-- Emily Damari, hostage survivor, upon hearing that Adham Abrahim Shaban Nesman, one of the Hamas terrorists that held her and others hostage for periods of time in Gaza, was eliminated by the IDF

This stabbing terrorist from Tel Aviv yesterday is a weird situation. Starting with he had a Green Card from the USA but originated in Morocco. Then, this guy living in the USA travels across the world to a country where he seems to know nobody just for a few days so he can stab people he did not know for a conflict he is not involved in. He was coming with nowhere to stay and just for a few days so it raised the suspicions of Border Control who denied him entry, but the Shabak overruled it and allowed him in, for unknown reasons. And it seems they did not find ties between him and terrorist organizations.

According to the United Nations, the destruction in Gaza is so bad that it will take 15 years to clear the rubble.

We will not rest until the murderer is locked up in prison!

Israeli news is reporting that the government has decided to release 2 Syrian captives held in Israel as a goodwill gesture in light of the recent return of the remains of Zachary Baumel. One is the Syrians is in jail for drug smuggling and the other for an attempted attack on an IDF base. The anonymous government source speaking says this was not part of any deal but is a recent decision as a goodwill gesture.

Personally I think this is a reasonable price to have paid, deal or not, however the process is flawed. There is no report of the security cabinet meeting to debate and come to a decision about this. There were no reports of an official discussion to release the captives in exchange for the remains. The issue of exchanging prisoners for dead bodies has always been a highly charged issue and one that was always debated fiercely in the public realm, and not least in the government.

This decision was taken by PM Benjamin Netanyahu alone, and that is a problem. There is a process for releasing captives in place, yet Netanyahu just circumvents it when he wants to. Another example of why term limits are needed. Not because this is not a price that Israel is willing to pay but because Netanyahu think she is the only person running the country and can do whatever he wants and to hell with everyone else.

is this a new flavor of Pringles? Have Pringles become like Cracker Jacks, each with a prize inside the package?

IDF soldiers at the Qalandiya security checkpoint found this when checking a Palestinian woman. Upon interrogation the knife was mean to be used in an attack on Israelis...

That's just a regular kitchen knife...

This is just too strange..

The Hamas spokesman, Sammy Abu Zohari, said that Israel, the Occupation, has opposed a humanitarian ceasefire on their holiday of Eid Al-Fitr, and this shows contempt to the sensitivities of Muslims, and therefore Israel will bear responsibility for the escalation..

thoughts:
1. we are at war. we have to be concerned about their sensitivities?
2. we are killing Muslims, as part of the war, including tragically children, but it is the lack of agreement on a ceasefire on Eid Al-Fitr that is showing contempt for their sensitivities? Is that really worse than the killing of people?
3. They are trying to kill us. Can we demand they be sensitive to our sensitivities and stop? If that is how war works, I hereby call upon Hamas to stop all of this, as it shows contempt to my sensitivities.
4. With all the arrests of terrorists, information has been uncovered that the purpose of many of the tunnels was to carry out a massive terror attack on Rosh Hashana. Terrorists would have popped out of the tunnels in Israeli towns, Kibbutzim and Moshavim and slaughtered people and taken hostages. I repeat - on Rosh Hashana. So, no ceasefire on Eid Al-Fitr is contempt to sensitivities, but planning a massive terror attack scheduled for Rosh Hashana is ok?

Are they insane?

And people fall for this stuff?

Bet Shemesh just can't get a break.

Somehow Bet Shemesh gets connected to every crazy story in the country.

Today 3 people from Bet Shemesh were supposedly arrested on suspicion of being involved in the murder of the Arab boy from Shuafat, Jerusalem, the other day...

If its not one thing, its another...

and shortly after this hit the rumor mill, Shopping Mekomi reported a revenge attack (I guess that's what it would be called), with an Arab attacking a Jewish person with a knife and throwing stones outside of Cafe Cafe in Bet Shemesh and lightly injuring him. Maybe Cafe Cafe should be serving cholent...

and the cycle of violence continues...

