#israel admitted to the bombing because it was full of terrorists and when it came out it was literally just a hospital full of civilians | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

anamericangirl · 1 month

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Hi, you are aware 99% of ppl condemning the colonizers are also condemning past colonization yes?

I condem the settler state of Israel. i conem them for what they have done to Palestine,i condem them for how they treat holocaust survivors.

I condem them for using the genocide of their ppl as a reason to cause genocide.

I condemn them for Bombing hospitals full of the sick elderly frail and young. Saying that a building AT OR BELOW SEA LEVEL can have tunnels. (Fun facts we all have “tunnels” it’s called SEWWERS)

You know that they have indiscriminately killed off some of the oldest CHRISTIAN bloodlines yes? Because your savior, the prophet son of god, Jesus was a Palestinian. A middle eastern man. So Ofcourse his first followers, and their descendants would be living in Palestine.

Jews and Muslims and Christians lived and coexisted in PEACE for millennia. And then Israel was formed as a way to get rid of the Jews from Europe in a “humane” manor. As a way to put a western agenda in the Middle East.

I condemn what Jesus would condemn.

And this is not to say I’m gungho Hamas. But if you were constantly being curb stomed. Killed starved imprisoned. You too would get to a point where you would consider violence.

It's amazing how you guys manage to get literally every single fact wrong. It's ok not to know things or not even to know everything, but to know nothing about a cause you are advocating for? And more than that, every single claim you make is false? That's inexcusable.

"I condem the settler state of Israel."

They aren't a settler state. You don't know what a settler state is so you should not use that term until you can do so correctly.

"i conem them for what they have done to Palestine."

What have they done?

"i condem them for how they treat holocaust survivors"

How do you think they treat them?

"I condem them for using the genocide of their ppl as a reason to cause genocide"

You are a massive fucking hypocrite. You acknowledge their people are under threat of genocide without condemning Hamas for trying to genocide them and then you condemn Israel for a genocide they aren't even guilty of.

They are not causing genocide and you're pretty rotten to condemn them for a genocide that's not happening while you refuse to condemn the genocide that you admitted was being attempted.

But I guess you don't care when it's a genocide of Jews, huh?

"I condemn them for Bombing hospitals full of the sick elderly frail and young"

They didn't do that you moron. Hamas, the terrorists you simp for, LIED. That is a verifiable fact.

"Saying that a building AT OR BELOW SEA LEVEL can have tunnels"

lmao glad to see you condemn Israel for this but not Hamas for lying, attempting genocide or using children as human shields you ignorant little terrorist apologist.

"You know that they have indiscriminately killed off some of the oldest CHRISTIAN bloodlines yes."

Prove it.

"Because your savior, the prophet son of god, Jesus was a Palestinian. A middle eastern man. So Ofcourse his first followers, and their descendants would be living in Palestine."

Jesus wasn't Palestinian you ignoramus. Palestine didn't exist. Jesus was a Jew.

"Jews and Muslims and Christians lived and coexisted in PEACE for millennia"

That's bullshit. Muslims have been starting wars with Jews and Christians since they came into existence.

"And then Israel was formed as a way to get rid of the Jews from Europe in a “humane” manor. As a way to put a western agenda in the Middle East."

Again, that's bullshit.

"I condemn what Jesus would condemn."

You don't condemn what Jesus would condemn because you're lying about a country and people under attack and supporting their genocide and Jesus wouldn't do that. Don't use the name of Jesus to try and justify your filth and lies. That's blasphemy.

"And this is not to say I’m gungho Hamas. But if you were constantly being curb stomed. Killed starved imprisoned. You too would get to a point where you would consider violence."

You are gungho Hamas. Everything you accuse Israel of doing to them they have done to Israel and you justify their unjustifiable violence and then lie about Israel. What Hamas does to Israel on the daily is magnitudes worse than anything Israel has ever done so shame on you for standing behind them and lying about Israel to justify the slaughter of Jews. Hamas is lucky to have a moron like you at their disposal to spread their lies and anti-semitism for them.

If Hitler was alive right now you'd be kissing his ass too.

You got nothing right. You are a liar. You are just a nasty, repulsive person who hates Jews and supports terrorism and genocide.

So, from the bottom of my heart, fuck you.

#anon #answered

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healthstyle101 · 6 months

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Israeli Reserve Soldier Recounts Deadly Desert Rave Concert Massacre

