In Arad It's Columbo the Hummus Guy

The food truck is huge. It's in the parking lot across from Arad's central town mikve (a pool used for Jewish ritual purity) and it stands in a spot where you have no choice but to either cut a wide swathe to avoid it, or step right up and say hello. 

But it's only there on Friday mornings and Itzhak, the "Hummus Guy" extraordinaire, only accepts petitioners for his fare from 10 am to 1 pm sharp. At 1:01 pm he closes up shop and whisks his truck away in order to reach his home in time to complete his own preparations for the holy Sabbath.

I've never figured out why he calls this thing "Colombo" and I've never quite dared to ask.

There isn't one guy in the religious community who doesn't know about this truck and every single one sings his praises. It's not hard to see why. 

First, there's the food, dished up just at the right temperature with huge portions, made there fresh on the spot, and of outstanding quality.  A Yemenite mother would smile with joy to see a son cook like that. In fact, I bet she does. I think Itzhak is probably Yemenite.

But the guy also knows things. 

"Hey -- I went to the doctor but that medicine he gave me was worthless. What did you tell me to do with that rash?"  A man behind me was asking Itzhak about the herbs he had told him to get last Friday, but he had dallied and deferred to allopathic methods. Now he was back to ask The Wise Man. 

Itzhak was patient. He went over the advice again, sketching out what the man had to do, how he had to boil the herbs, the kind of  poultice to prepare, and what he was to drink as well. He also gave him his phone number in case there was questions. No fee. 

It took a few minutes to prepare my hummus because he had to take the cooked chickpeas warm from the oven and grind them fresh there on the spot. I didn't mind waiting. 

He also gave me a free container of 'ful, because it was leftover and "it's a sin to waste." It's a Middle Eastern concoction of beans that is ladeled on to warm hummus with lemon and garlic. If you have never tried it, you do not know what true life is all about. Eat it with warm pita. Slowly.  

Was I sure I had enough money with me?  If not, he would wait till next week.  And in case I was too busy with my other cooking to get there in time, I could always call and he would send it to me by delivery. He gave me a little flyer with his number and the offerings.

This week, in fact, that is exactly what happened.  With only an hour to go till Itzhak would close up shop, I knew I would never make it.

I called him.  "Sure, sure. No problem. But can you call me back in a few minutes?  No wait -- what did you need?"

I told him. 

"Okay great. Give me your address.  I don't have time to take the card info now. There are people here. They need to eat. I'll take it next week. Don't worry. I'll just send the food. You'll give it to me next week or next time. It's fine. Shabbat shalom!"

He hung up. Politely.

The food arrived in record time.

Can you imagine anyone sending food without making sure you paid them in New York?

Welcome to Israel.

How to Avoid Israeli Brutality - A Guide for the Uninformed

Israeli Physician Talks About Meeting Aliens: What's in it for us? What's in it for them?

(This is the English translation of Part II of the two-part series "Meeting Aliens," authored by Israeli physician, inventor and creative human, Dr. Yuval Rabinovich. The website that published the original Hebrew version is HaYadan, which may be accessed by clicking here. The English translation of Part I of the series, 'Why we have never met aliens" was published by JewishPress.com .)

It could have been very nice if an intelligent species would have contacted us. We could cooperate in outer space research, with deeper understanding of the forces that mold our joint world. They might help us use nuclear power in a non-harmful way. We may contribute advanced metallurgy. Who knows?    

If an intelligent creature would ever want to contact us, it is likely to be wise enough to find out how we treat our surrounding beings. On this point we not only have a questionable past, but also a present. In his book "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" (2014), Yuval Harari explains how Man has wiped out all large animals which could not be directly exploited. After this, he turns against his own kind.

The built-in racism in Man was used to justify cultural and physical genocide of groups of people. The attackers and the victims were not genetically far apart from each other. The Spanish conquistadors easily massacred native Central Americans and South Americans. The Europeans easily enslaved Africans. They did not feel close to each other. Nor did the Hutu and Tutsi people in Africa feel close to each other, a factor that may have been significant when violence erupted again in Africa. But the deadly hostility of Christians toward Jews cannot be a function of genetic distance; it is rather one of cultural diversity only. Even less understandable is the joy of violence between Catholic and Protestant Christians. Nowadays the world is astonished by the sight of Sunni Muslims massacring everybody, including Shiite Muslims, and at least one incident of Sunnis killing other Sunnis in the name of Sunni Islam.

For further reading about the history of racism in pseudo-scientific literature I highly recommend Stephen Jay Gould's 1981 book, "The Mismeasure of Man".

We like nothing more than grading: who is the wealthiest person on earth? Who is the fastest runner? Who jumps the highest? The record holders are highly appreciated, although I am not sure we can explain why. We also cooperate: we have sports teams who engage in ceremonial fighting in which no one is supposed to die, although on some rare occasions sports team fans do kill each other. Anyway, nothing is more important to us than competing, even if it does not achieve anything useful.

We know of only one case of two intelligent species co-existing on Earth. One of them did not survive the encounter although we do not know exactly why. We do not know why Neanderthals perished, and there is not even a consensus as to when exactly it happened. Estimates range from 40,000 to 24,000 years ago. One thing we do know: the Neanderthals – who were not our ancestors but rather a side branch of the human family tree – became completely extinct. We also know they preceded our ancestors, the Cro-Magnons in Europe. This is the only case we know of an encounter between two intelligent species. The weaker did not survive.

