Israeli Leftist Targets Holocaust Organization

Israeli Leftist Targets Holocaust Organization

By Mark Tapson 

On the left-wing Israeli website Haaretz.com, correspondent Amira Hass posted an article recently with the unwieldy title, “On an ostensible Holocaust website, the U.S. right’s opposition to Obama is the message,” in which she attacked the work of the Los Angeles-based Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors (CJHS) for its pro-Israel and anti-totalitarian stance, two positions the left cannot tolerate.

Hass wrote that CJHS caught her attention a few months ago with an email containing a “hair-raising photograph of the train tracks to Auschwitz.” Hass, herself a child of Jewish Holocaust survivors, “assumed that this group that I wasn’t familiar with somehow considered me one of their own… and I let myself read what the group had to say.” I’m pretty certain that CJHS does not consider Hass one of its own, since her work perpetuates the standard leftist lies about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In any case, what Hass then read on the site prompted her to attempt a withering response.

“On the site of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors,” Hass wrote, “the right wing uses one of the 20th century’s greatest atrocities for political gain.” This disgusting accusation is a cynical ploy to gloss over the fact that it is the unholy alliance of the left and Islamic fundamentalists who want to diminish the historical truth of the Holocaust – or deny it altogether – for their own political gain.

“The first thing I learned” from the site, she continued, “was that I should be gravely worried by Chuck Hagel’s possible appointment as the next U.S. defense secretary.” Actually, Israel should be gravely worried, but Hass has nothing to fear, since neither she nor Hagel is a friend of our Middle East ally. Next, she read that CJHS is “committed to the promotion of Western values against the dual threats of complacency and the spread of Islam.” Hass found this amusing, claiming “that the social and biologically-based hierarchy, white supremacy, racial purity, country above all and man in service of the state and race are Western values.” If Hass considers those to be the West’s values, then she fits right in with the deranged Islamic fundamentalists whose genocidal agenda she is abetting.

She went on to complain about the CJHS website linking to politically conservative sites. “Surfing the site was like wandering through a meeting held by the American right.” How unsettling that must have been, to find herself in the virtual belly of the pro-Israel beast. She noted with disapproval that CJHS linked to an article on a different site that compared President Obama to Hitler; her concern is understandable considering that, as FrontPage’s Daniel Greenfield wrote, “Hass has repeatedly written sympathetic pieces about the genocidal anti-Semitic terrorist organization whose members often revere Hitler.”

“And I wasn’t at all surprised,” Hass continued, “to find among the Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors’ guests people like former ultra-right-wing MK Aryeh Eldad and right-wing Israeli group Women in Green.” In other words, Hass disapproves of staunch supporters of Israel, which says much more about her than it does about CJHS.

She went on to complain that CJHS links to articles on other sites that criticize Obama for raising taxes and threatening gun confiscation, which Americans are now realizing is an urgent goal of the radical Obama administration. Hass concludes sarcastically that CJHS believes that “to prevent a new Holocaust, it is necessary to leave untouched the free use of guns in the United States.” I’ll concede this one to her, although there is no “free use of guns” in the US, and the Founding Fathers established private gun ownership in order to defend against a tyrannical government; but yes, it’s also a good start toward staving off a new Holocaust.

Hass also was disturbed by a post on CJHS’s Facebook page which condemns “American Jews who voted for Obama against their own interests.” CJHS is right to condemn them. Obama has proven over and over again that he is an enemy of Israel and the Jews, arming the Jew-hating fundamentalist regime in Egypt, for example, with weapons that will one day be used against Israelis and Americans.

Furthermore, Hass seems suspicious that CJHS seems to consist of just one person – its founder and president:

Maybe I’m more Web-challenged than I thought, or maybe this woman really can do everything on her own, including searching the Web, organizing discussions, linking other articles, sending emails to tens of thousands of people (in her own words), writing press releases, keeping up on events and updating a Facebook page.

Hass does not name “this woman,” probably in a petty move to avoid giving her any free publicity. Allow me to name her now: Doris Wise Montrose.* Hass is correct that Doris really can and does do everything that Hass lists on her own, because she is a driven warrior against America’s and Israel’s enemies, foreign and domestic, and a passionate defender of human rights against totalitarians like Obama and Hamas.

