A Los Angeles litigator courageously stands in solidarity with Israel: channeling his aggressive zealous advocacy on behalf of Israel. Defending the State of Israel's: right to exist, right to protect her citizens from terrorism, right to defend her borders from hostile enemies. Prosecuting and impeaching Israel's defamers.
Israel has repeatedly gone way beyond the level of reasonable to give away huge parts of it’s homeland in order to take huge chances for questionable promises.
In 1981, 1991 and 2005, Israel made major concessions based on big promises from Arab leaders that have all summed up to one big nothing in return.
No quiet, no peace – just more war and more attacks.
Mortimer Zuckerman from the US News & World Report once commented that if Israel would be 10% more moral than the rest of the countries, it would be a tremendous accomplishment, and if Israel would be 25% more moral than the other nations, we would be a light unto the nations, but if Israel will be 50% more moral – then it will be dead.
Israel needs to be careful and vigilant – the costs are just too great.
The newest addition to the Jewish calendar and an Israeli national holiday, Jerusalem Day is held on the 28th day of the Hebrew month of Iyar—six weeks after the Passover seder and one week before the eve of the holiday of Shavuot.
In June 1967, 28 Iyar was the third day of the Six-Day War, when Jerusalem’s Old City fell to Israeli forces.
As we discussed in prior posts, Jerusalem Day celebrates this reunification of Israel’s capital city, when the IDF essentially brought the holy city back to Jewish sovereignty. It also commemorates the two-day (June 6-7, 1967) hard-fought battle for Jerusalem, when the elite 55th Paratroopers Brigade, led by its legendary commander General Motta Gur, liberated Jewish holy places from an illegal and immoral Jordanian occupation.
Now, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification, the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) has released a new film, “In Our Hands: the Battle for Jerusalem”. It celebrates Israel’s 1967 victory by closely following the soldiers who valiantly fought in the battalions of the 55th Brigade, capturing the eastern half of the Holy City.
Their heroism gave Jews across the planet and Israelis (including Christian and even Muslim Israeli citizens) access to holy sites that had been denied to them for nearly two decades.
It also made possible the restoration of the many synagogues, cemeteries, and other vestiges of Jewish life that Jordanian authorities had spent nineteen long years dynamiting, looting, ransacking, and befouling (“In Our Hands” opens powerfully with footage of this devastation of Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter, which according to newspapers of the time had the “look of Stalingrad or Berlin in World War II.”)
Over 700 movie theaters across America played CBN’s docudrama on May 23—the eve of Jerusalem Day—at 7:00pm local time in a special one-night-only Fathom Events presentation.
Most of the cinemas were reportedly sold out.
I had the opportunity to watch it last night at a packed Regal Cinemas theater in Syracuse, NY. It was an incredibly meaningful way to usher in the celebration of Jerusalem Day with family and friends.
With its inspiring reenactments, it’s ideal to see this film on the big screen (one of my favorite scenes that a computer or TV screen can’t possibly do justice: IDF Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren holding a Torah aloft as he runs through the narrow alleyways of the Old City, making a beeline for the Temple Mount and dodging Jordanian sniper fire along the way):
Encore presentations are scheduled for select movie theaters. A listing and further information for ticket purchases can be found here.
For those who can’t make it to an encore Fathom Event, the film is set to be available on DVD, Blu-Ray and for digital download on June 5.
The release is deliberately timed for the first day of the 1967 war, when Jordan began a relentless bombardment of the civilian areas in the western half of Jerusalem (the shelling hit the President’s Residence, the Hadassah Medical Center, the parliamentary building and 900 other buildings in the Israeli-controlled part of the city—killing 15 civilians and wounding over a thousand).
CBN’s Film is a “David and Goliath Story” Come to Life
As noted in the earlier post, what happened on Jerusalem’s battlegrounds during the Six-Day War is well-documented.
There are literally hundreds of books, scholarly journal articles, feature films and documentaries, and opinion editorials that address these monumental events for the history of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
In advance of the semi-centennial of the Holy City’s reunification this year, new materials about the reconstitution of Jewish Jerusalem have also been released. They include some never-before-seen black and white photos of worshippers at the Western Wall immediately after it was liberated.
Researchers will also now be able to mine the recently unsealed secret transcripts—935 pages worth, reflecting some 100 hours of deliberation—of the highly classified Israeli government committee that managed the country’s military affairs and basically “ran the Six-Day War.”
To this body of work, CBN’s docudrama is a noteworthy addition.