Survivor Recounts Terrorist Attack at Israeli Music Festival Netanel Halevi found himself dancing with friends in the southern Israeli desert at the Tribe of Nova music festival. It was meant to be a time of celebration and music. But the atmosphere took a terrifying turn when Hamas terrorists opened fire, sending bullets and rocket-propelled grenades into the unsuspecting crowd. Just two days later, Halevi was deployed with his reserve unit at Israel's northern front. "Shortly after the first missiles, they turned off the music and started shouting, 'Just run. Take everything you have on you and just run,'" Halevi recalled. "We looked up, we saw the parachutes coming down, and then we understood we were in a different kind of scenario." Halevi described the attackers, saying, "They had guns, RPGs, and grenades. They did horrible things, throwing grenades at people at the party and bombing them." The Hamas terrorists killed at least 260 people during their attack on the Tribe of Nova music festival on October 7. Paragliders dropped grenades on attendees, while ground forces shot bullets and rockets at terrified festivalgoers trying to escape. Around 3,500 young people had gathered to enjoy electronic music and celebrate the Jewish holidays of Sukkot and Simchat Torah. According to Halevi, Hamas struck a "jackpot" when they targeted the festival. The terrorists arrived in trucks and on motorcycles, some vehicles carrying as many as seven fighters each. "We started running towards our cars… and then we started hearing gunshots," Halevi explained. He continued, "I fell down, and then I got up, and a friend saw me emerge from the cars. He took me and said, 'Come on, we have to go.' He was very paranoid. So, luckily for me, because of him, we were able to get to a car really fast." As Halevi and his friends made their escape, they saw a scene of chaos – terrorists, victims, and bullet-ridden cars from the first wave of festivalgoers attempting to flee. The second wave had better odds as the terrorists were already preoccupied with killing or capturing civilians. Hamas is currently holding 199 Israelis hostage, while 13 Americans remain unaccounted for. The conflict has claimed the lives of at least 1,400 Israelis and 30 Americans, and approximately 2,800 Palestinians have been killed, with nearly 11,000 wounded, according to Palestinian health authorities. Halevi emphasized that he still hears stories about those who were killed and kidnapped, but for now, the focus is on fighting back. "Over there, we were barehanded. We came to a party, to have fun, to dance, to feel the love and the vibes," he said. "But now we are strong. We took our stuff, we took our weapons, and we're going to fight back. Now there's no running." After escaping the festival, Halevi, a tattoo artist in civilian life, contacted his reserve commanders and expressed his readiness to mobilize against the terrorists. Within two days, he was deployed. "I think I'll have ongoing trauma," Halevi admitted, "but now, this is the healing process for me." "At first, we were running," he added. "But now there's no running." Click here to watch Halevi's full account of the attack on the music festival. Read the full article

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nadzhosny2 · 6 months

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We need to wake the hell up

I have seen more horrific and devastating images coming from Gaza in the past week than ever before but the images I saw two days ago have got to be the worst I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

The settler colony of Israel bombed Al Ahli hospital in Gaza killing at least 810 people while hundreds more are buried beneath the wreckage. Instagram was full of nightmare footage; videos and images of the aftermath of the blast; bodies strewn everywhere, blood on the floor, fires ranging, people covered in soot and dust running for cover. There was a video of a man carrying the remains of his son in plastic bags. The REMAINS of his son because his body had been blasted apart, like so many others. There were body parts laying everywhere that it is going to be next to impossible to accurately determine how many people have died. That hospital had displaced people seeking refuge, doctors, nurses and aid workers trying to heal the already massive amount of wounded from the previous bombings. All wiped out, massacred in minutes. As all of this was happening, Hananya Naftali, who creates digital content for Israel’s Prime Minister posted a now-deleted tweet saying that the Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside the hospital but as soon as footage came out of the civilian deaths, they deleted the evidence, instead claiming that it was a failed rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad that was the cause of the bombing, which the group issued a statement on denying the claims.

Nobody is reporting about this, nobody is reporting that they admitted it and then retracted it. Nobody is mentioning that they do this all the time. Nobody is mentioning how this would not be the first hospital the zionist settler colony of Israel has bombed. They have destroyed hospitals, clinics, targeted ambulances, killed medics, murdered civilians while they slept in the merciless bombardment of homes. Entire families wiped out from the civil registry. Many had fled from the north of Gaza after the call by the settler colony for them to move to the South in 24 hours for their ‘safety’. Then they slaughtered them on the road while they travelled. Two days ago, the settler colony of Israel bombed a UN humanitarian aid warehouse containing wheat flour, powdered milk and other basic necessities for survival. 95% of the water in Gaza is contaminated and will lead to severe sickness and disease. Many more will die from starvation and infections from poor treatment of injuries. What diabolical, deranged mind intentionally butchers innocent civilians? What is happening in Palestine can no longer be described as genocide or even ethnic cleansing. It is beyond mass extermination- it is total erasure and we are watching it happen. The human race is capable of the most depraved and heinous actions. We are no strangers to mass killings, to dehumanising other people. It is splattered all over our history books and we STILL DO NOT LEARN. History is constantly repeating itself; the slave trade, the Holocaust, Apartheid, the Rwandan genocide, the Srebrenica genocide and so much more violence and bloodshed all over the world. We need to WAKE THE FUCK UP! When does it end?

Are we not all human beings? Are we not made up of the same flesh and blood? The same exact body parts, capable of the same emotions? Do we not all do the same things; eat, sleep, work, shit, go out? Do we not all have the same exact right to live? Is the world not big enough for all of us to exist in peace? Why are we letting trivial differences divide us? Why do we constantly let them drive us to kill, humiliate and dehumanise? WHAT’S THE FUCKING POINT? What are we proving? Why do we have to impose rule upon other people? Why do we have to subjugate others? Why is the world filled with so much hate for fellow human beings?

We should all be asking ourselves all of these questions because truly, we have become an utter disgrace. The human race is a deplorable and despicable thing, capable of the most evil and dangerous actions imaginable.

