Multiple Shooting attacks have been reported in the Shomron in the past 10 minutes (5:03 pm).

One occurred between Karnei Shomron and Yitzhar (Tzir Gilad), one person has been injured. MDA is responding.

In the second shooting attack also near Gilad farm, a number of Israeli cars were hit, but no injuries were reported.

Israeli reserve soldiers prevented a major terrorist attack in Sunday by arresting a Palestinian Authority terrorist at the checkpoint immediately west of Kfar Saba, north of Tel Aviv. The highway to the checkpoint is the main artery for Ginot and Karnei Shomron and Kedumim,

The terrorist was caught with an improvised firearm, ammunition and a map of the crossing. He intended to commit a terror attack at the crossing.

The reservists patrolling the checkpoint spotted the terrorist’s suspicious behavior and arrested him before he could carry out the intended attack.

Rock-throwing Arabs hit a soldier in his eye Monday and then rioted when solders fired back, aiming at the lower parts to minimize injuries in what is the latest of dozens of weekly Arab attacks that have been so routine that they are rarely reported.

The only exception is if someone is serious injured or murdered, which was the unfortunate case last week. In what was a real-life cowboys and Indians scene, Israeli police chased after an Arab vehicle carrying Arab workers without permits to work outside of Judea and Samaria.

The Arab driver tried to escape by reckless driving, and he crossed the white line, crashing into a car driven by a 29-year-old resident of Susiya, located between Be’er Sheva and Hevron.

The young man, Yenon Levanon, was killed instantly, and the Arabs were wounded lightly.

Murderous driving, usually by Arabs, is routine on the roads in the Negev, heavily populated by Bedouin, and throughout highways in Judea and Samaria.

The dangers are two-fold. If a driver is lucky enough to travel in his car without begin hit by an Arab driver who passes another passing car on a curve uphill, he still has to deal with dozens of firebomb and rock-throwing attacks.

This is not the “Third Intifada” that the IDF has been warning about; it is the continuation of the First Intifada from the late 1980s, which took a break during the euphoria of the eve of what was supposed to be the culmination of the Peace Process in the last 1990s, when the so-called “Second Intifada” or Oslo War began.

The State Dept. is careful to relate to President Obama every shack Jews erect in Judea and Samaria.

It is doubtful how much information he gets on Arab terrorist attacks, if the Associated Press is any guide.

Reporting Monday on Arab riots in support of Palestinian Authority prisoners on a hunger strike in Israeli jails, the news agency referred to “demonstrations,” such as one in Bethlehem where  Israeli forces dispersed several dozen activists who blocked a road on Monday.  AP added, “There were no reports of injuries.”

After telling readers that one hunger striker reportedly is in critical condition, AP reported, “Israel is holding some 4,500 Palestinians for charges ranging from throwing stones to undertaking deadly militant attacks. Their incarceration is a sensitive issue for Palestinians, who see them as heroes of the Palestinian liberation struggle.”

That is the end of the report , but it is not the end of the story. AP did not report that in the past week alone, Arabs carried out 29 Molotov firebomb attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians, including one on a public bus, another on a Jewish women driving near Kedumim, east of Karnei and Ginot Shomron in Samaria, and two on Rachel’s Tomb (Kever Rachel).

The Palestinian Authority claims Kever Rachel actually is a Muslim holy site, even though Islam was founded more than 2,000 years after Rachel died. The site is not holy enough to dissuade PA Arabs from attacking Jewish worshipers there. Besides firebombs, PA terrorists also hurled two grenades last week.

If Obama were to keep a diary of security incidents in Israel in just one week, he would discover:

– Hevron Arabs threw rocks on children in a playground in the Avraham Aveinu neighborhood of Hevron;

– PA Arabs fired at Kibbutz Migdal Oz on erev Shabbat, apparently careful to wait until the Muslim day of rest was over on Friday;

–  Arab Knesset Members, as part of their public service to the country, joined Palestinian Authority Arabs for Prayers at the Ofer jail, near Jerusalem, to show solidarity for hunger strikers. After prayers, hundreds of Arabs threw rocks at soldiers, two of whom were lightly inured;

