Dr. Micha Shamir, of Hadassah Resuscitation School and Service, and paramedic Moshe Tzalach went to the city of Shchem in Samaria on Sunday, to move 27-year-old Hilmi Abdul Azizi who had been seriously injured from a gunshot in a clash with Jewish settlers in the village of Qusra, Ma’ariv reported.

Another Arab, Khalid Nafed, was injured in his foot.

“It was crucial for Israel that we save the injured man’s life. Getting into Shchem was unpleasant and we experienced a few moments of fear,” Dr. Shamir told Ma’ariv.

The patient was being treated in a local hospital but his life was in danger and the hospital sought medical help from Israel. Officials contacted Dr. Shamir to ask if he would go to Shchem without a military escort.

“I did not think twice before I agreed,” the anesthesiologist said.

The mission was approved after coordination with the mayor of Shchem and the Israeli Civil Administration, and Palestinian police accompanied the doctor.

“For a decade, there hasn’t been such a mission,” Dr. Shamir said. “We could have easily been kidnapped should someone had decided to do it.”

An unidentified Arab vehicle waited at the entrance to Shchem, and the driver sped past protesters who were clashing with Israeli troops near a military checkpoint. At the same time, in a nearby IDF base, a Yasur chopper was being prepared to fly in and pick up the patient as soon as he was outside the city limits.

“His condition was stable but we had to check him before evacuating him,” said Dr. Shamir. He and the paramedic Tzalach worked for a long time to stabilize the condition of the young man, “Even though we were under a time constraint, we had to check him every quarter of an hour, to see if he responds well to the instrumentation. You can’t just take the injured man out after you see that everything is okay.”

Abdul Azizi was then evacuated by ambulance to a nearby IDF base where the chopper, and a few special forces soldiers was waiting to take him to hospital in Israel.

As they left the Nablus hospital, the Israeli medics saw dozens of Arabs gathering near the hospital.

“This was very unpleasant,” reported Dr. Shamir. “When we entered the hospital, nobody knew about us, but the mission had already been exposed and anyone could have done whatever they wanted,” Shamir said.

The young Arab’s condition continues to be difficult, but, according to Dr. Shamir, his chances of recovery are much higher at the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital than at the local hospital in Shchem.

Palestinian Authority violence continued early Wednesday afternoon when approximately 200 Arabs in Samaria rioted and hurled rocks at soldiers who evacuated a small illegal village.

Two of the soldiers were lightly injured and w ere treated on the spot. The IDF shot over the heads of the rioters to disperse them.

Following the recent deterioration of the security situation in Judea and Samaria, local residents have decided to take their security into their hands, reinitiating a civilian based recon unit which was operative during the second Intifada. In recent months there has been a sharp upsurge in terrorist attacks against the residents of Judea and Samaria. The number of stone and fire-bomb attacks on the roads has increased dramatically. To contend with this reality the local security councils have decided to reestablish the civilian security patrols on the roads.

The IDF has lately decreased the size of its forces in Judea and Samaria. As a direct result, Arab terrorists are freer to operate.  Furthermore, the IDF has reopened some roads to Arab traffic which have been closed up until now for security reasons. This further endangers the Jewish motorists.

The security councils of Neve Tsuf and Ateret, in Benyamin, dispatched a letter to Minister of Defense Ehud Barak protesting their current precarious condition. “The situation is ablaze and there is no response provided, and it seems that the peak is still ahead of us,” they stated in the letter, “… The residents have come to one conclusion – the authorities have left us with no proper response and we must care for our own security. In a joint decision, we have decided to reestablish the civilian patrols which will scout the roads during the dangerous hours and will provide security to the residents against terrorism.”

They further stated that, “As citizens of the State of Israel, we regret that the trust we had in the security system no longer exists and we can no longer rely on the military to provide the necessary security to our communities and the roads leading to them.” The residents’ representatives concluded the letter with a demand that the IDF restore a presence in the region, thus providing the required security which will enable them to conduct their lives in a proper fashion. Copies of the letter were sent to top IDF officers in the region and to members of Knesset

The civilian patrols are deployed at crucial points, serving as spotters and deterrents. They are equipped with first aid kits and communication tools. They were directed to travel slowly to detect any looming danger. If attacked, they are to block the roads and warn other drivers of the upcoming perils.

On Feb. 18^th, several cars were significantly damaged after being attacked with stones on the Trans-Benyamin highway. It took the army a long time to arrive on the scene, and a significant numbers of cars were hit until the IDF finally arrived and stopped the attacks. Last Friday, several Israelis were ambushed with stones at several points on the roads. Earlier that day a driver spotted two youth who were about to attack him. He drew his weapon and waved it at them and they ran away. In a different incident, a driver was attacked and fired in the air, and the terrorists fled the scene.

Yitzchak Shadmy, Chairman of the Benyamin Residents Council and a lieutenant colonel in the IDF reserves told Tazpit News Agency: “The IDF has lately left various areas in Judea and Samaria. Now, every time something happens it takes the IDF a long time to respond, up to the point where they are not relevant. It is upsetting that the IDF has not yet comprehended that a new Intifada is on the rise, and that it can be stopped early on. We call on all the residents to join and create a standing by force that will protect the women and children, before someone pays a heavy price.”

