Arab stone throwing and other violent disturbances near Efrat continues.

Following in the footsteps of the pipe bomb found near the northern entrance last week, a girl was hurt Thursday when rocks were thrown at a car she was riding in. A number of cars were hit and damaged near Efrat’s northern entrance.

Last week an Israeli car was totaled on the road to Beitar after Arabs poured oil on the road, and the car spun out of control.

On Friday, Efrat, Beitar, Kiryat Arba-Hebron, and other Gush Etzion residents on planning a massive vigil on the roads, at 10:30 AM to protest the lack of security.

It’s an amazing concept. Why would someone firebomb a grave…and an ancient one at that?

I just read a news article that Arabs have thrown 290 firebombs (and or planted explosive devices) at Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem in the last six months alone (that doesn’t count hundreds, perhaps thousands, before that).

I actually know the answer as to why – it comes back to that concept of hating all that is different from them and worse, an attempt to erase any one else’s past. Okay, I got that…sick…but I got it.

But seeing that headlines also reminded me of an article I wrote a decade ago. Only, it wasn’t about Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, but her son, Joseph’s tomb in Nablus (Shechem).

In February, 2003, Arabs rioted and burned the grave/tomb of Joseph, son of our patriarch, Jacob and his beloved wife, Rachel. Joseph was buried in Shechem after his bones were exhumed by the Israelites as they were leaving Egypt – a promise fulfilled not to leave his bones in a foreign land. His bones were carried through the desert, until they were brought home to rest in the land of his fathers. Only today, his tomb is found inside a Palestinian city. To get there is nearly impossible and only accomplished with an army escort, under strict protection.

Rachel was buried, according to tradition handed down over the centuries, in Bethlehem. You can get to her grave site, but you need to leave your car in Jerusalem and take armored buses – silly…it’s only a few hundred yards. The area around the tomb has been fortified, cement barriers erected to protect those wishing to pray beside her grave.

Back then – in 2003, I wrote an article, “Rachel is Crying.” I thought of that article as I read the news about the firebombs. Then it was Ariel Sharon as prime minister when they attacked and burned Joseph’s tomb and now, as they attack Rachel’s tomb it is Bibi Netanyahu.

Writing in 2003, I asked that Sharon either defend the tomb of Joseph, or go in and remove the body and rebury him near his mother’s grave in Bethlehem. Nothing was done to defend the tomb, to bring his body to Bethlehem. Jews sneak in to visit Joseph’s tomb under heavy guard, usually at night. It’s ironic that some 10 years later, it is Rachel’s grave that has come under attack.

Visit A Soldier’s Mother.

I learned from here that:

Prof. Mustafa Kabaha [Kabha], Department of History and Philosophy at the Quds Open University [his Ph.D., Aranne School of History, Tel-Aviv University and that 'Quds Open University' is just the Israeli Open University], said that the Israeli occupation seeks to blur and thieve the Palestinian identity and history…Israeli authorities started renaming the Palestinian towns, cities and streets in order to impose the Israeli ideological, religious, and national control over the Palestinian territories in an attempt to falsify the land’s history…Kabaha revealed that there is an Israeli committee specifically charged with Judaizing and changing the Palestinian Arab names.

P.S.  I have his book -  The Role of the Press and Journalistic Discourse in the Arab Palestinian National Struggle, 1929-1939 – on my shelf, actually.

About that committee – no revelation required.  It is well known.

But as to who is a-thieving, and stealing and expropriating historical identity, first of all, “Palestinianism” is a model of disinventivity nationalism.  Not only do they invent their own narrative but they disinvent Jewish history.

The Tomb of Rachel. Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs. The Temple Mount. Jerusalem Denial.  The whole UNESCO campaign.  All, and the entire Land of Israel, have been the subject of incessant Islamic reinvention.

My home town – Shiloh – became Seilun and the Pal. Minister for Archaeology denies its past.

With “intellectuals” and “academics” as he, they aren’t going anywhere fast.

Visit My Right Word.