75 years. That’s how long the Palestinians have been suffering. Being pushed out of their rightful homes by the zionist settler colony. Being denied basic human rights, being treated worse than animals, all for having the audacity to exist. What have they done to deserve all this malice, hatred and cruelty? Children in Gaza are growing up traumatised beyond belief, they will NEVER be the same. The settler colony of Israel has scarred entire GENERATIONS with their violence and the worst part is that they are still receiving support!

The Western powers that be are standing behind them as they annihilate the Palestinians in Gaza, spouting anti-Palestinian rhetoric and encouraging hateful language. The US and the West were quick to jump on the racist fabrications of baby beheadings, mass rapes and a global day of Jihad by Hamas that the settler colony was touting. Biden himself said he had seen pictures of the alleged beheadings when there were none and the White House had to quickly retract his statement. Everyone is quick to believe the most horrific actions by the Palestinians but when the settler colony bombs civilians on the road or a HOSPITAL, they are ‘defending’ themselves. The mainstream media houses are on the side of the oppressors and publishing news stories that are incorrect and using language that instills anti-Palestinian sentiment. Everyone is so ready to accept the image of the angry Arab, the evil muslim, the heinous savagery innate to our identity that they don’t even stop to question whether this is factual information or not. All this islamophobia and racism is a result of the West and their control over the media, pushing hate and discrimination down people’s throats.

This antagonism has led to bigoted attacks on innocent muslims in other countries. In Chicago, 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume and his mother Hanaan Shahin, 32, were attacked by their landlord on Saturday. The boy was stabbed 26 times while his mother suffered multiple wounds. expected The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil rights group, has reported cases of harassment, intimidation, vandalism or bigoted internet posting from people with responsible positions in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Diego, St. Louis and Cleveland, plus Austin, Texas, and Dearborn, Michigan. The assailant attempted to choke the mother and said “You Muslims must die,” CAIR said, citing text messages that Shahin sent to the boy’s father from the hospital. In Milan, a man assaulted UNICEF fundraisers raising money for Gaza. He was caught on video yelling at the workers while saying that he would ‘’kill’ them if they said the word ‘Palestine’ one more time. Here is the result of all the racism that is being pushed out into the world.

We have to get the truth from social media of all places. From people in Gaza themselves who are sharing their horror stories. The settler colony has cut off basic needs for the people in Gaza to survive; food, water, electricity-threatening to bomb aid trucks if they try to enter the city. All because the Palestinians had enough and tried to take back their land by any means necessary. These people have been pushed to the brink. They don’t care if they live or die as long as they defend themselves after years of being helpless. If what Hamas did was dropping a stone in the ocean, the settlers responded with a tsunami.

Today, the fear of what comes next is looming larger for Palestinians than the cruelty of the world’s apparent indifference to their suffering.

Don’t just push for a ceasefire or peace, push for their liberation. A ceasefire is temporary, even the so called ‘peace’ that everyone is touting is temporary. A halt to the violence will not free the Palestinians. When the settler colony of Israel stops bombing Gaza it will mean peace for the settlers but not the Palestinians, because peace for the settlers means the Palestinians remain living under military occupation, living under apartheid, living under the rule of a settler colony. They will still be trapped in an open air prison, they will still not be in their rightful homes, they will still have to endure checkpoints and searches in their OWN COUNTRY. The 500+ Israeli military checkpoints set up all throughout Palestinian land in the West Bank to restrict Palestinian movement will still exist; a checkpoint system only for Palestinians, not the zionist settlers. They have the freedom to go wherever and do whatever they want. A checkpoint system that is innately violent, where thousands of Palestinians line up every single day for their IDs to be checked, for their bags to be searched, their bodies to be searched, for their cars to be scanned by metal detectors. Lined up at a checkpoint with Israeli guards who are pointing guns directly at the Palestinians while they’re being searched. They have to wait for hours to pass through, in silence.

Now in this image, is there peace? Yes. But is there freedom? No. Is there equality? Fuck no. So peace for the zionist settlers means silence from the Palestinians. Settlers can only uphold their peace and freedom as long as the Palestinians are quiet and not resisting. And how does the West portray Palestinians as soon as they start resisting? Terrorists. The settler colony’s Minister of Defence called them ‘human animals’.

If you open Apple, Google or any other digital map and type Palestine, you will not find it. You will only find Israel. If you’re lucky, you may be directed to a small patchwork of what is called ‘Palestinian Territories’ firmly imbedded inside Israel lest anyone mistakenly think it is an independent nation. And of course, you will find nowhere on any map the key word that comes before Palestinian Territories to lay bare the ugly, but necessary and harrowing truth: Occupied.

In an ideal future, yes peace would be nice. It would be great actually. But we cannot accept and push this narrative when the system itself that the Israeli colony is built on, at its core, is not peaceful. The system itself is violent. The way that it was established was not peaceful. The way it’s maintained is not peaceful. And that’s why so many Palestinians say, ‘we don’t want peace, we want freedom’. Peace is not going to solve the occupation, the military blockade. And here’s the thing, the occupation in Palestine is tied to the West. First because the Israeli colony is supported and literally funded by the West. Second, the US and settler colony of Israel were built the same way. The US is just a lot older, just much further down in the timeline than the settler colony of Israel which is only 75 years old. There is an incredible amount of parallels between these two and that’s why they stick together.