Neve Tsuf’s secretariat told Tazpit that: “Following the IDF’s decrease of its forces in the region they are unable to fulfill their mission. With the knowledge of the security forces, a civilian patrol has been established. Its mission is to warn the IDF of security related incidents in real time. We regret that as citizens we are forced to replace the security forces guarding our lives. We demand that the political echelons get involved to restore a sense of security and peace to our area.”

An IDF official told Tazpit News Agency that they are doing their utmost, overtly and covertly, to contend with these attacks. The IDF categorizes stone attacks as terror and relates to them accordingly. He further added that the IDF has not decreased its presence in the region, but rather has redeployed its forces. He reaffirmed the IDF’s commitment to the residents of Judea and Samaria.

Some 3,000 vines, situated near Shiloh in Samaria, were destroyed over the past few days, it was discovered this morning.

The vineyards are visited every few days during this season, so the precise time of the destruction is unclear.

The damage is estimated at 200,000 NIS.

Footprints leading to the Arab village of Kutzrah were discovered by IDF trackers during their initial investigation. About a year ago, a 1/4 of an acre was destroyed in the same vineyard.

“This morning we discovered the difficult scene of some 3,000 destroyed vines,” Itamar Weiss, a worker at the vineyards, told Tazpit News Agency. “This is the fourth time this vineyard has been targeted in the past years.”

Israeli Police said an investigation has been launched to discover the culprits.

Weiss said that residents “expect these crimes to be treated with the same force that crimes throughput the rest of Israel are treated and investigated.”

This incident is one of many attacks apparently executed by Arabs against Jewish agriculture and farming in Judea and Samaria.

In the beginning of November 2012, Tazpit News Agency reported that a herd of some 400 goats was stolen from Avraham Hertzlich, a farmer from the Benyamin area.

An olive grove near Shiloh, owned by Erez Ben Sa’adon, was vandalized at around the same time. Many of the trees were uprooted or cut down, and the irrigation system was damaged.

About a month ago, 70 heads of sheep were stolen from a pen in Sussia.

As is my longtime custom, I went to שילה הקדומה Shiloh HaKeduma, Tel Shiloh to pray on Rosh Chodesh Adar.  Considering the problems Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is having constructing/negotiating his latest coalition, maybe he should go to Tel Shiloh, site of the Mishkan, Tabernacle to pray, too. 

Biblical Chana prayed in Shiloh for a son who would be the national and spiritual leader of the Jewish People to establish monarchy.  So, considering the state of our nation today, Shiloh is the perfect location for prayers.

The Jewish Month of Adar is known as a time of change, reversals, bad to good, winter to spring.

Yes, I was amazed at how richly the trees were in bloom and how beautifully the wildflowers had begun to cover the ground.  Last month, Rosh Chodesh Shvat, we saw green and brown, but now we also see red, pink and white.

Shiloh has been the location for prayer since Joshua made it the capital of the Jewish Nation after the Exodus from Egypt.  The Mishkan, Tabernacle, which had been a mobile synagogue during the forty years we wandered the desert, was set up in Shiloh and stayed there for 369 years.

That location, a large flat area to the north is now being excavated by archaeologists.

Wherever you look you can see signs of ancient building and construction.  Stones don’t naturally look like these.

Next Rosh Chodesh is Nissan.  Women are invited to join us for Women’s Rosh Chodesh Prayers.

New and old observation towers, plus ancient ruins at Tel Shiloh

Visit Shiloh Musings.

Four Palestinian women who had the sperm of their husbands smuggled out of Israeli jails are pregnant, the Palestinian Ma’an news agency reported.

At a news conference at the Razan Medical Center in Shchem, Samaria, Dr Salem Abu Khaizaran said the four successful pregnancies were a huge achievement, and that many insemination attempts had failed.

“We don’t intervene and ask how they smuggled sperm from prison and get it to Shchem. There are many failed attempts because the sperm die and so prisoners have to keep trying until it works,” Abu Khaizaran said.

Prison is hell.

“We believe that this is a human right, especially as these prisoners are spending long sentences in prisons and a woman’s biological clock is short so maybe when her husband comes out she won’t be able to have a child.”

Now, I’m no expert on human behavior, but if I’m a terrorist prisoner and my wife tells me she just conceived from my sperm donation—I’m asking for a paternity test. I love my wife and all, but some stories your wives (or husbands) tell should be double checked.

Meanwhile, the good doctor from Shchem said his clinic provided free treatment to the wives of political prisoners as a social and humanitarian contribution to Palestinians who sacrifice their lives for their homeland. The center is storing dozens of samples of frozen sperm from prisoners of all factions, he added.

Make that the first official terrorist sperm bank in the world.

The prisoners whose wives are pregnant were identified as Ali Nazzal, from Qalqiliya, who is sentenced to 25 years, Osama al-Silawi from Jenin, serving four life sentences plus 55 years (that’s a lot of time for trying), Rafat al-Qarawi of Ramallah, sentenced to 15 years, and an unidentified, fourth prisoner from Jericho.

