A Review Of Homicides In Israel

There has been an uptick in the number of homicides happening in Israel recently, and it deserves a detailed review which the mainstream media is too lazy to examine and too biased to report clearly.

In 2021, the last year for which homicide information is available by the World Bank, Israel’s homicide rate was 1.94 per 100,000, which increased from 1.42 in 2020, a 36% jump. The 1.42 in 2020 figure placed it amongst its neighbors’ average of 1.39 in Turkey, Lebanon, Cyprus and Jordan (no data was available for Lebanon in 2021).

Israel’s jump in 2021 to 1.94 homicides per 100,000 was similar to the murder rate in Montenegro (2.39), Albania (2.31), Armenia (2.18), Canada (2.06), Estonia (1.96), Morocco (1.93), Azerbaijan (1.91), Ghana (1.83) and Algeria (1.57). The United States homicide rate in 2021 was 6.80 per 100,000, or 3.5 times as much as Israel.

The rise in the murder rate shows particular trends.

Breakdown By Sex

The murder rate of males jumped to 3.3 per 100,000 in 2021 from 2.3 the prior year, while the murder rate for women jumped to 0.6 from 0.5 per 100,000, according to the World Bank.

The Israel Observatory on Femicide noted the erratic nature of the data: 21 women murdered in 2020, 16 in 2021 and then 24 in 2022, a 50% jump. The average age of the female victim jumped to 45.6 years old in 2021 due to a spike in matricide cases, where people killed their mothers.

Breakdown By Ethnicity

For 2021, the murdered women were 44% Jewish, 31% Israeli Arab and 19% Druze. In almost every case, the murderer had the same ethnic background as the victim. As in 2021, half of the women murdered in 2022 were Arab and killed by Arabs, mostly family members or former partners.

Overall, there were 126 Arabs murdered in 2021 (110 males and 16 females), almost all killed by fellow Arabs. While various organizations track violence in the Israeli Arab sector Abraham Initiatives, the data isn’t as available for Israeli Jews. Using the 1.94 homicides per 100,000 in an Israeli population of 9.364 million in 2021 would imply a total homicide figure of 182, of which 56 were Jewish. This assumes that the 17 Israelis killed by Arab terrorism in 2021 are not included in the homicide statistics.

While data from different sources are somewhat inconsistent, there is a sharp pattern.

The difference in the rate of murderers between Jews and Arabs is astounding if one considers that Jews make up 76% of the population and Arabs account for 21%. It means that an average Israeli Arab is 8.1x more likely to commit a murder than an Israeli Jew.

The 0.79 homicides per 100,000 amongst Israeli Jews is similar to the homicide rate in Greece (0.85), Germany (0.83), Croatia (0.81), Denmark (0.80), Portugal (0.80), Hungary (0.77), Australia (0.74) and Austria (0.73).

The homicide rate in Israel has taken a worrying trend upwards since 2021, now approaching the rate of Turkey when it used to be closer to Cyprus in 2015. The jump has principally come from Israeli Arabs killing other Arabs in gang violence amongst male victims, and “honor killings” and matricide among female victims. At the same time, the homicide rate of Israeli Jews remains much closer to those in Western Europe.

Related articles:

The Successful Murder Of Jews and Marker For New Massacres

Radical Muslim Groups Celebrate Bombings And Murder of Jewish Teenager In Jerusalem

The UN Treats Murdered Jews Worse Than Victims of Other Terrorist Attacks, Even When Killed In A Synagogue

Empowering Women… To Murder

Honor Killings in Gaza

Hamas Condemns The “Judaization” of Israel

On July 2, 2023, the Israeli government approved the establishment of a new town in northern Israel. Located near the Sea of Galilee and Mount Arbel, the town is to be called “Ramat Arbel”, designed to house roughly 500 families.

Mount Arbel overlooking the top of the Sea of Galilee

The popular political-terrorist group Hamas was apoplectic.

Its spokesperson said that Israel’s plan to “establish a colonial Jewish settlement in occupied Galilee represented a serious escalation in the occupation’s policy of Judaization and colonial settlement.” It added that Israel “is waging an open war against the Palestinian existence” and seeks to “advance the agenda of complete displacement, on which Zionism was founded.”