For instance, at this very moment, peace for the US means silence for the blacks. When black people stand up and attempt to resist a system that was built on the backs of black slaves, whether through peaceful or non peaceful forms of resistance, white America will always view these movements as violent, as a disruption to peace. When in reality, it’s disruption to peace for white people. That’s why when Black Lives Matter started to gain traction, white America lost it’s shit. Because Black people were attempting to resist and reject a system that is built on their silence and if they even think to open their mouth, they’re violent. They don’t want peace. Accept the system, accept the status quo or you don’t want peace. That’s what the narrative they want us to believe.

The same thing happened in South Africa. The natives were forced to accept colonisation, accept theft of their land or that means they don’t want peace. They want violence. That’s just the nature of colonisation, that’s how it works. It’s freedom for settlers built on the backs of the indigenous people.

So when we talk, post and share on social media about Palestine, we cannot accept the narrative of peace and insinuate that that’s the solution. When peace equals freedom of the Palestinians, that’s when it’s acceptable. On social media, the hashtag isn’t #peaceforpalestine, it’s #FREEPALESTINE. The objective is liberation of Palestine, calling for peace only is helping the zionist’s cause because that means we think the Palestinians are violent and that we support violence. But that worry and that fear is literally proof of peace being used as a tool to suppress rejection of their status quo.

We need to start viewing this conflict the way it actually is, not the way mainstream media, the West and the zionists want us to see it. We need to define what Israel and Palestine clearly are. Israel is NOT a country but a SETTLER COLONY occupying the COUNTRY of PALESTINE. This is coloniser vs colonised. Same way white Europeans landed in North America and decided to claim the land as their own despite the native population, white Europeans landed in Palestine and decided to claim it as their own despite the indigenous Palestinian population.

The simple truth is that the word Palestine is deeply damaging to the settler colony of Israel’s image on the international stage. The word Palestine carries with it so much universally recognised victimhood and so many stories of oppression, subjugation and genocide that when it is included in the conversation, the settler colony simply cannot dispute, however desperately it tries to, it’s crimes. The moral weight of Palestine is so heavy that every time the word is uttered, you can hear the deflating hiss from the settler’s public relations bubble. No amount of beach resorts, tech and agricultural wizards can wipe the permanent stain of Palestinian blood off the settler’s hands. Which is why the settler colony believes that the only way to get rid of this heavy moral burden of Palestine is to quite literally GET RID of Palestine altogether and that includes completely erasing it from the map. And yet, it is the settler colony of Israel that is recognised by the UN, is a member of the UN and stands in front of the General Assembly, year after year, pleading to be protected from the ‘barbarian’ nations that supposedly wish to erase it from the map. The irony and the hypocrisy is real.

I urge each and every one of you reading this right now, if you have any form of social media; whether you have a huge following or even single digit followers, SPEAK UP! Use the power that you have to speak for the voiceless. Share posts about the siege in Gaza, educate yourself, your family and friends. Do not keep quiet. We can use social media as it is intended, to do good, to cast light on the horrific and barbaric attacks on innocent civilians. There are protests all over the world, condemnations from the few countries with right on their side and we can push it along.

Our posts matter, our stories on social media matter, we can make a difference for once. Let us not let history remember that we stood by and watched an entire group of people being utterly erased from existence by another. Let us not turn a blind eye to another catastrophe. Let us be better. Future generations will ask us where we were when all of this happened. Let us give the Palestinians the easiest thing we can give them; an eyewitness account to their pain, their suffering, the denial of their freedom.

#palestine #free palestine #freedom #speak up

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friend-clarity · 5 years

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Omar and Tlaib came clean about who they are and what they want. But is anybody paying attention?

U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib held a news conference Monday to condemn the Israeli government for last week's decision banning the congresswomen from entering the country. By Steven Emerson Published August 21, 2019

Omar and Tlaib’s trip was organized by Miftah which has a long track record of promoting anti-Israel incitement and previously glorified suicide bombers for "sacrificing their lives for the cause." The group has also disseminated anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on several occasions.

@Frimet Roth: Republican Tlaib cried about her mother being “dehumanized" at Israeli checkpoints.My child Malki, a US citizen murdered at 15, would be here today had a checkpoint stopped murderer and a 10 kg bomb from entering Jerusalem. Remind Tlaib: checkpoints prevent terrorism terrorism - save lives

Many observers cite President Trump's pressure as the main reason behind Israel's last-minute decision to ban the congresswomen. However, other key factors are at play — including the fact that the congresswomen's itinerary was organized by a group with a history of glorifying terrorists.

The trip, titled "U.S. Congressional Delegation to Palestine," did not include any scheduled visits with Israeli officials.

From the outset, their trip — almost exclusively planned to take place in Palestinian population centers — was intended to be a one-sided propaganda tour to paint Israel as an occupying aggressor. It is not surprising that their follow-up press conference was just another episode in the congresswomen's vendetta against Israel.

While both congresswomen are right to point out troubles facing Palestinian society — they both miss the mark by entirely absolving Palestinian leaders for their constituencies' woes and criticizing major Israeli security measures without providing even the slightest context.

Tlaib recounted memories visiting Israel in her youth before detailing defensive Israeli counterterror measures.

"The delegation would have seen firsthand. Yeah, why walls are destructive, not productive. They could've asked the people in Bethlehem how walls cut people off away from economic opportunities, from a way to live and do psychological damage that lasts forever," Tlaib said.

