ELDER OF ZIYON: #Pallywood: The Gaza Pieta

This photo was taken by an AFP photographer in Gaza:

I noted on Twitter how staged this photo was. A person, presumably running to get medical help for his injured friend, stops to allow a photographer to take his picture.

Others noticed that this photo may have been much more staged than I realized. The "injured" person was posed to resemble the Pieta (specifically Michelangelo's Pieta), the famous artwork that shows the Virgin Mary holding Jesus' body.

I think there is something to this.

While the "injured" man dangles his right arm and puts his head back as if he is unconscious (or dead), his left hand is grasping the shoulder of his "Mary."

It really appears like the photographer was trying to subconsciously evoke a strong image of Jesus' suffering for the Christians who see the image and he directed his actors to help him out.

ELDER OF ZIYON: An Israeli soldier tells the truth about what happens at the Gaza border

I received a copy of this email that was sent to Rabbi Heshie Billet by an Israeli soldier who shows how wrong the media is about Gaza:

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_______________________________________________________________

55 killed and over 1200 wounded.

I'm writing this post for my good friends- my moral, humane friends, and for all those who are concerned and angry over today's deaths and injuries on the border with Gaza.

Regarding Israel's exodus from Egypt, when the Egyptian army drowned in the Red Sea just before overtaking the Israelites – our sages say that God scolded the angels and prevented them from singing and rejoicing, saying “my creations are drowning in the sea and you are singing?!”

I write these words with great caution, and from a sense of mission. I can understand and identify with all of those good and moral Zionists who fear that the many Palestinian victims may be our fault, the result of mistakes made by our side.

I’m writing because I am one of the few who was there – in uniform, in the reserves, but I was there. Yes, right there on the fence where the demonstrations are happening. It was last Friday – but I saw it with my own eyes; I was on our side but I could see and hear and understand everything. I want to testify from my firsthand knowledge, not a theoretical point of view. Because I was there.

I want to testify that what I saw and heard was a tremendous, supreme effort from our side, to prevent in every possible way Palestinian deaths and injuries.

Of course, the primary mission was to prevent hundreds of thousands of Gazans from infiltrating into our territory. That kind of invasion would be perilous, mortally dangerous to the nearby communities, would permit terrorists disguised as civilians to enter our kibbutzim and moshavim, and would leave us with no choice but to target every single infiltrator.

That’s why our soldiers were directed to prevent infiltration – in a variety of ways, only using live ammunition as a last resort. The IDF employs many creative means of reducing friction with Gazans and uses numerous methods, most of which are not made public, to prevent them from reaching the fence.

In addition, over the last few weeks there have been serious efforts to save the lives of children and civilians who have been pushed to the front lines by the Hamas – who are trying to hide behind them in order to infiltrate and attack Israel.

When there is no alternative and live ammunition must be used to stop those who storm the fence – the soldiers make heroic and sometimes dangerous efforts not to kill and only to injure those on the other side.

The IDF is stationing senior commanders at every confrontation point to ensure that every shot is approved and backed up by a responsible figure with proper authority. Every staging area has an especially large number of troops in order to make sure that soldiers are not put into life-threatening situations where they will have no choice but to fire indiscriminately.

A situation where thousands of people rush you is frightening, even terrifying. It is extremely difficult to show restraint, and it requires calm, mature professionalism.

55 dead is an enormous number. But I can testify from my first-hand experience, that every bullet and every hit is carefully reported, documented and investigated, in Excel spreadsheets. Literally. I was there and I saw it with my own eyes.

This isn’t the time or place to discuss the situation in general and the desperate plight of the residents of Gaza. I’m not interested in starting a political discussion here, although I do have a clear position.

What I’m trying to do is present, for everyone who really wants to listen, the extent of the IDF’s enormous effort to protect Israel’s borders while minimizing injuries and loss of life on the other side.

And despite all this – the situation on the border with Gaza is deteriorating. I hope that we won’t be called up again soon for reserve duty to protect our country. But if we are, we will go with the knowledge that we are serving a just and morally correct cause. We do not rejoice when we must go to war, but we also don’t go like sheep to the slaughter. Not anymore.