– PA Arabs rioted at Efrat, a “settlement” of several thousand families five miles south of Jerusalem, at Beit Haggai, which borders Hevron to the southwest, and at Beit El, another “settlement” of more than 1,500 families in Samaria;

– Rock-throwing Arabs, trying to cause fatal accidents, managed to wound an eight-year-old in the face at Beit El and a driver whose windshield was smashed at one of the terrorists’ favorite locations, the village of Azoon on the road between Kfar Saba, at the northern edge of metropolitan Tel Aviv, and the Jewish communities of Maaleh, Ginot and Karnei Shomron;

On Thursday noon, at a police roadblock on highway 55 in the Shomron, a Palestinian car broke through the road block and tried to run over a policeman.

The police began chasing after the car, and during the chase, they shot at the terrorists, wounding the driver in the back. The car was stopped near Karnei Shomron.

The injured terrorist driver was taken to the hospital under armed guard, and is listed in moderate condition.

A second Palestinian in the car was arrested. The police report that both Arabs were from the town of Kakilya, and in their 20s.

Following the incident, Arabs in the area have begun rioting near Karnei Shomron. The main entrance to the town of Karnei Shomron has been closed.

A resident of Karnei Shomron was lightly injured Monday evening by rock throwers. The rocks were thrown as he was driving his car on Route 55 near Maaleh Shomron

The victim was treated on site by an IDF ambulance.

Close your eyes. Picture a family full of smiles, and joy. See all the moments they spend together and support each other, through blessed times and difficult ones. Picture the holidays filled with warmth and laughter, and the Shabbat with delicious treats, while sitting around the table and hearing divrei Torah. The younger children have not yet really begun to live, whereas the older ones are only just starting their lives.

Then something destroys the serenity. There are soldiers everywhere, holding guns and wearing long, shiny boots. The family is rushed out of their house, their home, and allowed to take only minimal belongings with them. Their new residence is a corner in one of the rooms of a small house, where twenty other families live as well. The hunger and diseases are horrible, and end the lives of many people living in the ghetto.

Now they are being shoved into cattle cars with no room to breathe, with hundreds of other people just as confused as they are. The train ride lasts for more days then they can keep count of; there is no source of food or water to keep their fragile bodies from dying. They leave their wastes in the corners of the car, attracting insects and disease. When their destination is finally reached, the women and men are separated, never to see each other again. They are then led to the gas chambers where their lives are taken from them brutally. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of families like this one were destroyed by the Nazis, may their name and memory be obliterated.

I know this since I walked on my own feet into the gas chambers. I saw the stained walls, and felt the scratches on them made by innocent people with only the simple, and most reasonable desire to live. Statistics show that if the six million Jews had not been murdered almost seventy years ago, the worldwide Jewish population today would have been doubled, if not tripled.

The same question is asked over and over again, how could human beings become so horrific? How is it possible that they acted so maliciously towards innocent people? It is a very difficult question to answer. Humankind is, supposedly, inherently good. The fact of the matter is the Nazi army had long lost their humanity. Being able to look a mother in the eyes, while she hugs her child to her chest as close as she can, trembling, and then take her life with one merciless bullet is not a human act.

The Nazis were abominable in every way. We know today of six death camps throughout Poland, though there might have been more, where numerous Jews might have been murdered, but there are no survivors to confirm it. As frightening of a thought as that might be, the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust grows statistically every year as well, becoming closer to seven million.

I know all of this because it is information I learned on my trip to Poland last year. I trembled while stepping on the blood soaked ground of Treblinka, Chelmno, Majdanek, and Auschwitz where Jews had been slaughtered demonically. I felt the ghetto wall in Warsaw, and I visited Jewish cemeteries that have been around for centuries. I kept trying to picture myself alive during that horrible time, G-d forbid, in order to try to empathize with the holy people who are no longer living, but I just wasn’t able to.