Israel's security barrier — which largely separates the West Bank from Israel — may disrupt Palestinian social and economic life to varying degrees. But Tlaib's framing omits the fact that Israel put these measures in place following countless Palestinian terrorist and suicide attacks during the Second Intifada throughout the early 2000s. Counterterrorism experts cite Israel's security barrier as one of the most effective counterterrorism measures that drastically helped reduce Palestinian terrorist attacks and Israeli casualties. The wall did not alter Palestinian terrorist motivations. But it denied terrorists free entry to kill hundreds of Israelis. It is unfortunate that average Palestinian citizens are affected in adverse ways by these hurdles. But to frame these protective measures solely as a means to destroy Palestinian life is inaccurate and inherently dishonest. The security barrier was erected to stifle Palestinian terrorists, who continue to devote most of their resources and attention to killing Israelis.

The same is true for security checkpoints. Omar and Tlaib presented them as instruments used to punish Palestinians, but Frimet Roth offered a sad reality check. Her daughter, Malki, was 15 years old in 2001 when a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up inside Jerusalem's Sbarro pizza shop.

Since that brutal attack, the Palestinian Authority has paid more than $900,000 to the suicide bomber's family and accomplices, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Supporters of Palestinian terrorism, on the other hand, view attacks against Israeli civilians as heroic and legitimate resistance. These supporters include groups like Miftah — the organization which planned and funded Tlaib and Omar's proposed trip. In 2006, Miftah wrote a report referring to a 2002 Jerusalem suicide attack as an instance of "Fighting Back." As the National Review noted, Miftah published an article in which describes Dalal Al Mughrabi as "a Palestinian fighter who was killed during a military operation against Israel in 1978" and as one of the Palestinian people's "national heroes."

Mughrabi led a 1978 bus hijacking attack in which 37 Israeli civilians were killed. She is among the terrorist killers celebrated by the Palestinian Authority with monuments, summer camps and schools named in her honor.

Miftah has a long track record of promoting anti-Israel incitement and previously glorified suicide bombers for "sacrificing their lives for the cause." The group has also disseminated anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on several occasions.

The congresswomen pointed out that Miftah co-sponsored a similar trip for other members of Congress in the past. However, that 2016 trip occurred a year before Israel passed its 2017 anti-BDS law — which allows Israel to reject entry to anyone tied to or actively promoting the global BDS movement.

Both Tlaib and Omar have generated controversy for some of their anti-Israel positions, including Tlaib's full support for the BDS campaign to boycott Israel and encourage business and academic institutions to divest investments in companies which do business in Israel. Tlaib compared the campaign to a boycott against Nazi Germany, while Omar has repeatedly made anti-Semitic statements including Jewish money controls American foreign policy.

Critics of BDS emphasize the program's real goal is eliminating the state of Israel. That's difficult to deny when you consider the words of BDS leader Omar Barghouti: "We oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine."

Neither politician mentions Palestinian terrorism or Palestinian incitement or Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel a Jewish state as obstacles to peace in the region. "The occupation is real; barring members of Congress from seeing it does not make it go away. We must end it together," Omar said on Monday. This one-sided sentiment does not sound like someone who earlier boasted of meeting "with constituents holding a wide range of views on the conflict." Either Omar self-selected which constituents she'd meet with or she fully ignores the views of Israel supporters.

During the press conference, Omar argued that U.S. assistance to Israel should be contingent on how Palestinians are treated and questioned continued aid in response to Israel's ban on the congresswomen: "We give Israel more than $3 (billion) in aid every year. This is predicated on them being an important ally in the region and the only democracy in the Middle East. But denying a visit to duly elected members of Congress is not consistent with being an ally and denying millions of people freedom of movement or expression or self-determination is not consistent with being a democracy."

Omar sarcastically references Israel as "the only democracy in the Middle East" using hand quotes. Depending on how one defines democracy, it is true that there are other democratically elected leaders in the region including Tunisia, Turkey, and Iraq. However, according to prominent indices measuring freedom worldwide, Israel remains the region's sole liberal democracy.

The opposite is true for the Palestinian territories, whose governments systematically repress dissent and stifle many freedoms of expression and association, according to Human Rights Watch. On the same day as the anti-Israel press conference, PA police prohibited a Palestinian LGBT group from organizing any activities in the West Bank. The police even threatened to arrest the activists, arguing that their agenda is against the "values of Palestinian society." Israel, on the other hand, is one of the friendliest countries in the world when it comes to LGBT issues. But you won't hear these two congresswomen cite this huge distinction between Israeli and Palestinian society.

Instead, the act continued. Tlaib appeared surprised when asked about the controversy surrounding Miftah.

"So we're also taken aback and learn from everybody else that there was some issues regarding it. Again, I think especially Ilhan Omar and I are extremely careful in vetting because there is a close eye and policing of our actions that is so much more weighted on us than any other members," Tlaib answered.

"Extremely careful in vetting?" If Tlaib is so careful about who she associates with, then why does she continuously surround herself with Islamists who espouse anti-Semitic and pro-terrorist views? Either Tlaib failed to properly vet her go-to entourage or she endorses what prominent U.S.-based Islamists consistently spew.