EMES VEEMUNAH: The Truth about the Gaza Protest

Those of us that are Chicago Cubs fans have been made proud over the last couple of years. Even for those not into baseball it had been a widely known and accepted truism that the Cubs were the immutable  doormat of the National League - destined to remain there forever. Those ‘lovable losers’  were a perennial joke for comedians - forever incapable of making it to the World Series.

I recall the burst of laughter by the audience when the 1989 movie ‘Back to the Future II’ predicted that the Cubs would win the World Series in 2015. That movie was off by a year. In 2016 the Cubs won the Worlds Series.

What changed? It was the new owner’s determination to build a winner. Tom Ricketts bought the Cubs in 2009 and 7 years later people stopped laughing. Ricketts had a World Series winner. 2016 was 108 years since the last time the Cubs did that.

What many people today might not know is that the Cubs were once seen as so antisemitic that no respectable Jew would be a fan. Most old time Jewish Chicagoans that are in to baseball  remain loyal Chicago White Sox fans for that reason.

So as a Cub fan, I was particularly pleased to see  VIN report that Tom Ricketts (the new RNC finance Chair) had flown to Israel to attend the US Embassy opening in Jerusalem yesterday. My how times have changed.

As inspired as I was yesterday by the show of support for the Jewish state by so many people from diverse backgrounds, I was nevertheless disappointed by those who saw this magnificent event as troubling instead. Many of whom were Jews – some even religious Jews.

According to VIN 4 Republican senators, 10 Republican congressmen and one Republican governor attended. But not a single Democrat.  Most of whom expressed doom and gloom about it. Although at least one offered written support: 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, issued written statements of support.

“Every nation should have the right to choose its capital. I sponsored legislation to do this two decades ago, and I applaud President Trump for doing it,” the top Senate Democrat said in a rare moment of agreement with the Republican president. 

What is most egregious however (and what these doomers and gloomers were reflecting) was the mainstream media focus on Palestinians that were trying to cross the border from Gaza into Israel. A prime example of this was a  British rag called The Guardian: 

International condemnation of Israel’s killing of 59 Palestinian protesters in Gaza escalated as thousands rallied in the coastal enclave to bury the dead from the latest round of violence.

The killings took place on Monday during demonstrations at the Gaza border fence, which coincided with a high-profile ceremony to mark the controversial transfer of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by the Trump administration that overturned decades of US foreign policy.

As senior UN rights officials condemned the killings as an “outrageous human rights violation” – adding that it appeared anyone approaching the Gaza border fence was liable to be killed by Israeli soldiers. 

Not a word about context. The message is that Israeli soldiers care little about human life as they shoot to kill unarmed Palestinian whose only goal was to protest the harsh conditions imposed on them by the Israeli occupiers. 

That message is a shameful and bold faced lie. I’m sure that not a single Israeli soldier at the border crossing had any intention of killing a Palestinian. They did not shoot to kill. Israeli snipers aimed for and shot them in the legs to stop them from surging across the border. That was actually reported by a mainstream media reporter yesterday stationed in Gaza who witnessed where all the wounded Palestinians were injured. That 59 died needlessly is a tragedy. There is no shame in reporting that. The shame is in how it is being characterized. And in who they blame.

Let us be clear. Israel was protecting its borders from a people who have fired thousands of rockets indiscriminately into Israeli cites near the Gaza border. A people from whose ranks many have tried mightily to infiltrate Israel - and kill as many Jews randomly as they could. Mostly through terror tunnels.

It is also the stated policy of their Hamas leadership in Gaza - and the not so secret desire of the more ‘moderate’ Palestinian Authority (whose leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is an antisemitic Holocaust denier) to take back ‘their country’ for Islam by all means necessary. Including death to some of them while trying. 

Hamas surely knew that Palestinians trying to storm that border would be killed. They urged their people to close up shop and amass on the border to do exactly that – hoping for those deaths to occur so they could use them against Israel.  This too is not a secret. Even some of the mainstream media reported that truth albeit buried some where deep into their report. Which consisted mostly of Jews killing poor unarmed Palestinian protesters. Some of which was blamed by reporters on the Embassy opening in Jerusalem. Which Hamas cynically knew would be reported that way. 