With a run-time of one hour and 41 minutes, the documentary isn’t really a comprehensive or complete re-telling of Israel’s lightening victory, as director Erin Zimmerman acknowledged in an interview last week.
Still, for those less familiar with the history, I thought that the movie did a terrific job of conveying the “emotional rollercoaster” that Israel’s government and its citizens experienced during the run-up to the war.
Particularly compelling are the reenactments of the belligerent speeches from Arab leaders in the weeks before the fighting.
As I wrote in my prior post, in the spring of 1967 the Arab media was saturated with calls to annihilate the young Jewish state. But there’s nothing quite like seeing and hearing on the big screen the unhinged clamoring for Israel’s destruction.
It’s no wonder that Jews worldwide talked about the possibility of a second Holocaust or that Israelis began stockpiling body bags, anticipating tens of thousands of both IDF and civilian deaths.
So basically “In Our Hands” underscores the resilience of the Israeli people against unbelievable odds.
at the end of the day, the film is about more that the telling of Six Day War; it is about the survival of the Jewish people, which yet again escaped annihilation.”
“In Our Hands” Retraces the Decision to Reunify Jerusalem
Israel’s government and its military commanders debated and agonized over the decisions they faced in May and June of 1967.
They struggled to make sense of the unfolding events in Egypt and Syria, as the full scope of Arab military preparations to drive the Jews into the sea became increasingly clear.
They hesitated before directing the IDF to break the Arab choke ring by launching a preemptive air attack on Egypt’s Air Force bases in the Sinai on June 5, and made the fateful decision to cross over into the Old City only after Jordan’s King Hussein ignored one last offer for a cease fire.
It does so using archival footage; first-hand testimony from surviving members of the 55th Brigade; and interviews with a number of experts (getting several cameos is MK Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the United States and author of the war’s definitive study: Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East).
These offer viewers a wealth of insight into the decision making process. They show how despite Jordan’s deplorable and unlawful actions, Israel had no designs on the Jordanian-controlled portions of the city.
That is, the possibility of peace with Jordan was viewed as more important than reclaiming Jewish heritage sites in any practical or physical sense.
So it’s pretty clear after watching the first half of the film that there wouldn’t have been any war or any ‘occupation’ in the absence of Arab state belligerence.
Some Memorable Scenes from “In Our Hands: the Battle for Jerusalem”
CBN’s new film depicts how the war was waged on multiple fronts, with Israel ultimately succeeded in defeating three enemy armies, and capturing huge portions of territory.
By the time the UN Security Council declared a cease fire after some 130 hours of fighting, Israel had tripled its size. It added roughly 42,000 square miles to what Israeli diplomat Abba Eban once called the post-1948 War of Independence’s “Auschwitz borders”.
The scenes of Motta Gur coming up with battle plans and then choosing his key commanders are helpful for fleshing out key aspects of the military operation.
But the best parts of the movie by far are the exciting dramatized reenactments of what the paratroopers themselves experienced in the battle for Jerusalem.
These reenactments were filmed on location in Israel, including at Ammunition Hill, the Rockefeller Museum, the Mount of Olives, the Tower of David and more.
Filming took 17 days using Israeli crews and more than 100 actors and extras (the film stars Israeli actor Sharon Friedman who brilliantly plays General Motta Gur).
In these remarkably well-researched scenes, the film transforms into a compelling and emotional “Israeli version of Band of Brothers” (estimates vary, but by most accounts some 780 Israelis and roughly 20,000 Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians died during the week of fighting; in the one bloody night of trench warfare at Ammunition Hill, 36 Israeli paratroopers and 71 Jordanian soldiers were killed).
Much of the documentary follows the courageous soldiers that made up the 55th Brigade. They were men from all walks of life who had trained for weeks to do a parachute jump in the Sinai only to have that mission aborted and to be ordered to turn around and “go into an urban warfare situation that they were not trained for.”
They went in blind and had to improvise at every turn. The bravery through the firestorm and blood and guts of that fight; it was amazing to me that they ended up victorious despite the odds.”
The battle reenactments in the trenches at Ammunition Hill are particularly well done.
But also moving is what happened after the fighting was over, for example when the paratroopers at Ammunition Hill bury the Jordanian soldiers who were killed in battle, erecting a makeshift tribute to their bravery:
The reenactments at the Western Wall are also touching, including the one of the colonel helping an Arab woman give birth, and the one when a soldier teaches his non-religious friend how to pray for the first time:
But if I had to pick a favorite reenactment it would be where Yoram Zamosh, the company commander of the 71st battalion, and some of his troops are hosted for dinner by a Jewish family in west Jerusalem.