The root cause of the Israel-Palestinian conflict is Arab refusal to accept Jews living ANYWHERE between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River

The terrorist group Hamas is very popular among Palestinian Arabs, and has 58% of the seats in the current Palestinian parliament. According to a June 2023 poll, Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh would win the presidency with 56% of the vote, trouncing the current President Mahmoud Abbas, who would net only 33% of the vote.

Meanwhile, Abbas has said much the same about Israel, calling it a “painful historic settlement.”

Palestinians are not upset about Jews living east of the 1949 Armistice lines (E49/ “West Bank”), they are livid that Jews live anywhere in Israel.

That is the plain truth and root cause of the conflict.

ACTION ITEMS

CONTACT Sen. Christopher Murphy (D-CT) “The root cause of the Israel-Palestinian conflict is Arab refusal to accept Jews living ANYWHERE between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The US must therefore remain steadfast in: supporting Israel; ensuring that UNRWA textbooks include the long history and sanctity of the land for Jews, while teaching coexistence; denying the Palestinian Authority any funding while it continues its “martyr payments” and incitement to violence; and backing Israel’s and Egypt’s ongoing blockade of Gaza until Hamas formally accepts Israel’s existence.”

Other member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ)
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD)
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-DE)
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA)
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Sen. Cory A. Booker (D-NJ)
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI)
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)
Sen. James Risch (R-ID)
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT)
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE)
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)
Sen. Todd Young (R-IN)
Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY)
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN)
Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC)

Related articles:

“Which Most of the World Considers Illegal…”

The Israeli Peace Process versus the Palestinian Divorce Proceedings

Israel was never a British Colony; Judea and Samaria are not Israeli Colonies

“Ethnic Cleansing” in Israel and the Israeli Territories

The Noxious Anti-Semitism Of “European Settler Colonialism”

Israel’s Colonial Neighbors from Arabia

The Israeli-Arab Conflict Is About The Presence of Jews, Not the “1967 Borders”

The World Ignores Peaceful Dying Refugees And Obsesses Over Murdering Synthetic Refugees

39 immigrants suffocate in a truck in Bucharest.

Over 60 migrants die when their boat breaks apart off the coast of Italy.

53 migrants die in the sweltering heat in the back of a truck in San Antonio.

Between 79 and 600 refugees drown when their boat sunk off Greece.

Boat packed with as many as 750 fleeing migrants capsizes off Greece in June 2023

Since 2014, the United Nations International Organization of Migrants estimates that 56,912 migrants and refugees are dead or missing. This year is set to be perhaps the deadliest on record, as thousands of people flee their homes due to war or poverty.

The United Nations and media spend a scant moment mourning these poor souls. Men, women and children who reluctantly ran to far-away lands in pursuit of peace were quickly forgotten. No actions are taken to prevent the frequent tragedies.

The United Nations has other priorities:

  • For synthetic “refugees” over real refugees; and
  • For people who seek to murder over defenseless souls

The UN has dressed up Palestinian Arabs who have been living in the same land for generations, as a special class of “UNRWA Refugees”. It pardons their jihadi violence against Israeli Jews as a matter of routine and concocted resolutions.

The media closes its eyes and minds to the facts that Palestinian Arabs are not refugees who do not deserve a special UN agency accompanied by a promise of invading a UN member state. Politicians suspend belief that they favor a two state solution while simultaneously advocating that the Jewish State shouldn’t be Jewish and forced to take in millions of Arabs from a few miles away.

The UN held a week-long conference on counterterrorism in June, and subsequently informed Israel that only the rest of the world can combat the global scourge. Israel must accept jihadi violence as penance for its existence.

The UN Security Council is now scheduled to meet to invert reality in discussing Israel’s successful raid to eliminate terrorists in Jenin but will not convene to dismantle UNRWA camps in Gaza and the West Bank which serve as the incubators for Muslim extremists.

The UNSC will certainly not meet the Special Rapporteur on human rights and migrants whose task it is to help millions of actual refugees, as that privilege is reserved for the Special Rapporteur for the Middle East Peace Process (really the UN Coordinator for Palestinian Appeals), who has regularly scheduled meetings to berate Israel.

It is terribly sad that politicians, the United Nations and media do not attend to peaceful people in actual dire need. It is a horrific state of reality, that the world supports jihadi extremists living next to Israel in their quest to kill Jews and the only Jewish State.

