Wanton Destruction in Gaza Bodes Ill for the Future

Israel & Aliya (blog) ^ | 29 September 2005 | Caitlyn M. Martin

[anotherview]

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Wanton Destruction in Gaza Bodes Ill for the Future

The torching of synagogues and the looting and destruction of greenhouses in Gaza doesn't bode well for a future Palestinian state if one is to ever exist. Indeed, the destruction of those synagogues makes it far more unlikely that Israel will concede areas with important Jewish holy sites in Judea and Samaria. The greenhouses, donated to the Palestinian people by wealthy American Jews who bought them from the former settlers, used to provide Israel with $60 to $100 million in agricultural exports annually. They could have provided ample food for Palestinians now dependent on international food aid and jobs for thousands of the largely unemployed Palestinian population in Gaza. Instead the people of Gaza will remain poor and destitute.

Of course, as my previous post pointed out, the press is bending over backwards not to portray it this way. We will undoubtedly hear over and over again, as we have for the past five years, how Palestinian terrorism is due to the “hopelessness” of their situation and that, in turn, will be blamed on Israel. Why can't the blame be put where it belongs: on the Palestinian leadership which made excuses for this behavior rather than trying to prevent it? The Palestinians themselves destroyed what would have given them the means to feed themselves and would have given them an income and the beginnings of a sustainable economy. Instead American and European taxpayers will continue to subsidize “hopelessness” and “despair”, corruption, graft, thuggery, and terrorism.

The destruction of the synagogues, which could have become community centers for the Palestinian people, is even more serious. If the Palestinians continue to disrespect, defile, and even destroy Jewish and Christian holy sites, as they did at Joseph's Tomb, the Church of the Nativity, and most recently in Gaza, how can they be entrusted with some of the most important sites in Judaism, such as the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron? The sad fact is that they cannot. Israel must now consider extending the security fence to take in the Jewish sector of Hebron and the settlements in the Hebron hills, much as a finger of territory was walled off to protect Ariel in western Samaria. This, too, will cause much international condemnation, but what choice does Israel have?

Certainly Israel cannot turn over part of Jerusalem. which is the holiest place in all of Judaism. For millennia Jews have prayed “next year in Jerusalem”. Despite the insistence by the Palestinians and most recently by the Jordanians that the Jewish people have no historical or religious claim to Jerusalem, this flies in the face of Jewish and Christian belief and three thousand years of history. As I have pointed out in the past, throughout the five centuries of Ottoman rule Muslims were a minority in Jerusalem while Jews and Christians were the solid majority. During most of that time the Jewish people alone were a majority in the city.

So long as the Arabs as a whole and the Palestinians in particular deny Jewish and Christian history they cannot be entrusted to preserve or respect it. That, in turn, means that significant parts of the West Bank cannot be turned over to them. That, in turn, makes an independent state truly unlikely.

One last question: since when is the torching of Jewish holy sites OK with the press? Why the uproar over American soldiers at Guantanamo Bay allegedly mishandling a Koran if destroying synagogues is OK? As Jack Englehard pointed out in the piece I quoted and linked last week it seems only Muslim holy sites are considered holy by the press anymore, This double standard, like all the double standards in Middle East reporting, disgusts me. Why must every media outlet claim to be unbiased, fair, balanced, or even handed when, in fact, they promote a specific agenda even when the facts simply cannot support their position?

[anotherview]

ping

[KeepArizonaFree]

Hamas blows up their own truck in a crowd and blames Bush....

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They might be ragin raghead idiots.... but they got hillary's playbook down to a science! haha

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

..........................................

[Convert from ECUSA]

