Fogel Family Update:Leftists Visit, Hug Mother of Fogel Murderers

Have they no shame?

From: Israel National News

Several ultra-leftist groups organized a visit to the Arab village of Awarta on Saturday, April 16, in support of the villagers and against the IDF's activities there in the search for the murderers of Ruth and Rabbi Ehud Fogel and their children Yoav (11), Elad (4) and Hadas (three months).


The leftists visited several homes in the Samaria village, including that of the Awad family, which spawned the murderers. The identities of the confessed murderers were released for publication on Sunday, the day after the visit. The murderers were already in IDF custody at the time of the leftists' visit and their arrest - including the fact that they are relatively young - was already widely rumored and hinted at by the press.

A photograph from the visit which can be viewed here, posted by one of the activists on her Internet blog, shows Raya Yaron, spokeswoman of Machsom Watch, comforting a woman described as being 37 years old and "in a deep depression." The blogger explained in her post that the woman fainted during the leftist women's visit and was distraught over the arrest of her husband, her two sons and a daughter.

The woman is easily recognizable as Nuf Awad, mother of Hakem Awad, whose photograph was featured on the front page of Arab newspaper al-Hayat al-Jadida Monday.

"It is impossible that my son did this," she is quoted by the paper as saying. "My son doesn't know how to slaughter a chicken" (the translation is from the Seventh Eye media-watch website). The two murderers confessed, however, to slaughtering five human beings and investigators reported that they expressed no remorse, and even said that had they realized there were two more children sleeping in the house, they would have killed them as well. They saw no problem in slitting baby Hadas's throat, they explained, since she was a Jew.

Two Palestinians Arrested in Itamar Massacre

From: Commentary Magazine

Two Palestinian teenagers from the village of Awarta have been arrested for the murder of Udi and Ruth Fogel and three of their six children in Itamar last month.

Haaretz is reporting that the suspects, who are said to have confessed to the crime, are members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A Shin Bet official told the newspaper that the suspects, Amjad Mahmad Awad, 19, and Hakim Mazen Awad, 18, “described what they did with self-control and did not express regret over their actions at any stage of the investigation.”

According to Ynet, Hakim Awad belongs to a terrorist family. His uncle was involved in a June 2002 terror attack in Itamar, which left five dead. He was later killed in clashes with IDF forces.

Just three weeks before the Fogels’ murder, Palestinian TV had reportedly broadcast a tribute to a terrorist involved in another deadly 2002 attack upon Itamar.

Within days of the murder, Hamas was spreading the disinformation that an Asian worker, disgruntled over pay withheld by the “settler family from Itamar settlement,” was the primary suspect.

As transportation minister Yisrael Katz told Army Radio, “To those Palestinians who said ‘it can’t be one of us,’ well, it turned out to be one of you.”

Oregon Attorney General's Uncharitable Legislation

From: American Thinker

Oregon Attorney General John Kroger raised $1,048,841 for his 2008 election. Of that, $312,500, a little over 30 percent of his entire campaign's funding, came from SEIU. Much of that money came from what's called Citizen Action for Political Education, "a voluntary, nonprofit, unincorporated association limited to members of the Service Employees International Union Local 503, Oregon Public Employee's Union."

Kroger also received "a fat $150,000" from the Democratic Attorneys General Association, and $50,000 from the Oregon Education Association People for Improvement of Education, the state's National Education Association (teachers' union) affiliate. He also got plenty of money from lawyers.

In other words, his campaign was bankrolled by liberal special interests.

Kroger has asked the Oregon legislature to eliminate the tax exemption for certain charities that, unlike him, aren't fortunate to have a cadre of fat-cat special interest donors at their beck and call. (Or could it be he who is at the beck and call of fat-cat donors?)

Kroger's bill would, as he describes it, allow him "to disqualify charitable organizations from receiving tax-deductible contributions" for organizations that spend 70 percent or more of their funds on administrative and fundraising costs.

The Fogel Family Massacre and Facebook Hypocrisy

On March 11th of this year, in the most under reported story of the year, five members of the Fogel family were brutally murdered in their homes on the West Bank of Jerusalem. Below is a picture of mourners and the victims.

The Israeli Government and the surviving members of the Fogel family authorized releasing the crime scene photos depicting the murdered family. They were not broadcast or printed by major media outlets which is somewhat understandable. Within hours of the photos being released the they were uploaded to pages on Facebook. It took approximately two hours for Facebook to pull the pictures from their site and from those who uploaded them. Fair enough on its own.