According to the headlines P.M. wannabe the present Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid doesn’t like the “Leftist” label.

Speaking at a meeting of his Yesh Atid party Monday, Lapid said that he had very clear ideas about Israel’s relations with the PA, and that his views should not come as a surprise to anyone. “Whoever thinks that a diplomatic solution will not entail two states for two peoples is mistaken. Any idea of a bi-national state, whether on the left or the right, would mean the end of Zionism, and I am a Zionist,” Lapid said.

With that, he added that “I do not plan on falling into the classic trap of the left, which at the beginning of negotiations reveals immediately what it plans to give away – a situation that turns what is supposed to be the end of the negotiation process into the beginning. You don’t come to negotiations with just an olive branch in your hand,” Lapid added. “We are looking for a fair divorce from the Palestinians.” (Arutz Sheva).

I don’t think that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would accept it for himself too.  Livni once was comfortably in the more right-wing Likud with Bibi.  Only Shimon Peres isn’t shy about calling himself Left.

The big problem with what all of them, Lapid, Livni, Peres and Netanyahu preach, whether they call themselves, Right, Left or Center is that it’s all the same.  They all believe two dangerous things can and should be done: (1) negotiate with the Arabs for peace; (2) give the Arabs a state they’ll call “Palestine.”

Both of those things will seriously endanger the very existence of the State of Israel.  At the event memorializing Emanuel (Manny) Winston, Caroline Glick and other speakers spoke about the terrible mistakes the State of Israel has been making.  One of them is that we, the State of Israel, demand security rather than sovereignty.  With true sovereignty comes security. The late Manny Winston understood it.  And unfortunately the Arabs do, too.

True peace is not the result of negotiations.  True peace is something that evolves when neither side aims to destroy the other one.  It takes time.  Whenever people claim that if we don’t hurry we’ll miss the “window of opportunity” they are not referring to true peace.

What they, the Left-no matter which label they use for themselves, propose is like a cake or bread quickly baked with too high heat.  On the surface, at least for the first few minutes it may look fully baked, but it will quickly fall, collapse, all wet and soft inside.

Visit Shiloh Musings.

Today, an Israeli Government Review Committee published a long-awaited report on the Mohammed Al Durah incident, determining that the Palestinian boy was in fact not harmed by Israeli forces and did not die in the exchange of fire on September 30, 2000 at the Netzarim Junction in Gaza.

The Israeli committee arrived at the conclusion which had been reached by other serious observers who have studied the incident (and its tragic consequences) over the years: The incident was in all likelihood a hoax.

The report was released just three days before a French court is to rule on a defamation case involving the producer who broke the story for France 2, Charles Enderlin, and the French media analyst who accused Enderlin of fabricating the story, Philippe Karsenty.  (You can learn more about the background, evidence, and consequences of the Al Durah incident here.)

The following is my fisking of the original report in the Guardian on the Al Durah incident, written by Suzanne Goldenberg and published on Oct. 3, 2000 and titled ‘Making of a martyr”:

Suzanne Goldenberg begins her Oct. 3, 2000 Guardian account of an incident which had taken place three days earlier, near the Netzarim Junction in Gaza, ‘Making of a martyr’, thus:

A circle of 15 bullet holes on a cinder block wall, and a smear of darkening blood. That is what marks the spot where a terrified 12-year-old boy spent his final moments, cowering in his father’s arms, before he was hit by a final shot to the stomach, and slumped over, dead. Those last minutes in the life of Mohammed al-Durrah, captured in sickening detail by a Palestinian cameraman working for French TV, have taken on a power of their own. His death, aired around the world on Saturday night, has become the single searing image of these days of bloody rioting.

Goldenberg, as with nearly every journalist who reported on the incident, was relying entirely on a one minute, deceptively edited, France 2 video, as well as uncorroborated Palestinian “eyewitness” accounts.

While the the video purported to show the boy’s final moments – filmed by stringer named Talal Abu Rama, and which was cut by France 2 producer Charles Enderlin – the last few seconds showed a clearly alive boy lifting his hands and peeking out through his fingers and then slowly putting his arm down.

