Happenings In Our Crazy World This Week (June 17, 2014)

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                                        

                    The kidnapping of 3 Jewish school boys by Hamas Terrorists

The biggest disappointment happened last week in Athens when a proclamatiion was adopted by EU foreign ministers and their Arab colleagues.  It was one-sided and said that "it hails the Fatah-Hamas union and praised the Palestinians committed to DEMOCRACY and HUMAN RIGHTS.   Yet Hamas continued to shell Israel more than usual.  The declaration included harsh criticism of Israel.  Seems they can practice terrorism such as shooting  and terrorist acts of kidnapping, and that's okay.                                    
                                                                             

         Judea-Samaria and Gaza  in red, Israel in yellow.  One can see the katusha rocket range from "Palestine."  This week it's still hitting southern Israel from Gaza.  

ISIS, IRAQ  and  IRAN

The USA had  meetings with Iran about Iraq, the state they had a war with in 1980 that lasted for 8 years. Iraq and Iran  had fought so long and hard that the war was down to children fighting.   They met on Monday in Geneva, Switzerland about the ongoing nuclear negotiations and discussed the crisis in Iraq.  They discussed how ISIS threatens many countries in the region, including Iran.   (TIME).
                                                                         

                          ISIS now 35 miles from Baghdad, Iraq

Israel is against such an unparallelled meeting.  Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister, said Iran should not be helped to extend it's sway in Iraq.  Tehran would then have more control in Syria, where the Iranians back President Assad.  They'd get their foot in the door in Lebanan, where they have their Hizbullah allies.  This would wind up softening the American positions on the issue of the Iranian nuclear issue more than they already are, just what Iran would love.  It would be that the USA and Iran would be on the same side of supporting the government of Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki.

It may be that both are rooting for Maliki, but each has their own different reasons.  ISIS, the branch of al-Qaeda, is the enemy in this case, and is the worst Shi'a group in history.  For a group that started with little finances, they fixed that by robbing a big bank in Iraq, so that now they are loaded.  Right now ISIS is about 35 miles away from Damascus, supposedly a well-fortified city.

                                               KIDNAPPING OF 3 ISRAELI TEENAGERS
Two (2) months ago, PA's Abbas asked that Palestine be included in 15 international conventions.  One was the 1989 UN convention on the Rights of the Child...and Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in Armed Conflict.  At the same time they are responsible for the kidnapping of 3 Jewish teenagers by Hamas.

Israel holds the PA responsible for this act.  Hamas terrorists took the boys, of who one holds dual citizenship- USA and Israel.  The terrorists were staying in Judah which is under PA control.  Israel is holding many people in the act of searching for them.  Israel said that the 3 boys' lives are in danger and they will have to move in anyway possible to get information as to where they are to rescue them.  The clock is ticking.  Netanyahu promised that those who try to attack Israeli citizens like this will be hit for doing so.

He asks that the international community condemn this abduction and support Israel's legitimate acts of self-defense.  All the while Israel has been attacked by rockets from Gaza during this period from Hamas.  When a state is under attack by a terrorist group, it is a far more serious situation than if some gang of thieves kidnaps someone for financial gain.

                                                    RANDOM ACTS OF HOSTILITY
Three (3) Palestinians tried to break through the security perimeter of Kochav Yaakov in Judea-Samaria late Monday night and IDF soldiers shot at them, injuring one.  The others got away.

Two (2) firebombs were thrown at the Beit Orot Yeshiva on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem which set off a  fire , but it was small.          

Resource:  www.dailyalert.org
Time
Reuters
BBC News
Prime Minister's Office-Israel
Times of Israel
Wall Street Journal

                                          

Accept Us As a Jewish State

by Nadene Goldfoot

Why was Israel created in 1948? It was created as a Jewish state, something we haven't had since 70 A.D. We've been the perpetual "Wandering Jew" without a home, living in other's countries only to be kicked out as we became comfortable, wrongly thinking it was also our country.

There is no other Jewish state. After the Holocaust where 6 million of us were slaughtered, we finally agreed that we sure could have used a state of our own where there wasn't any anti-semitism.

Getting the Arab countries to agree with us has turned out to be impossible. Here they were, on Hitler's side of WWII, agreeing that we should all be killed, and now we expect them to not try to kill us all just because we hold the deed to our old piece of land again.

They continue to not recognise Israel as a Jewish state. This would interfere with their claim in a peace process of the right of their refugees to return to the area. Remember that when Israel was declared a state in 1948, the surrounding Arab states attacked in force to drive us into the sea. While their men were attacking, they told the few Arabs living there to flee and when they won they could return and have the homes of the Jews.

The fact is that they have not been living there for 62 years. They were few in number. The British even stooped so low as to cook the books, making the Arab numbers even bigger than they actually were. The adults have most likely died by now and the refugees are the children and have multiplied greatly. They haven't been working but have remained in Palestinian refugee camps, supported by the UN as the biggest needy group of all people ever. If they were given permission to enter Israel, and I'm not saying returning as they most likely never lived there, they would flood the teeny country and it would no longer have a Jewish majority. We'd be right back to square one only worse as these people hate us and want us dead. Israel is already made up of 20% Arab now with Arabs in the Knessset.