But then I saw a report on "America Live" with Megyn Kelly about the parents of Caroline Wimmer. I promptly did a search and came across this article dated today in NY Daily News.com HERE. Twenty Six year old Caroline Wimmer was strangled to death in March 2009 by her boyfriend who had beaten her prior to killing her. Mark Musarella was the first EMT on the scene after the parents found the body. He did something astonishing. He took a picture of the body with his cell phone and uploaded it to his Facebook page. Eventually he lost his EMT license and given 200 hours of community service.


Facebook has refused to remove the images. A stark contrast from the Fogel Family,huh? Putting aside the specific legal merits and their demands, here is what they want from Facebook.

"The suit wants Facebook to turn over the picture, identify those who viewed or downloaded it and destroy images in its possession. The lawsuit is also seeking a court mandate that Facebook cooperate with victims in the future."

Why the double standard? Why is an illegal image of a Staten Island murder victim protected by Facebook and the Fogel Family Massacre pictures scrubbed from the site? Is it just a simple question of dollars and cents? After all a 26 year old Jersey girl can't stir up historic hatreds in millions can it? Facebook refuses to show photos after family and nation approve, but those who are appalled that their mangled daughter's body is there for all to see are ignored? Appalling.

This is all the more intriguing as Facebook also has ignored protests over this page:

 

This little gem ask you to support the "Third Palestinian Intifada". Yid With Lid has a great post on this doozy of a story.

In my mind it is reasonable for public venues like Facebook to restrict graphic imagery, especially crime scene  photos, but it seems quite evident that there is at best inconsistent application and at worst the gravest of hypocrisy, driven by raw politics and market share. Facebook ought to see justice done and acede to the Wimmer's demands.

The New York Times and Itamar

From: American Thinker

The murders of the Fogel family, including three children stabbed to death in their beds, obviously posed a dilemma for the New York Times. Fixated as it is on a story line in which Israel, and especially Israeli settlers, bear central responsibility for ongoing tensions with the Arabs, the Times covered the killings with the strained circumlocutions, omissions and colored language typical for the paper's editors and reporters when addressing peril to Jews and the Jewish state.

The first major account of the carnage by reporter Isabel Kershner appeared on March 13 -- on page 16 with no photo. A day later, updates on the story appeared closer to the front of the paper, on page 4, as the focus turned to Israel's announcement of renewed construction in several settlements. Two photos ran that day of the Fogel funerals. A telling caption read: "About 20,000 attended the funerals for the Fogels, whose deaths outraged settlers."

Did the Times think only "settlers" were outraged over slitting the throats of children in their beds? Israel's leading columnist, Nahum Barnea, who's not a settler, had written:

"The murder in Itamar is so shocking, so horrible, that it makes the debate over settlements irrelevant. Against the murderer, who pulls out a knife and butchers in cold blood three children in their sleep, the difference between Tel Aviv and Itamar is erased."

The Fogel horror had to be reported, of course. But what to call the killings and how much to communicate about their instigation rooted in relentless dehumanizing of Jews throughout Palestinian culture -- in media, mosques, schools and political discourse -- were the question.

Alterations in wording of the Times account on its Web site over the first hours after the event suggest editorial interventions to mute even minimal references to the Israeli Prime Minister's strong language denouncing Palestinian demonizing of Israel and to the appalling terrorist attack.

A version posted at 23:02 GMT included Benjamin Netanyahu's statement: "A society that permits such wild incitement is one that eventually brings about the murder of children."

That charge, expressing the core of Israel's belief about the consequences of the pervasive, bigoted assault on Jews by Palestinian leaders and their social, religious and political institutions, was excised. What remained was language that reverted to the paper's characteristic distancing from the realities of anti-Jewish incitement. The final text read:

"Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, pointed a finger at the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, blaming it for what he described as incitement in the schools, the mosques and the news media it controls."

Omitted is the strong connective tie between anti-Jewish propaganda and killing children and inserted is the reference to the Palestinian Authority as "Western-backed." The message shifts; a finger-wagging leader of Israel, seemingly out of step with the West, is "blaming" the PA leadership - not for demonstrably instilling Jew-hatred, which is a moral outrage - but only for what the Israeli leader "described as incitement."

On March 15, the Times was seemingly compelled to touch fleetingly on the issue, as Israeli leaders pressed their denunciations of the Palestinian Authority's incitement to violence and muted condemnations of the murders. Once again, though, the information was minimal and colorless, subsumed in a story strenuously emphasizing and repeating that PA leaders condemned the Fogel atrocity.

