Tag Archives: Israel

Memo to Israel on a Ceasefire

Want to know why Israel can no longer tolerate the presence of the terrorist organization Hamas in neighboring Gaza? Consider this fact: The jihadists of Hamastan have just cut a vital lifeline for the Jewish State’s citizens, tourism industry and other commercial activities.

After a single rocket landed a mile away from Israel’s principal international airport, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered all U.S. airlines to cease flight operations there. Other airlines say they’ll do the same.

Neither Israel nor any 21st Century nation can allow jihadists to retain the ability to endanger so directly the lives and prosperity of its people in this way. Yet, that would be the practical effect of the immediate ceasefire the Obama administration, the UN and others want Israel to accept.

Memo to Israel: Just say, “No.”

Needed: Balanced Statements by Obama Officials on Israel-Gaza Conflict

Senior U.S. officials need to choose their words much more carefully on the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict.
 
President Obama yesterday called for an immediate cease-fire in the Israeli-Gaza conflict because “we don’t want to see any more civilians getting killed.”
 
Secretary of State Kerry was caught on a hot mic during a break in a Fox News Sunday appearance making comments that mocked Israel’s efforts to limit civilian casualties during the Gaza operation by sarcastically telling an aide, “It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation.”
 
Such biased and naïve comments play into the hands of Hamas leaders who have staged this war to isolate Israel internationally by sacrificing Palestinian women and children.
 
The Obama administration cautiously supported Israel’s invasion of Gaza and should have known this operation was certain to result in large numbers of civilian casualties because of Hamas’ practice of using women and children as human shields.  Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz calls this Hamas’ “dead baby strategy” which entails Hamas fighters deliberately firing rockets from densely populated civilian areas in Gaza, using hospitals, disability centers, mosques and schools as launching sites.  According to Dershowitz, this forces Israel to choose whether to allow these rockets to endanger Israeli civilians or to attack the launch sites, thereby risking civilian casualties among Hamas’ human shields.
 
This Hamas practice amounts to a war crime.  Obama and Kerry should be speaking out to condemn it as such.
 
Obama and Kerry also should be stressing that the Israeli invasion of Gaza would not have occurred if Hamas joined Israel in agreeing to an Egyptian cease-fire plan last week. 
 
Israeli forces have found far more Hamas tunnels to infiltrate Israel and store weapons than expected.  In a related development, Israeli forces reportedly destroyed a warehouse in Sudan over the weekend storing a large number of long-range Iranian missiles that were en route to Hamas fighters in Gaza. 
 
This is why Israeli leaders made the difficult decision to invade Gaza and why they intend to stay until Israeli forces have substantially reduced the threat from Hamas rockets and tunnels.  President Obama and Secretary Kerry should be talking about this and cease making statements that place most of the blame for this conflict on Israel and attempt to pressure Israeli leaders to halt the Gaza operation before its objectives are met.

Old-Fashioned Jew Hatred Is Back

As the violence between Israel and Hamas escalates, anti-Semitism fills Internet boards and in some cases, it spills out on the streets. Animosity towards Israel is bringing out anti-Semitism on levels not seen since Nazi Germany.

A recent Palestinian poll from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy has shown that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians want to eliminate the State of Israel. By routinely portraying Israel as an angry, evil, colonialist entity without a moral compass, Palestinians and their supporters have chosen to seek Israel’s total destruction by delegitimizing the Jewish state and the Jews who live there. A commonly proposed “two-state solution” is not serious when advocating Israel’s total destruction.

By utilizing various Pallywood propaganda techniques, Palestinians have routinely wooed world opinions against Israel, and then channeled the anger from perceived injustices to alienate the Jewish state. But, is this merely about Israel or is it just good old-fashioned Jew hatred? A recent Anti-Definition League survey found that anti-Semitic attitudes are persistent and pervasive around the world.

Recently in France, two synagogues were surrounded by an angry pro-Palestinian mob chanting “Death to the Jews.” Anti-Semitic attacks have been reported throughout Paris including beatings, stabbings, and a firebomb being hurled at a synagogue.

In Germany, thousands of activists marched into downtown Frankfurt to scream about Israel’s actions against Gaza while holding signs reading, “You Jews Are Beasts.”

Rabbi Moshe Ohayon of the Jewish community in Casablanca, Morocco was brutally attacked while walking to synagogue. Why? Because he’s Jewish.

