A barrage of rockets; A barrage of clichés

There's a heavy feeling in the air. The heaviest in a long, long time. The Arab population in Jerusalem has turned their neighborhoods into a war zone. Entire areas in the capital of Israel are now not safe for Jews. Massive violent riots and clashes with the police take place as I was typing these lines. To the best of my understanding, now with the Ramadan month in order, the Arab streets are quiet during the day and violent during the night (with them being observant believers, after all). Damage to the Light Rail infrastructure is estimated in tens of millions of shekels (while it already took the "evil Zionist occupiers" tens of millions of shekels to put the rails through, and connect the Arab neighborhoods to the heart of the Jerusalem downtown in the first place). The rail now makes only half of its usual route. Civil Israeli cars are attacked with nightfall (Ramadan, remember?) by Arabs with heavy rocks on the highways leading to the surrounded with Arab villages neigborhoods of Gilo, Har Homa, Armon Hanatziv, Pisgat Ze'ev and Neveh Ya'akov. Augmented presence of police is strongly noticed all over the city.

"Death to Israel! Death to Jews!" - Destroyed Light Rail station in East Jerusalem.

While this post was in process, the situation escalated all over the country. To stop the barrage of rockets fired at civilian population from Gaza, Israel opened Operation Protective Edge. The 300-and-something rockets fired at Israel since the beginning of 2014, are now quickly multiplied with more than a hundred daily.

If it looks like an Intifada and it smells like an intifada - it's an intifada.

Intifada, in case anyone's in the dark, though generally translated as "uprising", in reality is a war of terror. The target is civil population. The old, the women, the children - anything goes. The battleground is buses, restaurants, shopping malls - any daily environment. The goal is to disrupt everyday life, to put fear in the lives of all Jews all over Israel. Not exactly what you might hear from your local media.

This most recent "unrest on the Arab street" is generally credited to the heinous nationalistic murder of the Arab teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir (even though he stands in a long line of recent nationalistic murders of teens - Jewish teens; Shelley Dadon, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrach come to mind from the last 2 months alone). Mohammed has been brutally murdered by a gang of revolting, fanatic, racist Jewish teenage scum. The discovery of their guilt deeply shocked Israeli public. Their names (when they'll be known) will forever become a pariah in Israeli society. They don't represent neither the Israeli right, nor the settlement movement. No one, but their tiny, sick circle on the outskirts of the outskirts of society. 

Victims of nationalism Shelley Dadon and Mohammed Abu Khdeir. 

Who did you hear about in your news?

And yet, you can always trust the bleeding-hearts of our society and their unholy, unspoken union with the global fascist Anti-Semitism to dance on the blood of poor Mohammed, and use his tragic death as reason to lift a self righteous finger in the air, and utter a variety of tattered, irrelevant clichés with a sophisticated, all-knowing look.

Now, we've dealt already with the nonsense of "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", but your average brain-dead liberal knows no rest, so I must commit yet another post to stating the obvious.

"It's the fault of extremists on both side!" / "We are all equally to blame!" / "See, there's no difference between us!"

The truth is societies are not measured by their sickoes and extremists, but rather by their mainstream. Not by what's considered by the society to be some of the most terrible crimes committed by a tiniest of minorities, but by what's considered by a society to be perfectly mainstream, by what a society embraces. Let's make a swift comparison:

1.a. President Mahmoud Abbas pays Arab terrorists, convicted of murder, monthly salaries. The more murdered - the bigger. He celebrates the release of mass murderers as the homecoming of heroes.

1.b. PM Benjamin Netanyahu strongly and immediately condemned the murder of  Mohammed Abu Khdeir. Minister of Economy, Head of the right wing Jewish Home party, Naftali Bennett declared that Jewish terrorists must be treated the same way Arab terrorists are.

Abbas embraces freed terrorist. December, 2013. Photo: Flash 90.