Either the USA's left hand does not know what its right hand is doing, and it is just a matter of inefficiency in government, or else this is a sign of serious hypocrisy. And maybe it is also a knock from the Israeli side to sort of "show" the Americans that even when we have to listen to them, we can mess with them as well....

The USA, led for Secretary of State John Kerry, just bent Israel's arm and pressured it to release Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails, even with blood on their hands - terrorists guilty of murdering Israelis, as a goodwill gesture to the Palestinians to try to bring them to the negotiating table. The first batch of 26 murderer terrorists was just released.

It turns out that in the first nagla of terrorists was one who had killed an American citizen. And that upsets the Americans.

According to the Daily Beast:

Among those released Tuesday as an inducement to the Palestinian Authority to return to peace

negotiations was Al-Haaj Othman Amar Mustafa, a Palestinian convicted in 1991 of killing Frederick Steven Rosenfeld, who the Philadelphia Inquirer at the time of his death reported was a former U.S. Marine and U.S. citizen.
Mustafa was sentenced by an Israeli military court to life after he and two other assailants murdered Rosenfeld in 1989, 21 years after the former Marine emigrated to Israel. According to an Associated Press account of Mustafa’s trial before a military court, Mustafa and two others met Rosenfeld as he was hiking near the settlement where he lived in Ariel. At first, the three men befriended Rosenfeld and even posed for a photo. “Minutes after the picture was taken, the three stabbed Rosenfeld and left him for dead, according to their confession,” the AP dispatch said.
Today Mustafa is a free man, one of 26 Palestinians released from Israeli jails on Tuesday, the first group of a total of 104 prisoners Israel has promised to free in exchange for Palestinian participation in a new peace process. The list of prisoners was negotiated with the Palestinian Authority, at the urging of Secretary Kerry.
Marie Harf, deputy spokesperson for the State Department, told The Daily Beast Thursday, “The State Department conveyed the administration’s concerns regarding the release of this prisoner to the government of Israel, while recognizing the victim was a dual national of Israel and the United States.”
Harf said the Israeli side “acknowledged our views, but it was ultimately their decision to determine which prisoners to release. This is a very difficult situation for all involved, and further highlights the importance of making these negotiations successful.”
...
Kerry came around to the position that the settlement freeze was an obstacle to peace and began looking for another way to bring Abbas to the negotiations table. The agreement included Israel’s commitment to release 104 Palestinians detained for crimes committed before the Oslo peace process began in earnest in 1994.
Mustafa was one of those prisoners. Reuters reported on Wednesday that when he arrived back home to the West Bank, he was greeted as a hero. The story also said released prisoners would be receiving a stipend from the Palestinian Authority worth about $1,120 a month.
“As I understand the facts, there are only two possibilities,” said Elliott Abrams, a deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration and a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It was a very bad screwup by the State Department not to demand that he remain incarcerated or it is a silent change of policy. I believe the policy has always been that we oppose the release of anyone who has committed terrorism against Americans.”

So, letting Israel release this guy Mustafa was really just a snafu. Really, Israel must release, as a goodwill gesture, terrorists who killed Israelis, but not terrorists who killed Americans. Terrorists who killed Americans cannot be released, even for the great benefit of it possibly leading to peace. I wish the Israeli government would stand by its principles the way the American government does.

Picture of The Day

The bus blown up by a suicide bomber in Burgas, Bulgaria

------------------------------------------------------
Reach thousands of readers with your ad by advertising on Life in Israel
------------------------------------------------------

It was actually cool and interesting to follow (even partially) this on Twitter earlier this morning.

In a raid that sounded like France had become the "Wild West", the police had a shootout with the suspect they were trying to arrest for the shooting at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France killing four, and for other recent shootings.

He claimed to be linked to Al Qaeda. That is different than what they initially thought, that the fellow was a neo-Nazi.