Related articles:

The United Nations’ Remorse for “Creating” Israel

Help Refugees: Shut the UNRWA, Fund the UNHCR

The Reasons Behind The Spike In Palestinian Terrorism

The Collective Punishment Of Terrorism

“Politics Aside,” It’s All Politics for UNRWA

Those Welcoming Refugees and Immigrants

UNRWA Anoints New Palestinian Wards

While Palestinians Fire 400 Rockets, the United Nations Meets to Give Them Money

UNRWA’s Munchausen Disease

Dividing The Temple Mount Into Jewish And Muslim Sections

For many years, Palestinian Arab leaders warned Israel against dividing the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem in time and place. That reality may be coming closer.

The Old City of Jerusalem including the Jewish Temple Mount/ Al Aqsa Compound

For centuries, Muslims had prevented Jews from going to their holy places in the Jewish holy land. In both Hebron and Jerusalem, Muslims declared that Jewish holy sites were purely Islamic and denied Jews any rights. That changed after the neighboring Arab states conspired to destroy Israel in June 1967 but lost control of those two holy cities which Jordan had illegally annexed in 1950.

After the 1967 war, Jews were finally able to go into the Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs, which Muslims call the Ibrahimi Mosque. Israel made the site available to both Jews and Muslims, and in June 2023, opened an elevator to facilitate visitation by handicapped persons in a broad effort of inclusivity.

While Israel took over the Old City of Jerusalem in the same June 1967 Six Day War, it handled the situation very differently, giving administrative control of the Jewish Temple Mount/ Al Aqsa Mosque Compound to the Jordanian Waqf, while Israel maintained security control. Even after eastern Jerusalem, including the site, was officially annexed as part of Israel, the Waqf continued to forbid Jews from praying at their holiest location, even as they allow a small number of Jewish visitors.

In October 2014, a Palestinian attempted to assassinate Rabbi Yehuda Glick because he advocated for peace and equal rights for both Jewish and Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount. In response, Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority declared “Israel’s leaders are making a big mistake if they think they can turn back history, to impose a reality, and to divide the al-Aqsa Mosque [into separate prayers times and areas] as they divided the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.”

Rabbi Glick survived the four bullets, and was nominated to the Israeli Knesset in 2016, continuing to advocate for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount. His efforts resulted in few practical changes, however, the number of Jewish visitors to the holy site has steadily increased since that time.

For his part, Mahmoud Abbas continues to warn Israeli leaders about Jewish prayer and dividing the Temple Mount. In April 2022, Jordanian politicians joined in condemning then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet’s non-controversial comments that Jews, Christians and Muslims should all be free to celebrate their holidays (Passover, Easter and Ramadan), which Arab leaders viewed as a precursor to dividing the Temple Mount.

The back-and-forth continues.

In early June 2023, Amit Halevi, a member of Knesset from Likud, put forward an official proposal to divide the religious site between Jews and Muslims, calling for the southern 30% of the compound – which includes the al Aqsa Mosque – to be for Muslims, and the northern 70% – which includes the Dome of the Rock where the Jewish Temples stood – to be for Jews. The political-terrorist group Hamas declared that such proposal was part of an “Israeli religious war launched by the fascist Israeli government… [and] the Al-Aqsa mosque will remain an exclusively Muslim holy site and the Palestinian people will continue to defend the mosque against Israeli partition and Judaization schemes.” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh voiced concerns about the “order to impose temporal and spatial division in the blessed al Aqsa Mosque. We warn the occupation authorities against taking such a step that would have unpredictable results.”

Most of the media ignored the story, presumably because Halevi is a low level MK without portfolio, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said that he will uphold the Waqf’s antisemitic “status quo” banning Jewish prayer at the site.

The event may be unreported, but the situation will not remain ignored.

There are competing natural desires which have long brewed in the holy land: for Palestinian Arabs to return into the land of Israel to towns where grandparents had lived; for Jews to pray openly and frequently at their holiest site on the Temple Mount; and to live throughout the area. For years, the United States attempted to keep a lid on those aspirations until President Obama reversed precedent, nodding to Arab migration into Israel (2012), while making it illegal according to international law for Jews to move to the eastern parts of Jerusalem and the holy land (2016), and maintaining the ban on Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount.

The “status quo” is not a ban on Jews praying on the Temple Mount but of competing points of tension. The large holes in the holy land dam are readily apparent to everyone. One can ignore them and wait for the fissures to crack open unpredictably, or facilitate the spillway, with some Jews praying openly and discretely at their holiest site.