Moreover, the reporter hastened to interject what is likely a partial underpinning of the Times agenda in whitewashing Palestinian incitement:

"The new focus on incitement against Israel, together with Israeli dissatisfaction over the Palestinian response to the brutal attack, seemed to pose a question about the Israeli government's readiness to deal with Mr. Abbas as a serious peace partner - even though Mr. Abbas and Mr. Fayyad are widely considered moderates who have repeatedly said they would never resort to violence."

That is, if Israel insists on drawing attention to the demonization of its people by its peace partner, what might this portend for their "readiness to deal with Mr. Abbas," who is, after all, "moderate" and "would never resort to violence"?

For Times writers, "resort to violence" seemingly does not include raising generations imbued in the belief they're honor-bound to destroy Israel and in which even babies like the Fogel's three month old Hadas are deemed targets.

In the category of what's newsworthy and what's not, the naming of summer camps, sports events, streets and public squares in honor of terrorists such as Dalal Mughrabi, Wafa Idris and Yeyhe Ayyash prompts no serious, focused attention on the part of the Times. As it happens, Mughrabi's murderous rampage along the Tel Aviv coastal road in 1978 included the killing of at least ten toddlers and children, ages 2-14. Is it surprising that her elevation to icon status for killing demonized Jews would encourage others to seek similar fame by a similar route?

But any formulation that casts deep onus on the Palestinians is essentially foreign to the paper's story line, centered, as it is, on faulting Israel.

Kershner's original account of the Fogel murders included another editorial modification of note. A quote by Israeli military officials about their determination to apprehend the killers originally included the following:

"The military called the killings a terrorist attack, indicating that it held Palestinians responsible."

A few hours later all mention of the "t" word was deleted -- even as an indirect quote from the Israeli military. Nowhere in the coverage were the killings of the parents and three children characterized as a terrorist attack or even an apparent terrorist attack.

To put this in the context of other use of the term "terrorist" by the Times, just four days earlier on March 9, a story about Arid Uka, who shot two American military men in Germany, referred to the event as a "terrorist attack."

On March 4, a story about the arrest of New Jersey men seeking to join a radical Somali group referred to "terrorists born or raised in the United States."

A February 21 story about an attack on an Islamabad bank referred to a perpetrator as part of a "terrorist group."

A February 18 story referred to "Somali terrorists" who had bombed crowds in Kampala.

On February 11, a story referred to "terrorist groups that threaten India."

On January 29 and 25, multiple references were made to "terrorist" acts in describing a bombing at a Moscow airport.

A January 24 story about an attack on an Alexandria, Egypt, church referred to "the terrorist strike."

And so it goes.

"Terrorists" kill people across the globe, civilians and military, and are rightly called what they are by the Times. But those who entered the Fogel house and stabbed to death sleeping children were termed "intruders" in the bizarre logic and language of the Times.

A follow-up story on March 16 returned to Itamar, focusing on the fervent religious attachment of the residents to the area and noting the communities are deemed a violation of international law by "most of the world" - but not mentioning the traditional counter-view of the United States that they are legal. And, of course, rather than finally probe the malevolent forces in Palestinian culture that nurture and drive actions such as the stabbing of babies, and inspire Gazans to distribute candy and rejoice on hearing of the killing, that whole subject was left untouched. Again.

So, in Britain, it’s not morally depraved to murder innocents in their sleep?

From: Gay Patriot

“Let us,” R. S. McCain writes, “mentally transport ourselves back to the civil rights era, and suppose that a columnist used a phrase like ‘redneck savages’ or the ‘moral depravity of Mississippians’ to condemn violence against blacks“:

We might imagine that some would complain that this language unfairly implicated all Southern whites in the crimes of a hateful few. But there would have been no possibility of official sanction against such a columnist, as is the case with this British “Press Complaints Commission” that is investigating Melanie Phillips.

What is this commission? It was established in 1991 to stave off Parliamentary complaints about the media and is tasked with exercising “non-statutory self-regulation” in the press.

And what did Melanie Phillips do to merit this investigation? Well, in a “blogpost on the Spectator website“, she “referred to the ‘moral depravity’ of Arab ‘savages’“.

Now, if, if appears, she is referring to the Palestinian terrorists who, in the dead of night, snuck into a Jewish home and, in cold blood, murdered three Jewish children and their sleeping parents, well, then, the words she used accurately describe those terrorists. Such an act is one of moral depravity. Those committing it are indeed savages.