Even in American cities such as San Francisco, pro-Palestinian activists can be heard chanting: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” Anyone familiar with the regional geography is aware that this is nothing more than a covert way of saying ‘destruction of Israel!’

But unlike in the past where anti-Semitism would sprout up once in a while, the Internet has made refuting anti-Semitism a daily chore. While activists continue to claim they are not anti-Semites (they’re just against the occupation!), their anti-Israel diatribes are becoming less covert and are now manifesting as blatantly anti-Jewish rhetoric.

Anyone with an Internet connection and some spare time can anonymously post vitriolic Jew hatred on message board after message board without fear of reprisal for what they really thing about the Jews. Vile hashtags such as #HitlerWasRight and #HitlerDidNothingWrong recently trended on Twitter.

One would assume that easy access to information would eliminate many of the rhetoric and blood libels of old. Instead, the anti-Semitism has now donned the mask of science.

Many activists have taken a liking to a recent and flawed study about the genetic connection between the ancient Khazar society and the Jews. Despite the numerous flaws in this theory, Palestinian activists routinely cite this as proof that today’s Jews are not really the descendants of the biblical ‘Chosen People’ and therefore don’t have a legitimate claim to the land of Israel. There is absolutely no point to this argument other than to legitimize Jew hatred.

It is one thing to support a State for the Palestinian people. It is another to use vitriolic hate speech to delegitimize Israel and the Jews who live there. This hatred is clearly not directed solely towards Israel, as the angry attacks are indiscriminately perpetrated against world Jewry. In the information age, anti-Semitism is able to spread farther and faster than ever before.

Therefore, it is imperative to call out anti-Semitism immediately, before it spreads uncontrollably, and tell the purveyors of such vitriol: “Never Again!”

Death Camp Liberator Warns Israel About Hamas Doctrine

On September 30, 1938, William Langfan, a World War II veteran witnessed the catastrophic consequences of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler. In a March 2013 interview, Mr. Langfan explains how the Western world, led by President Barack Obama, is pressuring Israel to accommodate HAMAS, which would have catastrophic consequences. Mr. Langfan delivers a warning to Israel that has immediate application to the ground offensive going on in Gaza today. Will Israel learn a lesson from a moment in its brutal history as detailed by a soldier who helped liberate the Buchenwald death camp?

Doctrine plays a role. The Charter for a group called the Islamic Resistance Movement, otherwise known as the HAMAS will play a significant role in the conflict. The question before Israel and indeed the free world is whether or not the HAMAS actually believes in the “constitution” they constructed in 1988. It is possible that many people worked at compiling the exact words of the Covenant and many, many people gave their lives for those words, but neither the framers nor the fighters really believe all that nonsense about killing Jews, dying as martyrs or obliterating Israel from the river to the sea.

In the realm of all possible worlds, that could be one. But in this world, the facts argue to the contrary, that these jihadis are really jihadis and really believe in what they have written. But, if this is true don’t we all really have a problem? If the HAMAS really wants to kill Jews and obliterate Israel couldn’t that make for an uncomfortable cocktail hour after the first day of peace talks organized by the clueless UN or the Obama administration?

If the HAMAS really believes in their written Covenant, how can there ever be peace with a “partner” they view as an eternal enemy? If the HAMAS really believe in their doctrine, how can they ever divide a city that they must believe is theirs and if they divide it, they spend eternity in hell? If the HAMAS really believe in all this stuff then there really is no way that there can ever be peace and that doesn’t make sense because all reasonable people want peace, or so we in the West believe.

So, is there any way out of this conundrum wrapped in a Qassam rocket? Listen to Mr. Bill Langfan in this short interview as he indeed has some “on point” answers that can help the West get it right this time and avoid the obliteration of another sixty million people. If Bill is not persuasive then take a look at just a couple of the planks of the HAMAS political platform. Warning, after you stop laughing, remember, there is a guy around the corner who will slice your throat because you laughed at his religion. Can you imagine what he will do to people who “occupy his land?”

HAMAS COVENANT:
Right at the top, let’s see how the HAMAS views their peace partner, Israel:

Article One: Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

Of course the Obama Administration does not have any Muslim Brotherhood operatives in strategic positions, because we know that the Muslim Brotherhood is an exaggerated figment of the Islamophobe industry.

Article Two: The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine. Moslem Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times. It is characterised by its deep understanding, accurate comprehension and its complete embrace of all Islamic concepts of all aspects of life, culture, creed, politics, economics, education, society, justice and judgement, the spreading of Islam, education, art, information, science of the occult and conversion to Islam.