For this reason, Netanyahu has to be given the word that Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state. After all, there are already 48 states with 50% or more majority of Muslims. Can't we have one Jewish state in this world? We are only about 1% of the population in the United States. We are a noticable but wee group of people, most likely shrinking daily as it is in the U.S.

I'll throw a big party in my neighborhood if Abbas agrees to recognition, but even at that, he doesn't control the extremely hateful terrorist group, Hamas, who vow to never recognize Israel. They get their notoriety from their hatefulness and continuing attacks on Israel. In fact, Hamas still has control of some of Abbas's people, shown by the recent slaughter of four people traveling in the Judea/Samaria area in a car last week.

The 2nd round of talks will take place Tuesday in Egypt with Hillary Clinton present. "Just as we are asked to recognise the Palestinian national state...we also demand and expect the Palestinians to recognise a Jewish state," Netanyahu said at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting. Don't hold your breath, but I won't be far from my TV set Tuesday. Will they or won't they? If they can't do this, why bother discussing the other sticky core issues about the conflict? This would certainly mean that they are not truly serious about any intention for Fatah at least to put an end to the conflict.

Resource: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100912/wl_mideast_afp/israelpalestinianspeace/print

Book: From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters-The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine.

Who Recognizes Israel?

by Nadene Goldfoot

Is it so shocking that Israel's Netanyahu is asking for recognition of Israel in order to have peace? Recognition means acceptance of the state in the neighborhood. It means that it will be respected and not shot at. It means it's a legitimate neighbor and all want peace. It would be in a state such as USA is with its neighbors of Canada and Mexico today. Israelis are tired of putting up with rocket firing morning, noon and night. You can't sign a peace treaty with people who are intending to do you in anyway. Palestinians have to say, "Okay! You're a legitimate state accepted by the U.N. in May of 1948. We concede to that. We'll quit trying to drive you all into the sea. "

Palestinians don't want to recognize Israel because they want the West Bank and East Jerusalem to have no building at all by Israelis there. They want it for themselves. Since Jerusalem is the capitol of Israel, Israel feels it is their city. Jerusalem is THE city as far as Judaism goes. It's in our history, our religion, and our soul. We don't mind having Arabs living in East Jerusalem. We have a million Arabs living in Israel. However, the state of Palestine wants their country to be free of all Jews. They want us out. We have fears that they will try to take over all of Jerusalem, also. After all we've been through, we're not about to let that happen. We remember how our cemeteries were desecrated by the Jordanians. People used them as latrines. King David and his son King Solomon would roll over in their graves if they thought we'd let Jerusalem be given away. Most of our give aways that were in the name of peace have just resulted in being used as landing places for our neighbors to attack us.

The West Bank in history was Judea and Samaria. It's also most important in Jewish history. Again, we don't mind and wouldn't kick out the Arabs living there, but we don't like the idea of uprooting all the Jewish people that live there, either.

The Palestinians are always demanding that we give up land. We had a sufficient chunk of land promised to us in the first place, but had to settle for only a small part of it at the formation of Israel and that was okay with us. Something was better than nothing. Ever since then the Arabs have been chipping away pieces of it. We gained land after the 1967 battle of many Arab countries attacking us. Maybe it was a miracle that we won the war, but we won, and gained back Jerusalem from Jordan. Now, we're not about to let it go just because they're demanding.

They're calling out that building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal by the international community. Well, the international community is not supportive of Israel in any way shape or form, anyway. I feel they're still harboring anti-semitic feelings and have always been against the Jewish people. They certainly haven't condemned Palestinians for attacking Israel civilians with rockets, have they.

The whole affair is so one sided that it makes me dizzy. No wonder a Rabbi in Israel blew up cursing the Palestinian terrorists who are so against Israel. I would have said, may you all lose all your teeth except one, and in that one tooth get a giant toothache. I think that's the curse my grandmother used to use on people she was exasperated with.

Abbas Refuses to Recognize Jewish State

Nadene Goldfoot

Push has come to shove, and the President of the Arab "Palestinians" refuses to accept that Israel is a Jewish State. To do so might negate his idea of the right of return of thousands and thousands of Arabs to swamp his "Palestine", therefore putting Israel in danger all the more. It's their idea of driving Israel into the sea and ending it once and for all.

So we come to stalemate. Marshall, Obama's representative, has said that the only solution is to have a Palestine next door to Israel, no matter what, it looks like. Just get the job done, get it on his resume, two states, side by side, and then they can fight it out again. Marshall will then be out of the way of crossfire.

To have a state next door that does not recognize the most basic fact in that it is a state created as a haven for Jewish people, at a time in the world where there is no Jewish state at all, and this would be the only one, is insane. Would anything else be recognized? Rights, Safety ? No, this is the point. This is not a workable idea.

If everyone thought that Abbas was so willing to have a reasonable situation and work with Israel, they were mistaken. He has just taken a different tactic. He's just a different personality from Arafat, but has the very same intentions. It's a sad fact of life.

Abbas said all this at a conference. At the end he was presented a map covering all of Israel with the name on it in English, Palestine. There's his intention, boldly presented.

References: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html?_r=1
Palestinian Media Watch
Mahmoud Abbas: "I do not accept the Jewish State, call it what you will"by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook"