Israel in the News May/Jun 2011
Israel Mourns Massacred Family
“What kind of monster butchers an infant?” American TV personality Glenn Beck asked his viewers recently, following the brutal massacre of five Israelis in the West Bank town of Itamar.
The answer is Palestinian terrorists who think killing Jews of any age—even infants—is their highest calling. Following the murders, “Palestinians were seen giving out candy to celebrate,” wrote author Phyllis Chesler. “Palestinian terrorists are baby killers par excellence,” she said.
Tens of thousands attended the funeral services for the Fogel family who were mercilessly butchered in their beds following a Shabbat party at their home on March 11. Israel Today reported, “The huge attendance brought traffic to a standstill,” as the nation mourned the deaths of Udi Fogel, 36; his wife, Ruth, 35; their sons Yoav, 11, and Eldad, 3; and their 3-month-old daughter, Hadas.
Terrorists slashed the throat of the 3-month-old and stabbed Eldad three times in the heart as he slept. They missed 6-year-old Roi, asleep on the couch; 2-year-old Shai, asleep in another room; and 12-year-old Tamar, who returned home from a friend’s house and discovered the massacre, according to news reports.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the UN to condemn the attacks, which Fatah has claimed responsibility for. He also has directed Israel’s ambassador to the UN to file a protest. However, these actions are likely to fall on deaf ears.
The murders, among the most vicious in recent years, typically drew little sympathy from the liberal news media, including The New York Times. In its first piece about the crime, the Times tried to blame the Jews by characterizing the Samarian town as “home to some of Israel’s most radical settlers.”
The nightmare began around 10:30 P.M. when terrorists apparently scaled the security fence and entered the house through the living room picture window. Arutz-7 filed this report:
“[They] did not notice the 6-year-old boy sleeping on the couch and continued on to the bedroom where they slashed the throats of the father and newborn baby who were sleeping there. The mother came out of the bathroom and was stabbed on its threshold. The evidence shows that she tried to fight the terrorists. They then slashed the throat of the 11-year-old son who was reading in bed. They did not notice the 2-year-old asleep in his bed, but stabbed the 3-year-old three times in the heart. Then, they locked the door, exited through the window, and escaped.”
“Exactly two hours after the infiltration,” Arutz-7 reported, “there was another warning signal from the same spot on the [security] fence, as the terrorists left the way they had come. The 12-year-old daughter returned home at 12:30 A.M. and found the door locked. She asked a neighbor, Rabbi Yaakov Cohen, of the Itamar Yeshiva, to help her. He brought a weapon with him once he noticed tracks and mud near the house. The two woke up the 6-year-old sleeping in the living room by crawling through the window and when he opened the door, the rabbi returned to his home.
“When she entered the bedrooms, the young daughter saw the horrific blood-soaked scene and ran out of the house screaming.”
The children are now living with their grandparents. Said Chaim Fogel, Udi’s father: “We came to take the surviving grandchildren out of the Valley of Death. I don’t wish on anyone in the world the sight I saw. It is horrendous, beyond description, beyond comprehension.”
The 12-year-old survivor promised her relatives, “I will be strong and succeed in overcoming this. I understand the task that stands before me, and I will be a mother to my siblings,” reported Arutz-7.
The family previously lived in Gush Katif in Gaza, which Israel evacuated in 2005 in hopes of making peace with the Palestinians.
CAMERA Urges Readers: Write to The NY Times
In February The New York Times ran two op-eds sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood and a news story favorable to the group’s leader, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. CAMERA says readers must demand the “full picture.”
The Times said of al-Qaradawi, “Democracy and pluralism [have] long [been] hallmarks of his writing and preaching….He [urges] a civil government founded on principles of pluralism, democracy and freedom.” In the same article, however, we read, “But he has made exceptions for violence against Israel or the American forces in Iraq.”
“In fact,” writes CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), “Qaradawi is a virulent anti-Semite who has called on Allah to wipe out the Jewish people.” He defended the Iranian fatwa calling for the death of writer Salman Rushdie and promoted a “day of rage” against cartoons of Muhammad printed in Sweden and Denmark.
