Israel in the News Sep/Oct 2014
Editor’s Note: As we went to press with this issue of Israel My Glory, Israel was fighting Hamas in Gaza. Hate-filled anti-Israel demonstrations were breaking out around the world. So we decided to provide some facts that most of the world chooses to ignore.
#1 The Ratio
Israel is a small country, with a population of 6.1 million Jews. The ratio of Americans to Jewish Israelis is a staggering 52 to 1.
By press time, 43 Israeli officers and soldiers, most of them in their 20s, had been killed in Operation Protective Edge. This is a heavy toll for such a tiny population.
Israel’s loss would be equivalent to the United States losing 2,236 American soldiers. Statistically speaking, Israel has suffered more casualties than the United States in the war in Afghanistan. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, 2,197 American soldiers died in Afghanistan as of July 24 in Operation Enduring Freedom.
#2 The Tunnels
Global anti-Israel riots flared when 70 Palestinians in the Gaza suburb of Shejaiya died in the military action that killed 13 Israeli soldiers.
Hamas used the neighborhood to launch some 150 missiles into Israel in a single week. It was a Hamas stronghold. Israel Today reported Shejaiya had “a huge network of terror tunnels used to store missiles and infiltrate southern Israel.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military action “revealed more tunnels, in addition to others that we already uncovered, some of which reached Israel. We found handcuffs [and] sedating drugs” that terrorists use to kidnap Israeli soldiers.
#3 Arab Strategy
Israel warned residents of Shejaiya to evacuate days before the assault, but Hamas told them to stay.
“We urged the civilian population to evacuate for days, through leaflets, broadcasts, telephone calls,” Netanyahu said. “We urged them to evacuate, because we didn’t want to see innocent civilians caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hamas. But it is Hamas that ordered the civilians to stay put. It is Hamas that wanted those civilians to stay, so it would have a human shield for its terrorist machine.”
Israel Today reported that former U.S. President Bill Clinton told India’s NDTV the high civilian death toll was likely part of Hamas’s barbaric plan. Hamas has “a strategy,” Clinton said, “designed to force Israel to kill their own [Palestinian] civilians so that the rest of the world will condemn them [Israelis].”
Israel Today said “Hamas is not even trying to hide the fact that it uses the civilians of Gaza as a human shield….Terrorist rulers are openly calling on local residents to do their duty and place themselves in the path of Israeli reprisals.”
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) photos show definitively that Hamas even launches rockets from hospitals.
#4 IDF Hospital
While Hamas strives to kill and kidnap as many Israelis as possible, IDF medics in July saved the life of a terrorist who tried to kill them minutes earlier.
Israel Today reported that IDF soldier Daniel Albo posted to Facebook a photo of fellow army medics and himself treating the wounded Hamas terrorist.
“Today,” Albo wrote, “my unit and I saved the life of a terrorist who tried to kill us simply because we are IDF soldiers and Israeli citizens. We saved his life simply because we are human. Proud to serve in the IDF.”
Israel Today also reported that Israel has opened a military field hospital along the northern Gaza border to treat wounded Palestinian civilians. “In addition to trauma units, the IDF field hospital also has birthing rooms for pregnant Palestinian women who are unable to reach hospitals in nearby Gaza City,” Israel Today said.
#5 Electricity
Israel still supplies electricity to Gaza. Arutz-7 reported, “Hamas owes the Israel Electric Company hundreds of millions of shekels, part of the 1.4 billion shekel [approximately $408 million] electricity bill the Palestinian Authority owes. Neither the PA nor Gaza have paid for electricity for at least a decade.”
One of Hamas’s cease-fire terms is that Israel give its enemy free electricity.
#6 Hamas’s Goal
Hamas top terrorist Ismail Haniyeh again said the terror group will fight to “the last drop of blood” in its attempts to destroy Israel. “We will continue the struggle until we liberate the land, Jerusalem, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and return the ‘refugees’ to their homes.”
In other words, Hamas will never make peace with Israel.
#7 Hamas’s Money
Hamas has become a millionaire’s club. Since 2007, Hamas leaders have made vast fortunes by heavily taxing goods smuggled from Egypt in tunnels and by grossly overcharging for subsidized Egyptian fuel, reported Israel Today.
“Neither of those revenue streams would be possible without violently provoking Israel to lay siege to Gaza….Hamas profits are threatened by the enormous quantities of humanitarian aid and other goods Israel and the international community pump into Gaza every month, which is why numerous reports suggest Hamas blocks that aid from ever reaching local residents.
“At the same time, Hamas leaders have proved wildly successful fundraisers in their travels abroad….In recent media interviews, Professor Ahmed Karima of Al-Azhar University in Egypt noted…Hamas can boast no fewer than 1,200 millionaires.”
Israel Today said that while Gazans wallow in poverty, “Hamas leader Khaled Mashal has amassed a fortune of $2.6 billion, the Jordanian media reported.”
The Truth Comes Out: Christians Suffer in the PA
In 2012 CBS aired a notoriously dishonest 60 Minutes segment about Christians in the Holy Land. In the segment, prominent Palestinian Christians tried to dismiss legitimate concern about the suffering of Christians in Muslim-majority Palestinian society.
Now, one of the sources who appeared in the segment, Christy Anastas, a Palestinian Christian from Bethlehem, has stepped into the spotlight to reveal the truth about the suffering endured by Christians living under the Palestinian Authority (PA), a truth that is completely at odds with the 60 Minutes story.
Anastas gave a talk recently at Uppsala University in Sweden that is posted on YouTube. She directly contradicts the story by CBS’s Bob Simon.
After speaking in defense of Israel’s right to exist, Christy reports she was threatened by one of her own family members who said he would put a bullet in her head if she didn’t stop defending Israel. The explanation was that she was putting her family in danger.
Christy also described how one of her uncles was shot in the head and blinded for refusing to pay protection money, or al-jizyah, to Muslim extremists in the West Bank. His life was only saved by the treatment he received in an Israeli hospital. She also describes how Palestinian judges have colluded with the theft of land from Christians in Palestinian society.
After her talk was published on YouTube by the Jerusalem Institute for Justice, she was threatened and her family harassed. Christy’s father has even denounced her in an obvious attempt to deflect hostility from the rest of her family.
In the 60 Minutes segment, a number of Palestinian Christians, including Zahi Khouri, who owns a Coca-Cola franchise, dismissed then-Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren’s concerns about Muslim oppression of Christians as a “great selling point. Easy to sell to the American public.”
Christy Anastas, now living in the United Kingdom, doesn’t see it that way. Her YouTube video is compelling.
To read this entire article by Dexter Van Zile of CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), click here.
by CAMERA (Camera.org)