And what was their reason for doing this? Not the poverty they suffer because of a blockade imposed by both Israel and Egypt. Both of whom did that as a means to prevent arms being smuggled into Gaza which would be used against them. No... that wasn’t it. It was not a protest about the squalor in which they live. 

They wanted to return to the land their parents and grandparents abandoned during Israel’s war of independence in 1948 -  which they claim as a right. That too was reported last night in a rare moment of mainstream media honesty.

One can quibble about why they left and whose fault it was. But there is no way that the exponentially greater number of descendants are going to get that land back. To do so would mean the end of Israel – and they know it. Which is of course their goal.

What about the possibility of a 2 state solution with East Jerusalem as their capital? One of the protesters was randomly interviewed about what he thought about that. He categorically rejected the idea claiming all of Jerusalem is theirs. No Palestine without all of Jerusalem. 

It is pure fiction that the Israeli snipers were purposely killing unarmed Palestinians peacefully protesting at the border. There was nothing peaceful about it. They may not have brought guns. But that was only to done to paint  themselves as victims. They did, however, throw Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers. Molotov cocktails can be deadly in frightening ways causing people to burn to death. They also brought slingshots. Flinging stones with force of a  slingshot can easily kill someone hit in the head by it. 

What is Israel supposed to do? Bring their own slingshots and Molotov cocktails?! Of course they are going to protect themselves and the rest of Israel in the most efficient way possible. All while respecting human life. They used teargas to try and disperse the crowds and snipers firing at the legs of the protesters trying to storm the border. Some were killed. But that is exactly what their leadership wanted so they show the world about how evil Israel is in shooting unarmed protesters. That they have staged more than one death for those purposes has been proven. It wouldn’t surprise me if they did some of that here.

This is the context missing from the mainstream media. All they see is starving Palestinians so desperate that they are willing to risk their lives to make their case to the world. And that they are  being killed by Israelis who are fault for their lot in life. Which is exactly what the Hamas leadership orchestrated them to see.

So those that pity the poor souls dying for their cause, ought to save that pity for people that deserve it. Not for those who choose to be killed that way.

The truth is that most Gazans hate all for this and just want their lives to get back to their normal. They are not necessarily in lockstep with their leaders tactics even though they might agree with their goals. That was yet another moment of truth reported yesterday by the mainstream media.

The Guardian also reported the following:

The UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said: “Those responsible for outrageous human rights violations must be held to account. 

I actually agree with him. My only dispute is - who it is exactly that is responsible. I don’t think there can be any doubt to anyone even slightly objective that understands context. It is Hamas, the terrorist organization that is purposely leading its people down the path of poverty, death, and destruction. They are the ones that should be held accountable. It is more than high time that the mainstream media reported it that way. 

Oh - how things might have been different had Palestinian leaders taken Gaza and made their own ‘desert bloom’ -  instead of doubling down on their goal of destroying Israel. They could have asked Israel to help them do that. I am 100% certain that they would have. That might have led to a 2 state solution years ago. Instead they have 59 dead Palestinians and little to show for it. 

Alan Dershowitz Exposes BDS’ Immoral Deceptions

The things going on at the Gaza border.

Israel never should have left Gaza the way that Sharon incompetently and foolishly did.  He was too full of himself -- in more ways than one.  No one in Israel wanted Gaza, but Ehud Barak already had shown how stupid it would be to walk away unilaterally when he handed Southern Lebanon to Hezbollah. So, to prove Einstein's thing about insanity, Sharon did the exact same idiotic thing, and now Israel has a royal mess on both sides.  (Ehud Olmert, a bigger dope than the other two, wanted then to do the same thing yet again in Judea-Samaria -- even Einstein never had anticipated that level of insanity -- but Olmert first botched the Hezbollah War, got immediately bounced from office along with his incompetent Defense Minister Amir Peretz (the latter a union hack who had no business being Defense Minister but demanded the spot as a payoff for having his Labor Party vote with Olmer's now-defunct Kadimah Party), and Olmert ended up in prison as a convicted crook. He was such a raunchy crook that, even though he did not get to pass "GO!" on the way to prison, I think he still managed to swipe the extra $200 from the "Free Parking.")