------------------------------------------------------
Reach thousands of readers with your ad by advertising on Life in Israel
------------------------------------------------------

The recent escalation in hostilities, starting with the terrorist attack on Thursday and culminating in the barrage of rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel, with rockets landing in Ashqelon, Ashdod, Beer Sheva and surrounding area regions resulting in many injured and some killed looks like it is headed to only worse places.

I don't doubt the truth of the statement some rabbonim have made that the escalation is due to it being bein hazmanim, the vacation period from yeshivas. Because the yeshiva students are on vacation and traveling around the country, they are not learning nough and the protection we normally have from their Torah is currently not available. Rav Shteinman has even said that if the yeshiva boys would get back to learning, the situation would calm down.

I don't doubt that, as the Torah protects us, even if we don't understand exactly how. However, if that is the case, perhaps it is necessary for the rosh yeshivas to cancel the vacation period, shorten it, find a way to reschedule it, maybe stagger it sending different groups of boys on vacation at different times. If it is really the learning of the yeshiva students that so directly protects us, it seems negligent almost to allow them on such a wide-scale vacation.

I know vacation is necessary for yeshiva boys, but if their going on vacation has such a direct effect on the security situation, a solution must be found to have the learning continue around the year.

35 years ago today Operation Entebbe was carried out.

In what quickly became known as one of the most daring counter-terrorism operations in history, the Israeli army sent a strike team thousands of kiolmeters away from home, to the Entebbe Airport in Uganda to conduct a daring raid to rescue the Jewish hostages of an Air France flight that had been hijacked. The successful mission was marred by the death of team leader Lt. Col. Yonatan (a.k.a. Yoni) Netanyahu, along with the death of 3 of the hostages (and a fourth was killed in the hospital by a Ugandan officer).

The victim of last week's utterly evil missile attack on a school bus, is local Bet Shemesh/RBS resident Daniel Viflic, aged 16.

The Palestinians are complaining that in the wake of the Itamar massacre Israel went into surrounding villages, specifically Awarta, and arrested upwards of 60 people (depending on which report you read it is anywhere from 40 to 60 people)  and has been holding them in prison, after forcing them to go through DNA testing.

First I will say that they should just be happy that Israel did not raze the entire village of Awarta to the ground the day after the massacre of the Fogel family. That is what should have been done. Yes, it is collective punishment which is wrong, but that is the price to pay for terrorism and is what needs to be done to create an atmosphere of deterrence. Similar to what Ariel Sharon did back in the day with his Unit 101 that would go burn down villages after villagers would attack Jews.

However, since Israel did not raze the village, and has now waited two weeks, which has allowed any emotional sympathy around the world, and even in Israel, to fade, collective punishment is no longer an option. Collective punishment is best served hot. Going in and arresting people now, with no proof, and holding them for no apparent reason, as the security forces clearly have no idea who was responsible for the massacre, is simply a breakdown of respect for human rights.

What's the difference anyway? Maybe they will eventually get some information that will lead to the capture of those who were responsible for the massacre. And then what? They will put them in jail for 5 life sentences, and release them two years later in a goodwill gesture to the Palestinians.

If the Israeli government, and therefore the security forces, would do what it should in dealing with terrorism and war, that would be one thing. However, since the government does not treat terrorists as they deserve, the government has no business mistreating innocent people.

If you were not able to go to the funeral, you can watch it live now on INN - http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142853

Yesterday the security forces descended upon a building site in the Belz neighborhood of Bet Shemesh and came out after intensive searches with a number of illegal Arab workers.

It seems, though details are unclear as the actions were kept quiet despite being performed in broad daylight, that after the brutal attack and killing of a tourist and her guide in the forest, the security forces tracked some leads down to a group of illegals, and went looking for them.