Bearing this in mind, we went out looking for aliens. In 1960 astrophysicist Frank Drake started the Ozma project. This is the same Frank Drake whose equation for estimating the number of intelligent civilizations in outer space was discussed in my previous article. In this project, a radio telescope was used to try and detect intelligent radio signals from nearby stars for four months.

In 1972 and 1973, two small spacecrafts were launched, each carrying messages to aliens. These were Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 space ships and the messages carried were designed by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan (the late Carl Sagan was an American astronomer who had a great role in popularising astronomy, through means such as his TV series "Cosmos"). At the same time, project "Ozma 2" was launched; alien radio transmission were searched for four years. Nowadays a few projects to search for radio messages from space are ongoing; millions of radio channels are scanned non-stop and analyzed by universities and by people in a joint effort called SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) -- so far, to no avail.

Each Pioneer spacecraft carried with it a gold-plated aluminum plaque with messages carved on it. Let us examine a few of these messages. We will ignore the fact that the drawn images correspond to the ideal American beauty and not of average people. We will also ignore the question of whether aliens can understand that two dimensional carving represents three dimensional bodies and creatures. We will focus on the messages themselves.   

The man raises his hand in what seems to be a universal gesture of peace. We consider it as a message of peace because he does not carry any weapon. This message can only be understood by another violent creature. At the bottom of the plaque we see a schematic drawing of the sun and planets as was perceived by people in the seventies of the twentieth century. Pluto was still regarded a planet and only Saturn had rings. But we will ignore these inaccuracies for the following item: from the third planet, Earth, an arrow points to the Pioneer spacecraft that was launched from it. Excuse me. An arrow? What is an arrow? It is our intuitive way to mark a direction. For this we use a symbol of an aerodynamic weapon. We grew up. We no longer use arrows but rather missiles with the same structure.

To summarize, we are a very successful species. We wiped out almost all large animals, except those we found useful as a food source or as working beasts. The only intelligent creature we ever met did not survive. After that we started killing our own, justifying it in the ways in which they differ from us. We are also eager to meet aliens. We are still the masters in using aerodynamic weapons but our intentions are peaceful.

Why don't you come over?

Why Did the Goats Cross the Road?

Life in southern Israel can be quite unique. Take, for example, the issue of animal rights.

“Ima, there is a duck in the road.”

“Excuse me?”

“There’s a duck in the road.”  [In the middle of the Negev Desert, mind you.]

“Where are you?”

“On the road, Ima. Where do you think I am?”

Given the start of the conversation and the tin-can sound of the hands-free bluetooth set my daughter was using in the car, I wasn’t sure.

But it turns out she was driving home from her job in Be’er Sheva and was on the ubiquitous Highway 60, heading for the Shoqat Junction.

This Negev Bedouin herd of goats and sheep has finally crossed the road.
Photo: brewbooks / Wikimedia Commons

At the end, she drove around the duck, who apparently had no intention of disrupting his scheduled midday siesta. 

She checked in the rearview mirror, of course, to make sure she had not unduly ruffled his feathers. And reported back to me to set my fears at ease.

It was a similar conversation to the one I’d had with her just a few days earlier, only at that point, at least she wasn’t the driver.

“Ima?”  “Mmmm?”  “We’re stuck.” 

Stuck?  How could they be stuck? It was nearly all highway between Arad and Tel Aviv. No way could they be stuck.

“Where are you,” I asked with resignation, hoping I didn’t have to go get her.

“I don’t know. I think we’re still on Route 31 – or maybe we’re on Route 40.  We’re not on Highway 6 yet.”

The latter was a high-speed thruway that zoomed from one end of the country to the other. 

“Why are you stuck?"  (This time, I added silently.)

“There’s a herd of goats crossing and the shepherd is having trouble with them – a few of them don’t want to leave the other side.”

Why did the goat cross the highway?  Apparently not because she wanted to, if she had anything to do that day with Israeli Bedouin shepherds ...

Motorists were backed up nearly half a mile, my daughter told me – all of them waiting patiently for goats to cross to the other side. 

This is life in Israel. The world waits for the creations of G-d -- all of the creations, be they large or small -- and especially should they decide to impede motor vehicles.

And yet Israel is accused of being an apartheid state, by a United Nations Human Rights Council that dares accuse the sole democracy in the Middle East of committing "war crimes" and "violations of human rights" when it defends its citizens against terror attacks and targets the weapons fired from behind the safety of helpless civilians in Gaza. 

A nation where even a goat has more rights than a Jew with a PhD would have in the nation of Saudi Arabia -- and where every citizen gets a vote, regardless of color, ethnicity or creed. Even when they spew hatred of the Jewish State. 

Go find another place to match that in the Middle East.  

US-Israel Bilateral Deep-Freeze 'Gets Physical'

Perhaps the Creator has decided to embody the diplomatic "deep freeze" that has been taking place between the White House and Jerusalem -- showing what that can actually look and feel like when words become physical reality. 

Jews who learn Torah know, of course, that words do translate into reality at some level in any case. It is why we are warned to be careful with our words.

So this week has been an interesting one for weather around the world but especially in the United States and Israel.

Meteorologists reported record-breaking low temperatures in the United States and saw the second 'super storm' of the winter in Israel.

The Holy Land was covered with snow on Friday morning -- with some areas buried under as much as 10 inches of the white stuff -- and the central region continued to benefit from a gullywasher's worth of rain. But by midday the southern region of the Holy Land shone with brilliant sunshine and temperatures were back in the mid-50s.

Early Friday morning, Feb. 20 2015 this Negev yard was covered in snow. Four hours later, it was beautiful -- but bare.