As for the CJHS events, some of the speakers and topics CJHS has sponsored or co-sponsored for Los Angeles-area residents include, to name a few recent ones, Larry Schweikart discussing “A Patriot’s History of the Modern World”; Professor Abraham Sion on “How the Jewish Community Should Confront the Israeli Left and Arab Propaganda”; FrontPage’s own Caroline Glick on “Israel on the Eve of U.S. Elections”; and “Is Our First Amendment in Danger?” featuring Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, and Eugene Volokh, UCLA Professor of Law.

What Hass and her ilk resent is that, unlike too many Holocaust groups, Doris and CJHS are not content to merely memorialize and mourn the horrors of the past. Recognizing that Jews and Western civilization itself are facing a global hatred that threatens us anew, CJHS exists to do its part, through educational events and awareness-raising news and commentary, to prevent another Holocaust. As its motto states, “Never again is now.”

Amira Hass’s attempted condemnation of the Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors simply confirms that Doris Wise Montrose must be doing something very right.

* Full disclosure: the David Horowitz Freedom Center has co-sponsored many of CJHS’s important events, and Doris is a very close friend of mine, so I have firsthand knowledge of the courageous, critical work she does through CJHS.

 http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/israeli-leftist-targets-a-holocaust-organization/

OBAMA SHOULD WORRY ABOUT HIS OWN COUNTRY; INSTEAD, HE SHOULD BE SUPPORTING THE ONLY STABLE DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST!!!

OBAMA SHOULD WORRY ABOUT HIS OWN COUNTRY; INSTEAD, HE SHOULD BE SUPPORTING THE ONLY STABLE DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST!!!

Obama Deadline Raises Pressure on Bibi

Jonathan S. Tobin


Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to form a new coalition government have not been going smoothly. The prime minister’s attempt to break up the alliance between the two big winners of the last election — the centrist Yesh Atid Party’s Yair Lapid and the pro-settler Habyait Hayehudi’s Naftali Bennett — have flopped as the two have stuck to each other and their mutual support for a change in the draft system that will compel for the first time the conscription of Haredim. Netanyahu knows he needs at least one of the two to form a government and if they stick together, he must not only take both but also agree to their demands about a reform that he appears reluctant to implement.

But as difficult as his position was until now, Netanyahu’s leverage in the talks just got even smaller thanks to another longtime antagonist. Israel TV is claiming that the White House has made clear to Netanyahu that President Obama’s long anticipated trip to Israel next month will be postponed if the prime minister does not have a new government in place by March 16. While some in Israel, where Obama remains unpopular, may not care much about the visit, Netanyahu is counting on it. That means the chances are that Lapid and Bennett will soon be signing coalition agreements on their own terms and that the ultra-Orthodox parties will be losing their ability to stymie reform.


Netanyahu is eager for the Obama visit because he views it as a perfect opportunity to help reset the strained relations between the two governments. More importantly, he’s also hoping the president will use it to make a strong statement in support of Israeli security and to re-emphasize his willingness to do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capability. Losing that visit would be a blow to his prestige and undermine his efforts to have the allies present a united front on Iran and the peace process after four plus years of Obama’s efforts to distance the U.S. from Israel. Since dragging out the talks in what would probably be a vain try to get his way on the next coalition would probably keep Obama at home, that means that the prime minister’s already faltering attempt to split up the Lapid-Bennett tag team is now officially doomed.

Netanyahu has his own reasons for fearing both Lapid and Bennett.

He’s clearly worried about Lapid’s boasts about replacing Netanyahu in the next election and dreads having to give him the key post of foreign minister as part of the price for getting Yesh Atid’s 19 seats onto the government benches. Though they are closer on ideology, he seems to have just as much antipathy for the charismatic Bennett who once was chief of staff and broke with Netanyahu, allegedly because of the influence of the prime minister’s wife Sara.

But with Lapid and Bennett deciding that their mutual support for a more equitable system of nation service outweighing any differences on other issues, Netanyahu now has no choice but to swallow hard and have both of these would be rivals in the Cabinet.

 Obama and the two party leaders may be doing Netanyahu more of a favor than he knows. Keeping both Lapid and Bennett inside the government tent is to the prime minister’s advantage. Saddling him with responsibility for government actions also lessens Lapid’s long-term appeal as a reformer even if the foreign ministry would give him the gravitas to be a credible prime minister in the future. Moreover, achieving a real breakthrough on the question of the Haredim and the draft would be a genuine achievement for Netanyahu and burnish his legacy in his third term as Israel’s leader.