1. It is a shame that it takes an attack and a murder for the security forces to actually do anything about the illegal workers. The illegal Arabs are all over the place. They get caught, when reported for making trouble, and almost immediately released, if they are tracked down at all.
2. People should realize that that worker you think is great, who always just shows up looking for work at the right moment for a great price, is somebody you should be careful of. Check his papers, see if he is legally allowed to work, or even legally allowed to be in Israel. He could be a terrorist or even just a scout for a terrorist.
3. The kablanim need to have some sort of responsibility. While I understand they want to hire Arabs because they are cheaper and perform some obs Jewish Israelis supposedly will not do or do not have the expertise for, they should be held accountable to at least be hiring Arab workers who have been approved and granted work permits, and permits to stay overnight if necessary. They think they can get away with it, and they always do, so they hire the illegals and then hide them overnight in the building sites.

So by now everyone knows about the attempt to bomb a synagogue or two in Chicago. I have no idea why someone in Yemen or Saudi Arabia would choose Chicago as the target, rather than New York or Israel, but they did. I still remember when they caught one of the largest Hamas cells in America operating out of a bakery in Chicago, so Chicago is not foreign to extremists..

Anyways, the whole story sounded strange, and I am sure there is more we don't know than that which we do know. So, I asked my father, a very wise man who still lives in Chicago, what he thought about it.

Here are his thoughts, with his permission for reprinting.

Dr. G:
The reports in the media are so sketchy and the details vary from day to day that it is at best unclear what was sent and to whom. Several media have interviewed shul goers and p.r. people from different organizations. They all seem almost proud that their organization might be a target, i.e., they have achieved such prominence they are a target. More like peacocks! If this was a credible threat, then only human intelligence could have unmasked the plot. Regardless if the packages were detonable, lethal enough to have harmed anyone in the air or on the ground, or if they were just trial packages sent to see how security forces would react or even detect them, one thing is clear. There are moles or traitors among the terrorists willing to leak information for some kind of price. That's the key here, human intelligence; not drones, not spy in space satellites, not eavesdropping on cell calls, but on the ground, good old fashion spy stuff.


The media reports the targets were Jews and Jewish institutions, not random airliners or military bases or office buildings. This war against the Jews is exacerbated by Jimmy Carter's pandering to terrorists, by Obama's mollycoddler politics, by the media reports of Peter Beinart and Thomas Friedman and Helen Thomas, by UNESCO's repeatedly anti-Israel position papers and votes, and moves to boycott and disinvest from Israel by universities and labor unions. All these keep the focus on Israel and the Jews for now, so the next natural step is to target violent acts against any and all Jews anywhere in the world. The best thing about the editorial page of a newspaper is that nobody reads it.


This will pass in a short time, however. Obama will be so busy trying to save his presidency he won't have time for Middle East politics. The american people are sympathetic to Jews and Israel and this will only enhance our credibility with them. As the terrorists become more frustrated, they will target more soft targets in Europe and Scandinavia and will ignite the smoldering backlash already underway there.

And on another, more humorous, note on the same topic, the Yated expressed in its headline report about the great chasdei shamayim in their catching the bombs that were destined to explode in shuls in Chicago.

I wonder if they would have said the same thing if they knew t the time that the shul it was addressed to, Congregation Ohr Chadash, is a gay-lesbian shul..

Just Wondering..

Mohammad Alkaramla, the suspect arrested in March of 2009 for mailing a bomb threat to the Ida Crown Hebrew Academy, along with threats to kill and injure various individuals was just convicted.

Sentencing has not yet happened, but Alkaramla faces up to 10 years in prison along with a fine of up to $250,000.

A Jordanian national from the city's Far North Side was convicted today in federal court of mailing a bomb threat to a Jewish school in Chicago, officials said.
Mohammad Alkaramla, 26, of Chicago, was convicted in a two-day bench trial before U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, according to U.S. attorney's office spokesman Randall Samborn.

Pallmeyer revoked bond for Alkaramla and ordered him detained pending sentencing, scheduled for Sept. 29, said Samborn.

Alkaramla faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Alkaramla was arrested in March 2009 for mailing a threatening letter where he threatened to kill, injure and intimidate individuals and destroy the building, officials said.

The letter was addressed to numerous rabbis and leaders in the Jewish community and mailed to the Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Chicago, officials said.

Lock em up!