"If the Palestinians continue to disrespect, defile, and even destroy Jewish and Christian holy sites, as they did at Joseph's Tomb, the Church of the Nativity, and most recently in Gaza, how can they be entrusted with some of the most important sites in Judaism, such as the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron? The sad fact is that they cannot. Israel must now consider extending the security fence to take in the Jewish sector of Hebron and the settlements in the Hebron hills, much as a finger of territory was walled off to protect Ariel in western Samaria. This, too, will cause much international condemnation, but what choice does Israel have? Certainly Israel cannot turn over part of Jerusalem. which is the holiest place in all of Judaism. For millennia Jews have prayed “next year in Jerusalem”. Despite the insistence by the Palestinians and most recently by the Jordanians that the Jewish people have no historical or religious claim to Jerusalem, this flies in the face of Jewish and Christian belief and three thousand years of history. As I have pointed out in the past, throughout the five centuries of Ottoman rule Muslims were a minority in Jerusalem while Jews and Christians were the solid majority. During most of that time the Jewish people alone were a majority in the city. So long as the Arabs as a whole and the Palestinians in particular deny Jewish and Christian history they cannot be entrusted to preserve or respect it. That, in turn, means that significant parts of the West Bank cannot be turned over to them. That, in turn, makes an independent state truly unlikely. One last question: since when is the torching of Jewish holy sites OK with the press? Why the uproar over American soldiers at Guantanamo Bay allegedly mishandling a Koran if destroying synagogues is OK? As Jack Englehard pointed out in the piece I quoted and linked last week it seems only Muslim holy sites are considered holy by the press anymore, This double standard, like all the double standards in Middle East reporting, disgusts me."



Major hit-the-nail-on-the-head ping!

[Esther Ruth]

"One last question: since when is the torching of Jewish holy sites OK with the press? Why the uproar over American soldiers at Guantanamo Bay allegedly mishandling a Koran if destroying synagogues is OK?"

***
Isaiah 14:12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst WEAKEN THE NATIONS!

Rev 12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which DECEIVETH THE WHOLE WORLD world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

[sheik yerbouty]

Howling palesimians paying homage to Her Heinous..

[SunkenCiv]

the destruction of those synagogues makes it far more unlikely that Israel will concede areas with important Jewish holy sites in Judea and Samaria. The greenhouses... could have provided ample food for Palestinians now dependent on international food aid and jobs for thousands of the largely unemployed Palestinian population in Gaza. Instead the people of Gaza will remain poor and destitute.

...and all that is soooo part of the plan of the PLO.

[Alouette]

FRmail me to be added or removed from this Judaic/pro-Israel/Russian Jewry ping list.

Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.

[InvisibleChurch]

i thot the pull out was supposed to be for peace

[adam_az]

Actually "lucifer" is a bad translation to/from Latin.

A better translation is

14:12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O day-star, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, that didst cast lots over the nations!

The Hebrew word is "Helel," which was the proper name of the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, who this passage is about.

This word was translated to the latin Lucifero, which was translated to Lucifer first in the Christian KJV bible. Chalk it up to a bad translation!

[anotherview]

i thot the pull out was supposed to be for peace

Perhaps you thought that, but virtually noone in Israel, at least noone with any sense, thought that for even a minute.

Those of us who are not part of the Oslo dreamers of the far left who actually supported disengagement did so because we believe it gives Israel a defensible border and removed a huge burden from the IDF. It also makes striking back at Palestinian terrorists in Gaza all the easier. You never saw artillery (which is imprecise) brought up to the northern edge of Gaza when there was a Jewish population there, did you?

[anotherview]

Major hit-the-nail-on-the-head ping!

Agreed. If a rather liberal American Jew can get this right why can't the rather liberal media do so as well? Why are they so incredibly wedded to the Palestinian cause?

I did notice that Caitlyn's links (see the actual blog page) pointed to articles in the San Francisco Chronicle and the L.A. Times that actually represented some pretty good factual reporting. Maybe, at least in some places in the American press, the tide is beginning to turn.

[mississippi red-neck]

A little long but here is what the Lord has to say about Israel's neighbors and their hatred and land stealing tactics. He deals with it three chapters later in Eze 38 & 39.

Eze 35:5 Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end:

Eze 35:6 Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee.

Eze 35:7 Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth.

Eze 35:8 And I will fill his mountains with his slain men: in thy hills, and in thy valleys, and in all thy rivers, shall they fall that are slain with the sword.

Eze 35:9 I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

Eze 35:10 Because thou hast said, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it; whereas the LORD was there:

Eze 35:11 Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will even do according to thine anger, and according to thine envy which thou hast used out of thy hatred against them; and I will make myself known among them, when I have judged thee.

Eze 35:12 And thou shalt know that I am the LORD, and that I have heard all thy blasphemies which thou hast spoken against the mountains of Israel, saying, They are laid desolate, they are given us to consume.