Baruch Hashem, I have the privilege, the prerogative to live in the land that our ancestors had yearned to just set foot in. I can live a normal life as a proud Jew, and not be afraid to hide my religion – I can practice it. I attend a Jewish school, and will be serving my country next year, as it is the ideal way to show gratitude to the land I grew up in, cried in, laughed in. My living in the land promised to us by G-d as a proud Jew and belonging to the Jewish nation, while continuing along the generations is the greatest revenge. They wanted to see us lose our humanity, and we prove to them that the world does not evolve without the Jewish people. They wanted to see our nation aborted, and we fight back with the simplest of weapons – children. The murderers plan was to abolish the Jewish children first, as that would cut the nation short, for without our children there is no future. By living in Israel I am avenging in the simplest way, and that is the only way to show the Germans, the entire world and all the Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites that the Jewish nation is eternal.

Though leaders in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria decried the failure of Wednesday’s Knesset vote to overturn the destruction of five apartment buildings in Beit El, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved a major new construction plan to erect 300 new homes in the town, with 551 additional homes approved in four other locations.

The bill was voted down 69:22, sealing the fate of 30 residences in the Ulpana neighborhood in the pastoral and mountainous Benjamin Region.  Following the rejection of the bill, protesters and police clashed outside the Knesset and at the entrance to Jerusalem.

Baruch Gordon, Director of Development for Beit El Institutions, expressed his outrage at the outcome of the Knesset vote.  ”A great injustice is being perpetrated here against the Jews of Beit El’s Ulpana Hill, many of whom are indigenous residents of Israel for generations,” he told the Jewish Press.   “The ownership of the disputed land has not been determined by any court. The Supreme court openly admits this, and says it is relying on the Netanyahu government policy decision to demolish the houses. The absurdity is that there is a simultaneous case in the Jerusalem District Court to determine who is the rightful owner.”

“The Supreme Court openly wrote in its decision that it has no patience to wait for the outcome of this legitimate district court case which may take years. It wants the buildings demolished now,” Gordon said.   “This court decision is pure prejudice against the religious-Zionist public in Judea and Samaria. The court would have never issued such a ruling against Israelis elsewhere in Israel or against Arabs.”

Though indignation toward the Prime Minister’s failure to intervene on behalf of Ulpana Hill runs high,  Prime Minister Netanyahu approved 851 new homes on Wednesday evening – 300 for Beit El, and 551 to be divided among Karnei Shomron, Efrat, and other locations in Gush Etzion.

In a statement made Wednesday night, after the defeat of the bill, Prime Minister Netanyahu  said he is “committed to upholding the law and I am committed to uphold the settlement enterprise, and I tell you that there is no contradiction between the two.”  He further stated that he believes the bill would have ultimately harmed settlement in Judea and Samaria, whereas his plan to expand the communities in areas not under dispute in the courts would strengthen the settlement enterprise.

“We are not strangers in Beit El. We are not strangers in Judea and Samaria. This is the Land of our Patriarchs. This is where our identity was formed,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said.  “I say this here in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, and I say this everywhere in the world.”

Nonetheless, Prime Minister Netanyahu noted that the day on which the final attempt to stop the destruction failed “has been a complicated and difficult day.”

“Moving homes from their location, even if it is only five homes, is certainly not an action that this Government rejoices in doing,” he said.

Prime Minister Netanyahu also reiterated his commitment to establishing a ministerial committee on settlement in order to “ensure that the Government’s policy of strengthening settlement is implemented.”

He concluded by stating that “there is no government that supports, or will support, settlement more than my government,” noting that his government has withstood serious pressures in a “very complex diplomatic, national and legal environment”.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the measure to erect new homes, saying it sabotages negotiations.

Washington also disapproved, with a State Department representative reiterating the US position, “we do not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity.”

Military and civilian officials and experts are deliberating where to erect the new buildings in Beit El.  One option would place the buildings inside a military zone in the town.

A Jewish woman from Emmanuel had her car violently carjacked by three Arab men, while driving on Road 55 from Karnei Shomron to Kfar Saba.

According to eyewitness reports, the woman was driving behind a car with three occupants, in the vicinity of the Arab village Nabi Alias. The car continued to slow down until she had to stop her car. At that point, two Arab men jumped out of the car, approached her, and violently threw her out of her car while she was still seatbeleted. One individual drove off with the car in the direction of Kalkilya, while another escaped on foot. Other drivers tried to follow, but were unable to catch the assailant.

The IDF is currently is investigating the scene.