It’s important to understand the big loser here isn’t the prime minister. It’s the ultra-Orthodox who have used their disproportionate influence on the country’s political system to perpetuate an unequal burden of national service as well as to funnel huge amounts of patronage and government allocations to their institutions. Keeping Shas and United Torah Judaism out of the government will create a team of rivals in the Cabinet that worries Netanyahu but it will enable him to do something none of his predecessors ever achieved.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/02/28/obama-deadline-raises-pressure-on-bibi/

NO MATTER WHAT ISRAEL DOES FOR THIS TURKEY, LIKE GIVING THEM AWAC TECHNOLOGY, HE IS NEVER HAPPY!!

NO MATTER WHAT ISRAEL DOES FOR THIS TURKEY, LIKE GIVING THEM AWAC TECHNOLOGY, HE IS NEVER HAPPY!! 

Erdoğan: Zionism “Crime Against Humanity”

Michael Rubin


Speaking at a United Nations conference in Vienna, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared, “It is necessary that we must consider — just like Zionism or anti-Semitism or fascism — Islamophobia as a crime against humanity.”

Let’s put aside the fact that, when they argue for the criminalization of “Islamophobia,” Erdoğan and his fellow travelers seek to ban not discrimination against Muslims, but rather criticism of the more radical outliers of radical Islamism. Hence, pointing out that under Erdoğan, the murder rate of women in Turkey has increased 1,400 percent would be considered a hate crime. Erdoğan makes no secret of his antipathy of free speech: That is why the Turkish media has descended from relative openness to somewhere below Russia, Venezuela, Iraq, Burma, and Zimbabwe in terms of free press.

Zionism is, simply put, a belief that the Jewish people have the right to an independent homeland in what is now Israel. One doesn’t need to like the Israeli government to be a Zionist, nor does Zionism have anything to do with supporting or opposing a two-state solution. (I am a Zionist who supports a two-state solution, for example, and I have little opinion on Israeli politicians or diplomats, as I neither study them nor interact with them). To be anti-Zionist, however, is to believe that Israel should cease to exist, to be eradicated. Declaring Israel and the Israeli people to be illegitimate is, simply put, the same as declaring that they should be expunged. This isn’t like Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait in 1990 and denying Kuwaitis an independent state because Saddam had declared Kuwait an Iraqi province, and therefore Kuwaitis to be Iraqis. He did not question their right to exist like Erdoğan does the Israelis.

Perhaps this explains Erdoğan’s embrace not of Palestinian statehood, but of Hamas—an organization dedicated to the eradication not only of Israel but also of Jews. It is why Erdoğan defended an aid who donated money to an al-Qaeda charity. It is why the new generation of Turkish diplomats who have arisen from religious seminaries, rather than the secular system which Erdoğan has tried to dismantle, have gone so far as to endorse al-Qaeda openly. Anti-Semitism runs deep in Turkey’s government and, increasingly, its diplomatic corps.

What does Erdoğan’s outburst mean for the United States? Given the UN secretary general’s silence in the face of Erdoğan’s attempts to take the United Nations back to its “Zionism is Racism” days, perhaps it’s time for President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to question their uncritical embrace of the United Nations. Obama has also listed Erdoğan as one of his top foreign friends. Perhaps the White House would care to explain that endorsement and upon what it is based? Kerry will be in Turkey tomorrow. It will be interesting to see whether he bothers to bring up incitement to genocide with his host. Most shameful, however, is the behavior of the U.S. Congress. As Erdoğan embraces Hamas and spews anti-Semitism, and as Turkish diplomats defend al-Qaeda, where are our congressmen? At the Turkish embassy, enjoying free food and giving the Turkish government a photo-op about which Namik Tan, Turkey’s ambassador to the United States, can brag on his twitter account.

It is very important that the honorable men and women of the U.S. Congress know for what they are lending their names when they join groups like the Congressional Turkey Caucus.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/02/28/erdogan-zionism-crime-against-humanity/

Separating fact from fiction on BDS....How the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement distorts the reality in Israel

Separating fact from fiction on BDS....How the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement distorts the reality in Israel


NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

JULIA XANTHOS


To shed light on the passions generated by the Brooklyn College program that promoted the so-called BDS movement, the Daily News opens its Op-Ed page to one of the evening’s speakers.