So now Israel has Hezbollah on its north and Hamas on its south.  Indeed, Israel would have Iran in Syria, too, but Bibi's government would not abide it.  Time will tell whether the idiots there choose to oust Bibi over his foolishly accepting from one of his supporters cigars and champagne that did not bear the Trump brand name.  Anyway . . . 

Stop.  Think.  (That puts you ahead of Bette Midler.) Ask: What exactly is going on at Israel's Gaza border?  

The answer: Arab Muslims who march to Hamas commands have been gathering in the tens of thousands trying to break into the country, to tear down Israel's border fence, shouting "Death to Israel." 

Uh, what exactly is Israel supposed to do?  Does it not make sense to shoot them all?  Really.

If you had thirty drunks with knives and hatchets trying to break down and into your house, what would you do?  Call John Kerry? Call Bette Midler? Natalie Portman?  No, you would do one of three things:
1. Kill yourself.
2. Call the cops at 9-1-1.
3.  Start shooting at the crowd till the cops arrive.

That's what Israel did.  They chose not to kill themselves.  So they got their cops, and they started shooting.

What would Erdogan do if 50,000 Kurds tried to break into Turkey and destroy Turkish sovereignty?  What would Putin do if 50,000 people tried to break into the -- well, come to think of it, no one ever tries to break into the Soviet Union or whatever nickname it goes by.

What would America do if 50,000 M13 gang members tried to break down the border and enter en masse?

You shoot them.  You absolutely shoot them.

Look, if one or two people accidentally cross the border, so that's a thing that happens. Remember that Marine with the gun in his car who accidentally crossed into Mexico? And there was this time that we were touring in southern New Mexico, and one of my daughters went strolling with another family member to check something out and inadvertently crossed the border into Mexico, which set off a classic comedy of errors because they did not have I.D. or whatever. And then they had to convince the Border Police that they were not Mexicans nor ISIS but schlemazels from New York.

But when all 50,000 of your daughters announce that they will destroy the country, violate its borders, tear down its wall -- heck, the only thing you do is you shoot them.  I truly cannot understand what the issue is.  You shoot them. Of course you shoot them.  What country would not shoot them?

You lob tear gas to break up a violent demonstration at Berkeley when Ben Shapiro  comes to tell them that facts do not care about their feelings.  You drop leaflets to warn people who can read.  But when 50,000 people gather together on your Independence Day, declare that your Independence Day is their Catastrophe Day and that they now are going to straighten out the historical disappointment by seizing your country -- heck, you just shoot them.

After all, why were these people gathered there?  What were they seeking to do?  Why were 50,000 of them, at the behest of Hamas, trying to surge through the border of Israel --

To learn Hebrew at discounted Ulpan classes?
To learn Torah at yeshiva?
To ask Bibi for cigars and champagne?
To see whether Jared Kushner came with a yarmulka in his pocket?

Come on.  They came with violence. Many of the dead ones now have been identified as known Hamas leaders.  They fly these kites that they set on fire, hoping to start fires in Israeli farms across the border.

You shoot them.  And you shoot them.  And you shoot until people learn that Israel is a country, not a shtibl, and it has laws and borders and an army.  And no one else does this or deals with this nonsense.  No one charges a border like this. Israel is not UC Berkeley or some effete dung hole like Swarthmore, where Jew-haters on campus gather to destroy the Jewish People and terminate the State of Israel by announcing that they are boycotting Sabra Hummus until the end of Spring Term finals.

Hamas has been given so many billions from the idiots in Europe and elsewhere, not to mention via the Obama-Kerry Cash Payola to Iran. They use the money for cement and steel to build underground murder tunnels instead of building hospitals, schools, apartment buildings.  They put it into war, not peace.  So the locals have nothing, are miserable, see jews across the border living like real people do in the world where people spend money on stuff like food and clothes and kids' education instead of murder tunnels.  And they want in.

But, really, there is only one way that any country would deal intelligently with such a thing: You shoot them.  Otherwise, if you do it like Bette Midler and John Kerry, and you bring people to sing "You've Got a Friend" and "Hello, Dolly!" soon you end up with a hundred thousand, then a million, then two million people hell-bent on destroying your country.

There is no other way.  You shoot them.

And then you go back to celebrating the new embassy in Jerusalem, preparing next for Guatemala, Honduras, and Paraguay to come.  And maybe thereafter Romania and the Czech Republic.  You thank Trump.  For moving the embassy that Clinton said he would move but lied. And Bush lied.  And Obama lied. 

