Officials in the Justice Ministry have rejected claims that the proposal to force-feed hunger striking Palestinians is “cruel”, and they said Monday that the bill currently under consideration is “measured and balanced.”

According to a report on Israel Radio, the director general of the Ministry said that past experience has shown that hunger strikers don’t really want to die, and that doctors were stressed by the possibility that striking prisoners could die if they do not eat.

The report cited Deputy Attorney General Raz Nizri, who said two European courts have ruled that force-feeding can cause irreversible injury. However, Nisri believes the State would defend doctors who force-feed prisoners in accordance with court rulings.

MK Eitan Cabel (Labor) told Israel Radio that most of his colleagues oppose the law, and added that Israel “doesn’t care” whether the prisoners die of hunger. However, the current bill could harm the country and international hasbara efforts.

Seventy-six Palestinians are currently on a joint hunger strike.

The families of Palestinian Authority terrorists shut down an UNRWA office in Shechem on Wednesday to protest the organization’s silence about a Palestinian hunger strike in Israeli jails, the Palestinian news website Ma’an said.

Imad Ishtewy, a local spokesman, said the UN should intervene in the hunger strike immediately, and added that activists on the outside would escalate their plans in  support of the killers in the coming days. More than 100 PA Arabs declared a hunger strike a month ago to their detention without charge or trial in Israeli jails. Most of them started their hunger strike over three weeks ago.

The current strike is not the first time PA prisoners have attacked UNRWA installations and complained that the aid organization fails to meet their needs. Residents of UNRWA camps in Judea and Samaria and Jordan say the services they receive from UNRWA are often substandard – when they exist at all. In many camps, health clinics are often open for just three to five hours a day, and even then residents say they provide little more than basic over-the-counter painkillers.

Even worse, camp residents in Gaza, Judea and Samaria and Jordan have told this reporter that UNRWA has failed to protect their interests vis-à-vis local authorities. In Gaza, this means that the Hamas government has taken control of UNRWA facilities to fire rockets at civilian targets in Israel (most notably during the 2008 Operation Cast Lead), and has refused to use international aid funds to purchase medicine for UNRWA camp facilities.

In Jordan, UNRWA failures are even more dramatic.  “Roads” in UNRWA camps are often little more than unpaved dirt paths, with bare-footed children begging on every corner. Worse, residents of some Jordanian camps have no civil rights in the country because they do not possess Jordanian social security numbers. This bars them from legally working (they are allowed to perform day labor), owning property or businesses and from moving out of the camp.

But those issues do not seem to be in UNRWA’s agenda. Camp officials in all the camps mentioned here say that UNRWA officials care more about receiving their salaries and receiving international visitors than they do about serving the needs of refugees.

“What have they done here? We have nothing, we have no rights, and they think they’re saving the world because the health clinic is open from 11-2 every day. I don’t know if we’d be better off without them, but we certainly aren’t any better off with them,” one camp resident said.

Hunger strike, or not eating?

The current hunger strike is not the first time PA prisoners have declared a hunger strike to protest Israeli policies. But if the reports are correct that 15 people have been hospitalized since the strike began on April 24, it might be the first time that incarcerated prisoners have actually stopped eating: During a similar “strike” in 2004, PA leaders in jail were humiliated after prison guards filmed them eating during the strike. The stars of that Pallywood production included Marwan Barghouti, the arch Palestinian terror mastermind who is considered by Israeli and international human rights workers as the jewel in the crown of Palestinians in Israeli jails.

The last prisoner hunger strike, in May 2012, supposedly included 2,000 prisoners and ended after 27 days after Israel agreed to release administrative detainees and to allow 400 prisoners from the Gaza Strip to receive family visits.

Israel is set to release in the coming days 26 terrorists who killed Israeli citizens. Of the 26 terrorists set to be freed, 21 came from Judea and Samaria, and 5 from Gaza. Most committed their terror attacks before Oslo, and served sentences ranging from 19 to 28 years.

A point being repeated by Israeli official sources and is being echoed by all the local news media is that all those prisoners to be released committed their murders against innocents civilians before the Oslo agreement was signed. The idea must be that, had those killers been aware of a peace treaty with the “Jewish apes” they would have refrained from murdering them and possibly limited their aggression to table tennis and long hikes along the green line.

Except that — oops — the first Oslo accords were signed in Washington DC on Sepember 13, 1993, and Israel’s official list of the victims of Palestinian murder includes these two Jewish men:

Issac Rosenberg (67). Murdered March 29, 1994 by 2 terrorists with an ax. Murdered while working in Petach Tikva. Murdered after Oslo. Left behind a wife and son.

