It is my practice to begin with news of terror attacks. Last time I wrote, on July 5th, information had been released about Sgt. First Class David Yehuda Yitzhak z”l, the only IDF soldier to die in the Jenin operation.
I noted this with much sadness, but information at that point was still sparse and I was determined to write more about him, as honoring our fallen is important.
David, who died during the IDF withdrawal on July 4, was buried in the Mount Herzl military Cemetery in Jerusalem. The Commander of the Egoz unit in which he served, said of him:
“You were a fighter and an angel. A man with a heart of gold, dedicated and full of faith, which kept you going…”
His father eulogized him: “You saw everyone’s pain as if it were your own. You were a boy who [was] entirely soul, you were embedded into the hearts of everyone you knew,…” (Emphasis added here and above)
After David’s death, a friend shared on social media a letter of inspiration he had written to himself:
“Be good, simply good. Without making noise, without getting confused, just to be good,” he wrote at age 23.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/373730
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A mere day after David Yehuda Yitzhak was buried, there was a terror attack in Kedumim and Staff Sgt. Shilo Yosef Amir, 22, of the Givati Brigade was killed.
A suspicious car was reported driving around Kedumim. When a civilian security officer and IDF troops arrived at the scene and stopped the car for inspection, its occupant fired at them with a handgun, killing Shilo, and fled. The IDF forces then chased the terrorist and took him down.
Hamas subsequently claimed credit for the attack.
Shilo was buried in the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery next to David Yehuda Yitzhak.
“My heart refuses to believe [the news], it has been shattered to pieces,” said his mother, Orly, during the funeral “You taught us what love is. You understood your mission and you stuck with it. Nothing will ever be the same again.”
The commander of Sayeret Givati eulogized him:
Shilo, we stand here today shocked and pained by the terrible loss…you were always the first to volunteer…and you carried out every task to the end with maturity…you were loved by your friends, you were looking to give more.”
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-749233
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Immeasurable losses. We must pray that this is the end.
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I want to circle back to the Jenin operation and the appalling charges against Israel that have leveled by a number of international sources. The painful lesson we learn again and again is that in the eyes of the world we cannot win, we cannot do anything right. And so, we must proceed, accountable to ourselves.
It is also important to publicize the truth in order to refute the charges. Many will not listen, but some will. Please, spread the word broadly, my friends.
A key figure among those who made fallacious charges regarding Israel’s action in Jenin was UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who claimed excessive force was used.
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan (pictured) called Guterres’s remarks “shameful, far-fetched, and completely detached from reality.” He said the Israeli military action in Jenin “focused solely on combating the murderous Palestinian terror targeting innocent Israeli civilians.”
“…innocent civilians fled their homes only because Palestinian terrorists seized them for cover. Hospitals and schools were damaged only because Palestinian terrorists turned them into arms caches and command centers for their terror activity. Why do you ignore the facts on the ground? Are the lives of Israeli civilians not important enough to justify fighting terror?” (Emphasis added)
Not only did Guterres refuse to retract his accusations, as Erdan demanded, he refrained from specifically condemning the Palestinian Arab terror attacks, or the Palestinian Authority, which incites terror and provides support for terrorists (more on this below).
What perhaps most powerfully reveals an ingrained bias on the part of Guterres, and the international community more broadly, is that there was no outraged response to what the IDF uncovered in Jenin — guns, explosives, and weapons manufacturing sites. They did not acknowledge that this exposed an abhorrent intent on the part of terrorist Palestinian Arab groups to kill innocent Israelis. I suppose they couldn’t – for then they would have had to acknowledge that the Israelis had solid reason for the Jenin operation.
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And of course, there was no acknowledgement of the responsibility of UNRWA for this situation. The operation took place in the Jenin “refugee” camp, which houses primarily descendants of refugees and others. UNRWA is solidly in bed with Hamas and turns a blind eye to terrorism that is fostered within areas under its jurisdiction.
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Then there is the European Union (EU). We are well aware of the bias of this group, which funds illegal building by the PA in Judea & Samaria.
EU representative to the Palestinian territories Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff, a German diplomat, brought a delegation of UN officials and diplomats to tour the Jenin camp on Saturday.
In May, Von Burgsdorff had declared, “There is no such thing as Area B and C, it’s all Palestine.” Not surprising, then, that now he drew upon common buzz words in leveling his criticism of Israel:
He declared, “This cycle of violence has to end.” That is a very misleading expression – also employed by the US – implying a moral equivalency that does not exist. The Israeli operation, enacted to save innocent Israeli lives, cannot be compared to actions by terrorists designed to take those lives.
“We are concerned about the deployment of weaponry and weapons systems which question the proportionality of the military during the operation,” he also said.
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The charge of “disproportionate” use of power by Israel is not new; it is based on a fallacious understanding of what proportionate military power is. It does not mean that since the terror groups use rifles and machine guns Israel can only use similar weapons in fighting them. Israel used tanks and drones going into Jenin, while the Arabs in Jenin possess neither drones nor tanks. But this is legitimate.
Disproportionate attacks are those in which incidental loss of civilian life, and injury to civilians, is excessive with regard to the military objective anticipated (International Committee of the Red Cross).
https://casebook.icrc.org/a_to_z/glossary/proportionality
The military objective in Jenin was to reduce the capacity of terrorists to kill innocent Israelis. This objective was achieved. Had it been achieved by carpet bombing Jenin this would have been illegal and disproportionate. But the Israeli attack was very controlled and entirely proportionate.