And you thank Trump for killing the Iran Deal, which let them build their ballistic missiles and spread murder tyhroughout the world.  And you thank Trump maybe for getting the NoKo Doughboy off the nuclear warpath, which is good for Samsung and Kia, and people who buy them, and for Japan and for Hawaii, and maybe also takes a critical nuclear player out of Iran's orbit. You thank Trump for tax cuts and for nipping some of Obamacare out and for getting tough on trade.

You begin to realize that he is not suffering from dementia but is crazy like a fox.

And you only regret that he does not have more class and character because, if he did, he really might prove worthy of a spot on Rushmore. Instead, he is Trump.  So we take the bitter with the sweet.

And we thank G-d that it was not Hillary.

Nikki Haley Embassy Opening & Gaza Un Security Council Meeting 5/15/18

Ambassador Nikki Haley

U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations

U.S. Mission to the United Nations

New York City

May 15, 2018

Thank you, Madam President. Today’s session was called to discuss the issue of violence in the Middle East. We are all concerned about violence in the Middle East. The United States deplores the loss of human life. But there is a lot of violence throughout the region. And I will note that the double standard is all too common in this chamber, and working overtime today.

Last week, Iranian forces attacked Israeli positions on the Golan Heights by launching rockets from Syria. This was a reckless provocation and escalation that must be stopped. It is an example of regional violence that should occupy our attention here in the Security Council. Also last week, Iranian proxy forces in Yemen launched missiles into Saudi Arabia. It was not the first time they have done it. This too is regional violence that should occupy our attention here in the Security Council. In recent days, Hamas terrorists, backed by Iran, have incited attacks against Israeli security forces and infrastructure. That is violence that should occupy our attention, too.

The common thread in all of this is the destabilizing conduct of the Iranian regime – a regime that insists on promoting violence throughout the Middle East, while depriving its own people of basic human rights.

The United States welcomes a discussion of this violence in the Middle East. We welcome discussing the ways we can cooperate with each other to put an end to this violence. There is far too little discussion in the Security Council on Iran’s destabilizing presence in Syria, its promotion of violence in Yemen, its support for terrorism in Gaza, and its dangerous and illegal weapons buildup in Lebanon.

However, in the minds of some, today’s meeting was not called to discuss any of those examples of violence in the Middle East. Today’s meeting was called to discuss the violence that some suggest was connected with yesterday’s opening of the United States’ embassy in Jerusalem. For some people, the embassy opening is said to be a reason to engage in violence. How is that justified?

As our President said when he announced the decision in December, the location of our embassy has no bearing on the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested borders. It has no bearing on Jerusalem’s holy sites. It does not prejudge whatever the parties might negotiate in a peace agreement. It does not undermine the prospects for peace in any way. And yet, for some, this is supposedly a cause for violence.

But let’s remember that the Hamas terrorist organization has been inciting violence for years, long before the United States decided to move our embassy.

In recent days, multiple news organizations have documented the Hamas incitement in Gaza. They have reported that Hamas maps and social media show the fastest routes to reach Israeli communities in case demonstrators make it through the security fence. They have reported on Hamas messages over loudspeakers that urge demonstrators to burst through the fence, falsely claiming Israeli soldiers were fleeing, when in fact, they were not. The same loudspeakers are used by Hamas to urge the crowds to “Get closer! Get closer!” to the security fence.

Hamas has attacked the Kerem Shalom crossing, the biggest entry point in Gaza for fuel, food, and medical supplies. This is how determined they are to make the lives of the Palestinian people miserable. They light Molotov cocktails attached to kites on fire and attempt to fly them into Israel to cause as much destruction as possible. When asked yesterday why he put a swastika on his burning kite, the terrorist responded, “The Jews go crazy when you mention Hitler.”

This is what is endangering the people of Gaza. Make no mistake: Hamas is pleased with the results from yesterday.

I ask my colleagues here in the Security Council, who among us would accept this type of activity on your border? No one would. No country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has. In fact, the records of several countries here today suggest they would be much less restrained.