In April, she met with an American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) delegation. Several AMP leaders, including its chairman and its executive director, previously worked with a group called the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which served as the propaganda arm of a Muslim Brotherhood-run Hamas-support network in the United States. According to an IPT exclusive, Tlaib was caught smiling in photographs with anti-Israel terrorist supporters twice this year.

Tlaib has also expressed a need to "protect" anti-Israel figures like CAIR leader Zahra Billoo.

Billoo, like other U.S. Islamist figures, consistently opposes any type of engagement or interfaith dialogue with organizations that maintain ties to Israel. She's at least honest enough not to hide her hate, admitting that she does not believe Israel has a right to exist. She has repeatedly condemned Muslim leaders as illegitimate if they oppose BDS. Like core BDS supporters, Tlaib similarly has advocated for a "one-state solution" — which is essentially the destruction of the Jewish state.

BDS is considered anti-Semitic because it singles out the world's only Jewish state.

We have yet to see Tlaib and Omar stand on a podium and hold a news conference against any other Middle East government with far worse human rights records than the Jewish state..

Steven Emerson is an internationally recognized expert on terrorism and national security and considered one of the leading world authorities on Islamic extremist networks, financing and operations. He now serves as the Executive Director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, one of the world's largest archival data and intelligence institutes on Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorist groups.

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eretzyisrael · 7 years

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HOW A PRO-PALESTINIAN AMERICAN REPORTER CHANGED HIS VIEWS ON ISRAEL AND THE CONFLICTBYHUNTER STUART FEBRUARY 15, 2017 12:17

A year working as a journalist in Israel and the Palestinian territories made Hunter Stuart rethink his positions on the conflict.

The author walks past Ofer Prison near Ramallah, during a Palestinian protest outside the facility in November 2015. (photo credit:COURTESY / JONATHAN BROWN)

IN THE summer of 2015, just three days after I moved to Israel for a year-and-a-half stint freelance reporting in the region, I wrote down my feelings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A friend of mine in New York had mentioned that it would be interesting to see if living in Israel would change the way I felt. My friend probably suspected that things would look differently from the front-row seat, so to speak. Boy was he right.

Before I moved to Jerusalem, I was very pro-Palestinian. Almost everyone I knew was. I grew up Protestant in a quaint, politically correct New England town; almost everyone around me was liberal. And being liberal in America comes with a pantheon of beliefs: You support pluralism, tolerance and diversity. You support gay rights, access to abortion and gun control.

The belief that Israel is unjustly bullying the Palestinians is an inextricable part of this pantheon. Most progressives in the US view Israel as an aggressor, oppressing the poor noble Arabs who are being so brutally denied their freedom.

“I believe Israel should relinquish control of all of the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank,” I wrote on July 11, 2015, from a park near my new apartment in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood. “The occupation is an act of colonialism that only creates suffering, frustration and despair for millions of Palestinians.”

Perhaps predictably, this view didn’t play well among the people I met during my first few weeks in Jerusalem, which, even by Israeli standards, is a conservative city. My wife and I had moved to the Jewish side of town, more or less by chance ‒ the first Airbnb host who accepted our request to rent a room happened to be in the Nachlaot neighborhood where even the hipsters are religious. As a result, almost everyone we interacted with was Jewish Israeli and very supportive of Israel. I didn’t announce my pro-Palestinian views to them ‒ I was too afraid. But they must have sensed my antipathy (I later learned this is a sixth sense Israelis have).

During my first few weeks in Jerusalem, I found myself constantly getting into arguments about the conflict with my roommates and in social settings. Unlike waspy New England, Israel does not afford the privilege of politely avoiding unpleasant political conversations. Outside of the Tel Aviv bubble, the conflict is omnipresent; it affects almost every aspect of life. Avoiding it simply isn’t an option.

During one such argument, one of my roommates ‒ an easygoing American-Jewish guy in his mid-30s ‒ seemed to be suggesting that all Palestinians were terrorists. I became annoyed and told him it was wrong to call all Palestinians terrorists, that only a small minority supported terrorist attacks. My roommate promptly pulled out his laptop, called up a 2013 Pew Research poll and showed me the screen. I saw that Pew’s researchers had done a survey of thousands of people across the Muslim world, asking them if they supported suicide bombings against civilians in order to “defend Islam from its enemies.” The survey found that 62 percent of Palestinians believed such terrorist acts against civilians were justified in these circumstances. And not only that, the Palestinian territories were the only place in the Muslim world where a majority of citizens supported terrorism; everywhere else it was a minority ‒ from Lebanon and Egypt to Pakistan and Malaysia.

I didn’t let my roommate win the argument early morning hours. But the statistic stuck with me.

Less than a month later, in October 2015, a wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks against Jewish-Israelis began. Nearly every day, an angry, young Muslim Palestinian was stabbing or trying to run over someone with his car. A lot of the violence was happening in Jerusalem, some of it just steps from where my wife and I had moved into an apartment of our own, and lived and worked and went grocery shopping.

At first, I’ll admit, I didn’t feel a lot of sympathy for Israelis. Actually, I felt hostility. I felt that they were the cause of the violence. I wanted to shake them and say, “Stop occupying the West Bank, stop blockading Gaza, and Palestinians will stop killing you!” It seemed so obvious to me; how could they not realize that all this violence was a natural, if unpleasant, reaction to their government’s actions?