Related articles:

The Waqf and the Temple Mount

Open Letter To Politicians On Al Aqsa Mosque

The Inalienable Right of Jews to Pray on The Temple Mount

Time for King Abdullah of Jordan to Denounce the Mourabitoun

Visitor Rights on the Temple Mount

The UN’s Disinterest in Jewish Rights at Jewish Holy Places

Tolerance at the Temple Mount

Majority of Palestinians Believe Israel Will Soon Cease to Exist

The latest Palestinian poll of June 14, 2023 showed a familiar preference for violence that has been a constant sentiment for years. Now a new headline has emerged: that Palestinians think Israel will disappear within the next 25 years.

Preference For Violent Jihad

When asked about the most positive things to happen to Palestinians over the past 75 years since the reestablishment of the Jewish State of Israel in the so-called “Nakba catastrophe”, the number one response was the establishment of the terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Second, were the two “Intifada pogroms” which killed over 1,000 Israeli Jews. Trailing those responses was the creation of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority (PA) and last, the formation of the more moderate political party, Fatah.

A large majority of 71% are in favor of the formation of the newest terrorist groups “Lion’s Den” and “Jenin Battalion” which sparked the dramatic rise in deaths among both Israelis and Palestinians over the past two years. An incredible 86% of Palestinian Arabs think the terrorist groups should operate outside of the PA. Not surprisingly, with such support, 58% expect “these armed groups to expand and spread to other areas in the West Bank.”

When asked about the most effective means of creating a Palestinian state, “the public split into three groups: 52% chose armed struggle [aka violent jihad] (55% in the Gaza Strip and 49% in the West Bank), 21% negotiations, and 22% popular resistance.”

These findings are not meaningfully different than results of past polls. The alarming question about the preference to kill Jewish civilians inside of Israel was not asked in this latest poll. In March 2023, 61% were in favor of such terrorist attacks (question 70).

The End of Israel

The quarterly Palestinian poll occasionally introduces new questions based on recent events. For example, this poll asked about opinions related to the Iranian-Saudi reproachment. Last poll asked whether people were in favor of killing two Israelis who drove into the town of Huwara (a vast majority were).

In the latest poll, people were asked a more general question about the future of Israel as the country celebrated its 75th anniversary. In response to the question of Israel making it to its 100th anniversary, “two-thirds say Israel will not celebrate the centenary of its establishment, and the majority believes that the Palestinian people will be able in the future to recover Palestine and return its refugees to their homes.”

While the world debates how to set the “peace process” on track and solely blames the Israeli government for the failure of progress, Palestinians have mentally moved on, and see the end of the Jewish State in their lifetimes and its replacement with an Arab country.

ACTION ITEM

While the world debates how to set the “peace process” on track and solely blames the Israeli government for the failure of progress, Palestinians have mentally moved on, and see the end of the Jewish State in their lifetimes.

CONTACT Sen. Christopher Murphy (D-CT) “Palestinians polled themselves once again and not only show a strong preference for violence but see the end of Israel in the near future. Stop efforts to condition aid to Israel.”

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Related articles:

The Israeli-Arab Conflict Is About The Presence of Jews, Not the “1967 Borders”

UN Lies About Palestinians Favoring Two States

Terrifying Trifecta Of Anti-Zionism

Biden To Push Coexistence Agenda To Palestinian Arabs Not Interested

Most Palestinians Are For Hamas. Most Israelis Are Not European Jews.

Arabs of Eastern Jerusalem Are Favoring Israel

NY Times Is Not Willfully Ignorant But Willfully Misleading About The Arab-Israeli Conflict

Palestinian Arabs Do Not Want Negotiations or a Two State Solution

No One Mentions Actual Palestinians’ Sentiments

Why Blockade Gaza

Israel: Security in a Small Country

Some Truth About The Jerusalem Parades

The holy city of Jerusalem, the capital of Israel held two parades over the past couple of weeks. One was done by the right-wing and the other by the left-wing. Each side claimed the moral high ground and accused the other of acting in bad faith.

Let’s speak about both honestly.

The Flag Parade

On May 18, thousands of Israelis marched through the streets of Jerusalem carrying Israeli flags to mark the reunification of the city at the end of the 1967 Six Day War. The tremendous pride in country and messianic feel of Jews controlling Judaism’s holiest site for the first time in almost two thousand years was palpable at the time, and many tried to recreate that sense of awe 56 years later.

