Honesty in blogging. I am keying this in Yavne Israel. Yavne sits between Gaza City and Tel Aviv (see map, below). Gaza’s rulers — Hamas and their fellows — send unguided missiles into Israel literally day and night. As the missiles lack a guidance system — they basically are long-range mortars and a few drones, compliments of Iran — those that make it past Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system often fall on civilian targets.
In most places this is considered a “war crime,” but not when Israelis — Christians, Druze, Jews, Muslims, others — are the victims.
Check points
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A US/CANADA OR US/MEXICO BORDER CHECK POINT AND AN ISRAEL/PLO BORDER CHECK POINT?
- Both stop people planning to cross.
- Both demand residency documentation.
- Both want to know WHY a person wants to enter.
- Both check for contraband and weapons.
- Both usually allow the person to enter for a specific time.
SO TELL ME, WHY IS THE ISRAELI/PLO CHECK POINT MORE ONEROUS THAN CANADA/U.S. OR MEXICO/U.S. CHECK POINTS?
You’ll never know reading the NY Times
Obama CIA director and New York Times opinion writer John Brennan singled out Israel for not living up to his moral standards. (https://tinyurl.com/264543xk)
Brennan begins his article by personalizing the “humiliation” of a Palestinian child and her father at an Israeli checkpoint, described in a documentary that he recommended to President Joe Biden.
The NYT writer chooses not to add any personal anecdotes to tug at your heartstrings of equally compelling stories of Israelis murdered by Palestinians who crossed into Israel. There was the incident of two men hiding rifles within prayer rugs and killing Jewish soldiers at point-blank range at a checkpoint near Bethlehem. (ibid.)
A few words about Brennan from Wikipedia (https://tinyurl.com/6e2d68f7):
- Brennan began his CIA career as an analyst and spent 25 years with the agency. He was a daily intelligence briefer for President Bill Clinton. In 1996, he was CIA station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, when the Khobar Towers bombing killed 19 U.S. servicemen. (So much for Brennan's "intelligence.")
You won’t find it on Google
At least six Israelis — including a Muslim father and his child — have been killed by Hamas’ missiles fired indiscriminately into Israel.
Do a “Google search” for Israelis killed by Hamas rockets in 2021” (I narrowed the field a bit) and what “hits” do I get? See the image below. The query was keyed at 11 a.m. Israel time (3:32 a.m. NYT time).
Even the Mafia knew better
Back in the day (c 1970) when I was a reporter in Trenton NJ I worked with an old timer named Harry Blaise. Harry covered the state courthouse and one of the cases was of a Mafia boss. Harry and The Boss had a relationship — not exactly adversarial but less than strictly professional. The Boss, Harry told me, often would see Harry in the hall and give him a pistol finger. (☛)
Harry was not concerned for, as he said, the Mafia never attacked reporters knowing that it it did, the media would hound the cops until and arrest was made, then hound the courts until there was a conviction.
Time have changed.
Some Israeli Muslims attacked a beat a tv news reporter.
The incident made the news on the reporter’s channel, but then the issue “disappeared.”
Much of the media in Israel leans (or falls over) to the left, unlike the U.S. in the 70s.
- I once stood in the center of a group of black protesters — they had a legitimate complaint — and although not winning a popularity contest, I never was threatened or felt threatened.
Times change.
Cutting off nose to spite the face
Muslims in Israel may feel like “second class” citizens — despite sitting in parliament (Knesset), as city mayors, on courts low and high, being commanders in the national police, and in as few cases, IDF officers and soldiers. (Muslims are not, unlike Jewish citizens, obligated to serve in the army, albeit they are encouraged to perform national service in their own communities.)
Muslims and Jews work together in hospitals, in rescue groups (e.g., Mogan David Adom), in private and public service. Muslims have the vote, they can live anyplace they can afford (some have beautiful homes that most Israeli Jews — this scrivener included — cannot HOPE to afford), own businesses of all types and sell to all customers, yet some, mostly the 18 to 30 set, egged on by politicians and preachers insist on taking to the streets, with the end result being that they are generating a huge prejudice against ALL Muslims.
One man who lives in a “mixed” building now is afraid to go into the building’s shelter for fear this neighbors will attack him. Right or wrong, the fear is there.In the end it will cost the Muslims far more than their non-Muslim neighbors, not only in good will but on the “bottom line.”
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.
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