There is no video or still photos – despite the numerous journalists at the scene – of the boy being carried away in a stretcher, or being loaded onto an ambulance.

Additionally, despite claims that the IDF fired on the boy and his father for 40 minutes – which somehow only managed to produce a dozen or so bullet holes in the wall and barrel – and supposedly died of a stomach wound, it evidently didn’t seem odd to Goldberg that there was only a “smear” of blood?

Goldenberg:

The pictures of Mohammed’s death seemed not just to encapsulate the horror of these last five days but also to have become its motor.

Though more Palestinians have been killed since Mohammed’s death – including a two-year-old yesterday – it is his image that haunts Israel. For all of the claims of the prime minister, Ehud Barak, and other officials that their soldiers only fire to protect Israeli lives, Mohammed’s death seems an irrefutable reply.

Here, any semblance of objective reporting is shrewn to pieces. Not only in the last sentence of this passage is Goldberg determining Israeli guilt in the boy’s death, but imputing malice to the entire army – all based on 63 seconds of video.

Goldenberg:

By the end of the weekend the evidence was pointing to a still more chilling conclusion: that the 12-year-old boy and his father were deliberately targeted by Israeli soldiers.

The blood libel begins.

Goldenberg has now established – a mere four days following the incident – that the 12-year-old Palestinian child was deliberately targeted by Israeli soldiers.

Caught in a burst of firing, the pair sought shelter behind a concrete water butt, about 15 yards to the east of the Palestinian post, diagonally opposite the Israeli position. The father gestured frantically towards the Israelis, as if pleading with them to stop firing. They did not.

Originally published at the Gatestone Institute.

While Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was meeting in his office in Ramallah with Shelly Yachimovich, chairwoman of Israel’s opposition Labor Party, his Fatah faction was busy threatening Palestinians who meet with Israelis.

That Abbas continues to meet with Israelis on a regular basis in Ramallah does not seem to bother Fatah.

Nor does Fatah seem to be bothered that Palestinian security officers work closely together with their Israeli counterparts. That is called “security coordination” between the Palestinians and Israel.

But when Palestinian youths are invited to meet with Israelis as part of an interfaith dialogue project, Fatah is quick to issue denunciations and threats.

When Palestinian and Israeli teenagers are invited to play football together as part of a project to promote peace and coexistence, Fatah is also quick to react.

But Fatah has no problem when Abbas or any top Palestinian official meets with Israelis.

Nor does Fatah have a problem with some of its senior representatives carrying Israeli-issued VIP cards that grant them various privileges that are denied to most Palestinians, such as permission to enter Israel and avoid waiting at Israel Defense Force checkpoints.

Palestinian youths from Hebron, though, who met with Israelis near Bethlehem to share their problems and insights have been forced to issue a statement distancing themselves from the meeting.

Following threats from Fatah, which condemned the event as a form of “normalization” with Israel, the Palestinian participants claimed that they had been “misled” regarding the true goals of the meeting.

This claim was clearly issued because of the “anti-normalization” campaign waged by Fatah over the past few years. This is a campaign that — in the context of “peace” and “coexistence” projects that are often sponsored and funded by the European Union and the U.S. — aims at banning meetings between Israeli and Palestinians.

The most recent victims of the anti-normalization drive are Palestinian boys and girls who committed the “crime” of playing in a football match against Israeli teenagers. When pictures of the match appeared in the media, Fatah rushed to issue threats against the Palestinian players and those behind the tournament.

Organizers of the “anti-normalization” campaign, most of whom belong to Abbas’s Fatah faction, have been boasting that, in recent years, they have succeeded in thwarting dozens of planned meetings between Israelis and Palestinians.

But Fatah has not condemned its own leader, Abbas, for meeting with Yachimovich and other Israelis.

The real problem here is that Abbas himself has not come out against Fatah’s campaign of intimidation and threats. By remaining silent, Abbas in fact appears to have endorsed the “anti-normalization” campaign — at least so long as its does not affect him personally.