Just one day earlier Israelis were shivering in the cold with freezing temperatures and blizzard conditions. 

The second "super storm" of this winter blanketed even southern Israel's Negev towns with snow on Feb. 19, 2015.

Even communities in the northern Negev saw a few inches of snow and lost power for short periods of time.

Meanwhile, at the same time 5,000 miles away on the other side of 'The Pond'...

The Hudson River was freezing over, on the West Side of New York City. The East River did the same on the other side of the city, with New York commuters who use the ferry service standing at the riverside, staring at the ice with wonder mixed with horror.

Broadcast news anchors repeated the symptoms for frostbite on local channels and correspondents issued warnings for locals the “make sure to keep every body part covered.”

At two degrees Farenheit the temperature dropped to a record low for the third time this week.

Pipes burst: not only water pipes but also those carrying sewage through the Big Apple.

Further north, the fast-flowing river beneath Niagra Falls was sluggish and in fact had begun to freeze over by Friday as well.

Weekend weather forecasts predict more snow for New York – and rain for Israel. Go figure. 

Has Barack Obama made up with Binyamin Netanyahu yet? 

A Light Unto the Nations? Not in the Skies.

An ugly conflict between "right" and "smart" in Israel's national airline this week has come to symbolize a national struggle so unpleasant it nearly defies description. But this is an issue that must be addressed because it is essential to resolve the underlying issues that also lead to eruptions of violence as well.

For months, El Al Airlines has been struggling to deal with difficult Chassidic male passengers who refuse to sit next to females on the planes. They block women from taking their ticketed seats -- as was witnessed by this writer this week -- leaving the female passengers with nowhere to sit. Some also take up the entire overhead bin with carry-on luggage, hatbox and carefully-folded rekel (long coat), leaving no place for any other passenger's items.

A few can be quite nasty and intractable in their manner; others chuckle at the women and snicker with each other (as happened this week) over efforts made by female passengers and/or flight attendants to cope with their resistance.

Flight attendants are caught between a rock and a hard place by all this. Generally they try to find alternate seating arrangements for the displaced passenger -- but I don't understand why the airline does not try to establish an alternate airline altogether for this sector of the population. Either that, or simple eject the aggressive passenger from the flight. In any other country, that is what would be done. 

In Israel, however, it is a complicated problem. The hareidi population has a strong advocate in the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) political party which wields a great deal of influence over funding and legislation in the government -- and has a great deal of power over the airline as a result. Moreover, numbers talk. The population itself flies a great deal between major cities in the world, including Tel Aviv, New York, London, Brussels, Antwerp and Paris among others; those tickets comprise a significant percentage of the El Al market. Offending one's customer base is not good business. 

But in the eyes of the wondering non-religious Jews and those people who are not Jewish at all (some of whom have never even met an observant Jew before) the image is indelibly burned into their memories. It's not a nice one. That message goes home to the tourists and the other American Jews who fly on "Israel's national airline" to visit the Jewish State too. And they reconsider those plans, because when they factor in the cost and the potential for unpleasantness, the two points outweigh the advantage of El Al's peerless security record. Very few foreign flights are attacked on their way to Israel.

Slowly, the extremist ultra-Orthodox Jews -- whose Chassidic observance could probably be questioned, given the emphasis placed on physicality over spirituality -- the extremists succeed in scaring away other passengers.

Worse, this becomes to the public eye what “hareidi” Jews are all about – this horrific hilul Hashem, this desecration of G-d's Torah while claiming to be mehader the mitzvah of tznius and negiah.

The halachos of derech shalom, derech eretz, ahavas Yisroel and yes, also the mitzvah of not being mevayesh b'pumbit one's fellow Jew, which is machshiv k'retzach – all those halachos somehow are not even considered when measured against the sexual terror of these men.

For that is what this is really all about. Fear, plain and simple, cold fear because they are simply unable to manage their sexual issues properly. One who is at peace with one's physical body is not at war with that of another.

This was not about sitting next to girls who were dressed in revealing garb. It is winter, after all. Everyone was bundled quite warmly. It is about men who have issues about being near women, any women, at any time at all. They cannot manage their sexuality at any time because they are not taught how to do it. In fact, they are trained to allow their behavior to run unchecked with no self-regulation other than insisting there be no female presence in their immediate environment other than family -- and that minimally at best.

Men in this world rely on their rabbis citing extreme examples in Torah to regulate their behavior. They rely on their women to restrict their sexuality. They reject the presence of anything and anyone else, fearful of contamination by all, that it might taint the purity of their holy Torah learning. They can and do use violence when they perceive a threat to that insularity, real or imagined.

How pure and holy can such learning be, governed by hatred, violence and fear? What kind of merit is earned by a mitzvah performed with a poisoned mind and evil intent – or deed – towards a fellow Jew? 

Does the mitzvah supposedly earned outweigh the massive hilul Hashem committed on the world's only Jewish airline? 

I doubt it.

Why Do Israeli Media Sing the Enemy's Song?

November 1, 2014 - After a week in which security personnel have been trying to keep the capital from going up in flames, some Israeli media are nevertheless singing soulfully about the "occupation."

What the hell is that all about?

A somewhat confusing report on “the voices behind the riots” written for Jerusalem Online.com by Yael Klein allegedly quotes a “French news agency reporter” and “AP news agency” to describe the Arab “fear of becoming the next Mohammed Abu Hadir.” (sic)

Talk about slanted coverage.