Al-Qaradawi also issued religious decrees encouraging suicide attacks against Israeli and American civilians, defended female genital mutilation, and affirmed Muslim teachings calling for death to homosexuals and for those who leave Islam and encourage others to do the same. He has been wanted by Israel for years and is banned from entering the United States and Great Britain. Al-Qaradawi also heads the Union of Good, an umbrella organization of more than 50 Islamic funds and foundations around the globe that channels money into Hamas institutions in Gaza.
In January 2009 al-Qaradawi called Hitler a “divine tool” sent to punish the Jewish people for their sins. He also called on Allah to “take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. O Allah, do not spare a single one of them. O Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.”
The Times also ran two op-eds by Muslim Brotherhood apologists Tariq Ramadan and Essam El-Errian. Newsweek journalists Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff have reported on connections between al-Qaida and leading Brotherhood figures.
CAMERA urges people to write to Times executive editor Bill Keller asking the paper to give readers “a more accurate view of the Muslim Brotherhood” and al-Qaradawi.
by Arutz-7, IsraelNationalNews.com
Farrakhan, Yemen Blame Israel for Arab Unrest
It was only a matter of time before Arab leaders and Islamic figures started accusing Israel of being behind the unrest sweeping the Middle East. “I am going to reveal a secret,” the embattled president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, told supporters recently. “There is an operations room in Tel Aviv with the aim of destabilizing the Arab world. The operations room is in Tel Aviv and run by the White House.”
American Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan echoed Saleh’s accusations at the annual gathering of his Nation of Islam near Chicago in February.
Saleh claimed the United States is aiding and directing the mounting demonstrations against his regime, but that the “Zionists” are pulling the strings. “We say that this is a Zionist agenda,” declared Saleh, insisting that pro-democracy revolutions across the region are part of a “conspiracy that serves Israel and the Zionists.”
Yemen is a major battleground in the war against al-Qaida, and Osama bin Laden’s group would love to establish a firm stronghold in the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Until now, Saleh had been allied with the United States in preventing this outcome.
Farrakhan publicly urged U.S. President Barack Obama not to allow the “Zionists to push you to mount a military offensive” against the crumbling regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who has been slaughtering demonstrators in an effort to hang on to power.
Farrakhan called Gaddafi “my brother” and insisted the only people who benefit from the turmoil are the “Zionists,” who, according to Farrakhan, “dominate the government of the United States of America and her banking system.” For good measure, Farrakhan, who is African-American, also accused Jews of having been “disproportionately involved in the slave trade.”
by Israel Today, www.israeltoday.co.il
UN to Israel: Surrender!
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said recently the world body expects Israel to surrender immediately to Arab demands that it relinquish all claims to Judea and Samaria and half of its capital of Jerusalem.
The Jewish presence in the so-called West Bank, the biblical Jewish heartland that includes East Jerusalem, is “morally and politically unsustainable, and must end,” Ban insisted during a press conference in Uruguay.
Meanwhile, Palestinians plan to declare an independent state later this year, with UN support, outside the framework of a peace deal with Israel. The motion is almost certain to be shot down in the UN Security Council, where the United States exercises veto power; but it will be widely adopted by the UN General Assembly.
Israeli officials are lobbying various nations against supporting this move, but diplomats fear their efforts are bearing little fruit. Many Israelis are urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to insist the UN approach the peace process from the viewpoint that the West Bank and Jerusalem are disputed territories, where Jews have just as much, if not more, claim than local Palestinian Arabs. But it may be too late. An unnamed Israeli official told the Associated Press that, if the Palestinians seek recognition of their sovereignty in the UN, Israel may annex the parts of the West Bank most populated by Jews—the much-maligned “settlement blocs.”
Israel annexed the eastern half of Jerusalem decades ago, but the international community has all but ignored that decision.
by Israel Today, israeltoday.co.il