Yigal Vaknin (22). Murdered September 24, 1993, in Batzra, near Raanana. Stabbed to death. Murdered after Oslo. Left behind parents and eight brothers and sisters.

(Thanks to Moshe Matitya for the h/t.)

Can it be true? Is it possible that the Netanyahu-Livni peace dealers are lying to the public? We at the Jewish Pres online refuse to believe such an insinuation, and are certain that the murderers of these two blameless Jews were included by mistake. And now, that it’s become clear that their pending release is rooted in an error, the government will make sure to inform the prison authority and take them back to their cells.

Because our government is decent and democratic and would never, ever lie to us!

Another reason we know this must be a mistake, has to do with the rebuke that chief negotiator Tzipi Livni has sent Naftali Bennett’s way, telling him he was cynically attempting to destroy a process that the government has already approved and is on its way. Someone claiming the high moral ground, like Minister Tzipi Livni, could not possibly lie about the dates when the prisoners she’s releasing committed their murders.

Incidentally, Tzipi Livni’s circle continue to argue that any attempt on the part of Jewish Home to object to Tzipi Livni is tantamount to a call for her assassination, and they point out that a few days ago some guy up north spat in Tzipi Livni’s faction member’s face, and that’s how all assassinations usually start. First you spit at the Archduke Ferdinand, then you throw a bomb at his procession.

welcome to Israel, the land where every season is the silly season.

Here is the list of the other Jews who were murdered, and the circumstances of their demise. If you’re angry after reading this list and livid at the release of the murderers it means you’re holding on to a measure of sanity. If you consider letting their 26 killers go the price of making peace, you are quite possibly insane.

David Reuven (59). Murdered April 20, 1991. Beaten to death, while tied up in a mini-market where he worked. Left behind a wife, three children, and grandchildren.

Avi Osher (40). Murdered June 28, 1991. Stabbed to death in Moshav Massuah by Arab workers who worked for him for over 15 years. Left behind a wife and two children.

Meir Ben-Yair (33). Murdered June 27, 1985. Shot in his car, in a forest near Jerusalem.

Michal Cohen (32). Murdered June 27, 1985. Shot in her car, while touring in the forest near Jerusalem. Left behind a husband and two children.

Yosef Shirzi (62). Murdered May 29, 1992. Murdered in Eilat, by four terrorists who swam into Eilat. He was working as a guard when he went to investigate suspicious movement, at which point the terrorists shot him. Left behind a wife and three brothers.

Yosef Eliyahu (35). Murdered July 21, 1985. Was touring in Gilboa for work when three terrorists attacked them. The body was found in a cave a week later. Left behind a wife and five children.

Leah Almakais (19). Murdered July 21, 1985. Was touring in Gilboa for work when three terrorists attacked them and strangled her to death. The body was found in a cave a week later. Left behind a parents, brothers and a sister.

Gania Friedman. February 21, 1992. Murdered while walking down the street in Kfar Saba. Her father and two additional bystanders were also stabbed in the attack.

Moti Biton (32). Murdered October 27, 1992. Murdered in the Jezreel Valley, when he entered an Arab owned supermarket. His wife shot at the terrorists. Left behind a wife and three children.

Revital Seri (22). Murdered October 22, 1984. Tied up and shot by terrorists, while hiking near Jerusalem with her boyfriend Ron Levi. Survived by parents and two sisters.

Ron Levi (23). Murdered October 22, 1984. Tied up and shot by terrorists, while hiking near Jerusalem with his girlfriend Revital Seri. Survived by parents and two sisters.

David Kaspi (33). April 19, 1985. Killed by three Arabs passengers in his taxi, who shot him. Left behind a wife and two daughters.

Shimon Cohen (71). Murdered May 28, 1990. Murdered by a bomb in Machane Left behind a wife, five children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Tzvi Klein (44). Murdered December 3, 1991. Murdered in a drive-by shooting, between Jerusalem and Ofra. Left behind a wife and three children.

The Hamas organization accepted responsibility on Sunday for the digging of the “terror tunnel” exposed by the IDF a week and a half ago in the area between Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha and the Gaza Strip border.

It turns out the Hamas has a “military arm,” which is responsible for doing the bad things, while the “civilian arm” continues to receive donations from the nice folks in Europe. This way they make sure that the money donated to Hamas is only used to feed orphans and widows, all of them 100 percent victims of Israeli genocide.

On Sunday, a spokesman for the bad Hamas, a gentleman nicknamed Abu Ubaida, after a medieval Muslim language scholar (on account of the talking, you get it, right?), told the Hamas radio station in Gaza that the Hamas military force “dug the tunnel and were responsible for it.”

