zone in Lebanon. Eisner upon hearing about it, jumped into a jeep, drove out, and brought the soldier’s body back to Israel.

Senior IDF officer Yehkezkiel Agai testified, “Shalom and I served together in the tank unit, I brought him into his current position as deputy commander because he is trustworthy and dedicated to his job. He is like a man who never received a traffic ticket for 40 years and then is suddenly involved in a serious accident.

“There is no question about the qualities of Shalom. There is no problem with his values or  behavior. He just make a mistake.”

Sami Turgeman, head of the Southern Command, told the military judges, “As a commander of ground forces, I often have to face officers in positions that they do not like. Eisner willingly took the position as the Jordan Valley division deputy commander which is not convenient from a personal standpoint and for family life. I have no doubt that he is a highly motivated officer.”

However, Nitzan Alon head of Central Command and a long-time thorn in the side of national religious officers such as Eisner, told the court that despite Eisner’s excellent qualities, “I saw professional failures in maintaining control.”

The incident began when 250 anarchists rode their bicycles onto Highway 90, the only highway connecting the southern and northern ends of the Jordan Valley, with the stated aim of blocking the road in an illegal protest.

The division commander was on vacation at the time and left instructions for Eisner to call the police if there was any trouble.

Eisner had instead decided to deal with the protesters himself.

Anarchists struggled with the soldiers, and some of them were also “bumping” their bicycles into the IDF soldiers as a “non-violent” provocation. With two broken fingers, Eisner’s patience ran out when one of the protesters purposely stood in his way as he and his soldiers were trying to clear the demonstrators off the highway.

After the video of the confrontation went viral, Eisner was removed from duty until an investigation was completed.

In September, Eisner reached the plea bargain agreement, reported here.

On the surface, Eisner came out better than expected, because he can return to his present position after two months of public service, and will retire from the army in another year instead of being forced out right away.

Unfortunately the mistake here is that he is being forced to retire at all.

An Israeli army patrol working on the border with Lebanon came under fire Thursday and returned fire. No on was injured in the exchange.

The soldiers were on patrol near Metullah, which borders Lebanon.

The IDF is investigating but said that the source of the shooting could have been hunters on the other side of the border.

The incident occurred less than a week after an explosive device detonated on the side of the road near the Syrian border in the Golan as an IDF patrol was passing by. The attack, believed to be directed at the patrol, damaged an IDF jeep.

Four soldiers in a tank unit involved in a training exercise in the Golan Heights suffered burn wounds Tuesday afternoon, and three helicopters evacuated the soldiers, two of them whose injuries were described as serious.

The other two soldiers suffered moderate burns.

The IDF is investigating the incident involving Unit 401, which uses the most advanced tanks in the IDF. The explosion occurred when an overheated shell exploded. The families of the wounded soldiers have been notified.

The teenage son of Father Gabriel Nadaf of Nazareth, who was soon to be drafted into the Israel Defense Forces, suffered a brutal beating on Friday evening. He is being treated at the English Hospital in Nazareth.

A 21-year-old affiliated with the anti-Israel Hadash party was arrested in connection with the attack, Israel’s Channel 2 television reported.

Nadaf, a Greek Orthodox priest known for encouraging participation in military and national service among local Christians, said in the TV interview that his wife and other son fear leaving their home.

“As I call for integration in Israeli society, extremists are trying to divide and tear and incite against me,” Nadaf said. “The incitement of verbal threats has passed yesterday into physical violence as their goal is to intimidate me and my family.”

His family has been threatened not only physically; Israeli politicians have interfered to prevent the Jerusalem Patriarchate from firing Nadaf and destroying his livelihood.

Matan Peleg, director of operations for Im Tirtzu (“If you will it”), an Israeli organization promoting Zionist values, told United with Israel that last year, when a number of Christians in Nazareth had decided to promote enlistment in the IDF and join the Israeli mainstream, “we helped them immediately. They were placing their destiny with the State of Israel.”

Nadaf is “a good friend,” Peleg said, adding that only last week his group had warned that “something like this would happen.”

The past several months have seen a growing patriotism among Christian Israeli Arabs, which has alarmed enemies of the Jewish state.

In July, a new Christian party, Brit HaHadasha (meaning “Sons of the New Testament”), was created, calling for service in the IDF among other forms of integration

By mid-summer, the number of IDF recruits from Israel’s Arab-Christian community more than tripled since last year – from 35 to 100 – and 500 had volunteered for national service. They identify themselves as “Arab-speaking Israeli Christians.”