This is not to say that all Arabs are savages. Indeed, most are not. But, if cheering such a murder and praising its perpetrators does not strike us as morally depraved, then we have truly lost sight of the values of a civilized society.

Perhaps, some might Melanie Phillips’s language as suggesting that all Arabs are savages. If so, her critics should ask for a clarification and/or a correction, rather than grandstanding by filing such complaint.

And to note, as does McCain in his update, the complainant is not someone without an agenda:

Mark Steyn notes that the complaint against Phillips was brought by Inayat Bunglawala, chairman of Muslims4UK, “a man who called the blind sheikh behind the first World Trade Center bombing ‘courageous’ and Osama bin Laden a ‘freedom fighter.’”

Appeasement and the Itamar Slaughter

From: American Thinker

Arab terrorist organizations, including the military arms of Israel's supposed "peace" partner, the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas, all read an open door policy in the actions of the Israeli government. In addition to releasing terrorists sentenced in Israeli courts for severe crimes and removing check points from critical areas throughout Israel, PM Netanyahu has put the security of Israeli citizens in Judea and Samaria under the control of the Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak.

The fact that Judea and Samaria have never been annexed to become legal parts of Israel, defies understanding. Holding this area as a military zone is admission to the Arabs that Israel really has no interest in keeping this biblical heartland as part of its nation. The implicit understanding conveyed by the Israeli government, as it works to delegitimize the Jews of Judea and Samaria, is that they don't belong there and deserve to be removed. Even the Israeli left-wing media picks up this chant. It is therefore understandable that Arabs would attempt to take possession of what they perceive to be theirs.

Just last week, we saw the Israeli police enter Chavat Gilad, a farm built on privately owned Jewish land in Samaria, and destroy Jewish homes citing them as "illegal." Although no one was killed, plastic, rubber, and other types of bullets were shot, some at close range, at the residents of Chavat Gilad. Jewish police were shooting at Jewish citizens. Jewish homes were destroyed. We know the people at Chavat Gilad, having visited there many times, most recently this past November, and we saw the pride they took in the homes they had constructed with their own labor. But the Defense Minister, with the backing of PM Netanyahu, deems them illegal and sends in the destruction teams to demolish homes and threaten lives.

Is it any wonder, then, that Arab terrorists should jump a security fence in Itamar, enter a Jewish home, and brutally murder a mother, father, and three children? They are taking their cue from the Israeli government that stops at actually murdering its people, but doesn't hesitate to shoot at them. The Arab mentality, subjected to early indoctrination in the hatred of the "Zionist occupiers" and the culture of jihad and suicide bombings, carries it to the next step, and butchers Jews in their beds. We are shocked and horrified, but should we be surprised? This has been the pattern of the reign of Arab terror for years, which accompanies Israel's policies of appeasement, concession and destruction.

As a sop to those who are crying out for justice, PM Netanyahu approved the construction of 400 units for Jews. That is a slap in the face to the murdered victims and to the devoted residents of Judea and Samaria who desperately need housing for their expanding families. Thousands of units of Jewish housing should be built as a normal process of life in Israel, but not as revenge for Jewish blood. At the same time, illegal Arab building goes on unchecked and the building of a new Arab city, Rawabi, continues with Israel's approval.

And what do we hear from U.S. President Obama? He believes that despite the slaughter in Itamar, and despite the total upheaval of the Arab world, Obama insists that Israeli "settlements are the obstacle to peace" that have prevented his intended "two-state solution." He, and members of the international community will continue to strong-arm PM Netanyahu into weakening Israel. They refuse to understand that Arab terrorism and refusal to accept Israel's right to exist, are the true obstacles to peace.

West Bank Politics and History

From: American Thinker

It is sheer sophistry for American "elites" to maintain that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are a genuine obstacle to peace in the Middle East. To even assert such nonsense is to ignore three thousand five hundred years of history. Neither is "Palestinian pathos" the explanation for the contemporary blood libel that attempts to legitimize Arab claims to the West Bank at the expense of Jewish settlements.

For many, it is naked anti-Semitism that feeds the flames of the Palestinian narrative, and the fuel for that fire is Arab oil money. Without it, the "elites" who propagate the myth of Arab sovereignty over parts of the Jewish homeland would be powerless to weave the web of delusion in which so many Westerners are now ensnared. But for Westerners who honor truth rather than prejudice, a few historical facts may suffice to put out the fire of that Arab fiction.