The Fatah activists who are threatening Palestinian teenagers and youths for talking to Israelis and playing football with them are the same people who claim, at least in public, that they support the peace process with Israel.

But how can there ever be a peace process when any Palestinian who meets with an Israeli is immediately denounced as a traitor? It is worth noting that most of these denunciations are coming from the “moderate” Fatah, and not from Hamas.

It now remains to be seen how Fatah will react if and when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry persuades Abbas to return to the negotiating table with Israel. Will Fatah condemn Abbas for advocating “normalization with the Israeli enemy” when he sits at the negotiating table? Or will Fatah continue to go only after Palestinian boys and girls who just want to have fun and play football?

Originally published at the Gatestone Institute.

Has Stephen Hawking really left the company of Albert Einstein, an avowed Zionist who worked to create the State of Israel, and replaced him with the august company of Elvis Costello and other Israel boycotters?

Since Hawking is so often called the Einstein of his generation, it is worth reminding him that Einstein was a committed Zionist who traveled around the United States with Chain Weizmann to raise money for the creation of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an institution that Hawking now refuses to even visit. In a 1921 letter to his friend Friedrich Zangger, Einstein wrote, “On Saturday I’m off to America – not to speak at universities (though there will probably be that, too, on the side) but rather to help in the founding of the Jewish University in Jerusalem. I feel an intense need to do something for this cause.”

Originally published at the Gatestone Institute.

More than 55,000 Palestinians have been forced to flee Syria to Lebanon and Jordan over the past two years, according to figures released by the United Nations Work and Relief Agency [UNRWA].

According to Palestinian sources, more than 2,000 Palestinians have been killed in Syria, most in recent months, by both the rebels and the Syrian army.

Most of the Palestinians who fled Syria have found shelter in neighboring Lebanon, where more than 500,000 Palestinians live in several refugee camps in different parts of the country.

It is worth noting that Palestinians in Lebanon are subjected to apartheid laws that deny them work, social and health benefits, and freedom of movement.

UNRWA now estimates that approximately 235,000 Palestinians have been displaced inside Syria since the beginning of the conflict two years ago.

Just two weeks ago, some 6,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes in Ein al-Tal, a refugee camp near Aleppo in northern Syria.

This was not the only UNRWA-run refugee camp in Syria to be targeted by both the opposition and forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.

“Ein al-Tal is the latest manifestation of a cycle of catastrophic violence in which the conduct of all parties has transformed refugee camps into theaters of conflict in which heavy weapons are used, resulting in severe suffering for Palestinian civilians,” the UNRWA said in a statement. “Palestinian refugees in Syria are being killed, injured and displaced in greater numbers than even before.”

And what have the Palestinians’ two governments – Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank [Judea and Samaria -ed.] – done to help the displaced Palestinians? Almost nothing, according to the displaced families.

What have the Arab countries done to help the Palestinians fleeing Syria? Almost nothing.

Neither the Palestinian governments nor the Arab countries has even asked for an emergency U.N. Security Council session to discuss the new Palestinian tragedy.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is too busy touring the world and fighting with his former prime minister, Salam Fayyad.

The Hamas government is too busy inciting Palestinians and preparing for the next wave of terror attacks against Israel.

As for the Arab countries, why should they care about Palestinians when hundreds of Syrians are being killed every day and no one in the Arab world seems to care?

It is no secret that most of the Arab governments despise the Palestinians and continue to treat them as third-class residents and a potential threat to Arabs’ national security.

The Arab League foreign ministers who recently met with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington did not even bother to raise the issue of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were forced out of their homes in Syria.

For these ministers and the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, construction in an Israeli settlement is more urgent than the lives of thousands of Palestinians and Syrians.

But it is not only the Arabs and the Palestinian governments who are turning a blind eye to the mass displacement of Palestinians. Human rights organizations and the mainstream media in the West are also ignoring the plight of the Palestinians. This is, after all, a story that lacks an anti-Israel angle.

Originally published at the Gatestone Institute.