Those who suggest that the Gaza violence has anything to do with the location of the American embassy are sorely mistaken. Rather, the violence comes from those who reject the existence of the state of Israel in any location. Such a motivation – the destruction of a United Nations Member State – is so illegitimate as to not be worth our time in the Security Council, other than the time it takes to denounce it.

Yesterday’s opening of our embassy in Jerusalem is a cause for celebration for the American people. Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem was the right thing to do. It reflects the will of the American people. It reflects our sovereign right to decide the location of our embassy – a right that everyone in this room claims for their own country. Importantly, moving our embassy to Jerusalem also reflects the reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. It has served as Israel’s capital since the founding of the state. It is the ancient capital of the Jewish people. There is no plausible peace agreement under which Jerusalem would no longer remain the capital of Israel. Recognizing this reality makes peace more achievable, not less.

The United States is prepared to support peace negotiations and a peace agreement in every way. We want nothing more than peace. A peace in which people of all faiths are free to worship in Jerusalem. A peace in which the rights of all people are respected, and the future prospects of all people is bright. That peace will only be achieved if it is rooted in the realities that too many choose to deny. The United States’ action yesterday promoted the reality and the desire for peace. It is our sincere wish that the nations of the world will join us in this pursuit of credible, realistic, and enduring peace.

As I conclude, I want to take a moment to mark the 70th anniversary of Israel’s independence. In this United Nations Security Council, on behalf of the American people, I congratulate our friends in Israel on the remarkable achievement of 70 years of independence. From humble and desperate beginnings, a proud people have realized the Prophet Isaiah’s vision of a light unto the nations. May the next 70 years be ones of strength, of hope, and of peace.

Thank you.

Media Do Hamas' Dirty Work, Claim Israel Is Killing 'Protesters.' That's A Lie. By BEN SHAPIRO @BENSHAPIRO

On Monday, in an attempt to depict America’s decision to open its embassy in Jerusalem as a provocative act of incitement, Hamas-backed terrorists attacked the Gaza border en masse, seeking to harm Israeli soldiers and invade Israeli territory. Israeli soldiers were forced to respond, and some 50-plus Palestinians have now been killed. The media dutifully reported the Hamas line, suggesting that Israel was to blame for the violence against “protesters.”

Take, for example, this Washington Post headline: “Israelis kill dozens of Palestinians in Gaza protesting US Embassy move to Jerusalem.” This makes it sound as though a bunch of peaceful protesters gathered in Gaza for a sit-in. Not so much. The same article quotes one of the “protesters,” 23-year-old Mohammed Mansoura: “We are excited to storm and get inside. … Whatever is possible, to kill, throw stones.” The New York Times similarly headlined, “Israeli Troops Kill Dozens of Palestinian Protesters.” The Wall Street Journal headlined, “Scores Killed, Thousands Injured as Palestinians Protest US Embassy Opening In Jerusalem.” That same article acknowledged, however, that “Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, which controls the territory, suggested last week that more than 100,000 people could storm the fence on Tuesday. Israeli military officials say it has information that Hamas is using the protests as a pretext to stage an attack into Israel. Earlier in the morning Israel’s military dropped leaflets over Gaza warning residents not to approach the border.”

Organizers of the “protests” are telling demonstrators that they should attempt to burst through the border fence, and lying that Israeli soldiers were “fleeing their positions.” According to the Jerusalem Post, “Some 35,000 Palestinians were reported by the IDF as taking part in violent protests at 12 different locations along the fence, throwing stones, explosive devices, and Molotov cocktails at the fence and IDF troops, burning tires, and other burning objects with the intention of setting fires in Israeli territory. The Jerusalem Post witnessed at least six incendiary kites, with two setting fires in fields near Kibbutz Nahal Oz.” At one outpost, Palestinians laid an explosive device. The IDF spokesman, Ronen Manelis, says that Hamas is paying families to protest, and that Hamas was planning to use the protests as cover to abduct soldiers.

As always, Hamas and other terrorist groups hide their terrorists among civilian populations in an attempt to portray Israeli troops as targeting civilians. That’s untrue. Israel has utter air and ground superiority — if it wanted to kill protesters en masse, there would be no logistical problem in doing so. Israel stringently attempts to protect civilians on both sides.