The article cites this week's shooting of Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick as a cause of current tensions, Frankly, that was an attempted targeted assassination by a convicted Islamic Jihad terrorist, who first asked Glick his name to be sure of his identity before firing four bullets at him at point-blank range. Oddly, that fact is not mentioned once in the article.

The murder attempt led directly to the closing of the Temple Mount to all visitors and worshipers for the first time since 1967, Jews as well as Arabs even though it was a Muslim Arab who tried to kill Glick and it is Arabs who are rioting. This detail was also ignored in the article, which cites the closing of the Mount as another cause of the continued violence by Arab “protesters” who have been “rioting” for weeks.

Instead, Klein attempts to pin the blame for the wave of destruction and attacks in Jerusalem by Arab terrorists on the revenge killing of young Abu Khder. While the murder was despicable she never mentions that the Jewish murderers were caught and detained immediately, unlike the Arab terrorists triggered the wave of violence in the first place by abducting and murdering three Jewish teens on June 12, less than three weeks earlier. 

Abu Khder was murdered and his body was discovered the day after the bodies of the three Jewish teens were found in a shallow grave in a field just north of Hebron.  

“Riots in Arab neighborhoods are unceasing, and the young men confronting the security forces have no faith in the situation changing.”

Huh??  HELLO.

The rioting young men who are hurling rocks and firebombs (Molotov cocktails) and fireworks at civilians and security forces -- who are doing their best to kill people on the roads of Jerusalem and anywhere else they can find them – THEY have no faith in the situation changing? Really? Why not? Could it be because they have no intention of changing it themselves, perchance?

“Hisham, 14, from Shuafat who was born during the second intifada, dreams of a new uprising that will protect Al-Aqsa.”

From what?  From his own people who are doing their best to destroy the structure with their own violence? Perhaps he just dreams of a new uprising because he is drunk on a hefty overdose of adrenalin and jazzed from the Friday sermon at the mosque.

“The Temple Mount compound, where the mosque erects, is a symbol for the Israeli occupation for the Palestinians in East Jerusalem,” Klein explains. She writes for the Jerusalem Online website, mind you – not an Arab website and not Haaretz -- but aside from the phrasing, I also don't get how the Temple Mount has suddenly become a symbol of the "occupation" since it is supposed to be the third holiest site in Islam. 

More to the point, I don't get this writer's intimate use of the enemy's language. 

What on earth is wrong with us? Since when have Israeli media become so self-destructive that we are now willing to trumpet Arab propaganda? 

There is a difference between recognizing a legitimate issue, and cozying up to total bullshit.

Are Arab youth having difficulties in their neighborhoods? Yes. They’re getting mixed messages from families, the mosque and political leaders. They have no idea which is right. More to the point – which is right for them.

Sadly, their own parents are in the same boat.

It’s been too many years and three generations fed on a steady diet of hate, thanks to a stupid Israeli government decision to abandon control over public communications and education of Arab youth in Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem restored to the capital in 1967.

This kind of damage cannot be undone quickly. But someone is going to have to bite the bullet and do it; since the current Israeli administration is hated internationally anyway, it may as well be now. 

Annex Palestinian Authority-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria, and give them autonomy status similar to that of Puerto Rico with the U.S. 

Cut Gaza loose -- it's just an enemy Arab state anyway at this point -- and then seal off the southern border, the way the northern border is sealed off with Lebanon. 

Israeli media are certainly doing no one any good whatsoever by feeding the frenzy to destroy any hope of co-existence by advancing radical Palestinian Authority propaganda. Disagreement is one thing. Incitement is quite another. Bashing your own people with Arab propaganda while they're actively being attacked by that same enemy? Wrong.

It's time for those who are citizens of this country to learn the definition of "allegiance." Those who believe they're supposed to be in Ramallah or Gaza (like MK Hanin Zoabi, for instance) really should be allowed to move on -- preferably across the border. 

Don't forget to surrender your passports, benefits and blue identity cards on the way out.

 

Rabbi Akiva, Daniel Pearl and ISIS

I have been reading the account of the murder this past weekend of David Cawthorne Haines, a British aid worker, by terrorists from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).   

It's a moniker that President Barack Obama prefers to avoid. He chooses to use “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, (ISIL), which avoids the unpleasantness of having to mention Syria and has the added benefit of including Israel in its geographic embrace. 

 But regardless of how one refers to this group of barbarians, their method of murder is brutal and direct. There’s no messing about with endless threats and semantics. They give an approximate two-week warning, then they behead their victim before a video camera and upload the footage on to a website for all to see. They also make sure to have their hapless victim read a script, in English, accusing his country of origin of having caused his demise by waging war against the terrorist entity. 

The group’s stated aim, baldly, is to take over and subjugate the entire world, murdering those who do not convert to their twisted concept of Islam. So clearly it is not an option to evade that responsibility in any event. Anyone who has fallen into their grasp, and thus is likely bound to die, is bereft of most options. So far, their victims have been quite docile about it all -- likely feeling they have no choice. They have read their scripts obediently. 

 But as Viktor Frenkel once observed, one does always have the choice of attitude, and thought. One can choose how to die. 

 It was a point made thousands of years earlier by the great Talmudic Sage Rabbi Akiva, who was tortured to death by the Romans. Rabbi Akiva’s flesh was flayed from his body with the use of metal combs as he was roasted to death at the stake before his horrified students. And yet he gave the Romans no sign of fear, and no cry. He reassured his students, telling them he had prepared for the day that he would depart this World for the Next, to sanctify G-d’s Holy Name. At the very last when he felt his soul departing his physical body, then he called out the greatest prayer in the Jewish faith, the Shema, ending his life on the final word, acknowledging that G-d is “One.”