IT WASN’T until the violence became personal that I began to see the Israeli side with greater clarity. As the “Stabbing Intifada” (as it later became known) kicked into full gear, I traveled to the impoverished East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan for a story I was writing.

As soon as I arrived, a Palestinian kid who was perhaps 13 years old pointed at me and shouted “Yehud!” which means “Jew” in Arabic. Immediately, a large group of his friends who’d been hanging out nearby were running toward me with a terrifying sparkle in their eyes. “Yehud! Yehud!” they shouted. I felt my heart start to pound. I shouted at them in Arabic “Ana mish yehud! Ana mish yehud!” (“I’m not Jewish, I’m not Jewish!”) over and over. I told them, also in Arabic, that I was an American journalist who “loved Palestine.” They calmed down after that, but the look in their eyes when they first saw me is something I’ll never forget. Later, at a house party in Amman, I met a Palestinian guy who’d grown up in Silwan. “If you were Jewish, they probably would have killed you,” he said.

I made it back from Silwan that day in one piece; others weren’t so lucky. In Jerusalem, and across Israel, the attacks against Jewish Israelis continued. My attitude began to shift, probably because the violence was, for the first time, affecting me directly.

I found myself worrying that my wife might be stabbed while she was on her way home from work. Every time my phone lit up with news of another attack, if I wasn’t in the same room with her, I immediately sent her a text to see if she was OK.

Then a friend of mine ‒ an older Jewish Israeli guy who’d hosted my wife and I for dinner at his apartment in the capital’s Talpiot neighborhood ‒ told us that his friend had been murdered by two Palestinians the month before on a city bus not far from his apartment. I knew the story well ‒ not just from the news, but because I’d interviewed the family of one of the Palestinian guys who’d carried out the attack. In the interview, his family told me how he was a promising young entrepreneur who was pushed over the edge by the daily humiliations wrought by the occupation. I ended up writing a very sympathetic story about the killer for a Jordanian news site called Al Bawaba News.

Writing about the attack with the detached analytical eye of a journalist, I was able to take the perspective that (I was fast learning) most news outlets wanted – that Israel was to blame for Palestinian violence. But when I learned that my friend’s friend was one of the victims, it changed my way of thinking. I felt horrible for having publicly glorified one of the murderers. The man who’d been murdered, Richard Lakin, was originally from New England, like me, and had taught English to Israeli and Palestinian children at a school in Jerusalem. He believed in making peace with the Palestinians and “never missed a peace rally,” according to his son.

By contrast, his killers ‒ who came from a middle-class neighborhood in East Jerusalem and were actually quite well-off relative to most Palestinians ‒ had been paid 20,000 shekels to storm the bus that morning with their cowardly guns. More than a year later, you can still see their faces plastered around East Jerusalem on posters hailing them as martyrs. (One of the attackers, Baha Aliyan, 22, was killed at the scene; the second, Bilal Ranem, 23, was captured alive.)

Being personally affected by the conflict caused me to question how forgiving I’d been of Palestinian violence previously. Liberals, human-rights groups and most of the media, though, continued to blame Israel for being attacked. Ban Ki-moon, for example, who at the time was the head of the United Nations, said in January 2016 ‒ as the streets of my neighborhood were stained with the blood of innocent Israeli civilians ‒ that it was “human nature to react to occupation.” In fact, there is no justification for killing someone, no matter what the political situation may or may not be, and Ban’s statement rankled me.

SIMILARLY, THE way that international NGOs, European leaders and others criticized Israel for its “shoot to kill” policy during this wave of terrorist attacks began to annoy me more and more.

In almost any nation, when the police confront a terrorist in the act of killing people, they shoot him dead and human-rights groups don’t make a peep. This happens in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh; it happens in Germany and England and France and Spain, and it sure as hell happens in the US (see San Bernardino and the Orlando nightclub massacre, the Boston Marathon bombings and others). Did Amnesty International condemn Barack Obama or Abdel Fattah al-Sisi or Angela Merkel or François Hollande when their police forces killed a terrorist? Nope. But they made a point of condemning Israel.

What’s more, I started to notice that the media were unusually fixated on highlighting the moral shortcomings of Israel, even as other countries acted in infinitely more abominable ways. If Israel threatened to relocate a collection of Palestinian agricultural tents, as they did in the West Bank village of Sussiya in the summer of 2015, for example, the story made international headlines for weeks. The liberal outrage was endless. Yet, when Egypt’s president used bulldozers and dynamite to demolish an entire neighborhood in the Sinai Peninsula in the name of national security, people scarcely noticed.

Where do these double standards come from?

I’ve come to believe it’s because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appeals to the appetites of progressive people in Europe, the US and elsewhere. They see it as a white, first world people beating on a poor, third world one. It’s easier for them to become outraged watching two radically different civilizations collide than it is watching Alawite Muslims kill Sunni Muslims in Syria, for example, because to a Western observer the difference between Alawite and Sunni is too subtle to fit into a compelling narrative that can be easily summarized on Facebook.

Unfortunately for Israel, videos on social media that show US-funded Jewish soldiers shooting tear gas at rioting Arab Muslims is Hollywood-level entertainment and fits perfectly with the liberal narrative that Muslims are oppressed and Jewish Israel is a bully.