Article Eight: Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.

Why is it their land when the Jews were here 2000 years before them?

Article Eleven: The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim to have the right to represent Moslem generations till Judgement Day?


Read the complete Covenant: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp

 

The Popular Palestinians

If the Palestinians are merely engaged in a nationalist struggle for self-determination, then why are they inciting genocide of Jewry? In the midst of Operation Protective Edge, Hamas released a music video in Hebrew calling for the Palestinians to bomb Israel and kill all Israelis.

“Raze it [Israel] to the ground, exterminate the cockroaches’ nest, and banish all the Zionists,” the lyrics read.

Some human rights activists and lawyers may get a sense of déjà vu upon reading these words. Back in 1994, there were several radio broadcasts calling for the extermination of human cockroaches.

They were in Rwanda.

When the Hutus began their genocide of the Tutsis on April 6, 1994, the most popular radio station in the country was RTLM, owned by relatives and friends of Rwandan president Juvenal Habyrarimana.

That day, RTLM exhorted its listeners, “You have to kill the Tutsis, they’re cockroaches. All those who are listening, rise so we can fight for our Rwanda. Fight with the weapons you have at your disposal: those who have arrows, with arrows, those who have spears, with spears.

We must all fight. We must all fight the Tutsis. We must finish with them, exterminate them, sweep them from the whole country. There must be no refuge for them.”

RTLM continued to incite for genocide throughout the war. And as the invading Tutsi army came in from Uganda, RTLM staff fled to Zaire with a mobile radio transmitter to continue broadcasting.

After the war, several senior RTLM managers and journalists were convicted of inciting genocide, and conspiracy to carry out genocide and crimes against humanity. And all right-thinking people cheered.

But then, those were Hutus.

Even Palestinian officials acknowledge that their missile offensive that began last month is a crime against humanity.

In an interview with Palestinian Authority TV last week, Ibrahim Khreiseh, the PLO ’s ambassador to the UN Human Rights Committee admitted, “The missiles that are now being launched against Israel – each and every missile constitutes a crime against humanity whether it hits or misses, because it is directed at civilian targets.”

Khreiseh also explained that since Palestinians in Gaza have “appeared on TV and said that the Israeli army warned them to evacuate their homes before the bombardment… if someone is killed, the law considers it a mistake rather than an intentional killing because [the Israelis] followed legal procedures.”

Khreiseh then noted, “We never warn anyone about where these missiles are about to fall or the operations we carry out.”

In other words, the PLO ’s own representative said that Israel is innocent and the Palestinians are guilty of conducting acts of genocide.

But their Western supporters don’t care. Instead, their affection and commitment to the Palestinian campaign against Israel grows in intensity every time the Palestinians escalate their genocidal incitement and violence.

This support regularly involves anti-Jewish violence directed against local Jewish communities and pro-Israel activists.

Consider France. Since the beginning of the year, anti-Jewish violence and intimidation in France has reached levels not seen since the Holocaust. And things have only gotten worse since Palestinian terrorists in Hebron kidnapped and murdered Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrah and Gil-Ad Shaer a month ago. Life for Jews in France is becoming increasingly untenable.

Anti-Jewish attacks run the gamut from shouting “Death to the Jews,” and “Finish Hitler’s Work,” to delivering bomb threats to Jewish kindergartens and businesses, to vandalizing Jewish businesses, institutions and other property, to physically assaulting Jews of all ages, as well as Jewish institutions.

On Sunday, violent mass assaults on Jewish targets commenced just as a two-hour-long fanatically pro-Palestinian march was dispersing. Nearly 200 Jewish worshipers were trapped inside of the Don Issac Avrabanel synagogue as assailants, riled up from the march, threw bricks at the synagogue and attacked its Jewish defenders with metal rods.

In the US, levels of violence against Jews by supporters of the Palestinians continue to rise. In San Francisco, pro-Palestinian protesters showed their solidarity with the Palestinian goal of genocide by, among other things, calling for Israel’s destruction while wearing white gloves with red paint on the fingers and palms.

One of the most searing images of the Palestinian terror war against Israel was the photograph taken on October 12, 2000, of a Palestinian terrorist at the Ramallah police station standing in the window and holding up his blood-soaked hands to a cheering crowd below.