Abu Ubaida stated that the tunnel was dug in an attempt to kidnap an Israeli soldier or civilian, and use them to force Israel to release the remaining thousands of Palestinian prisoners in its jails.

Israel has established many times in the past that not only is it happy to negotiate with terrorist, but that it’s willing to give away the story. The going rate for 1,000 jailed Arabs is one captured Israeli.

In 2011, 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, who were collectively responsible for 569 Israeli deaths, were released in exchange for Gilad Shalit. The campaign to release him (see the girls below painting his portrait on the pavement) reassured Hamas that they don’t need to ever give up anything in negotiations, or recognize, not even on paper, the Jews’ right to live. All they need is to get them a succulent Israeli with good, middle class parents.

It should be noted that the IDF blamed Hamas for the tunnel as soon as it was discovered. It also blamed winter for rain, and summer for those long, hot days in August.

It should also be noted that the tunnel required some 500 tons of cement, which was produced in Israel and provided to the Arabs in Gaza for the explicit purpose of rebuilding their neighborhoods following the 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense.

It appears that the Arabs went ahead and used that precious cement to aggressive ends, rather than to construct their homes. In fact, the IDF estimated that an astounding 20% of Hamas’s annual budget goes into building terror tunnels.

This is astonishing, in light of the fact that they’ve never done anything like that before, and no one in Israel could have imagined this kind of treachery. This is a moral failure on the part of the bad Hams, and we certainly hope the good Hamas will give them a sound rebuke!

The tunnel, incidentally, was 45 feet deep in places, and looks like a mini subway tunnel, complete with a track and a small car that could be used to whisk away the kidnapped soldier, even as his or her parents are being called and urged to start organizing a mass grassroots movement to release a thousand murderers.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated the IDF for the discovery, saying it’s all part of Israel’s new, aggressive security policy, which is the reason why we’ve had the “quietest year in a decade” in Gaza, despite the rise in terrorist activity in recent years.

Of course, it could be that the reason the Arabs have been so quiet is that they’re all underground, digging up tunnels.

It’s interesting to note that the Egyptian Army has found a very effective way of securing its own border with the Gaza Strip: they caved in all the tunnels with bulldozers, then used the same bulldozers to raze a swath of several kilometers worth of buildings, creating a no man’s area where Arabs who dare to enter will be shot.

Could we contract the same Egyptians to fix our Gaza problem?

Comments by Israel’s ambassador to Sweden comparing the recently-released Palestinian prisoners to the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik who, on 22 July 2011, bombed government buildings in Oslo, killing 8, then killed 69 on a vacation island, have left relatives of victims of the Utøya massacre seething, Swedish news website The Local reports.

In a Tuesday interview with Svergies Radio (SR), Israeli ambassador Isaac Bachman compared the release of Palestinian prisoners to setting the monster Breivik free.

“The horrors that [the Palestinian prisoners] did, to put it in a Scandinavian understanding, it’s like what happened in Norway with Breivik,” Bachman told SR.

“Imagine if Breivik was released as a gesture of some sort,” he added, and complained that Israel is not getting enough credit for agreeing to the release.

Pointing out the enormous risk Israel was taking with its gesture, Bachman noted that “research has shown that these people will return to crime. It’s not easy to get public support for releasing these people.”

It turns out the good ambassador was completely wrong in his comparison, which seemed completely reasonable to him, but not to the listeners. You see, Breivik – he killed sweet, pink skinned, blond Norwegians, which was a crime against humanity, while the Palestinians only killed Jews. Big difference, apparently, in Scandinavia.

The comments, which came on the eve of Israel’s Wednesday release of 26 Palestinian prisoners, sparked outrage from none other than survivors and family members of victims of Breivik’s 2011 attack, The Local reported.

“I think it is ridiculous to compare this with a mass murderer from Norway,” Trond Blattmann, whose son Torjusdatter was killed when Breivik opened fire on Utøya, told The Local. “There’s no similarity at all. This is a ridiculous way to talk.”

“The comparison does not make sense,” added Bjørn Ihler, who survived the Breivik massacre by hiding on the southern tip of the island. “Breivik was a solo terrorist whose actions were based purely on an unreal situation. The situation in the Middle East is very different. There is a real fight for Palestinian freedom going on.”

You see, when an entire Jewish family, babies and all, is butchered in its own kitchen – that’s freedom fighting. You have to think blond.