All of which prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to respond:

Benjamin Netanyahu

✔@netanyahu

לכל מדינה החובה להגן על גבולותיה. ארגון הטרור חמאס מצהיר שבכוונתו להשמיד את ישראל ושולח אלפים לפרוץ את גדר הגבול כדי לממש מטרה זו. נמשיך לפעול בנחישות כדי להגן על ריבונותנו ואזרחינו

9:47 AM - May 14, 2018

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This translates roughly this way: “Each country must protect its borders. Hamas' terrorist organization states that it intends to destroy Israel and send thousands to breach the border fence to realize this goal. We will continue to act firmly to protect our sovereignty and our citizens.”

The media’s willingness to do Hamas’ dirty work in distributing their propaganda is horrendous. These are not protesters being killed. These are rioters attacking a sovereign nation’s border and attempting to harm its soldiers. To cover them as peaceful protesters merely hoping to spread flower power is a lie, and a lie on behalf of one of the world’s worst terror organizations.

Neo-Nazi Candidate Patrick Little Is Ecstatic About Anti-Semitic Robocall Endorsing Him In California

A robocall obtained by Los Angeles talk radio station KFI AM 640  told voters “to rid America of the traitorous Jews like Dianne Feinstein, vote for Patrick Little for U.S. Senator for California.” The call was sponsored by a neo-Nazi podcast.

As Right Wing Watch first reported, Patrick Little is an anti-Semitic white nationalist running for U.S. Senate in California on a neo-Nazi platform so extreme that he has discouraged supporters from donating to his campaign since campaign contributions are public record.

The voice in the ad says, “To rid America of the traitorous Jews like Dianne Feinstein, vote for Patrick Little for U.S. Senator for California … He’s a patriot, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, and he’s vowed to end Jewish control over America, starting with Diane Feinstein, an Israeli citizen pretending to be an American while she takes our money for her real country, Israel, and kills our children for it, too.”

“He’s going to get rid of all the nation-wrecking Jews from our country,” the ad continues.

Then, audio plays of children yelling, “Goodbye Jews!”

At the end of the minute-and-a-half ad, the voice says the call was paid for by “The Road to Power,” which is a little-known podcast that describes itself to be “White Nationalist anti-jew.” A quick scroll through the show’s profile on Gab, a Twitter knock-off popular with neo-Nazis and white nationalists banned from other platforms, reveals a plethora of racial slurs and anti-Semitic sentiment. Just last week, the podcast called for the deportation of all African Americans.

Little said on Gab that he was unaware that the robocall was being sent on his behalf, but when asked if he approved of the call, he told the San Francisco Chronicle, “Show me the lie, and I will consider renouncing it.”

Although Little’s views are abhorrent and extreme, he was recently found to be the top-polling Republican candidate in California.

Tags: Patrick LittleAlt-RightAnti-Semitismwhite nationalismwhite supremacist

DRIVING THE DAY -- Newspaper Front Pages

Palestinians in Gaza Are Dying for a Photo-Op And the media are complicit By Liel Leibovitz

“We are excited to storm and get inside,” a 23-year-old Gazan named Mohammed Mansoura, told the Washington Post yesterday. “When asked what he would do inside Israel,” the newspaper reported, “he said, ‘Whatever is possible, to kill, throw stones.'”

When Israel withdrew every last soldier and settler from the Gaza Strip in 2005, only the most hardened and bitter cynics predicted that the end of Israel’s occupation of 1.3 million Palestinians would bring even greater misery to Palestinians and Israelis alike. After all, the man who led the withdrawal, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was hardly a naive peacenik. The only way things could possibly get worse in Gaza after an Israeli withdrawal, even sober-minded people reasoned, would be if the Palestinians themselves chose leaders who were determined to sacrifice the welfare of every single person living in Gaza to a hopeless yet continuing campaign of cross-border terror against Israel.

Absurd, right? Sadly, that is exactly what has happened, leading to devastating wars in 2009 and 2014, whose failure led in turn to the recent decision by Hamas to launch a series of human wave attacks against Israel proper. Since there is no state on earth that would allow its borders to be physically overrun by mobs including terrorists with explosives, the outcome of these attacks was clear: Hamas would lose.