BDS proponent Omar Barghouti writes of the movement’s motivations and goals. We recommend that you read his piece and then return here for the truth.

Barghouti aims in the short-term to undermine Israel’s moral legitimacy on the way to the long-term prize of securing rights for Palestinians that would effectively dismantle the Jewish state.

His dancing around this central point lets Barghouti verge on anti-Semitism while claiming respectability.

Skilled as a propagandist, he piles falsehood upon falsehood to present Israel as relentlessly oppressing the Palestinians in violation of human decency, and to hold Israel exclusively responsible for the ills afflicting them.

And so, he says, Israel must be hit with BDS — a boycott of commerce, divestment from the country’s economy and economic sanctions.

Let’s catalog his distortions:

Falsehood : Israel has vindictively crippled the Palestinians by imprisoning them behind a wall.

Truth : Israel built the wall to stop Palestinian bombers. In the three years before the barrier went up, 73 suicide attacks killed 293 people and wounded more than 1,900 in Israel. In the decade that followed, the wall drove bombings into the single digits per year by making it hard for attackers to enter Israel.

Falsehood : Israel has further crippled the Palestinians by maintaining an “illegal” naval blockade on Palestinian ports.

Truth : Israel has stopped ships from landing to prevent Palestinians from importing weapons.

In 2011, a UN report concluded: “The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.”

Falsehood: The U.S. State Department hammered Israel for broad “institutional, legal and societal discrimination” against Arab citizens.

Truth : After conducting an annual review of the human rights records of countries around the globe, the department in 2010 found that all Israelis enjoy freedom of speech and assembly, fully exercise their democratic rights, are guided by an impartial judiciary and ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.

At the same time, the “institutional, legal and societal discrimination” cited by Barghouti stems partly from the exclusive control that Orthodox rabbis have over family matters of Jews, such as marriages and divorces.

State also dinged Israel with a finding that an Arab minority receives fewer services from the government than the Jewish majority and generally does not enjoy the career advantages that flow from service in the Israeli military.

Falsehood: Barghouti pulled the inflammatory quote from a two-year-old report.

Truth: He ignored the department’s latest document, which found that “The most significant human rights issues during the year were terrorist attacks against civilians” by Palestinians.


Reviewing human rights as measured out by the Palestinian leadership, State also concluded: “The three most egregious human rights violations across the occupied territories were arbitrary arrest and associated torture and abuse, often with impunity and particularly against security or political prisoners, by multiple actors in the region; restrictions on civil liberties; and the inability of residents of the Gaza Strip under Hamas to choose or hold to account their own government.”

Barghouti’s distortions point clearly to his believing that Israel is inherently a malignant force. He subscribes, for example, to “pinkwashing,” the paranoid view that Israel espouses equal rights for gays to divert the world’s attention from alleged sins against the Palestinians.

The unifying theme is that Barghouti merely seeks Palestinian civil rights. This, too, is a falsehood — his ultimate falsehood.

Soothingly, he states that he wants Israel to cede occupied territories to Palestinians and grant Palestinians a right of return to land once theirs. Both notions are central to attempts to negotiate a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians.

But his definition of the terms, unspoken on the opposite page, is the creation of a single “secular, democratic state” built on an influx of Arabs who come to dominate the population and vote an end to Israel as a Jewish nation.

That, ultimately, is the nefarious truth behind his libels. It is also why many New Yorkers rose up in proper protest after Brooklyn College’s political science department endorsed Barghouti’s campus lecture.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/lies-truth-article-1.1271323

UN researcher reports UN session on Israel that never happened

UN researcher reports UN session on Israel that never happened

by Hillel Neuer 

Nicola Perugini, a UN researcher in the Palestinian territories for UNESCO and UNIFEM (the UN women’s fund), and who has academic positions at Bard College’s Al Quds program and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, should be removed from his UN and scholarly posts on grounds of utter incompetence.

His Feb. 22 Al Jazaeera article on the latest UNHRC report on Israeli settlements tells us all about a session in January which, in fact, never took place:


“At the end of January, the 22nd session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) focused on the ‘Human rights situation in Palestine and other Arab territories’…”
“The session welcomed a report produced by an international fact-finding mission on the implications of the Israeli settlements…”
“The session was a new chapter in the protracted chain of condemnations issued by international bodies against Israel’s violations of human rights and international law…”
Israel “preemptively isolated itself by boycotting this UNHRC session…”
“[T]he session was not good publicity for Israel…”
“[T]he fact that Israel boycotted this 22nd session should not surprise us. Tactics are also a weapon of the state, not merely a weapon of the weak.”
Except Perugini’s session could not have focused on anything, welcomed any report, opened any chapter, been boycotted by anyone, or created any bad publicity for Israel, for the simple reason that it never existed.