Marchers near Damascus Gate of Old City during Jerusalem Day, 2023

The parade route into the Old City to the Western Wall could have worked its way through the Jewish Quarter but the nationalist spirit of the marchers directed them through the Arab Quarter, essentially re-educating the Arabs about their defeat. While the march was basically peaceful, roughly 2,500 police officers came to maintain order as past years saw scuffles as the Arabs in the Old City resented the march.

The Gay Pride Parade

On June 1, thousands of Israelis marched through the streets in a gay Pride Parade. While such a parade would have happened without controversy in the liberal and secular city of Tel Aviv, the religious beliefs of devout Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem caused friction.

Thousands of police came to protect the marchers as there were attacks in past years. This year’s event proved peaceful and uneventful.

Some Truths

The Flag and Pride Parades were both legal and unnecessarily provocative. The right wing Jewish nationalists did not need to go through the Arab Quarter and the left wing secular Jews did not need to march through religious sections of the country. Each sought to drive home their own point that they are free and able to hold such events, and enjoyed rubbing the spectators’ noses in the fact.

The left-wing media only focused on the right-wing in both cases. CNN described a “contentious flag march” in which a” number of Palestinian shopkeepers told CNN before the event that they would close their shops in the Old City for fear of attacks by far-right Jewish nationalists.” The New York Times covered the “Conflict With the Far Right Shrouds Jerusalem’s Pride Parade,” with the backdrop of “the most hard-line and religiously conservative government in the country’s history took power.”

Both the right-wing and left-wing held their parades in Jerusalem being proud and provocative, yet the mainstream opinion shapers could only find fault with right-wing and religious Jews. It fed their macro narrative of right-wing White Supremacist Jews as the elite amongst the bigots, despite being the most persecuted group in the world.

Related articles:

Bitter Waters and The Jerusalem Flag Parade

On Defenses: Provocative and Legal / Unprovocative and Illegal

Gay Rights in the Middle East

Pride. Jewish and Gay

Palestinian Hate Speech

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres delivered a message on March 30, 2023 related to the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. He offered words for the whole world.

How easily hate speech — a key indicator of the risk of genocide — turns to hate crime.  How complacency in the face of atrocity is complicity.  And how no place, and no time is immune to danger — including our own.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres

Unfortunately, the global body – as well as many countries and people – turn a blind eye to the rampant hate speech in Palestinian society.

On May 15, 2023, the United Nations gave a platform to the acting President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. The man who wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial gave a master class in antisemitism.

Abbas claimed that Jews have no history in the Jewish historical homeland. He said that Jews never even had a single temple in Jerusalem.

Abbas said that Jews were implanted into the land of Israel by the British and Americans who wanted to export the Jews which they despised. He argued that doing so made the Jews indebted to their western benefactors to serve as a colonial outpost.

Abbas called the Jews a bunch of liars – on par with Nazi Germany’s propagandist Joseph Goebbels, who was instrumental in the genocide of European Jewry.

Abbas’s performance was a reminder of his past antisemitic tirades when he praised the Arab assassins of Jewish civilians, calling them “martyrs” for the Palestinian cause, who will always get pay-to-slay money, even “if we had only a penny left.

Horrifically, the United Nations was not “complacent in the face of these atrocities” but an active participant.

The UN continues to give the Palestinian leader the floor to air his antisemitic vitriol. It continues to push money into the terrorist enclave of Gaza, headed by Hamas, with the most antisemitic governing charter ever written. The global forum echoes Palestinians’ demands for apartheid, denying Jews the basic right to pray at their holiest location on the Jewish Temple Mount, and to live in the center of their holy land.

Palestinian hate speech was once again given a platform at the United Nations, inflaming danger to Jews everywhere, and “the risk of genocide.”

Seemingly by design.

