RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://worldisraelnews.com/fighter-for-israels-independence-zionist-activist-and-prominent-geographer-passes-away/

By Atara Beck, World Israel News

One of the last of the Jewish Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (Lehi) and first chairman of Americans for A Safe Israel (AFSI) passed away on Nov. 5.

Dr. Erich Isaac, born in Mainz, Germany, left his birth country with his parents for what was then Mandatory Palestine in 1938. Although he was only nine years old on arrival, he never forgot seeing the countryside on fire as the train took them to Tel Aviv. The conflagration was part of the ongoing 1936 Arab riots.

Isaac grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home. At around the age of his Bar Mitzvah, he became involved in the pre-state, underground Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, or Lehi.

Isaac was so young that he wasn’t allowed to participate fully in one of his first missions — a bank robbery (which is how Lehi raised its money) — and was told he could only be a lookout. (Reminiscing, he said with a smile that, fortunately, no one came.)

Lehi was misunderstood and vilified as a violent gang of thugs during its period of activity. It was referred to negatively as the Stern Gang, named after its founder Avraham “Yair” Stern, who was murdered by the British. The negative attitude toward Lehi persisted even after the modern Jewish state was established. One of its leaders, Israel Eldad — father of Aryeh Eldad, a prominent Israeli medical doctor and politician — was even forbidden by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion from teaching Israeli high schoolers lest he have a bad influence over them.

Over time, Lehi came to be recognized for its contributions, especially once Yitzhak Shamir, one of its leaders, became prime minister in 1983. After that, it won for itself a place in the pantheon of those who fought for the freedom of Israel.

“Once, when we were eating at a Middle Eastern-style restaurant in Jaffa – around 1982 — he walked up to a man,” his son David told World Israel News. “The blood drained from his face when he saw my dad. It was the restaurant owner. He’d been in the same Lehi cell as my dad. My mom, who witnessed this, said that the man was terrified that Dad would reveal that the owner had been in Lehi. Even in the early 1980s, it seems, being a former member of the ‘Stern Gang’ was bad for business…

“Unfortunately, we only know bits and pieces of his time in Lehi. My eldest brother said that once, while walking with Dad in Givatayim [east of Tel Aviv], probably around 1970, he pointed to a wall with bullet holes and said, ‘You see those bullet holes? That’s where I was involved in a gunfight with the British.’”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17943/palestinians-fleeing-gaza-strip

Referring to the lavish lifestyle led by most Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip and abroad, many Palestinians complained that while the fish are eating the poor emigrants, Hamas leaders continue to enjoy the best fish and seafood on offer in Qatar and the Gaza Strip.

Apparently, the two million Palestinians living under the rule of Hamas have reached the conclusion that it is Hamas, and not Israel, that is responsible for their misery.

“During the past 15 years, Hamas has taken Gaza from bad to worse. Gazans are a people under a brutal Islamist regime who are held hostage to stagnant policies that only serve the interests of Hamas and their global Islamist allies. If the international community could help liberate Gaza from such forces, they could help Gazans create a Dubai on the Med or a new Singapore.” — Ghanem Nusseibeh, a Palestinian Muslim belonging to the oldest Arab family in Jerusalem, Al-Arab News, May 29, 2021.

Blaming Israel for everything wrong in the Gaza Strip may fool many in the US, Canada and the UK. But the Palestinians fleeing Gaza and their families who remain behind know the truth — that it is Hamas that has brought them to the abyss, including the sea in which they are now drowning.

A tragedy that recently hit the Gaza Strip has again exposed the extent of the suffering of Palestinians under the rule of the Iranian-backed group, Hamas.

The tragedy also serves as a reminder of the double standards of the international community in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially the obsession with Israel and the tendency to ignore any wrongdoing on the Palestinian side.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/the-immorality-of-confusing-victims-with-villains-opinion-684741
The sentencing this week of Arad resident Aryeh Schiff returned a longstanding Israeli debate about the “purity of arms” to the fore. Though the crime for which he was convicted in July wasn’t military in nature, the arguments surrounding it are reminiscent of those raised in relation to the IDF.

A year ago in December, the then-70-year-old was arrested for shooting and killing 36-year-old Bedouin Mohammad al-Atrash – an ex-con with a hefty rap sheet – who had broken into his car and was driving it away. Schiff recounted that he and his wife were awoken by a noise that they realized was the auto theft in progress.

He then ran outside with his pistol drawn and fired twice at the car. The first thing he did when he discerned that the thief had been hit was to phone the police and an ambulance.
Paramedics evacuated Atrash to the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, where he was pronounced dead from a bullet wound to the head. Meanwhile, Schiff fully cooperated with interrogators, admitting that he had not first fired a warning shot in the air. He claimed, however, that he had aimed at the car’s tires, not the robber in the driver’s seat.