I admire the liberal desire to support the underdog. They want to be on the right side of history, and their intentions are good. The problem is that their beliefs often don’t square with reality.

In reality, things are much, much more complex than a five-minute spot on the evening news or a two paragraph-long Facebook status will ever be able to portray. As a friend told me recently, “The reason the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so intractable is that both sides have a really, really good point.”

Unfortunately, not enough people see it that way. I recently bumped into an old friend from college who told me that a guy we’d both known when we were freshmen had been active in Palestinian protests for a time after graduating. The fact that a smart, well-educated kid from Vermont, who went to one of the best liberal arts schools in the US, traveled thousands of miles to throw bricks at Israeli soldiers is very, very telling.

THERE’S AN old saying that goes, “If you want to change someone’s mind, first make them your friend.” The friends I made in Israel forever changed my mind about the country and about the Jewish need for a homeland. But I also spent a lot of time traveling in the Palestinian territories getting to know Palestinians. I spent close to six weeks visiting Nablus and Ramallah and Hebron, and even the Gaza Strip. I met some incredible people in these places; I saw generosity and hospitality unlike anywhere else I’ve ever traveled to. I’ll be friends with some of them for the rest of my life. But almost without fail, their views of the conflict and of Israel and of Jewish people in general was extremely disappointing.

First of all, even the kindest, most educated, upper-class Palestinians reject 100 percent of Israel ‒ not just the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. They simply will not be content with a two-state solution ‒ what they want is to return to their ancestral homes in Ramle and Jaffa and Haifa and other places in 1948 Israel, within the Green Line. And they want the Israelis who live there now to leave. They almost never speak of coexistence; they speak of expulsion, of taking back “their” land.

To me, however morally complicated the creation of Israel may have been, however many innocent Palestinians were killed and displaced from their homes in 1948 and again in 1967, Israel is now a fact, accepted by almost every government in the world (including many in the Middle East). But the ongoing desire of Palestinians to wipe Israel off the map is unproductive and backward- looking and the West must be very careful not to encourage it.

The other thing is that a large percentage of Palestinians, even among the educated upper class, believe that most Islamic terrorism is actually engineered by Western governments to make Muslims look bad. I know this sounds absurd. It’s a conspiracy theory that’s comical until you hear it repeated again and again as I did. I can hardly count how many Palestinians told me the stabbing attacks in Israel in 2015 and 2016 were fake or that the CIA had created ISIS.

For example, after the November 2015 ISIS shootings in Paris that killed 150 people, a colleague of mine ‒ an educated 27-year-old Lebanese-Palestinian journalist ‒ casually remarked that those massacres were “probably” perpetrated by the Mossad. Though she was a journalist like me and ought to have been committed to searching out the truth no matter how unpleasant, this woman was unwilling to admit that Muslims would commit such a horrific attack, and all too willing ‒ in defiance of all the facts ‒ to blame it on Israeli spies.

USUALLY WHEN I travel, I try to listen to people without imposing my own opinion. To me that’s what traveling is all about ‒ keeping your mouth shut and learning other perspectives. But after 3-4 weeks of traveling in Palestine, I grew tired of these conspiracy theories.

“Arabs need to take responsibility for certain things,” I finally shouted at a friend I’d made in Nablus the third or fourth time he tried to deflect blame from Muslims for Islamic terrorism. “Not everything is America’s fault.” My friend seemed surprised by my vehemence and let the subject drop ‒ obviously I’d reached my saturation point with this nonsense.

I know a lot of Jewish-Israelis who are willing to share the land with Muslim Palestinians, but for some reason finding a Palestinian who feels the same way was near impossible. Countless Palestinians told me they didn’t have a problem with Jewish people, only with Zionists. They seemed to forget that Jews have been living in Israel for thousands of years, along with Muslims, Christians, Druse, atheists, agnostics and others, more often than not, in harmony. Instead, the vast majority believe that Jews only arrived in Israel in the 20th century and, therefore, don’t belong here.

Of course, I don’t blame Palestinians for wanting autonomy or for wanting to return to their ancestral homes. It’s a completely natural desire; I know I would feel the same way if something similar happened to my own family. But as long as Western powers and NGOs and progressive people in the US and Europe fail to condemn Palestinian attacks against Israel, the deeper the conflict will grow and the more blood will be shed on both sides.

I’m back in the US now, living on the north side of Chicago in a liberal enclave where most people ‒ including Jews ‒ tend to support the Palestinians’ bid for statehood, which is gaining steam every year in international forums such as the UN.

Personally, I’m no longer convinced it’s such a good idea. If the Palestinians are given their own state in the West Bank, who’s to say they wouldn’t elect Hamas, an Islamist group committed to Israel’s destruction? That’s exactly what happened in Gaza in democratic elections in 2006. Fortunately, Gaza is somewhat isolated, and its geographic isolation ‒ plus the Israeli and Egyptian-imposed blockade ‒ limit the damage the group can do. But having them in control of the West Bank and half of Jerusalem is something Israel obviously doesn’t want. It would be suicide. And no country can be expected to consent to its own destruction.

So, now, I don’t know what to think. I’m squarely in the center of one of the most polarized issues in the world. I guess, at least, I can say that, no matter how socially unacceptable it was, I was willing to change my mind.

If only more people would do the same.

#Israel #Journalism

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