Perugini, the expert consultant and researcher in the Palestinian territories  for two major UN agencies — including for the UNESCO-funded “Decolonizing Architecture” project that imagines various ways to take apart Israeli settlements — appears to have conflated three completely different things into one giant mush that is a figment of his imagination: (a) the settlements report itself; (b) an unrelated Universal Periodic Review meeting on Israel; (c) and the actual 22nd session of the UNHRC, which begins on Monday, Feb. 25.

The incident underscores the shoddy scholarship and disregard for facts that characterizes much of the anti-Israel propaganda produced by many of the researchers who write UN reports on Israel, including the Goldstone Report.

Will UNESCO and UNIFEM disclose which Palestinian matters have been handled by Perugini? Are they in the least troubled by his politicization and incompetence?

Is this the kind of shoddy scholarship Bard College is trying to promote through its Palestinian summer school?

http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2013/02/22/al-jazeera-reports-on-un-session-that-never-happened/

EU Recommends Boycott Against Israel Presence in Judea, Samaria

EU Recommends Boycott Against Israel Presence in Judea, Samaria

                 

                                                                                                      Israel or EU's concern?

The European Union has formally recommended its 27 members “prevent” Israeli activity in Judea and Samaria through an economic boycott.

Chana Ya'ar

The European Union has formally recommended its 27 member states “prevent” Israeli activity in Judea and Samaria through an economic boycott of Jewish communities in those regions. 

The EU's latest boycott recommendation came to light in the publication of the EU’s Jerusalem Report 2012, released Wednesday, in which the European body recommends its members avoid financial transactions with Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria, AFP reported.

In the report, the EU suggests its member states “prevent, discourage and raise awareness about problematic implications of financial transactions, including foreign direct investments from within the EU in support of settlement activities, infrastructure and services.” The recommendation followed an internal report which alleged that Israel had used construction in eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to prevent the possibility of a two-state solution. 

In the strongly-worded 15-page report, the EU also calls to "ensure that imports of settlement products do not benefit from preferential tariffs" and make sure that all such products are clearly labelled as originating from Israeli-occupied areas."

The move comes as a clear statement of support for the Palestinian Authority's attempt to oust some half a million Jews from their homes, and claim the entire area for its hoped-for independent, sovereign state without bothering with final status negotiations with Israel. This ignores the fact that by any legal parameter, Israel is not "occupying" the area, which belongs to no sovereign state.

A successful first step in that process was made at the United Nations last September when the PA won an upgraded status via the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a non-member observer state. The move gained for the PA de facto recognition as a sovereign country by the international body, and helped circumvent the need for final status talks with Israel on a myriad of issues, as mandated by the internationally-recognized Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian Authority – and much of the international community – defines “settlement activity – in very broad terms, sometimes as broad as repairing a broken fence for a private home in an existing community, or paving a driveway. “Settlement construction” is a term defined equally loosely, and includes such activities as adding a pergola to an existing front or back porch or patio, or even enclosing an existing balcony on a home in a community that numbers at least 25,000 residents and has existed for more than 35 years.

However, despite Israel's willingness to negotiate, PA leaders refuse to engage in talks without preconditions, and each time negotiations have been suggested, they have categorically rejected any attempt to jumpstart the process unless Israel first agrees to all PA demands -- primary among them, a complete halt to all "settlement activities," the "right of return" for more than five million foreign Arabs who once lived in the area and their generations of descendants, and the surrender of nearly half of Israel's holy capital city, Jerusalem, for use as the future capital of the hoped-for PA state of "Palestine."

At present, the twin capitals of the Palestinian Authority are the Samaria-based city of Ramallah, and Gaza-based city of Gaza City, inasmuch as the two leading factions of the PA, Fatah and Hamas, have yet to even reach an agreement on creating a unity government.


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/165670#.US7VN-vwLbx

The "Hilltop Youth": Israel's Heroes

The "Hilltop Youth": Israel's Heroes

The "hilltop youth" deserve our awe and respect, not the maligning to which they are subject.