Inside, he and his war criminal comrades had torn apart two IDF reservists who got lost on the road and accidentally entered Ramallah. The blood on his hands was theirs.

In Los Angeles and Boston, pro-Israel demonstrators were physically assaulted and subjected to anti-Semitic vitriol. In Seattle, pro-Palestinian protesters held up placards depicting Jews eating Palestinian children and drinking their blood.

Street protests calling for the annihilation of Israel, expressing support for Palestinian terrorists, engaging in rank anti-Jewish incitement and violent assaults against Jews enjoy the intellectual support of the professoriate and the media.

This week, Daniel Mael, a pro-Israel activist at Brandeis, published excerpts from a previously secret listserv of nearly a hundred university professors. On it, the professors “express their fear and disdain on issues ranging from [US] foreign and domestic policy, the ‘American system,’ and ‘the Israelists.’” In other words, anti-Israelism is one of the causes that comprise the Leftist ideological litmus test.

Then there is the media. With rare exceptions, foreign reporting of the Palestinian assault on Israel has followed the script. Both sides are fighting. Israel is killing more Palestinians than the Palestinians are killing Jews.

Therefore Israel must stop defending itself.

And the diplomatic community – with the notable exception of Canada – has been similarly predictable.

No one admits what Khreiseh acknowledged about each separate rocket launch constituting a separate war crime.

No one mentions that Fatah terrorists joined Hamas in its missile campaign.

Then there are the leftist American Jews who claim that they are pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian. The Palestinian rocket war makes them uncomfortable.

On the one hand, they cannot ignore the fact that 80 percent of Israelis have been targeted for slaughter by Hamas rockets over the past week and a half. But on the other hand, they define themselves by their criticism of Israel, not their criticism of the Palestinians. So, J Street, like Eric Yoffie from the Reform Movement, condemned both the Palestinians and Israel. The Palestinians are bad to shoot rockets to kill Israelis. The Israelis are bad because they continue to live in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem.

As Yoffie explained in a recent essay in Haaretz, to combat Hamas, Israel needs to quit Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, as it quit Gaza in 2005, because then Fatah will make peace with Israel.

Like the Israeli leftists they adore, neither Yoffie nor his fellow leftist Jews have ever explained how peace with Fatah will solve Israel’s problem with Hamas. They never explain how such a peace will pacify or otherwise tame Hamas, an organization committed to the commission of the genocide of world Jewry.

These are distressing times for Israel. For over a week, more than four million Israelis have been forced to run to bomb shelters to protect themselves from Hamas’s attempts to slaughter civilians with rockets in order to advance its ultimate aim of genocide.

And even as Palestinian officials acknowledge the nature of this war, rather than rethink their support for genocidal terrorists anti-Israel activists in the US and Europe redouble their support for the Palestinians, by among other things engaging in violent assaults on local Jews. In so doing, they demonstrate that they share the Palestinians’ ultimate objective.

These activists are in turn supported by the leftist academia.

Their efforts are buoyed by the media which, at a minimum, fail to report on the nature of the campaign against Israel and generally, actively strive to obfuscate it. Leftist Jews, while compelled to condemn Hamas rocket fire, (but not rocket fire by Fatah militias), nonetheless make clear that at a minimum, Israel is also to blame for the Palestinian assault because it doesn’t give other Palestinians its heartland and capital city.

Finally, as we see with US-led Western demand that Israel reach a cease-fire with Hamas without first defeating the Palestinian terror machine in Gaza, the activists, the professoriate and the media are joined by political leaders who all agree that inciting and acting on behalf of the genocide of Jewry is not a disqualifying offense.

Finish Off Hamas

Yesterday, the terrorist organization Hamas launched more than 140 rockets at Israel while the Jewish State observed a cease-fire announced by Egypt. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu properly responded by authorizing his military to use “full force” to retaliate against Hamas.

Israel may currently have an opportunity not just to punish Hamas, but to destroy it. For the moment at least, that is a goal shared by the current, anti-Muslim Brotherhood government of Egypt. Accordingly, Cairo has helped blockade the Gaza Strip by shutting down smuggling tunnels and otherwise undermining “Hamastan.”

This opportunity may not last long, however. Therefore, Israel would be well-advised truly to use “full force” against the jihadists of Hamas – who are sworn to the destruction of the Jewish State and, pursuant to shariah, to ours, as well.