Even Middle East expert Per Jönsson with the Swedish Institute for International Affairs (Utrikespolitiska institutets – UI) slammed Bachman’s Breivik comparison.

“The comparison with Brevik is insane in several ways. Breivik is very special. These people that Israel is now releasing are freedom fighters, murderers, and in some cases terrorists, but they are nevertheless rather normal people,” he told the Aftonbladet newspaper.

We have to understand that the reactions from Sweden are an expression of pure, unadulterated Jew hatred, whether those people are aware of it or not. The world is changing around us, and being Jewish is no longer for the faint of heart.

On Wednesday, the State asked the High Court to reject a petition of the families of terror victims against the decision to release 104 Palestinian prisoners as part of renewing the peace process.

The State made ​​it clear that the purpose of the ministerial committee formed to decide on which prisoners will be released and when, is to keep the negotiations secret from some coalition partners.

A quick review of the current coalition partners suggests that the party in government who is most likely to oppose the releases is Jewish Home, as well as the majority of the Likud MKs.

“The decision to appoint a small team of ministers, including concerned senior government ministers, was adopted in order to ensure the confidentiality of the discussions that will take place within the team, so as not to reveal the full breadth of the negotiations conducted with the Palestinians in a way that could harm the peace process and even thwart it,” the state told the court.

The “team” includes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitz, Science Minister Yaakov Peri and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni.

There is not a single Jewish Home Party representative on the “team.”

According to the State’s Attorney’s response to the high court, the first group of Palestinian prisoners with Jewish blood on their hands will be released next week, and the next three groups will be released on the fourth, sixth and eighths month of the negotiations with the Palestinians, depending on the success of the talks.

In its response to the victims of terror petition, the state argued that the release of prisoners is a purely political matter, which the High Court has always considered to be outside of its purview.

“The issue of releasing prisoners is an integral part of a political process which the government has begun, and which the decision to release the prisoners an integral part of, and will be made along the way in accordance with the progress made by the two sides of the negotiations,” the State Attorney’s Office insisted. “The position of the bereaved families has been and will be brought before the proper authorities and will be considered as part of every decision.”

Talks between Palestinians and Israelis will resume on Monday evening, the first such formal deliberations in almost three years.

Meetings between top negotiators will take place Monday night and Tuesday in Washington, the U.S. State Department said in a statement. Secretary of State John Kerry has been pressing the sides for a resumption and has visited the region six times since assuming his post in February.

The Israeli side will be represented by Tsipi Livni, the justice minister, and Yitzhak Molcho, the national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Saeb Erekat, the top Palestinian negotiator, and Mohammed Shtayyeh, who directs the Palestinian Economic Council and who has ministerial status, will represent the Palestinian Authority.

The State Department release said that the talks would at first focus on the procedure for the talks, but added that the basis for negotiations is in place.

“As Secretary Kerry announced on July 19 in Amman, Jordan, the Israelis and Palestinians had reached agreement on the basis for resuming direct final status negotiations,” it said. It did not elaborate what the basis is.

“The meetings in Washington will mark the beginning of these talks,” it said. “They will serve as an opportunity to develop a procedural workplan for how the parties can proceed with the negotiations in the coming months.”

“Both leaders have demonstrated a willingness to make difficult decisions that have been instrumental in getting to this point. We are grateful for their leadership,” Kerry added in the statement.

The announcement came after Israel promised to release 104 Palestinian prisoners with Jewish blood on their hands.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet met Sunday to debate the prisoner release and to approve the resumption of talks. The 22-member cabinet approved the release by a vote of 13 in favor, seven against and two abstentions.

Likud MK and Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon urged ministers to vote against the release, branding it “a diplomatic mistake, a moral mistake.”

It is still not clear whether the released prisoners will include 14 Israeli Arabs—which the PA made clear would be a deal breaker. Sources in Jerusalem told Kol Israel there has been no Israeli commitment on that issue.

Among the Israeli Arab prisoners whose release the PA is demanding are the four Arabs who killed three Israeli soldiers with pitchforks on the infamous “Pitchforks Night” in the early ’90s, the terrorist who threw a firebomb into the car belonging to the Moses family, murdering the mother Ofra and her son Tal, and the terrorist who threw a firebomb at a bus, murdering Rachel Weiss, mother of three children, and soldier David Delaroza, in the 1980s.

There were conflicting reports in recent days over whether the sides had achieved a basis for the talks, or whether negotiators would convene only to prepare the basis for talks.

Israeli and Palestinian talks have been suspended since October 2010, when the Palestinians walked out over Israel’s refusal to extend a 10-month settlement construction freeze.
JTA content was used in this report.