While seated at the dining room table, Zamosh is given an old Israeli flag to take with him into battle. It turns out the flag belongs to the family’s matriarch, who had to flee the Old City in 1948 after the Jordanians ethnically cleansed all Jews from the territory that came under their control. She asks Zamosh to put the flag back where it rightfully belongs (this moving scene is embedded in this short video clip):
As it happened, Zamosh did get the chance to keep his promise—he and his men hung that very flag above the Western Wall on June 7. A photograph of this triumphant moment has become one of the iconic images of the 1967 war:
“In Our Hands” unexpectedly wraps up with Gordon Robertson, the CEO of the Christian Broadcasting Network, offering a 10 minute analysis of the film’s significance.
Robertson is the son of the famous Southern Baptist minister Pat Robertson, who reportedly also had a long-standing interest in creating a film about Israel’s extraordinary 1967 victory.
But Robertson devotes most of his remarks to current events. A sharp critic of both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, he basically argues that the Palestinians aren’t currently credible peace partners.
He also shares with the audience how important it was that the film’s production coincided with the UN Security Council’s passage of Resolution 2334, which declares east Jerusalem and even the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter to be illegally occupied territory.
According to Robertson, the shameful resolution made the crew more cognizant of how “In Our Hands” wasn’t just about making the 1967 war come to life on the big screen—it was also about dispelling the lies of the anti-Israel global movement by “proclaiming the truth about Israel’s past and present.”
Robertson ends his monologue on a positive note though.
For him, the very fact that Israel was able to enter into peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan—two countries dedicated to wiping Israel off the map back in 1967—shows that even the “impossible is possible.”
Conclusion
Yom Yerushalayim marks the day when a 2,000 year historical injustice was reversed and when the Jewish state’s certain defeat was transformed into an incredible victory.
But the Christian Broadcasting Network’s new docudrama is a reminder that Jewish heritage was liberated and a massacre was averted not merely because of Israel’s superior military tactics and training, or the bravery of the men in the IDF’s 55th Brigade. The message of the film is that what happened on June 7, 1967 (the 28th day of Hebrew month of Iyar) was a miracle, not least because it was so unexpected.
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Miriam F. Elman is an Associate Professor of Political Science and the Robert D. McClure Professor of Teaching Excellence at the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, Syracuse University. She is the editor of five books and the author of over 60 journal articles, book chapters, and government reports on topics related to international and national security, religion and politics, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She also frequently speaks and writes on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) anti-Israel movement. Follow her on Twitter @MiriamElman
The Jordanian government strongly condemned the "storming" of a a group of "radical Jewish activists" to the Temple Mount, warning Israel of "hurting the feelings of Muslims."
Jordanian Minister for Media Affairs and official government spokesman Mohammad Momani said that "the Jordanian government strongly condemns the blatant Israeli aggression to enable Jewish extremists to storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque yards, as this represents a violation of the sanctity of the place and hurting the feelings of Muslims around the world." .
Israeli police arrested several Jews for attempting to pray on their holiest site, which the Jordanian media reported, but they are blaming Israel anyway.
Momani said that Jordan "holds the Israeli government as the occupying power responsible for compromising the Al-Aqsa Mosque and of encouraging hundreds of settlers to desecrate the area."
This is state-sanctioned antisemitism. Not that anyone in the "human rights" community cares much.
You know how "human rights" groups and "pro-Palestinian" groups love to say that Israel puts Palestinians in Gaza as well as the West Bank in an "open-air prison"?
You know how the media will exhaustively cover any defensive measures Israel does to protect itself from terrorists that live among the Palestinians as "collective punishment"?
You know how Israel's security fence that has saved hundreds or thousands of lives is routinely denounced because it inconveniences some Arabs?
You know how Palestinian leaders will send official complaints to the UN for everything Israel does, or allegedly does, that has the slightest impact on the slightest number of Palestinian Arabs?
Finally, a final question: How much have you read or heard about a literal open-air prison, complete with watchtowers, being built around a Palestinian UNRWA camp in Lebanon that houses some 120,000 people?
Construction of a controversial concrete wall barrier around the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp has resumed following a brief halt.
The past few weeks have seen a surge in concrete wall’s construction. A security source told The Daily Star that the wall is now “80 percent complete.”
Palestinian officials and popular committee members at the south Lebanon camp have reached tentative agreements following discussions with the army.
However, Palestinian refugees are dealing with various problems due to the wall’s construction. Omm Issam’s home had several of its rooms taken down due to its proximity to the wall.
A source told The Daily Star that the wall will run through “hundreds” of houses.