2.a. Arabs celebrated in the streets the kidnapping (and subsequent murder) of Eyal, Gilad and Naftali. Candies were given out to the celebrating crowd. A social media campaign cheering the kidnapping of three Jews was launched.

2.b. None of the above, not even close, happened in Israeli society as the news of the murder of Mohammed came out.

3.a. Arabs in Gaza and Judea and Samaria glorify violence, murderers and terrorists. Streets, squares and schools are named after suicide bombers. They are revered as heroes by the public, looked up upon as role models.

3.b. None of the above, not even close, exists in Israeli society.

4.a. Terrorist and extremist organizations of all sorts run openly for elections in the "Palestinian" societies, and win by a landslide. The mainstream "Palestinian" public votes to see these people as their leadership.

4.b. Israeli current Knesset presents a wide variety of political and ideological difference, from left to center to right, but extremists are not welcomed. The farthest right wing party currently existing Otzma LeYisrael (who's leaders, Dr. Michael Ben-Ari and Lawyer Itamar Ben Gvir, were among the organizers of some of the more violent Jewish protests of recent time), which is generally regarded as the ideological heirs of Meir Kahane, didn't pass the electoral threshold needed to enter the Knesset. The extreme does not represent the views of the Israeli public.

Got the difference yet?

"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind!"

A lovely cliché if you have kids of kindergarten age, and you want to teach them morals, or if you're of kindergarten age yourself. In the real world, of course, this sentence works in a completely different way. "An eye for an eye" is mainly a waste of time, because if someone takes your eye out, you must take their head off, if you want to survive. Now, before you jump to blame me with racism / extremism / support of ethnic cleansing, or any other idiotic label, leftists use to help their narrow minds cope with reality, think again! Name any war from any geographical or historical point, and tell me when that wasn't the case. Good luck!

Not to mention, the entire basic premise of this statement is simply wrong, as the brilliant writer/director Martin McDonagh explained in his excellent film "Seven Psychopaths"! :)

"I'm ashamed today!"

I'm horrified today. I'm devastated today. I'm in mourning today. But why on earth should I be ashamed? How on earth is any of this my fault? The existence of crazy, extremist scum in any society is deeply regrettable. Any society must pursue and excommunicate its extremes. But why should the entire society be personally ashamed of them? Should all Americans be personally ashamed of Ted Bundy? Should all Ukrainians be personally ashamed of Andrei Chikatilo? Should all Norwegians be personally ashamed of Anders Breivik? Of course not. Because all Americans, Ukrainians or Norwegians bear no responsibility for the actions of sick individuals.

Shame could be appropriate when the mainstream is sick. Now, I'm not a huge fan of collective guilt in any form, but when Germans tell me they're ashamed of the crimes of the Nazis in WWII (which I don't think is right, because no one is responsible for the actions of his grandfather), then that statement has some internal logic, for Nazism was mainstream in 30s' Germany. When former Muslims tell me they're ashamed of the atrocities comitted in the Muslim world (which I don't think is right, because they, as individuals, chose a different path), then that statement bares some internal sense, for an extremist Islamic regime is prevalent in a significant number of countries. Yet, when an Israeli says he's ashamed over the acts of some Israeli degenerates, then that statement bares to internal logic whatsoever. As carefully examined above, the Israeli society has no reason for shame over the acts of its degenerates. If anything, Israelis have every reason for pride.

"The occupation is to blame!"

Ah, yes, of course! "The occupation"! How can we forget "the occupation"?!

Let's all hope that this current operation will finally put an end to terrorism once and for all, and stop the endless loss of life. Yes, on both sides.

In the meantime try to avoid meaningless clichés, and don't forget to use your brains even at times of war!

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"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter"? Think again!

On thursday night three Israeli teens went missing on their way back from school in Judea and Samaria. It was pretty clear from the very beginning they were kidnapped by Arab terrorists. Today it's known for a fact. Now whether it's Hamas or Fatah (under their new, whitewashed name "The Palestinian Authority"), their main bodies or some rogue factions, or indeed some completely different Islamic insanity group, is of absolutely no importance. Security importance, sure (where to look, who to press, who to arrest, etc.), but not political. Even less political importance should be given now, when the new "wonderful unity of the 'Palestinian' people" government emerged.