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The commander of the drone unit that operated in Jenin gave an interview to the JPost today. With regard to the difficulty of avoiding damage to civilians in a very dense area, he said:
“We performed a technological survey and analysis of the surveillance footage. Are people we see in the video surveillance screen armed or not? Are they handling and throwing improvised explosives or not? Are they carrying out military movements and acting aggressively or acting like civilians?”
He said that his drone unit would only fire on someone if they “actually saw they were armed and there was no room for ambiguity.”
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-749395
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Infrastructure was damaged, Arabs had to flee, and there were some 100+ injuries.
But no Arab civilians were killed! All of the 12 Arabs killed were identified with terror groups.
Col. Kemp, the former commander of the British military forces in Afghanistan, had special praise for Israel in this regard (emphasis added):
“To conduct an operation of such intensity in an urban area without killing any uninvolved civilians at all is a remarkable achievement by the IDF and probably unprecedented in modern warfare. Casualty ratios in most such operations have often been 3 to 5 civilians killed for every fighter, and that is by Western armies that do their best to avoid civilian casualties and adhere to the laws of war. I doubt any other army in the world would be able to achieve what the IDF did in Jenin.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/373909
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One other appalling charge was leveled against Israel, including by the UN: that we kill children when conducting military operations. The BBC went even further, claiming that, “Israeli forces are happy to kill children.”
It was said that four “children” were killed. Palestinian Media Watch has been able to identify three of them. One was 16, and the other two 17 years old. All were associated with terror groups, each with a different group: The Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and Fatah’s terror wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. PMW was able to make these identifications because their pictures were posted on various terror websites. It is likely that the fourth killed had similar associations.
Are these “children” or are these young people, carrying automatic weapons, trained terrorists taught to kill?
https://palwatch.org/page/34252
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There is a belief among certain members of our government and of our security agencies that we need the Palestinian Authority: It presumably serves as a buffer in Judea & Samaria against terror entities such as Hamas, and its security forces cooperate with Israeli security in some situations.
What is more, it serves an administrative role regarding schools, hospitals and civic agencies in PA areas – a role that either Israel would have to assume or would be assumed by Hamas.
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But the Palestinian Authority is crumbling: it has diminished control in Judea & Samaria, generating a power vacuum. And it is on the verge of bankruptcy. (Minus the slay-for-pay and corruption there might not be a fiscal emergency.)
The fact that Mahmoud Abbas, who is serving the 17th year of a four-year term as president, is failing exacerbates the situation.
Already members of Fatah (the key party of the PA) are pitted against one another in their desire to succeed him. This further decreases PA stability: The likelihood of a civil war is great. In any event, not one of those competing to succeed Abbas is remotely moderate. In fact, their credentials are sharpened when they demonstrate support for terrorism. The PA post-Abbas will likely be worse than it is now.
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I, along with others, was appalled when news broke about Netanyahu’s intention to help save the PA from fiscal collapse. It seemed to me that there was more at play than an internal security assessment. I also saw the long hand of Joe Biden. Hey! How can you promote that “two-state solution” when there is no more PA?
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I believe it is time to bite the bullet and face the fact that the PA should go. Consider:
[] Abbas had already said he was cancelling security cooperation with Israel. With the Jenin operation he couldn’t be seen to be on Israel’s side.
[] The Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the armed branch of the Fatah movement (the major faction of the PA), said that it has placed “all of our fighters in the West Bank” on “general alert” status, in preparation for a large-scale conflict with the Jewish state.
“We call on all of our fighters and military cells, in every place in the West Bank, to attack the Zionist enemy and all of its components, including within the fragile heart of the entity, Tel Aviv.
“We have received the instructions. We hereby declare the escalation of the general alert situation of all our fighters to the highest level, which is that of open warfare.
“This is a revolution and an armed intifada which will be ongoing until victory. Mercy to our heroic martyrs, recovery to our heroic injured, and freedom to our heroic prisoners.”
https://worldisraelnews.com/mahmoud-abbas-fatah-calls-for-armed-intifada-with-attacks-on-tel-aviv/
[] PA Security Forces (the forces that are supposed to cooperate with Israel) are actively involved in terror. Fatah has put out a video showing photos of 24 armed terrorists who were also salaried members of PA Security Forces. Each picture includes the logo of the terror organization the terrorist belonged to and the branch of the PA Security Forces, with rank. Palestinian Media Watch has tracked this:
https://palwatch.org/page/34255
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When MK Itamar Ben Gvir (Chair, Otzma Yehudit) learned that measures to strengthen the PA were going to be brought before the Security Cabinet for approval, he called this delusional and vowed not only to oppose this but also to enlist others to do the same.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/373870
Last night (Sunday), the Security Cabinet indeed did vote, by 8 to 1, to strengthen the Palestinian Authority. But this was the statement that was released:
“In the absence of a change in the national assessment, Israel will act to prevent the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, while demanding that it cease its anti-Israel activity in the international legal-diplomatic arena, the incitement in its media and education system, the payments to the families of terrorists and murderers, and the illegal construction in Area C.”
It took almost no time at all for the PA to reject Israel’s terms, calling them “extortion.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/373946
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While I am delighted at the conditions set out by the Security Cabinet, I retain a lingering unease that quietly our prime minister might yet act to assist the PA in one respect or another, especially as this is what Biden would want.
I will return at another time to examine thoughts on how to replace the PA.
My next posting will address the appalling behavior of the opposition to judicial reform, a major issue for Israel today.
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Alene Kushner. This material is produced by independent journalist Arlene Kushner. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