Abu Yassin, whose home and orange garden are dwarfed by the wall, mockingly says that the wall is now his neighbor.
In November 2016, it was announced that an agreement had been made between the Lebanese Army and the Palestinian factions to construct a wall and erect watchtowers around Ain al-Hilweh, and that the process was well underway.
The move was to maintain security in the camp, which has been rocked by clashes, most recently in April. The nearly six days of continuous clashes left at least 10 dead and over 50 wounded.
Despite an initial agreement between the Lebanese Army and Palestinian factions, opposition to the wall mounted during the construction process, forcing the army to temporarily halt construction.
“The Palestinian factions implicitly agree on it [despite vocal objection later on],” a source told The Daily Star in February.
The hypocrisy is stunning. Palestinian "leaders" agreed to build this prison, and the only ones who oppose it are the actual people affected, who have no voice. (Terror groups like Hamas and PFLP are the only organized groups that opposed the wall. Hezbollah supports it completely as a decision by the Lebanese government to "prevent terrorists from infiltrating the country."
To be sure, Ain el Hilweh is a violent mess, and a terror group associated with Al Qaeda, Bilal al Badr, has infiltrated the camp and clashes regularly with Palestinian forces (Fatah, PFLP, DFLP) an the Lebanese Army. Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees of Palestinian descent have crammed into the already crowded camp because they cannot be treated like normal refugees thanks to the existence of UNRWA. Lebanon does not allow Palestinians to become citizens even after 70 years of them living in these wretched conditions and has specifically anti-Palestinian laws on the books.
But the silence from NGOs, the UN, Palestinian leaders and world media over what can literally be called a prison, with concrete walls and watchtowers, being built by the Lebanese government, shows how sickeningly hypocritical the entire world is.
No one gives a damn about Palestinians unless Jews can be blamed.
In another show of admiration for terrorist murderers and according to the Palestinian Authority's policy of presenting them as role models for Palestinian youth, the Palestinian NGO "Women's Technical Affairs Committee" (WTAC) has named a youth center for women after the terrorist murderer who led the most lethal attack in Israel's history.
The Dalal Mughrabi Center is a joint initiative of the NGO, the PA, the UN, and the Norwegian government! The center's name sign prominently includes the logos of:
- The PA Ministry of Local Government
- UN Women
- The Norwegian Representative Office to the PA
The center, which was inaugurated last week, is named after the terrorist who in 1978 led a group of terrorists who hijacked a bus and killed 37 Israelis, among them of these 12 children:
Worse still, it is not only the name that glorifies the terrorist murderer, the purpose of the center is to educate about her murderous terror attack to youth. At the inauguration of the center, which is situated in the village of Burqa in the Nablus district, a member of the village council, explained about the center's activities:
"Reem Hajje, a member of the village council, noted that the center will focus especially on the history of the struggle of Martyr Dalal Mughrabi and on presenting it to the youth groups, and that it constitutes the beginning of the launch of enrichment activities regarding the history of the Palestinian struggle."
[Ma'an, independent Palestinian news agency, May 15, 2017]
The Norwegian Representative Office describes its cultural activities with Palestinians on its website:
"The Norwegian Representative Office (NRO), along with Norwegian cultural institutions, are among the main cooperation partners in the culture sector in Palestine. The NRO culture program includes supporting cultural rights and increasing the capacity of the culture sector, through civil society organizations that can play the role as agents of change, in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture."
[Website of the Representative Office of Norway
to the Palestinian Authority, accessed May 25, 2017]
It would seem Norway expects the WTAC to "play the role as agents of change" - but one wonders which change that might be when the new center teaches youth that a terrorist murderer is a role model for women.
UN Women is listed on WTAC's website as a "partner," and NGO Monitor has documented that UN Women is a donor of the WATC.
The following is a longer excerpt of the article reporting on the opening of the center named after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi:
Headline: "The Women's [Technical] Affairs Committee inaugurated a women's center in Burqa"
"The Women's [Technical] Affairs Committee, today, Monday [May 15, 2017], inaugurated the Martyr Dalal Mughrabi Center (i.e., terrorist who led murder of 37, 12 of them children) in the village of Burqa in the Nablus district.
The renovation of this center and turning it into a place for the village's activities were carried out as part of an initiative of the Women's [Technical] Affairs Committee in partnership with female members of the village council. This building will be used to hold social activities and activities for women and youth...
Reem Hajje, a member of the village council, noted that the center will focus especially on the history of the struggle of Martyr Dalal Mughrabi and on presenting it to the youth groups, and that it constitutes the beginning of the launch of enrichment activities regarding the history of the Palestinian struggle.
