| Palestinian Authority arrests 16 year old for his Facebook post, in a wave of arrests for social media posts that NO ONE IS REPORTINGnoreply@blogger. | | On Wednesday morning, Palestinian Preventive Security Services arrested 16-year old Amir Taha Muhammad Abu Sharar of Hebron for a Facebook post. The police forced the child to close his Facebook account. The Facebook post that offended the Palestinians was published during the conflict in May. Abu Sharar, who suffers from diabetes, was held in custody for hours before he and his mother made a pledge to close his account and that he would stay away from posting on social media. According to the Euro Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, this is only the latest in a wave of similar arrests for things people have posted on social media. Anything that offends the Palestinian government can be prosecuted under their overly broad "Cybercrime Law." At least 60 people have been arrested or detained in the past month, and there are reports that some of those arrested...Read More |
From Ian: Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy: The Un-Jews - The Jewish attempt to cancel Israel and Jewish peoplehood The clash between zealots for progress—or what some decided was progress—and Jewish traditionalism reaches back to the time of the ancients, too. There were many Jews during Greek and Roman times who wanted to advance these appealing civilizations, which seemed to be giving birth to a brighter future. The Roman pantheon of gods seemed so much more majestic, more worldly, than the Jews' one jealous God. These rebels would be happy to keep Jerusalem and other Jewish sites as relics as they marched along the road to a better tomorrow—backed by the imperial power of the Roman legions. One of the Roman generals who helped raze Jerusalem and destroy the Second Temple may have been the first un-Jew. Tiberius Julius Alexander, the nephew of the leading Jewish philosopher Philo, "did not remain in his ancestral customs," in the words of the ancient historian Josephus, a Jewish general who himself joined the Roman cause. Then, as now, those annoying Jews insisted on keeping their ghetto, their ethnonationalist state, if you will, and rejected the symbols of Rome's more worldly multicultural empire. Historians ultimately don't know that much about Tiberius. What we do know is that despite his Jewish roots, he was anxious to help the world become civilized like Rome—and he unleashed the...Read More |
Naftali Bennett is the new prime minister of Israel, an honor to be sure. But many of us are devastated by his assumption to the throne. It's not only that Bennett lacks the polish and statesmanship of Netanyahu, it's the way he seized power. Israel is a true democracy, pretty much split down the middle in terms of right and left. We comprise a plurality of views. And that is precisely why we kept having election after election (after election after election). It is so darned difficult to settle an election when half the population feels one way, and the other half feels the other way. But even right and left are fragmented into itsy bitsy parties. Except for Netanyahu's Likud, which received the most significant block of votes. An election was always going to be decided by forming a coalition, because without 61 seats, you can't make a government, and Likud had only 30. The only thing to do then is to make a match between a large party, the next largest party (Lapid's Yesh Atid), and a few lesser parties. It was either that or cobbling together lots of teeny tiny little parties to make a larger whole of a coalition that would be so fragmented in its views that it would always be doomed to failure and not represent anyone at all. The latter is exactly the track Naftali Bennett chose in his rise to power. He glued together teensy little parties that the majority of Israelis did not vote for, and then put them all together in a basket and presented us with a government that...Read More |
Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal For the first time in its history, Israel's government includes an Arab party. Arabs have sat in the Knesset since Israel's founding, both as members of primarily Jewish parties and as representatives of various Arab parties. From time to time Arab MKs have kept a government in office by supporting it from outside the coalition, as happened in 1993 when the Oslo Declaration of Principles was approved. But no Arab party has ever been member of the governing coalition until now. Some people think this is wonderful. The Arabs are 20% of our population, so why shouldn't they have a commensurate role in government? Mansour Abbas is a pragmatist who just wants the best for his constituents, they say. Others think it is a disaster. The Arab parties are all anti-Zionist and in some cases disloyal. What will happen when there is an operation against Hamas? Mansour Abbas represents an Islamist party that is associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent of Hamas! My view is that I honestly have no idea how this will work out, even assuming that the new government lasts more than a few weeks. But one thing is absolutely clear: putting an Arab party in the coalition brings the question of the relationship of the Jewish state to its Muslim Arab citizens front and center in a way that it heretofore hasn't been. Indeed, it's one of those elephants in the room that we have been carefully ignoring for years. But since the formation of the new government...Read More |
From Ian: Bret Stephens: The Paradoxes of Benjamin Netanyahu Netanyahu is hardly Tolstoy. Still, he's a man of formidable ambition and talent who entered the political fray looking for the harmonious universe in which a Jewish state—recognized, whole, and secure—could take its rightful place among the nations. What he found instead was that there was no straight way to get there, and perhaps no way at all, given the implacability of many of its enemies and the faithlessness of some of its friends. The two great "solutions" are equally false. There is no plausible Palestinian state that can satisfy Israeli security requirements and Palestinian desires. There is also no map of Israel that can simply swallow the Palestinians without risking being swallowed by them in turn. What there is, then, is a muddled reality that must deeply disappoint idealists of every stripe. But it's also a reality that beats every conceivable alternative. Netanyahu understands this, even if it's not something he would say out loud. The criticism that he does nothing but kick cans down the road ignores the fact that, when it comes to Israel's major strategic challenges, at least for now, that's the only thing an Israeli prime minister can do. The question is how far the can gets kicked, and how much power and flexibility Israel can gain—militarily, economically, demographically, and so on—before...Read More |
From MyLondon.News: A 69-year-old protester climbed to the very top of a huge crane at a Nine Elms building site and has spent the night after unfurling a Palestinian flag as police try to talk him down. The Metropolitan Police spent Tuesday (June 15) attempting to speak to the man after he climbed about 100 metres to the top of the crane between Battersea Power Station and the Sky Pool at just before 4am. On Wednesday morning the Met confirmed they were still trying to speak to the man, and road closures remained in place. One of the few people tweeting about him said that "He has little water and no sleeping bag, yet, he won't come down until #Palestine is trending again." I'm sure that there is a Knesset meeting happening now about what to do. This is pro-Palestinian activism in a nutshell - instead of actually helping Palestinians, they resort to gimmicks and stunts. Not to mention that they end up tying up police and firefighters from actually saving the lives of people who need it. * * * * * *
...Read More |
The Jerusalem Post reports: An attempted combined stabbing and ramming attack was thwarted by the IDF outside the town of Hizma near Jerusalem on Wednesday, the army said in a statement.
A Palestinian woman who arrived at the scene attempted to run over soldiers who were securing engineering work and then exited her car and tried to stab the soldiers. The terrorist was shot and killed by the soldiers, and one soldier was lightly injured and treated at the scene.
The terrorist was identified as Mai Afanah, 29, from Abu Dis, by Palestinian media. While Times of Israel reports that Afanah posted on Facebook hours before the attack that "I don't have much time left in life." I couldn't find that in her page. What I did find was someone who was a big fan of terrorists. She wrote this tribute to DFLP terrorist Muhammad Khalaf in 2017: In 2019, she praised Omar Abu Laila, who fatally stabbed Sgt. Gal Keidan and murdered Rabbi Achiad Ettinger. In February, she praised Fatah terrorist and explosive belt expert Ahmed Sanaqrah: Last month, she...Read More |
| | | |
אין תגובות:
הוסף רשומת תגובה