A NYT article by Ronen Bergman says Israel’s top military leaders regard Benjamin Netanyahu as a religious, ideological ambitious man who seeks “belligerent” solutions to problems. Then why is Hillary Clinton saying she wants to invite this “dangerous” man to the White House in her first month as president?
In a surprise move, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week forced out his long-serving defense minister, Moshe Yaalon. As he stepped down, Yaalon warned: “Extremist and dangerous elements have taken over Israel.” He was referring partly to his expected successor, Avigdor Lieberman, and Israeli commentators pointed out that the new government will be the most extreme in Israel’s history. Less noticed however has been the gradual and parallel takeover of Israel’s security institutions by those espousing the ideology of the settlers – known in Israel as the national-religious camp.
Off-duty Border Police officers in civilian clothes savagely assaulted a Palestinian supermarket worker in central Tel Aviv on Sunday after he refused to identify himself because he didn’t know who they were, according to eyewitnesses. “The blows were murderous, from the guy and from one of his friends. I’ve never seen anything like it. Teeth were flying through the air. The Arab was torn apart,” Erez Krispin, an eyewitness, wrote in a Facebook post.
On May 7, 2016, fire broke out in the Abu al-Hindi home in Gaza’s Shati (Beach) refugee camp. Started by a tipped candle, the flames grew quickly grew out of control. Three children, Yusra, 3, Rahaf, 2, and Nasser, 6 months, perished in the burning house, and Muhannad, 8, was severely burned. Ali, 6, is the only survivor without physical injuries but lives with deep psychological trauma. The fire is a direct result of severe electricity shortages due to the ongoing and tightening Israeli/Egyptian since and repeated Israeli military assaults.
One can no more separate Zionism from Judaism than separate London from Great Britain, says Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis. So Judaism is like other religions incapable of committing crimes in the name of faith and God. But what is the way through for Jews?
A lifeline for Gaza’s 1.95 million residents was a transit permit from Jordan, allowing the bearer to travel through Israel and the West Bank to Jordan. But Jordan has now cut back those permits, residents and rights groups say, leaving Gazans in despair and livelihoods at risk.
The front page article in the New York Times is headlined, “As Hamas Tunnels Back Into Israel, Palestinians Are Afraid, Too.” So it blames all Israeli attacks on Gaza civilians, killing thousands of them, on Hamas. This is straight out of hasbara central, and just what Hillary Clinton says.
When the plain-clothed men came for him, Kifah Quzmar, 27, did not need to be told why they were dragging him out of a popular Ramallah cafe on a sunny afternoon last week. “Call my brother,” he told bystanders before being tossed into the back of a tinted SUV parked outside. “The muhaberat are rotten,” Quzmar wrote on Facebook two weeks before he was detained, using the Arabic colloquial term for undercover Palestinian intelligence agents. In the West Bank, such words are a punishable offensive under a 1960 Jordanian law still on the books making illegal “insulting a public official.” The crime carries a maximum of a six-month prison sentence.
Welcome to Khadoori Institute. Located on the pre-1967 border with Israel in the city of Tulkarem, this Palestinian agricultural and technical college has lost 200 dunams of land to Israel’s separation wall and neighbors an Israeli chemical factory that was built in the occupied territories to circumvent environmental laws. In the 1990s the IDF took 23 dunums of school property to place a military training field on Khadoori’s campus and since tensions rekindled in October 2015, soldiers have shot at protesting students on campus with live bullets, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray gas, and also sprayed skunk liquid over university buildings.
“Extremist and dangerous elements have taken over Israel and also the Likud Party and have shaken the house and are threatening to hurt the inhabitants,” Defense Minister Ya’alon says in resigning. The shocking statement makes headlines around the world, but the New York Times treats the story like the CT governor’s race, and buries the “extremism” quote.