The inauguration of the center on the 69th anniversary of the Nakba (i.e., "the catastrophe," Palestinian term for the establishment of the State of Israel) symbolizes the persistence in continuing on the path of struggle and honoring the Palestinian female and male fighters."
[Ma'an, independent Palestinian news agency, May 15, 2017]
The photo shows girls posing at the Dalal Mughrabi Center below a sign with the logo of the PA Ministry of Local Government (upper right), the logo of the WATC (upper left), the logo of UN Women - a UN organization for women - (lower right), the logo of the Norwegian Representative Office to the PA (lower left) and the logo of the Central Elections Commission - Palestine. Text on sign: "Martyr Dalal Mughrabi Center A cultural and social center and youth center In partnership with the Burqa village council and the Committee for Women's Affairs"
Dalal Mughrabi led the most lethal terror attack in Israel's history, known as the Coastal Road massacre, in 1978, when she and other Fatah terrorists hijacked a bus on Israel's Coastal Highway, murdering 37 civilians, 12 of them children, and wounding over 70.
Women's Technical Affairs Committee (WATC) - a Palestinian NGO committed to advocate Palestinian women's rights. WATC states on its website that many of its members are also members of the PLO but it does not seem as if the WATC itself is a member of the PLO. The website says WATC "embrace[s] a coalition of seven women's frameworks, represented in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and a number of women's centers and activists."
On Monday this week, while Mahmoud Abbas was probably preparing his "we-want-peace" statement for US President Trump the next day, official PA TV interviewed and honored the heroism of a terrorist murderer of 16 Israelis. But the PA host went even further. Not only did she glorify the murders of the past, she also expressed her longing for the return to the days of Palestinian terror and violence:
"We long for the days of the Intifada, the days of the revolution... Why are we not seeing activities like that today? ... We want more from them [the Palestinian people]."
[Official PA TV, I Call You, May 22, 2017]
Interviewing released terrorist Abd Al-Hadi Ghneim who murdered 16 during the first wave of Palestinian violence and terror in the first Intifada, the PA TV host encouraged Palestinians to use more violence.Whenthe murderer responded, recounting that he had succeeded killing "16 Zionists" in his "operation," the female host praised his "heroism":
Official PA TV host: "Today, during the [prisoners' hunger] strike, we long for the days of the Intifada, the days of the revolution, in which the Palestinian people struggled for freedom, struggled to end the settlements, and against the occupation that still exists today. Why are we not seeing activities like that today? We appreciate every effort of every member of our Palestinian people, but we want more from them."
Released terrorist murderer Abd Al-Hadi Ghneim: "You bring me back to the 1987 Intifada (i.e., Palestinian violence and terror, 1987-1993). I was active in various ways. In my operation (i.e., terror attack) on bus 405, 16 Zionists died and 24 were wounded... I was arrested after the operation and they took care of me [medically]. I spent 22 and a half years [in prison]."
Official PA TV host: "We always salute this heroic role."
During the PA TV program, a photo of terrorist prisoner Marwan Barghouti was displayed behind the TV host.
The murderer Abd Al-Hadi Ghneim was sentenced to 16 life sentences for the murder of 16 passengers on a bus in 1989. Ghneim attacked the driver and forced the bus off a cliff, murdering 16. Ghneim was released in October 2011 as part of the Shalit prisoner exchange deal brokered between the Israeli government and Hamas. Israel released 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held hostage by Hamas for more than 5 years.
Marwan Barghouti is heading the current hunger strike by the Palestinian prisoners (since April 17, 2017). He is serving 5 life sentences for orchestrating three shooting attacks that murdered 5 people: one attack in Jerusalem (June 12, 2001) in which Greek monk Tsibouktsakis Germanus was murdered by terrorist Ismail Radaida and another unidentified terrorist, another attack at a gas station in Givat Zeev near Jerusalem (Jan. 15, 2002) in which Yoela Hen, 45, was murdered by terrorists led by Mohammed Matla, and one shooting and stabbing attack at the Sea Food Market restaurant in Tel Aviv (March 5, 2002) in which Eli Dahan, 53, Yosef Habi, 52, and Police Officer Sergeant-Major Salim Barakat, 33, were murdered by terrorist Ibrahim Hasouna. When arrested by Israel in 2002, Barghouti headed the Tanzim (Fatah terror faction). After he was convicted and imprisoned, he was re-elected member of the Palestinian Authority parliament. On Dec. 4, 2016, he was elected to Fatah's Central Committee.