Sticks and Stones Break Bones

Hamas has decided to perpetrate a third Intifada after the Israeli Defense Force conducted an extensive house-to-house search in Hebron, to find three Israeli teens that they kidnapped and murdered.

Rockets are now raining down on Israeli cities and violence is pouring through the streets of Jerusalem as Palestinians riot and throw rocks at Israelis. In response to these rocket attacks, Israel has launched Operation Protective Edge and is preparing to launch ground operations in Gaza.

Raised to iconic levels, throwing baseball-sized rocks at Israelis is a national sport for Palestinians. Having been described as a birthright and duty, Palestinians see stone throwing as emblematic of their resistance of Israel and encourage the youth to throw stones at Israeli. The one thing people neglect is, rocks kill people.

Palestinian activists often describe rock throwing with a general disregard for its hazards. They often justify the rock throwing by saying Jews don’t belong in the land and that the West Bank should be Judenrein (Jew Free). Additional justifications tend to revolve around the argument that the land was stolen from the Palestinians, which completely and erroneously negates the history of Arab belligerence against Israel.

Despite Palestinian rock throwers being seen by the international community as ‘unarmed civilians,’ rocks are deadly weapons meant for one purpose: To injure, maim and kill. Over the years there have been countless incidents of Palestinian rock throwing against Jews resulting in the injury and deaths of many innocent Israeli adults and children.

Instead of rebuking such heinous acts from its citizens, Palestinian authorities have reward violence against Israel and Jews by naming schools, hospitals, and streets after the murderers. A recent Palestinian opinion poll, from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy show that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians opposes any goal other than the elimination the State of Israel thus adding to the indoctrination of hate.

Additionally, Israel finds itself in a sticky wicket because they are typically seen as the aggressor when responding to these deadly rock attacks. Media officials and photographers do nothing as Palestinian kids and teens pelt Jews with rocks. International journalists actually stand with the Palestinians and videotape them as they pelt cars with Israeli license plates. Cars like the one carrying Adele Biton, a 3 year-old who suffered traumatic brain injury after a rock flew through the cars windshield and struck her on the head, causing the car to crash into the back of a truck.

When Israeli soldiers detain the Palestinian perpetrators of these crimes – some of whom are young children — journalists will photograph the detaining and scream at the Israelis, saying they are innocent children. This type of media manipulation is all too common with journalists who are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and looking to influence public opinion. This journalist bias is so common it’s referred to as “Pallywood.”

As violence escalates, new images of supposed Israeli actions against “unarmed” Palestinian stone throwers are sure to pop up. Many images currently being shared on social media are not even of Palestinians. What would your response be if someone were throwing rocks at you because it’s their “hobby” to injure and maim Jews?

Hamas has spent years warning of and provoking a third Intifada, perpetrating acts of violence for decades, even during the height of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in the 1990’s. By creating a unity government that incorporates Hamas ministers, Palestinians chose to wage armed and violent “resistance” over negotiating peace.

Israel has a right to defend itself from threats, including from rocks. Operation Protective Edge is a just and appropriate mission to both stop terrorists and degrade their capability to launch future attacks.

It is time for the international community to end these Pallywood antics and stop disregarding the carnage rock throwing can cause. Not doing so only perpetuates a culture of violence.

Fighting enemies from within and without

Sixteen-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir was doing his own thing last Tuesday when he was abducted by Jewish terrorists, who slaughtered him. They killed him because he was an Arab, and they are racist murderers.

The police made solving Abu Khdeir’s murder a top priority. In less than a week, they had six suspects in custody. Three confessed to the murder.

There are dark forces at work in Israeli society. They need to be dealt with.

And they will be dealt with harshly.

They will be dealt with harshly because there is no significant sector in Israeli society that supports terrorism.

There is no Jewish tradition that condones or calls for the murder of innocents. In Jewish tradition, the line between protecting society from its enemies and committing murder is long, wide, unmistakable and unmoving.

This is why, for instance, at the memorial service for 20-year-old Shelly Dadon, who was murdered by an Israeli Arab terrorist from the Galilee in early May, the placards held up by the 2,000 participants called for the police to protect the public.

“Our blood is not worthless,” “Today it’s Shelly, tomorrow it could be you,” and, “Death penalty for murderers,” they read.

Not surprisingly, when on Sunday the police revealed both that they had arrested Abu Khdeir’s Jewish killers and that they had arrested Dadon’s Muslim murderer, public interest in the former story far surpassed interest in the latter.