The Romans got nothing from Akiva, but they created an infinite Jewish martyr that day. 

 Not many can be a Rabbi Akiva. In fact I can hazard a guess that none of us in our generation are capable. I could not. But perhaps we can be a Daniel Pearl. 

 Journalist Daniel Pearl was the South Asia bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. Based in Mumbai, India, he was abducted and later beheaded by a Pakistani member of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization in Pakistan. A British national of Pakistani origin who was a member of Al Qaeda was also later sentenced to death by hanging for Pearl’s murder. 

 When Pearl was kidnaped, the group first sent a list of demands to the United States. When there was no response from the government, the journalist was decapitated nine days later. But while Daniel, too, was forced to read a script prior to his beheading, he added during his recitation that a street in Israel’s city of Bnei Brak is named after his great grandfather, who was one of the founders of the town. Pearl’s family has stated that this authenticated Daniel’s own voice, and showed that to the end, he claimed the right to his own identity as a Jew. 

“My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish,” he said – per the script – prior to adding that detail that made clear his pride in his heritage. It was his last act before his death on Feb. 1, 2002, but one that made a world of difference to those he left behind, and to his captors who realized that at the end, they were not the victors after all. 

 The sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneerson, – the spiritual leader of the Chabad Lubavitch chassidic movement -- was arrested and held in a Bolshevik prison in Leningrad in the Soviet Union in 1927. 

Accused of “counter revolutionary activities and sentenced to death, the Rebbe was tortured repeatedly, and threatened by his jailers with firearms. 

“With this little toy, I can do you more harm than you can possibly imagine,” one of his jailers told him at one point. The Rebbe’s response was instructive. 

“This little toy is effective only in this World,” he replied. “It can do nothing to me in the Next; there it is completely harmless.” 

 Ultimately, a storm of protest by Western leaders and the International Red Cross forced the Soviet government to commute the death sentence. On 3 Tamuz he was banished to Kostroma for three years, a sentence that again was commuted, and eventually he was allowed to leave Russia altogether.  
The point is this: for every person there comes a point at which we must contemplate our final destiny, and our means of getting there. For some of us this moment comes sooner than others, and in ways far more dramatic, or frightening. Regardless, we are never at a complete loss of control. One can always choose a course of action. 

Even at the last moment, with one’s last breath, one can choose to smile, spit or say or think the Shema. In the Jewish world, we are taught that if one must die in any case, it is best to make that last moment count for yourself and for others, forever.

Anti-Israel, Anti-Semitic Attack in London July 31, 2014 - August 1, 2014

Post by Doron Ska.

To Israel’s International ‘Do Gooder’ Fan Club

August 3, 2014 - I have been sitting here at my desk since late morning, watching the ‘Code Red’ alert pop up on my screen every time there’s a launch from Gaza.

They appear every few minutes.

U.S. Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick gets it. He joined with his House colleagues to send a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on July 31, pointing out that this is the third campaign by Hamas in six years, “of terrorizing a civilian population by indiscriminately firing nearly two thousand rockets into Israeli airspace. As well, Hamas has built a network of underground tunnels from Gaza into Israel with the express intent of killing and capturing Israelis.”

A few years ago, it was estimated there were more than 600 of those tunnels honeycombing the earth under Gaza and its borders with Israel, Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula.

There are probably more, now. The Egyptians flooded and destroyed several hundred. Our soldiers detonated and destroyed a few dozen in the two weeks they have managed to discover and map out the ones they tracked down during Operation Protective Edge.  

By my calculation, that still leaves several hundred more, and they're still firing rockets and missiles at our civilians, attacks launched every five minutes or so.  That means that in the south, a significant portion of the population is cooped up in bomb shelters for a good part of the day, every day.

Could you live that way, with your family? How would you manage your job, or your farm if you had one? Could you work your fields like that? What about getting to your office? How about school for your children? What about getting your little ones to sleep through the night? Toilet training? Taking a shower? Intimate marital relations? A wedding night?

No one should be asked to live this way.  Israel certainly refuses to live this way any longer.

“United Nations shelters must be safe zones, not combat zones,” Ban said in one of his sanctimonious statements on Sunday after another UN school was used as a refuge for terrorists, by terrorists. But Israeli soldiers aimed as carefully as they could and returned fire to the source. The source – Hamas terrorists – then fled in a vehicle, right next to the gates to the entrance of an UNRWA school. They moved quicker than the missile of course, which struck just outside the gate – where civilians were standing around, including children, as the terrorists knew – and hoped – they would be.  It makes a great photo op!

“The Israel Defense Forces have been repeatedly informed of the location of these sites.” 

You bet, baby. By Hamas, with its mortar shelling and rocket fire.

“This attack, along with other breaches of international law, must be swiftly investigated and those responsible held accountable.”

Now wouldn’t THAT be nice?  If for once on this planet your self-righteous, pompous, bigoted world body actually did carry out a real investigation and hold those responsible for the violations of international law ?

“It is a moral outrage and a criminal act.”

Yep.  It sure is. A pity you can’t see that though.

The IDF has dropped hundreds of thousands of flyers over Gaza, begging the residents to get out of the way so we could neutralize the weapons with which we were being attacked. No one wanted to hurt them.  IDF personnel made phone calls to their homes – and to the hospitals that had to be evacuated too – and sent Arabic-language SMS text messages to all of their cell phones, letting them know where we would attack, and when. They were given plenty of notice to leave, and even directed as to where to go.

Which army in the entire world does that?

Neither of the nations of your birth – not you, Ban, nor you, Navi -- do that. That’s for damn sure. And neither does the U.S. Army. Nor does the UK. In fact, feel free to email me with the name of any other that does. I’d be pleased to know about it.

Have the people of Gaza taken the hint? Some have. 

But many have not, and instead they follow the orders of terrorist handlers and race up to rooftops like sheep, thinking we will run.

But not this time, because at last we decided it was time for their relatives to stop attacking our own innocent sleeping children. Time to hit back, and stop allowing terrorists to fire at innocent Israeli families, without firing back.

It is now 6:30 pm Sunday night, and Hamas is still firing medium range missiles at major population centers in Israel. The Code Red incoming rocket alert sirens have been blaring across the coastal city of Ashkelon, and throughout the port city of Ashdod. Literally hundreds of thousands of Israelis are racing for shelter again, and the night has barely begun. In fact, the sun hasn’t even set yet. 

Two missile were intercepted this evening over Ashdod by the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system and one exploded in the city. 

Were it not for a last-minute move by the U.S. Senate on Friday, and a signature by President Barack Obama, Israeli civilians might soon find the problem solved forever to the liking of Hamas, and perhaps the rest of the world – maybe including Ban and Pillay. Hamas has yet to exhaust its supply of missiles after all. Moreover, Iran is willing to supply more, and North Korea has just signed a contract to provide military supplies as well.

Has there been heard even one murmur of outrage from the United Nations against this incessant rain of rocket fire against Israeli civilians?

Silence.  Just silence.

Similar to the gap in the words where there should be a condemnation of ‘those responsible’ for the breach in Friday’s cease fire – the one the UN and the US forced on Israel and Hamas. The one violated by Hamas, and which resulted in the death of three young IDF officers, including two about to be married.

I'm sick to the teeth of all of it, diplomatic hypocrisy cloaked in worldly wisdom. 

Until the IDF has completed its mission in destroying the terror tunnels and silences the rocket fire, when peaceful days finally return to southern Israel, probably the less said by international ‘do gooders’ the better.

Those suffering from war crime issues, ‘moral outrage’ and ‘gross violation of international humanitarian law’ can shove them all.  Either apply your standards equally or not at all.

Spend a month in our shelters, and then let’s discuss it. And yes -- we do have shelters and the Gazans don't. Reason: we spent our money on defensive technology and shelters to protect our citizens. They spent their money on buying more weapons and building tunnels to attack our citizens.

And no, we're not going to apologize for that.

US President Barack Obama Briefs Media Friday August 1, 2014, on Hamas Breach of Cease Fire in Gaza

International Black Comedy Hour

July 23, 2014 - I heard a British-accented female voice announce on the radio this morning that Israeli actions in Gaza “may constitute a war crime.”

Actually, I thought I was mistaken because I had not yet had my morning coffee. But then I heard the same sound bite again an hour later in the next newscast.

It was our very good friend, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Madame Navi Pillay, saying that Israel “may have” committed war crimes in Gaza and determining that an investigation into every single questionable incident would have to be carried out.

Here’s the text of her statement, in full:

“As we speak, the indiscriminate firing of Hamas and other armed groups of more than 2,900 rockets as well as mortars from Gaza continues to endanger the lives of civilians in Israel. I have repeatedly condemned such indiscriminate attacks in the past.  I do so again today. 

“I further emphasize that it is unacceptable to locate military assets in densely populated areas or to launch attacks from such areas. 

“However, international law is clear. The actions of one party do not absolve the other party of the need to respect its obligations under international law.  

"My staff are continuing to document several other cases in which family residences were destroyed with the reported loss of civilian life and in which preliminary indications suggest not even a single member of an armed group was present. 

“Then just two days ago on 21 July, shells hit the Al Aqsa Hospital in Dir Al Bala reportedly killing at least three people and wounding dozens of others including doctors. 

“These are just a few instances where there seems to be a strong possibility that international humanitarian law has been violated in a manner that could amount to war crimes. 

"Every one of these incidents must be properly and independently investigated.”  (bold and italics mine)

First of all, I get it. She's on a witch hunt.  She even says so. That's not new. She also omits the fact that her staff is "documenting" the evidence from one side only, and the staff doing the "documenting" is biased, representing a massive conflict of interest. She also fails to mention that the hospital in question was evacuated and the area was designated as a closed military zone. Shocking.

No mention of the terrorist attacks on Israeli communities in sovereign Israeli territory. No mention of the incessant shelling of Israeli villages, towns and cities, homes damaged, entire families traumatized for life.

No mention of the dozens of incidents of destruction of ‘family residences destroyed’ in Israel, all without ‘even a single member of an armed group present’ because everyone in the family was hiding in a bomb shelter as the rockets were raining down.

No mention of the cross-border invasion by Hamas terrorists into Israeli territory.

No mention of the unprovoked kidnapping and murders of the three Israeli teenagers by Hamas terrorists that ignited this entire nightmare in the first place.

No mention of the thousands of flyers dropped by the IDF days in advance warning Gaza residents to leave the areas they plan to attack, the phone calls to their homes and the SMS text messages, all in Arabic, all of which also warns the enemy as well – all in order to prevent civilian deaths.

No mention of the fact that UNRWA – the United Nations’ own Relief and Works Agency, has so far been caught twice during routine inspections with two of its own schools in Gaza being used as storage facilities for terrorist missiles, most recently Tuesday 22 July.  In both cases, UNRWA chose to hand over the lethal ordnance to the Hamas terrorist organization that began this conflict and which repeatedly refuses to end it with a cease fire agreement.  

No. 

But that is no surprise, because Ms. Pillay leads a U.N. agency that from the outset aims primarily to condemn Israel above any other member nation in the world body.

I wondered how long it would take before she would come to hunt down Israel.  I doubt she’ll convince Judge Goldstone to do her dirty work this time, however, and I wonder whether her agency is even relevant at this point.

In any case, the U.N. will require Israel’s cooperation in any so-called “investigation” of military events in Gaza; and the current government is not one led by eternally guilt-ridden, self-hating Jews. Not this time.

And given that even liberal Tzipi Livni has called the UN Human Rights Council an “anti-Israel” body – I doubt Madame Pillay has much hope of doing damage this time.

How to Get Rid of a Terrorist Tunnel

July 22, 2014 - IDF soldiers are encountering an annoying number of terrorist tunnels in their efforts to reach and destroy the weapons being aimed at Israel's civilians.

But Israeli soldiers have not become discouraged by this obstacle, nor are they alarmed. They are simply eliminating the problem. Behold.

Post by Israel Defense Forces.

 

Hamas Terrorists Tunneling Their Way to 'Glory'

July 22, 2014 - Several years ago, an Al Jazeera journalist did a feature on the 'Marhabetuna' tunneling unit of the Izz a-Din al-Qassam military wing of the Hamas terrorist organization, 'exposing for the first time ever' detailed visuals of the group's underground operations. 

The piece, originally filmed in 2009, has been resurrected in light of the current conflict and the group's use of those tunnels in its guerrilla warfare against Israel.

Post  

The greatest advantage of the tunnels, he points out, is that "they will help members of the resistance in Gaza to carry out missions and attacks far away from the danger of Israeli air strikes. The tunnels have served as a powerful weapon," he adds, noting they were used in 2006 during the kidnapping of then-IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, "and to fire rockets on Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities during the most recent war in Gaza."

The tunnels were also used during Operation Pillar of Defense, he reported, showing images of missiles being fired from concealed rocket launches inside the earth. 

Yesterday, seven IDF soldiers from the Golani Brigade died and two others were badly wounded while preventing a massacre at two kibbutzim near the Gaza border just after dawn. An eighth soldier miraculously survived unharmed. (A number of others died in action inside Gaza, most from the Golani Brigade.)

An IAF pilot spotted two squads of Hamas terrorists erupting from two separate tunnels at a spot along the border between the two kibbutzim. But they hesitated to fire upon them, because all were dressed in IDF uniforms, right down to the regulation footwear. 

An IDF ground force led by the Gefen Battalion engaged the terrorists instead, who fired at troops in two military vehicles. The lead vehicle, which carried a senior officer and several others, sustained a direct hit by an anti-tank missile. All four men died instantly. Soldiers poured out of an Israeli APC (armored personnel carrier). The Hamas operatives were heavily armed; they fired a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) at the soldiers and then a second anti-tank missile at the APC. 

The lone soldier who stayed behind in the APC somehow managed to escape at the very last instant, racing away as the vehicle was hit and exploded in flames.

Once a definite identification was made and pilots were able to confirm the difference between their own men and the terrorists, the IAF launched an air strike to prevent the terrorists from escaping into a nearby tunnel. Israeli missile fire combined with gunfire from ground forces eventually eliminated all 10 terrorists in the savage and bloody battle.

There have been many so far in this war, quite a few caused by terrorists emerging from tunnels in Israeli territory. But one particularly savage battle took place inside Gaza, in the neighborhood of Sejaiya, in Gaza City. That one was due to Hamas placement of concealed rocket launchers under numerous civilian buildings, including mosques, schools, private homes and children's playgrounds. 

Hamas orders to Gaza residents to remain in those places as human shields in order to deter Israeli soldiers from attacking the launchers and the terrorists didn't work this time, as upsetting as it was to the soldiers forced to fire. The civilians were warned three days in advance, with flyers dropped on their neighborhood, with phone calls to their homes and via SMS text messages transmitted to their cell phones. All messages conveyed the same warning: "Please leave the area because Israel is going to attack and we would like you to be safe and out of harm's way." The residents know where to go and how to get there. That information is conveyed to them; UNRWA schools are neutral ground as they are well aware.

Actually, NOT so neutral these days: 20 missiles were "discovered" by international staff at an UNRWA school accidentally during a routine inspection of the facility in the town of Rafah, on the Gaza border with Egypt. 

UNRWA -- the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, funded with tax dollars from the United States, among other nations -- promptly handed the missiles over to the Hamas terrorist organization.

Not so neutral after all and probably a war crime, committed by the very entity that sets the standard.

So much for unity of nations.  Unity against Israel, I guess.

Operation ‘Benny’s Summer Camp’ on Israel Army Radio

July 15, 2014 - It begins with the baritone voice of Benny Bashan, murmuring into the microphone, quietly, leisurely singing, “Oseh shalom bimromav.... Hu ya’aseh shalom alenu...”

“He who makes peace in the Heavens, He will bestow peace upon us . . .” The ancient Biblical passage is also part of a Jewish prayer recited several times a day.

The noisy, chaotic reporting that characterizes Israeli radio coverage of the missile fire to this point in the day stops still. You can tell that his mike placement is deliberate, and he is crooning as close to the mike as he dares to, without popping the consonants... it’s a canned intro but effective.