Related articles:

Abbas’s Speech and the Window into Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism

United Nations’ Particularism About Racism But Universalism On Anti-Semitism Reveals Its Jew Hatred

The United Nations Ignores Radical Muslim Violent Extremism and Terrorism

Apartheid In Palestinian Authority, Not Israel

Amid The Terror, The United Nations Elevates Hamas

To Serve Jews, United Nations Style

The U.N. Openly Declares Opposition To Jews in Jerusalem

While Palestinians Fire 400 Rockets, the United Nations Meets to Give Them Money

Abbas’ European Audience for His Rantings

The United Nations’ Incitement to Violence

What’s “Outrageous” for the United Nations

“Mainstream” and Abbas’ Jihad

Abbas Knows Racism

The Flawed and Inconsistent U.S. Position On Israelis Living In The West Bank

On May 21, 2023, the U.S. State Department issued a statement about Israeli “Settlements in the West Bank.” It read:

“We are deeply troubled by the Israeli government’s order that allows its citizens to establish a permanent presence in the Homesh outpost in the northern West Bank, which according to Israeli law was illegally built on private Palestinian land. This order is inconsistent with both former Prime Minister Sharon’s written commitment to the Bush Administration in 2004 and the current Israeli government’s commitments to the Biden Administration. Advancing Israeli settlements in the West Bank is an obstacle to the achievement of a two-state solution.”

There were many things covered in this paragraph:

  • Israeli law about whether building in the “Homesh outpost” is legal;
  • The 2004 exchange of letters between Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon and U.S. President George W. Bush;
  • The current Israeli commitments to the Biden Administration; and
  • Whether Israeli Jews “living in the West Bank is an obstacle…to a two-state solution.”

Israeli Law

First, it’s a bit rich for the United States to make comments about Israeli law. I cannot imagine that the U.S. would take kindly to any country opining on its rulings on imminent domain, seizing land to build a wall with Mexico, or any other real estate matter.

While Israeli courts have ruled against approving building on privately owned land, the courts have also legalized previously unauthorized settlements. Countries modify their rulings depending on societal needs of the moment. For example, the Israeli courts had approved Israeli taking ownership of the homes they own in the Sheikh Jarrah section of Jerusalem but then suspended the eviction of the Arab squatters because of violence. Real estate in Israel is a matter of law as well as of security and order.

The 2004 Exchange of Letters

In the middle of the 2000-2005 Arab pogroms which killed over 1,000 Israelis, Israeli PM Sharon decided that he was going to build a security barrier to stop terrorism emanating from the West Bank, and to pull all Israelis out of Gaza. In exchange for these actions, U.S. President Bush issued a letter in support of the actions with U.S. commitments.

The State Department just referenced the 2004 Sharon letter because while Sharon understood there was no chance for peace with Palestinians at that time, he “decided to initiate a process of gradual disengagement with the hope of reducing friction between Israelis and Palestinians.” Sharon’s “Disengagement Plan” called for pulling all Israelis out of Gaza “as well as other military installations and a small number of villages in Samaria,” which included the town of Homesh and three other nearby villages.

The Israeli Disengagement Plan was not a “commitment” as described in the latest State Department statement. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Sharon made clear that it “represents an independent Israeli plan” designed to create space between the parties while terrorism was ongoing.

In addition to incorrectly calling the dismantling of Homesh a commitment, the State Department ignored U.S. commitments that Bush made to Sharon in that exchange of letters.

The Bush letter repeatedly stated that the U.S. is committed to fight Palestinian terrorism and incitement and that it will work to “prevent the areas from which Israel has withdrawn from posing a threat.” That was in 2004 and Israel left Gaza the following year in 2005.

Then what happened?

The Palestinians held elections in 2006 under America’s watch, and the terrorist group Hamas won a majority of Parliament. In 2007, Hamas routed Fatah and took control of Gaza, and proceeded to launch wars against Israel in 2008, 2012, 2014 and more recently.

So much for America’s commitment to preventing the abandoned areas “from posing a threat.”

Further, in another part of his letter, Bush stated clearly that “in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.” In plain English, that meant that the United States acknowledged that Israel will annex sections of the West Bank.

Yet the Obama Administration broke that commitment to Israel when it allowed United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass in 2016, making it illegal for Israelis to live east of “the armistice lines of 1949.”

In short, Israel made no commitments in the 2004 letter while the United States trampled on its commitments to Israel.

Current Commitment to Biden Administration

Israel met with the U.S. and Palestinian Authority in Egypt in March 2023 and issued a joint statement which covered a number of issues including “an Israeli commitment to stop discussion of any new settlement units for 4 months, and to stop authorization of any outposts for 6 months.” As Homesh was an existing settlement until it was dismantled in 2005, it is debatable whether allowing its redevelopment runs counter to Israel’s statement.