The center insists on the presence of a close relative of each spouse at the procedure.

Nazzal’s wife told Ma’an she was initially reluctant to go through with the operation.

“At the beginning I refused this principle, especially as I am completely banned from visiting my husband, but now I am convinced, especially as it doesn’t contradict religion and the sperm is my husband’s,” she said.

Yeah, yeah, I’d still expect a blood test.

Al-Qarawi’s mother told reporters her daughter-in-law’s pregnancy followed several failed attempts.

“We tried many times before it succeeded. The assassin of Rabin isn’t better than Palestinian prisoners,” she said, pointing out that conjugal visits were a natural right of prisoners.

Yigal Amir, who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, was allowed conjugal prison visits in 2006, which resulted in the birth of his son in 2007.

Not the trusting type.

A Channel 10 report on Thursday ranked the various Israeli Prime Ministers, since 1991, based on the amount of actual housing construction that began during their respective terms, inside the Israel’s Settlements.

*Also destroyed thousands of buildings and homes.
** This chart doesn’t include infrastructure construction, only homes.

Based on information collected by Peace Now, below are the number of government tenders for new settlement housing that were issued, by year for the past decase. We then correlated that information according to who was Prime Minister at the time.

Again, the information above is for new homes only. It does not include the infrastructure development in the settlements, which Netanyahu, for instance, did a lot of (exact data unavailable at the moment) during this last term as Prime Minister.

Updated:

According to Peace Now, the Netanyahu government also approved dozens of “outposts”, though what Peace Now calls “outposts” are actually neighborhoods of existing Settlements.

Earlier this month, a man in uniform you have probably never heard of sat down at his desk and took a quick glance at the piece of paper in front of him containing a military order.

The language was bland and lackluster, bearing no emotion and revealing nothing concerning the momentousness of the event at hand.

But when Nitzan Alon, head of the IDF Central Command, affixed his signature at the bottom of the page, conferring formal recognition upon Rehalim as the 32nd Jewish community in Samaria, it marked a major victory for those who love the Land of Israel.

Located north of Eli and east of Ariel, Rehalim’s story is one of determination and fortitude born out of tragedy. And it should inspire all those who are anxious about the future of the Jewish presence in the cradle of our civilization.

Rehalim’s story stretches back more than two decades, when international pressure began to mount on Israel to make a deal with the Palestinians.

On October 28, 1991, just days before the start of the Madrid peace conference, Palestinian terrorists attacked an Israeli bus that was on its way from Shilo to a rally organized by the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

The bus driver, Yitzchak Rofeh, as well as Rachel Druck, a mother of 7 children, were murdered.

Afterward, Druck’s friends erected tents at the site of the killing and eventually received permission from the government to set up a civilian outpost and religious seminary there. They chose the name Rehalim as a way to memorialize Druck as well as Rachel Weiss, who had been murdered by terrorists three years previously.

By 1997, the government had agreed to upgrade Rehalim from an outpost to a community and it began to flourish, but for reasons that are unclear, the defense minister did not sign off on the final permit, which was the last remaining bureaucratic requirement.

Eight years later, that came back to haunt the community when a report commissioned by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared Rehalim to be “an unauthorized outpost.” As a result, all building at the site was halted and no development work was permitted. Even the construction of a kindergarten for children was prohibited, and it looked as if Rehalim’s future was in doubt.

But then an unwitting redeemer appeared from the most unlikely of places.

As part of its campaign against Jewish life in Judea and Samaria, the left-wing Yesh Din organization filed a petition with Israel’ Supreme Court with the aim of compelling the government to remove Rehalim and other outposts.

This measure forced the government’s hand, and last year it informed the court that Rehalim would receive the final approval necessary to formalize and legalize its status.

And so the long, winding and torturous process of making Rehalim “official” came to a happy conclusion when Nitzan Alon in effect signed its birth certificate just a few weeks ago.

It is hard to overlook the delicious irony in all of this. Had Yesh Din not filed its petition, who knows if the government would have bothered to address Rehalim’s status?

Paradoxically, the left-wing activists at Yesh Din were driven by a desire to tear down Rehalim, but they turned into an instrument for ensuring its permanence. Moving forward, they might want to think twice before taking to the courts to subvert Jewish life.

But the real heroes of this story, of course, are the brave men and women of the community itself, who endured years of uncertainty with the threat of evacuation hanging over their heads. Just imagine trying to build a life for yourself and your family when you know that at any moment the court or the government can decide to uproot you and remove you from your home, all because of a bureaucrat’s signature.

But guided by faith and a deep-seated belief in the justness of their cause, Rehalim’s pioneers persisted and did not yield to despair.

They were rewarded this month with formal approval, proving that sometimes, all it takes is the stroke of a pen to alter the course of Jewish history.

And that is something that should motivate us all. For despite the challenges and difficulties that Israel may face, and the wave of international opprobrium, the return of the Jewish people to its land can and will continue.