The story of an Israeli Muslim terrorist murdering an Israeli Jewish woman is a dog bites man story.

The story of Israeli Jewish terrorists murdering an Israeli Muslim teenager is a man bites dog story.

The same goes for violent rioting.

The anti-terror demonstration in Jerusalem scheduled for last Tuesday quickly became a violent anti-Arab riot with rioters assaulting helpless Arab passersby. The police arrested 47 Jewish rioters. And the public as a whole condemned them.

Without public support, such deviant behavior has little longevity. Mob violence, as a general rule, plays to the audience at home. With no public support, the riots were over after one night.

In contrast, Jerusalem Arabs began rioting on Wednesday night. The riots spread to the north and south of the country by the end of the week. And there seems to be no end in sight.

There are several factors prolonging them. The most troubling is the depraved state of Arab society – both Palestinian Arab and Israeli Arab.

Whereas aside from fascist soccer fan clubs there are no significant Israeli Jewish groups that condone terrorism or racial violence, hatred of Israel and support for terrorism and the destruction of the Jewish state are widespread among Israeli Arab leaders and the general Arab public.

As for the Palestinians, there are no significant forces in Palestinian society calling for peaceful coexistence with Israel. The only voices celebrated are those calling for murdering Jews and destroying the Jewish state.

There is also the issue of the unfortunate timing the current violence.

The month of Ramadan has only just begun. During Ramadan, Muslims generally sleep during the day, wake up in the evening to eat and stay up all night long. With the widespread societal support for committing violence against Jews, rioting after the holiday meal is an attractive option for young people.

Moreover, we are in the midst of summer vacation. Teenagers with nothing to do can easily keep rioting through the night until school starts on September 1.

Monday night was witness to some encouraging signs. Several Arab mayors took to the streets to discourage continued rioting. The mayor of Kalansuwa, whose residents firebombed Jewish cars over the weekend and beat their drivers, began cleaning up the road. But the rioting is far from a spent force.

Beyond the local cause for their continuation, there are the outside forces itching to take over the action.

Israeli Arabs do not operate in a vacuum.

If the rioting continues, the current situation, in which much of the violence is spontaneous and locally organized, is not likely to last.

In 1987, the Palestinian uprising began as a spontaneous riot in Gaza City following a traffic accident involving an Israeli driver. At the time, from its distant base in Tunis, the PLO was searching for a way to be relevant.

Yasser Arafat and his goons quickly seized on the riots in the territories and took control of them through a campaign of bribery, extortion and murder.

Today Fatah and Hamas are in the midst of a power struggle. Each is keen to take control of the riots to assert supremacy over the other.

In Fatah’s case the effort still appears limited to incitement. On Monday for instance, Fatah’s Facebook page addressed Israel saying, “Sons of Zion, this is an oath to the Lord of the Heavens: Prepare all the body bags you can for your body parts.”

As Palestinian Media Watch has reported, this post was of a piece with other posts Fatah has published in the past week, all making clear that Fatah supports the riots and wishes to subsume them into a larger Fatah-led terror campaign against Israel.

Hamas today faces severe challenges.

Egypt is starving Hamas by blocking the smuggling tunnels from Egypt to Gaza. Fatah is starving Hamas by refusing to pay its employees’ salaries.

Internally Hamas in Gaza is facing a growing challenge from Islamic Jihad on the one hand and al-Qaida and ISIS affiliated terror cells on the other.

As Hamas sees it, no doubt rightly, the best way to rally its people behind it, weaken Fatah and alleviate Egypt’s stranglehold of Gaza is to go to war against the Jews. Operationally, it believes that it has a momentary advantage because a significant number of Israeli forces are tied down in Judea and Samaria.

The Netanyahu government gave Hamas good reason to believe it should press its perceived advantage.

By openly calling last Thursday for a cease-fire with Hamas, the government demonstrated severe weakness at a critical moment. It is not at all surprising that by Monday Hamas had escalated its attacks and extended the range of the rockets it has deployed to the outskirts of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Nor is it surprising that by Monday night, the government was compelled to launch Operation Protective Edge to destroy Hamas’s missile arsenal.

The Jewish terrorists who murdered Abu Khdeir have made a bad situation much worse for Israel. The largely anti-Semitic international community had difficulty denying Israel’s right to self-defense after Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-Ad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah’s bodies were found last Monday.