It should be noted that the Palestinian Authority has completely ignored its stated March 2023 commitments, as it continues to incite violence.

Jews As Obstacle to Two State Solution

Roughly 25% of Israeli citizens are non-Jews, so the notion that a theoretical Arab state of Palestine cannot be viable with a small percentage of Jews is ridiculous. It can only be viewed as an “obstacle” to two states if the Palestinian Authority refuses to have any Jews living in the country.

And if Palestine can only be created as a Jew-free state, it should never be admitted to the United Nations or recognized by any country.

Road in Judea and Samaria

The State Department is “deeply troubled” by Israeli action in the village of Homesh because its accounting of history and facts are deeply flawed. More generally, if the U.S. assumes that a Palestinian State must be Jew-free, it should adamantly oppose its existence.

Should pressure mount on Israel to evacuate Homesh again, it should turn to those agitators and get their support for the Israeli Jews to take ownership of their homes in Sheikh Jarrah.

Related articles:

Time to Define Banning Jews From Living Somewhere as Antisemitic

When were Jews barred from living in Judea & Samaria?

The Palestinian State I Oppose

Pro Israel Advocates Should Stop Using “Judea and Samaria”

Israel was never a British Colony; Judea and Samaria are not Israeli Colonies

Ramat Shlomo, Jerusalem and Joe Biden

Related video:

Judea and Samaria (music by Foo Fighters)

E1: The Battle for Jerusalem (music by The Who)

The Toxicity of The Latest “Nakba” Resolution

On May 10, 2023, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) sponsored a resolution, “H.Res.388 – Recognizing the ongoing Nakba and Palestine refugees rights” which was co-sponsored by five fellow extremist members of Congress, Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO). The same cohort pushed a resolution last May called “H.Res.1123 – Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian refugees’ rights.” The two bills are similar but by no means the same, and the latest version reveals the deep toxicity of the current anti-peace anti-Israel narrative.

The insertion of one word in the resolution’s title – “ongoing” – captures much of the difference between the 2022 and 2023 versions of the bill. While the 811-word, May 2022 Res.1123 gave an alternative version of actual history, whitewashing the crimes committed by Palestinians in the 1930s and 1940s when it worked with the Nazis in Europe and British in Palestine to facilitate the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Holocaust and to launch a war on Jewish survivors in Palestine, the 2023 resolution claims that the war of Israel’s independence is very much part of the Palestinian psyche TODAY.

The May 2023 1,327-word Res.388 claims the so-called “nakba” “is the root cause” of the Palestinian conflict and that there will not be peace “without addressing the Nakba and remedying its injustices toward the Palestinian people.” The resolution holds the United States accountable that it must force the State of Israel to accept millions of Stateless Arabs whose parents or grandparents left Israel while they waited for five Arab armies to perform a second genocide of Jews in a generation.

Both the Democratic and Republican Parties were historically very clear on the issue of “refugees.” The 2008 Democratic platform specifically said “The creation of a Palestinian state through final status negotiations, together with an international compensation mechanism, should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel.” The 2004 letter from U.S. President George W. Bush to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said almost the exact same, that “It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.” The entire idea of a two state solution is a Jewish state and an Arab state, not a bi-national state of Israel and an Arab state of Palestine.

Palestinian polls, as recently as January 2023, show that Palestinians believe that the conflict started with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, promoting a Jewish State, together with the immigration of Jews. Relatively few blame the conflict on the 1948 or 1967 wars. It is the presence of Jews that is the core problem for Palestinian Arabs, not Arabs being unable to live in the same apartments as their grandparents had lived in.

If the 2023 resolution simply misrepresented the core of the conflict or misquoted bipartisan policy for the descendants of Palestine refugees, that would be bad enough. The resolution went much further.

The resolution called upon the president to use the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018, named after a Jewish Holocaust survivor, against the Jewish State in regards to its treatment of Arabs. The fact that Hamas, a political-terrorist group governs half of the Palestinian Arabs and has over half of the seats in the Palestinian parliament is ignored, as is its antisemitic charter which calls for a jihad on Jews and destruction of the Jewish State. Today, nearly two-thirds of Palestinians (61%) support killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel. Somehow, this resolution turns an act meant “to prevent and mitigate acts of genocide and other mass atrocities against civilians” AGAINST THE DEFENDERS OF CIVILIANS IN FAVOR OF THE PERPETRATORS.