“All my life, I will have to live with the fact that I killed a person unintentionally,” Schiff told the Beersheba Magistrate’s Court. “My grief is deep for taking a person’s life… I am very sorry for the tragic event.”

POLICE AND prosecutors told a different story, however, based on video footage of the incident, which showed Schiff pointing his weapon at Atrash. They appealed the court’s decision to release Schiff on house arrest for the duration of the investigation, requesting that he be charged with reckless manslaughter, and claiming that he posed a flight risk. After extending his remand three times at the behest of the prosecution, the court finally sent Schiff home.

The following July, three months ago, the Beersheba District Court rejected Schiff’s claim of self-defense and convicted him of manslaughter. He was sentenced to nine months of community service through a plea bargain, thwarting the prosecution’s initial demand that he be imprisoned for four to six years.

Not surprisingly, responses to both the case itself and the verdict were divided along political lines, with the Right backing Schiff and the Left assuming its customary, bleeding-heart stance.

Meretz MK Mossi Raz, for example, called the sentence an “embarrassment,” warning against the “normalization” of citizens taking the law into their own hands. Of course, he had to add, “I can’t help thinking that if Schiff had been an Arab, his punishment would have been far more severe.”

Never mind that the second part of his statement is especially ridiculous, given the major problem of violence and lawlessness in the Arab sector, which police and prosecutors have been at a loss to tackle and that the government keeps vowing to rectify. Raz’s point was clear: to suggest that nationalism and racism are responsible for all of Israel’s societal flaws.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17928/palestinian-leaders-inflict-pain

The peaceful protests were swiftly and violently crushed by the Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces. Again, those protests and the crackdown did not seem to be of any interest to many in the international community, especially the Western donors that fund the PA. Had the demonstrations taken place against Israel, they would doubtless have received extensive coverage and howls of outrage from the mainstream media in the West.

The protesters have appealed to the European Union for help, to no avail. Attempts by the protesters to gain the attention to their plight from the international media have also been totally ignored. This is the same EU that is quick to criticize Israel over the issue of construction in the settlements….

Abbas’s sanctions… have made the civil servants and their families vulnerable to extreme poverty. — Salah Abdel Ati, head of the International Commission to Support the Rights of the Palestinian People, Alwatanvoice.com, November 3, 2021.

According to [Hamed] Abu Wadi, the PA leadership cut off the salaries as a means of silencing and punishing its critics.

“You are the ones who provide aid to the Palestinian Authority, which is depriving us of our salaries and rights in violation of the law.” — Hamed Abu Wadi, civil servant affected by Abbas’s sanctions, addressing the European Union; Facebook, October 25, 2021.

Palestinian leaders are punishing their own people as part of the power struggle between the PA and Hamas. Again, this is happening as the world turns away from the perpetrators and fixes its obsessive gaze on Israel.

If the Biden administration is serious about reviving a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, it should start by trying to make peace between the Palestinian mini-state in the Gaza Strip and Abbas’s PA entity in the West Bank.

If the EU really cares about ending the suffering of the Palestinians, it first needs to hold Abbas responsible for imposing sanctions on his people and to demand that Hamas cease using the Gaza Strip as a launching pad for waging jihad (holy war) on Israel.

When Palestinians living in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip demonstrate against Israel, many in the international community, including the mainstream media, are quick to notice the protest.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/eating-knesset-candy-and-drinking-the-kool-aid/

 Photos that emerged last week of Israeli lawmakers munching on candy for two white nights in a row served as a perfect metaphor for the kindergarten-like atmosphere of the Knesset as a whole and the current government in particular.

Though the assortment of sweets was there for a “serious” purpose—to provide an energy boost to the exhausted parliamentarians during the wee hours of Thursday and Friday, when they debated and voted on the 2021 and 2022 state budgets—there was something both comical and disconcerting about the display

The sight of Defense Minister Benny Gantz sucking on a pink lollipop, for example, was a bit cringe-inducing. The mullahs in Tehran must have gotten a kick out of it. Or at least wondered why the Israeli figure charged with targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities opted for a sucker over strong Middle Eastern coffee.

In fairness to Gantz, he wasn’t alone. Indeed, the whole lollipop-licking plenum looked as puerile as it’s been sounding these days, with childish verbiage and decibel levels not even fit for a playground.

Nor did the final passage of the budgets put a stop to the infantile behavior. On the contrary, the aftermath of the marathon that kept the government from falling has been just as embarrassing, if not more.