The ‘straight man’ side of his team consists of a woman and a second male who changes from time to time.  They chat easily, comfortably, and accept phone calls from listeners across the life span.

He always plays music – now he’s playing Song of Freedom, a reggae tune by the eminent Bob Marley.  Even English-speaking listeners can relate and slowly learn their Hebrew this way. 

A fourth voice – also female – has been breaking in to warn listeners whenever a Color Red rocket alert siren is activated in the various regions around the country. She always repeats the announcement twice, and never hesitates to interrupt his broadcast no matter what is happening -- even if there’s a newscast.

Yesterday Benny took calls from little kids and praised them for finding creative ways to cope with their enforced imprisonment at home, when instead they wanted to be playing at camp outside or at a park. And he took calls from adults and seniors, coaxing them to hum a few bars of the national anthem, HaTikvah – ‘The Hope’ – with him on the air. Several began to weep, the stress and rage and despair finally breaking through their bravado; his goal had been to relieve that, of course, and he wished each one well, with deep compassion, kindness and fellowship flowing through his voice.

It is for this that radio was created, and in such circumstances little can replace it. 

In radio, it is crucial to know how to use one’s voice to its fullest potential if one is to convey a message accurately – let alone, to do it effectively. Understanding and learning how to do that ultimately becomes an art form. 

Benny Bashan is one of the artists of ‘Tzuk Eitan’ – Operation Protective Edge – Israel’s military operation in the current conflict.

The Media Missile War

July 9, 2014 - As wars go, this one's been pretty weird so far.

Last night I was lying in bed trying to rid myself of excess adrenalin, unable to disengage from flying missiles zipping through my mind.

It seems many people were having the same problem – thousands were tuned in to Israeli radio, wondering what was going on.

Fortunately Israel’s radio personalities are always up to the task. They are able to balance entertainment with information, humor with gravity and constant interruptions of the Color Red rocket alert warnings with equanimity.

Just before falling asleep, I could hear them describing the latest missile barrage. It involved an attack that reached farther north than ever before – apparently Hamas was trying for Haifa – but “of course they didn’t reach it this time,” they commented casually.

The terrorists had launched their latest missile, the 120-kilogram, Syrian-made M302, a gift received courtesy of the Iranians via Sudan. The M302 reportedly has a range of approximately 100 kilometers – around 62-65 miles. 

The radio personalities then started discussing the various missiles currently in the Hamas arsenal and which ones had been fired where in the past several minutes. It sounded a lot like the running commentary at a soccer game.

They quoted the Hamas terrorist spokesman, who had issued an official statement describing the group’s newest missile and all its great features and how it can reach such-and-such a range, and go this far into Israel . . . and then they returned to debating the merits of the terrorist group’s latest acquisition and whether or not it could actually reach Haifa. 

I fell asleep to the sounds of an old 60's rock tune they spun sometime after that.

My kid informed me this morning that she’s going to a beach party tonight down at the Dead Sea. My son still thinks he is going to a party in Tel Aviv. Another daughter has already left for a wedding in Jerusalem.

“If we stop living and living the life that we normally do then they will have already won,” my younger daughter told me.

“It is a risk to go (to a scheduled event in nearby Be’er Sheva) but I am going anyway because we are beating them by living our normal lives. By going to my bagrut and going about my normal affairs I have already won.”

Of course, the folks who schedule that high school final may decide they cannot hold the exam anyway. But that doesn't make my kid any less of a winner.

The Stupidity of Fake Calls to Police and ‘Crying Wolf’

July 7, 2014 - When I was a child my parents read me the story of ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf.’  Most children who grow up in the United States – at least those who are not Chassidic and probably those who are not Litvish – are exposed to this story, which is not a Jewish tale.

It is the story of a boy who used to pretend he was being attacked by a wolf, and would cry out, “Wolf!” and everyone would run to save him. Except that people became so used to the sight of finding him laughing when they came running that they no longer paid attention to his antics. Of course, the day finally came when he actually was attacked by a wolf – only by then no one responded to his cries, and the boy was torn apart and died.

A pretty grim tale, right?

Right.

What a pity that Israeli parents have never read it to their children, and the lesson obviously was never learned in any other way. Israel Police have been the unwilling recipients of hundreds of false alarms and fake distress calls over the years.

One would think that since the June 12 terrorist kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens in Gush Etzion, this phenomenon would have stopped rather abruptly, no?  Sadly, it has not.

Memorial in front of Arad central post office for Eyal Yifrach, 19, Naftali Frenkel, 16, and Gilad Shayer, 16, kidnapped in Gush Etzion and murdered by Hamas terrorists on June 12, 2014.  Photo: Hana Levi Julian

In fact, according to Israel Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld police still receive as many as 10 to 12 fake “kidnapping” calls per day.  Each time, the police dispatcher is forced to determine whether or not the call is a “possible” incident, one that must be acted on swiftly, without any delay.

Today that happened and for hours helicopters were in the sky, IDF soldiers were out on roadblocks and police officers were out there searching -- even though there was no hard evidence that any child was missing. Police cannot take a chance, Rosenfeld said.

All this took place because one child told his father – who was conscientious enough to call police – reporting that he had seen another boy with a kipa being taken by two strange men into a car in the middle of Modi’in.  

Seven hours later, police finally were able to halt the search, at last sure there weren’t any parents that had missed a child, that none were believed to be visiting with a friend after camp or school but instead were gone. 

Case closed, thank G-d. This time.