Nearly two-thirds of Palestinians (61%) support killing Jews inside of Israel, but Rep. Tlaib and her antisemitic squad want to use the Elie Wiesel Genocide Prevention Act to protect Arabs killing Jews

The “Nakba” was a self-inflicted event in the 1940s when Arabs rejected coexistence with Jews and launched a war to destroy Israel, which they fortunately lost. Outrageously, on the 75th anniversary of the rebirth of the Jewish State, six extremist members of congress put forward a resolution asking the United States to join the Arabs to continue their fight to end the Jewish State.

ACTION ITEMS

EMAIL REP. JAMAAL BOWMAN (NY16) “Your ongoing extremism and co-sponsorship of an ‘ongoing Nakba’ resolution at Israel’s 75th anniversary is both a whitewashing of the contribution of Palestinians to the deaths of thousands of Jews in the 1940s, and a hostile action to dismantle the only Jewish state today.”

EMAIL SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY) “The Nakba Resolution put forward by two New York Democratic members of congress is appalling and offensive. To mark the rebirth of the Jewish State in the shadow of the Holocaust in this way, as nearly two-thirds of Palestinians polled say they are in favor of killing Jewish civilians in Israel is sickening.”

EMAIL SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D-NY) “The Nakba Resolution put forward by two New York Democratic members of congress is appalling and offensive. To mark the rebirth of the Jewish State in the shadow of the Holocaust in this way, as nearly two-thirds of Palestinians polled say they are in favor of killing Jewish civilians in Israel is sickening.”

EMAIL WHITE HOUSE “The Nakba Resolution put forward by two New York Democratic members of congress is appalling and offensive. To mark the rebirth of the Jewish State in the shadow of the Holocaust in this way, as nearly two-thirds of Palestinians polled say they are in favor of killing Jewish civilians in Israel is sickening.”

You must register as a Democrat to PrimaryBowman.com New York State. Registration in (English) and (Spanish).

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Palestinian Actions Matter

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NakbaWashing Crimes Against Jews

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While Over A Million Muslims Visit Al Aqsa Mosque Over Ramadan, Hamas Claims Palestinians Banned And Calls For Global Jihad

The crowds coming to Jerusalem were enormous during the holy month of Ramadan. Despite ongoing Palestinian terrorism slaughtering many Israeli civilians, Israel facilitated the large Muslim crowds into the Old City of Jerusalem.

Tens of thousands Muslim worshippers pray near the Dome of the Rock at Al-Aqsa mosque compound / Jewish Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem on April 17, 2023, on the night of 27 Ramadan, celebrated as Laylat al-Qadr, one of the holiest nights during Ramadan. (Photo by HAZEM BADER / AFP)

On April 17, some 280,000 people in total entered the Temple Mount compound for prayers during Laylat Al Qadr, also known as the Night of Destiny. Police said that the crowds peaked at 130,000 inside the compound at any one time. Noon prayers the Friday before were estimated to have had 250,000 people.

The Israeli government banned all non-Muslims from visiting the site to make it easier for Muslims to reach the compound. Despite the efforts to accommodate prayer, many leading Palestinians turned what should have been a time of contemplation and appreciation, into caustic calls against the Jewish State.

The former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, said at Friday prayers “There is no room for compromise on Al-Aqsa or space for negotiations around it and we will not give up one iota of its land.”

The political-terrorist group Hamas which rules Gaza and makes up a majority of Palestinian parliament issued a statement calling “on international rights and legal groups to condemn and expose Israeli crimes against occupied Jerusalem and its Palestinian population. The Israeli occupation continues to target Palestinian Jerusalemites, by detaining them, banning them from accessing the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Old City, and imposing hefty fines on them, in a bid to force them from the holy city.” The statement further “called on all Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim world to provide the Palestinian population of occupied Jerusalem with all forms of financial and popular support to confront the Israeli occupation and its policies against them.”

Both Israel and Palestinians prove repeatedly that the Jewish State is the only honest and safe caretaker of the holy sites in the holy land.

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The U.N. Openly Declares Opposition To Jews in Jerusalem

“Palestinians and Israelis Alike are Experiencing Growing Insecurity, Growing Fear in Their Places of Worship”

Jews In Jerusalem Still Fighting For ‘Social Justice’

Enduring Peace Requires Unity AND Tolerance

Tolerance at the Temple Mount

Visitor Rights on the Temple Mount