“At a time when Christian communities across the Islamic world are facing vicious persecution in the form of arrests, mob violence and bombings of churches, it’s no coincidence that this assertive form of Christian identity has manifested in democratic Israel,” noted JNS journalist Ben Cohen. “Increasingly, Christians in the Middle East understand that if their faith is to have a future in the region, the states in which they live need to be governed by the values of democracy and tolerance. A state that is Jewish in terms of its identity but which gives the same rights and demands the same duties of all of its citizens is truly a revolutionary development for the Middle East – and a key reason why so many of its neighbors dream of its destruction.”

“Our goal is to guard the Holy Land and the State of Israel,” Nadaf declared at a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the summer. “We have broken the barrier of fear – the state deserves that we do our part in defending it. Those who oppose the integration of the Christian community in the institutions of state do not walk in the path of Christianity.”

“Members of the Christian community must be allowed to enlist in the IDF,” Netanyahu asserted. “You are loyal citizens who want to defend the state and I salute you and support you. We will not tolerate threats against you and we will act to enforce the law with a heavy hand against those who persecute you. I will not tolerate attempts to crumble the state from within. The State of Israel and the Prime Minister stand alongside you.”

Following the attack, Netanyahu vowed that Israel will not tolerate continued violence against Christian supporters of Israel.

Visit United with Israel.

On Wednesday, hundreds of yeshiva students demonstrated outside Prison Six in Atlit, south of Haifa, where the IDF has placed Moshe A., 19, a yeshiva student dodging the draft.

On Sunday, Moshe came to his Kiryat Malachi home for a short furlough from his Lithuanian yeshiva Nachlat Asher in Petach Tikva. According to his mother, Miri, who spoke to Ynet, the IDF recruitment department called to make sure he was home, and then, at 2:30 AM Monday, some MPs arrived and arrested Moshe.

“Since then I haven’t heard a thing from him,” his mother said, who’s getting the news about her son only through his yeshiva rebbi.

On Tuesday, Moshe A. was sentenced to 14 days in jail for ignoring an invitation from the army. His mother said Moshe was very much afraid of the draft, after hearing that yeshiva boys are “ruined” in the army. She added that on Sunday he called his father to say tearfully that “people are cursing here, dirtying their mouths, I can’t stand it.”

Just to set the record straight, the IDF Spokesperson’s office made clear that Moshe A. was the only yeshiva student arrested, but not because he’s opposed to the draft—they all are, but because he chose to ignore the draft notice. According to the IDF, everybody else who are classified as a draft candidate whose Torah study is his livelihood did show up, register and received a deferment until the Knesset passes the new draft law.

Moshe A. was following the command of Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, leader of the Jerusalem Lithuanian Haredim, who declared the effort to recruit yeshiva students “gzeirat shmad,” tantamount to the medieval church’s attempts to convert Jews by force.

An ad published in a Haredi paper associated with Rabbi Auerbach last week cited him as saying that since the current notices being sent out to yeshiva students of age are only for the purpose of screening and placement—and not actual draft notices—students must not report at all.

So Rabbi Auerbach and his merry band of Haredim needed a pawn to serve their political aims, not the least of which is fund raising for the glorious struggle against the Torah hating Zionisrs, and Moshe A. volunteered.

Just to make things even more complicated, according to his mother, Moshe A. is scheduled to undergo back surgery next week. “They promised me to release him until then,” she said. “But I’m worried. Meanwhile he’s suffering pain over there. I don’t know what his medical condition is, and I’m afraid they’ll harass him and force him to do things which are contrary to his faith…”

Transportation from Kiryat Malachi, in the northern Negev, to the prison up north presents a problem for Miri, who relies on buses to travel. “In my entire life I never took the bus to Haifa,” she said.

Rabbi Auerbach did show up in front of the prison gates Wednesday, with hundreds of followers, to pray for “the removal of the decree.”

The elderly rabbi visited Moshe A. in his prison cell, gave him a religious seifer-book and a bouquet of flowers. He also asked the boy to bless him.

Now that the first yeshiva student has been punished with a short prison sentence, the fight is bound to intensify. The rally by the jail marked the start of a new campaign, in Israel and abroad, in which the name of the state of Israel will be dragged through the mud and the IDF be compared to Stalin and the Communists.

Elite Palestinian Authority security forces rounded up suspected Salafist terrorists in Shechem this week but left untouched Mahmoud Abbas’ Al Aqsa terrorist arm, which recently branded their rifles in a march to commemorate the death of Yasser Arafat.

The apparent contradiction highlights the heart of the constant threat that worldwide supplies of heavy-duty weapons for the PA forces will be used against Israel, exactly like the rifles that Israel gave Yasser Arafat in the hey-day of the Oslo Illusions were weapons that killed and wounded hundreds of Israelis when the Oslo Accords exploded.

The Palestinian National Security Forces (NSF) has a new counter-terrorism unit called Special Operations Unit 101 (SOU 101), deployed in Jenin, and its “Brigade 9” in Shechem. The NSF rounded this past Sunday 20 Salafist terrorist members in Jenin, Shechem and Kalkilya.