To show its strength, Hamas was supposed to turn out several hundred thousand Gazans yesterday to rush the border and kill—or maim—Israeli civilians inside Israel. Instead, they turned out a mere forty thousand people—meaning that the majority of Hamas’ own membership in Gaza opted out of this insanity. By the gruesome calculus that Hamas has imposed on Palestinians and Israelis alike, the tactic of using innocent Gazans as human shields for attacks on Israel’s borders had proven to be a failure.

But Hamas won anyway, by giving the Western media the opportunity to juxtapose pictures of Donald Trump and his family with pictures of dead Palestinians. In exchange for those precious images, the media was more than happy to erase the facts that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, that the attacks on Israel’s borders have been going on for weeks, or that Hamas is an evil, anti-Semitic, misogynist, homophobic, theocratic cult. The chance to bash Trump and demonize Israel was worth whitewashing any number of crimes —and the more Palestinians Hamas sent to die, the better the photo op.

Surely, no one could actually be that cynical and evil, right? Let The New York Times tell the story: “Israeli soldiers used tear gas and gunfire to keep Palestinian protesters from crossing the border fence with Gaza,” the Paper of Record reported to its 15 million followers on Facebook, “killing at least 52 according to Palestinian officials. 40 miles away, officials celebrated the U.S. Embassy’s relocation to Jerusalem.” In case you missed the ever-so-subtle storyline, the post contained two photographs, one on top of the other, the first showing Palestinians crouching in a cloud of black smoke, the second Ivanka Trump pointing to the new building’s cornerstone, prominently featuring her father’s name.

The Daily News took the story a step further with allegations of causality: “Dozens of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces at Gaza border, thousands injured in protests over U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem,” read the headline, cheerfully ignoring the fact that the “protests”—a troubling term for consistent assaults on a sovereign nation’s border orchestrated by a terrorist organization—have been going on for weeks now.

Even former CIA director John Brennan, who now spends his days on Twitter, bought in on the story-line of the day: “Deaths in Gaza result of utter disregard of Messers Trump & Netanyahu for Palestinian rights & homeland,” he tweeted. “By moving Embassy to Jerusalem, Trump played politics, destroyed US peacemaker role. New generation of Israelis/Palestinians need to isolate extremists to find path to peace.”

It’s not particularly surprising that Hamas, a murderous group that routinely uses civilians, including children, as human shields, would stage such a gruesome piece of theater, incentivizing tens of thousands of the citizens it had systemically robbed of a livelihood and a future by offering cash prizes to attack the Israeli border. But it is alarming that so many in the media and foreign policy establishment bought into this cynical and deadly provocation, pretending as if the riots had something to do with Trump and then chastising Israel for defending its borders from rioters who openly admitted that their goal was to randomly murder Jews. Were Hamas’s far more deadly wars in 2009 and 2014 caused by Barack Obama? Of course not.

The position that the mobs attacking Israel’s borders were “protesters” is an equally cynical lie. Just look at a snapshot of the day, as recorded by the IDF: Five explosive devices at 12:53 p.m.; another bombing attack five minutes later; six terrorists taking cover among the rioters at 1:15 p.m., opening fire at IDF soldiers; another shooting attack at 1:30 p.m., and another fifteen minutes later, this time by eight armed terrorists; three explosive devices detonated at 2:09 p.m. That’s just one random hour out of the day. And it has nothing to do with anything save for Hamas’s repeatedly stated desire to eliminate the Jewish state. To suggest otherwise is to ignore observable reality.

That so many of our elites still fall into a cheap propaganda trap set up by a terrorist cult is dispiriting, to say the least. That they further the goals of a terrorist organization by furnishing the backdrop to its macabre and murderous theater is deplorable. But after 2005, and 2009, and 2014, it has become increasingly hard to credit the idea that anyone involved on any side is naive about the nature and consequences of their actions.

What’s truly disturbing about yesterday’s events is the idea that they were theater. In other words, that the press knows exactly what it is doing—that news organizations are knowingly partnering with Hamas, and gladly whitewashing the crimes of a ghoulish leadership in return for pictures that they want as much as Hamas does, and that they are happy to pay for in uncritical coverage and free airtime.

That kind of cynicism, at the expense of Palestinian lives, is truly breathtaking, even for the Middle East. And it makes us all complicit.