Now, despite the obvious differences between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the man-bites-dog story these Jewish terrorists created has relegated Israel again to its normal position of defendant in the continuous Kafkaesque trial that is the Jewish state’s diplomatic fate.

Unfortunately, we cannot stand down because we are mortified by the sick margins of our society.

We must build on these first signs of remorse and quell the Israeli Arab riots as quickly as possible. Aside from their obvious human toll, every day the riots continue, the prospect of Palestinian terror groups taking over and directing the violence expands.

So too, Israel has no choice but to fight another round of war with Hamas. And it must win this one decisively.

It would have been far more advantageous if Israel could have sat back and watched as Hamas and its foes destroyed one another. But this is not an option. Hamas is determined to fight. Israel must defeat it.

Once the dust has settled, or even as it continues to storm, Israel will have to deal with our Jewish terrorist problem.

The weeds of our society must be uprooted. And we must take action to heal Israeli Arab society. We cannot repeat the mistake we made in 2000, by appointing a commission that strengthened the most dangerous forces in Israeli Arab society in an attempt to appease them.

We must build on the actions of the Arab mayors who have begun to stand up to the rioters and actively encourage Israeli Arabs to integrate into Israeli society while enforcing the laws without prejudice against those who incite, condone, facilitate, organize or otherwise abet mob violence and irredentism among Israeli Arab society.

Israel faces a difficult, violent period ahead. But there are certain imperatives of freedom that we cannot shirk.

Defeating enemies – from within and without – who act to destroy us is one of them.

Where’s Israel’s Hashtag, Mr. President?

Hashtag activism has become a staple of the Obama administration’s foreign policy toolbox. While many view hashtag campaigns as a good way to bring an issue to the attention of those who can effect change, it’s also seen as nothing more than a feel good gesture undertaken by ineffectual leadership.

When Russian forces first invaded Ukraine, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki tweeted a picture of herself holding a sign with the hashtag #UnitedForUkraine as a sign of support for the country. When the al-Qaeda affiliated Boko Haram terrorists kidnapped 276 girls from their school in Nigeria, First Lady Michelle Obama held up a #BringBackOurGirls sign calling for the release of the kidnapped girls.

Last week, Palestinian terrorists kidnapped three Israeli teenagers in Judea and Samaria. The students, identified as Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaer, and Naftali Frankel were abducted as they were hitchhiking home from their school in the West Bank. Additionally, one of the kidnapped teens is a U.S. citizen. So, where is the administration’s outrage? Where is the administration’s hashtag campaign?

As Jewish communities around the world pray for the safe return of these three boys, Palestinians affiliated with Hamas are celebrating the news of missing Israeli teens by passing out candies in Gaza.

Founded as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is an openly anti-Semitic and violent terrorist organization bent on the complete destruction of Israel. They have claimed responsibility for the deaths of countless innocent Israelis through cowardly acts of terror.

Moreover, Hamas has justified these kidnappings as a legitimate act and has condemned any Palestinian cooperation with Israel in the search for the missing boys. Palestinian militants have long stated their support for kidnapping Israelis in order to win concessions from the Israeli government.

Recently, the Palestinian Authority swore in a new “unity” government that incorporates Hamas appointed ministers, which has led to a breakdown in peace talks. Despite Hamas’s charged rhetoric and stated support for kidnapping, administration officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, have decided to place the blame for the failure of peace talks on Israel.

Though the White House has implicated Hamas in the kidnappings, it is unlikely that there will be any direct action taken. The Obama administration’s disdain for Israel is no secret. It can be seen by both the lack of a symbolic gesture of support for the kidnapped teens, as well as the legitimization of their enemies through financial support.

The White House has decided not only to discount the kidnapping of three young boys, including an American, they have also decided to skirt U.S. law by promising continued funds to the new terrorist-aligned Palestinian government. By law, U.S. aid is to be cut from any Palestinian government where Hamas holds influence, unless Hamas complies with strict guidelines that include the recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State, something Hamas still refuse to acknowledge.

This legitimization of Israel’s enemies will only invite further violence. If President Obama wants to prove his critics wrong and show that he is a friend to Israel then he should join congressional lawmakers who are pushing legislation to classify the newly formed unity government as a foreign terrorist organization, and cut off aid to the Palestinians terrorists. This action is a necessary undertaking until the Palestinians stop associating with terrorists, kidnapping innocent teenagers, and can show their willingness to accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. At a bare minimum, the White House can support the #BringBackOurBoys hashtag.