In the meantime the only thing more deafening then the initial world media silence was the vile Anti-Israeli framing of the incident that followed. "What? Three Israeli kids have been kidnapped by terrorists, how can they possibly present it in an Anti-Israeli light?!" - you'll probably think. Well, the leading news outlets had managed to do just that. Whether by focusing on the IDF search and the measures it has to take to try and locate the kids like the BBC did, or making sure everyone knows the teens are not just innocent, kidnapped human beings but are first of all "settlers" like The Guardian and The Independent did (regardless of your stand on the disputed Judea and Samaria territories, technically only one of the three teens lives beyond the Green Line), or unmistakably recognizing "the cause of the destabilization of the Israeli-Palestinian relations" like the NY Times did.

With such disgusting attempts to manipulate reality, I wonder when was the last time these "progressive, liberal, freedom championing" newspapers blamed rape victims for "dressing up provocatively" and "asking for it"!

The kidanpping crisis and the media's treatment of it, has brought me to analyze the cliché phrase from the headline of this post. It has turned into one of those idiotic aphorisms, that insufferable know-it-alls throw at you every now and then with a calm, smug expression of an enlightened guru. Well, guess what? They're dead wrong! Legitimate resistance fighters fight the oppressive mechanisms, i.e. the armed forces of the occupier, just like the Jewish resistance groups fought the British occupying forces at the dawn of the state of Israel. Legitimate resistance fighters don't target civillians deliberately, just like the Jewish resistance groups didn't when they fought the British armed forces for the Israeli independence. Want to be called legitimate "freedom fighters"? Be my guest, attack army bases and police stations! You'll still be my enemy, and I'll hate you, but at least when the "pro-peace" world media would call you "resistance", I wouldn't need to fight a gag reflex. Want to kidnap innocent teenagers, on their way back from school, cheer and give out candies for their abduction and start a vile, gloating celebration campaign on the social media to "honor" it? Think again! You're nothing, but a filthy, terrorist scum!

And you'll ask me: "So, you acknowledge the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit was a legitimate act of resistance?"

And I'll tell you: The act itself, if could be viewed as a stand alone act, all by itself, could be called a legitimate resistance act. Unfortunately, the Shalit abduction didn't take place in a vacuum, but in the real world. The gang who took Shalit, the Al-Qassam Brigades, is the military wing of Hamas. They are the same people who for a decade targeted Israeli civillians with missiles, and for two decades exploded Israeli buses and restaurants. If Shalit's abductors were to differ themselves from the rest of the terrorists, perform operations exclusively against the military and condemn their fellow Arabs for the attacks on civillian population - we'd have an armed resistance group. Since obviously nothing of the sort ever happened, the Shalit abduction can't be put in a vacuum, and is an act of terror. In fact, today the IDF fights nothing but terror - there are no legitimate Arab resistance groups.

Got the difference?

Good! Keep using those brains!

P.S.

The "Bring Back Our Boys" social media campaign is touching and heartwarming. However, I don't believe it to be useful. If anything it can do more harm than good. No terrorist would ever be dissuaded or convinced to bring the boys back because of the campaign. If anything, the opposite is right. They'd get reaffirmation to hold them for as long as possible, and encouragement to demand as many murderers in return for them as possible. It's hard to believe citizens of the world would be persuaded as well. After all they have such "objective and unbiased" media to inform them. So, what can a simple citizen, who wants to raise awareness to these tragic events, do? Here's an alternative. All those of you who do social media and care, share the hashtag #AbbasIsHamas. It's simple, informative and non-emotional. Hamas is recognised as a terror organization in most of the Western world, in Egypt as well. Help expose the world to the true nature of the "wonderful Palestinian unity government". Thank you!

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