Palestinian Authority sources insisted that the Salafists were not directly affiliated with Al Qaeda despite a shared ideology. Three days before the roundup, Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and the IDF killed three Salafist terrorists south of Hevron and whom the Mujahedeen Shura Council said were “the tip of the iceberg.”

“By the will of God Almighty, the global jihadist doctrine has reached the bank of pride, the West Bank, planting its foothold after all attempts to thwart its presence,” the Council said after their members were killed.

It was later revealed that the Palestinian Authority had arrested several other Salafists in an apparent coordinated effort with the IDF.

A Palestinian Authority official told the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency that all of the Salafists who were arrested were former members of Hamas.

In October, the PA elite unit operated in Jenin. Its commander Major Sadam Amr, told IHS Jane’s that around 150 soldiers are in the unit and are armed with Zastava M70 assault rifles, fitted with picatinny rails so they can be used with the red dot, laser and night vision sites acquired by the unit.

“Each rifle upgrade cost us $1,000, “Major Amr told Janes, which added, “The unit is also equipped with a tactical communications system made by a UIS company called Tiger. The radios allow members of the unit to stay in contact with each other in their operations room.

“The unit uses Ford F-150 pick-up trucks, several of which have been fitted with protective armor…as well as 7.62 mm machine guns to provide fire support.

That should be a great relief to Israelis, now certain that Mahmoud Abbas deployed his forces to tear down the terrorist infrastructure,

The problem is that in the Palestinian Authority, “terrorists” are Hamas members and Salafists, while Abbas’ Fatah party “military” squad, quaintly named the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, simply is a group of resistance fighters.

With masks over their faces and assault weapons in their peace partner hands, they held a military parade between Ramallah and Jerusalem two weeks ago to mark the ninth anniversary of Arafat’s death.

The Oslo Accords are not relevant any more. The Palestinian Authority has broken word after word and clause after clause, but some of the text bears repeating.

The number of armed forces in the Palestinian Authority is way beyond the limit stated in the Accords, which also declare, “The Palestinian Police will act systematically against all expressions of violence and terror. The Council will issue permits in order to legalize the possession and carrying of arms by civilians. Any illegal arms will be confiscated by the Palestinian Police.”

The agreement also states, “The Palestinian Police will possess the following arms and equipment: up to 4,000 rifles;  up to 4,000 pistols; up to 120 machine guns of 0.3″ or 0.5″ caliber; and up to 15 light, unarmed riot vehicles.

Fifty lone soldiers and over 200 young professional Olim celebrated “Thanksgivukkah” at a festive event organized by Nefesh B’Nefesh and White City Shabbat.

Revelers celebrated the once-in-a-lifetime double holiday of Chanukkah and Thanksgiving at the landmark Goren Synagogue in Tel Aviv with a three-course meal replete with traditional holiday foods including latkes and turkey.

After the meal, Tel Aviv’s deputy mayor Asaf Zamir led the Chanukkah candle-lighting ceremony. This event was also sponsored by the Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption, The Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Kayemeth L’Israel, JNF and the FIDF as a part of Nefesh B’Nefesh’s ongoing social events for its Olim and Lone Soldiers.

As a gesture of showing thanks and in order to promote acts of kindness towards those less fortunate, dinner guests were encouraged to donate lightly worn clothes for the event’s clothing drive.

“We are excited to have teamed up with White City Shabbat on this exceptional holiday event. This was a great opportunity for young professionals and lone soldiers to enjoy a traditional festive meal and express their thanks together with fellow Olim from around the country,” said Benji Davis, Events & Programs Coordinator at Nefesh B’Nefesh.

White City Shabbat is a volunteer-run portal for Jewish life in Tel Aviv that hosts a range of intercommunity events, including its hugely successful monthly Shabbat meals.

As a native Brit, Deborah Danan doesn’t feel that Thanksgivukkah is exclusive for Americans. “The theme of Thanksgiving is anyway inherent to the festival of Chanukkah which all Jews celebrate,” said Danan, who co-directs White City Shabbat together with Eytan White, “And of course, as our tagline states, ‘you don’t have to be American to give thanks!’ People from a broad spectrum of nationalities are coming together to show their gratitude for being able to celebrate this unique holiday in Israel.”

Islamic and “Palestinian nationalist factions” in Hevron declared a day of mourning on Wednesday for the three Salafist jihad terrorists who Israel said were planning to attack Palestinian Authority official as well as Israelis, according to the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency.

The IDF and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) forces killed the three terrorists in Yatta, immediately south of Hevron, on Tuesday after meeting resistance during an attempt to arrest them.

The Islamists, apparently rejecting the Israeli statement, called on Arabs to “beware of Israeli media which disseminates poisonous reports in an attempt to harm Palestinian unity.”