Giulio Meotti

With their long hair flying in the wind, their yarmulkes askew, their fringes peeking out from under faded t-shirts, the maligned "hilltop youth" are the Jews of the Jewish State, the Jews of the "settlers".

Is education deficient? Blame the hilltop youth. Is crime rampant? Blame the hilltop youth.

They are Israel's most outstanding individuals, instilled with ideals that their government ministers can only envy. They are Israel's last heroes.

But their homes and their children have been brutally dispersed by hundreds of soldiers.

The latest destruction took place in Maaleh Rehavam. The unconscionable uprooting of the Jewish residents - this time stopped by court order - in order to attain “peace” with the Arabs has been one of the most terrible chapters in Israel's short history. And the energized Obama-Livni duo will try to erase all of their homes.

Many of the hilltop youth have lived through the murder of friends and relatives by terrorists. Most have adopted a very religious life style. No drugs or TV. No playing around. They're not hanging out at discos. Many have no steaming water. No electricity. They have held on to Judea and Samaria's barren hills for years.

No Arabs were displaced by them.

While the established "settlements" have been fortified with barbed-wire fences and the "settlers" have been compelled to travel in bulletproof vehicles and guarded convoys, for safety's sake,  the hilltop youth are just like in the days of the War of Independence. No fences for them. They see the protective gear that has gripped the "settlements" as a sign of weakness.

During the Second Intifada, in Judea and Samaria, most of the newcomers were these religious youth and most of those departing were secular. The hilltop youth came while others left.

Their enemies today are the Jihad of the Arab beheaders, the incitement of the Western leftists but also Israel's self hatred.

If they would not be up there on Israel's peaks and hills, who would be? A friend told me: "They bear the war for the Land on their shoulders".

You can meet this Jewish breed in the South Hevron Hills, in Yitzhar, and in a few other villages like Esh Kodesh and Maaleh Rehavam.

They are Jews who will fight for what Jews over the centuries have always fought: Israel's God, ideals, people and land - who will brave rocks, Molotov cocktails and even a Palestinian Arab terrorist army to be the bridge over which a Jewish tradition of courage, commitment and creativity passes to the generations to come.

They know that the whole hatred of "settlements" is not new. It started in the Thirties. Croatia, Belfast, Kashmir, Kazakhstan, the transformation of Konigsberg into Kaliningrad and the conquest of Mexican Texas...But only Western Eretz Israel is expected to be turned into a tabula rasa for the Arabs.

That's why the hilltop youth is fighting a noble and just war over land, state land.

The hilltop youth is the only obstacle to the betrayal of solemn promises made to the people of Israel, the betrayal of the Jewish inhabitants of Judea, Samaria and the hitherto greatest threat to Israel's security. The hilltop youth are a living shelter against the fatal blunder of delivering territory - an irreversible concession - in return for promises, papers and committees. In return for war.


The hilltop youth are an obstacle to the army retreat to the "security zones" and the flooding of the area, with the billions of Washington and Saudi Arabia, of millions of Arabs from the nearby countries. They oppose creating the sights of desolation for the Jews in the areas versus the soaring development among the Arabs.
Without the hilltop youth, Israel would be robbed of the fruits of victory of 1967.

On the hilltops, young mothers stroll with their toddlers a few dozen feet from their front doorsteps and set out coffee in the house-trailer synagogue each evening for the Israeli soldiers who patrol the community. Husbands take turns patrolling at night with M16s or Uzis slung over their shoulders, pistols on their hips. They live a stone’s throw from the Arabs, but on state land. For them traveling past Arabs areas has become a Russian roulette: Will they be shot at or not?


It is a new generation imbued with the pioneering ethos that was once the ideal of the secular kibbutz, a mystical nationalism combined with an ascetic spirit and an oriental sense of fatalism; it rejects the consumerism of the big cities on the coast, and lives by ideology, faith, and zeal. In many outposts, the young couples construct a giant Star of David so the Jews in nearby settlements and the Palestinian Arabs can see it.

The hilltop youth live lives of dignified joy. These Jews oppose the balkanization of the land into terrorist enclaves. They know who they are. They know what being a Jew means. They know what they are doing, why they are doing it and that it’s right.

How many youngsters like these can Europe count? How many Jews like these can you find in New York? They have much to offer the world.


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12933#.US7Uv-vwLbx