The ancient Holy Land of the Jews included the West Bank that the Arabs now claim. The Arab claim is asserted on behalf of "Palestinian" Arabs. But the word "Palestinian" doesn't even refer to Arabs. It derives from the Romanized version of "Philistine," which refers to a seafaring people from Mycenean Greece who conquered a part of the southern coastal plane of the Holy Land then known as Canaan, and were later conquered by the ancient Hebrews. The Mycenean sea people were neither Arabs nor Semites. They were Indo-Europeans. Thus, even the "Palestinian" name under which the Arabs now claim sovereign rights over the West Bank is an historical deception.

Before the word "Palestine" was ever applied to the Holy Land, the land was known as Judaea. After the massacre and deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews by Nero's legions in 66-70 A.D., the Holy Land became a backwater of the Roman Empire. But the memory of national independence and territorial sovereignty burned fiercely in the Jews who remained in Judaea, and on two later occasions they rebelled unsuccessfully against Roman imperialism. The second rebellion is known as Bar Kokhba's revolt, which took place in 132-135 A.D., after which the Emperor Hadrian changed the name of the Holy Land to "Syria Palaestina" in order to humiliate the Jewish people by attempting to erase even from memory their historical ties to the Holy Land.

The modern word "Palestinian" thus derives from a massive land theft by the Romans, and an act of existential malice perpetrated in classical times against Jewish patriots and freedom fighters by Indo-European imperialists. That the Arabs seek to perpetuate the land theft today in the name of "Palestinian" rights would be laughable if it weren't so tragic for everyone concerned. But even that is not the heart of the problem, for it is the Arabs' existential malice against all non-Muslims that must first be overcome if peace is to reign in the Holy Land. To understand this, it is necessary to take a little trip through post-Classical history.

Although a majority of Jews were killed, or enslaved and deported, by the Romans, a significant remnant remained in the Holy Land. Those Jews were ruled by Roman administrators and Greek colonists. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the Fifth century A.D., and the collapse of Rome's bureaucratic civil administration in the Holy Land, a more atavistic way of life settled over the entire area. Many nomads from the deserts of Arabia wandered into the Holy Land and squatted on land that had been stolen from the Jews at the height of the Roman Empire. For more than two hundred years, the Arab squatters and the Jewish inhabitants of the Holy Land were able to peacefully coexist with one another, but in the Seventh century A.D. all of that began to change.

In 638 A.D., Muhammad's army conquered the Holy Land. Islam was on the rise at the time, and was being spread by blood and sword in vast swaths across the Middle East and North Africa. This began the rule over the Holy Land by the Muslim Caliphs and the religion of Islam. Jerusalem still remained a backwater; potentates who lived far away in Mecca and Medina ruled the Holy Land. Arabs living in the Holy Land did not form a "nation," nor was it ever part of the Islamic Caliphate ideology that they should do so.

The control of the Arab Caliphate over the Holy Land was supplanted after 432 years by the Seljuk Turks (another Islamic conqueror) in the year 1072. Twenty-four years later, in the year 1096, the Holy Land was wrested from the Seljuks by the Crusaders. The Crusaders retained control over the Holy Land for 195 years, until the Mameluke Turks conquered the land in 1291. The Mameluke Turks ruled the Holy Land as a province of their Islamic Turkish Empire for 225 years, until 1516, at which time the Ottoman Turks conquered the land for Islam. The Ottoman Turks ruled the Holy Land as a province of their empire for 402 years, until the defeat of Turkey by the Allied powers of Europe and America in World War I.

During none of the periods of Islamic rule was there a nation of Palestine, or an Arab nation by any name whatsoever in the Holy Land. During all of those periods, Jews continued to live in their ancient homeland, albeit as oppressed peasants, menial servants and second-class citizens subject to onerous tax burdens, social humiliation, political disenfranchisement, and invidious discrimination under Islamic law. Despite their degraded status, the Jews clung tenaciously to the Holy Land as their home, and nobody ever claimed the land in the name of "Palestinian" Arabs.

Following World War I, the British were given a mandate to administer the Holy Land by the League of Nations. The 1922 mandate declared that, as a matter of international law, the Jews were entitled to re-establish their own nation state in their ancestral homeland. Maps showing the international boundaries of that day reveal that the land to be included in the Jewish state consisted of modern day Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, when the United Nations declared the existence of the State of Israel in 1948, it muddied the legal status of the West Bank, and gave the Arabs the excuse they have been using ever since to try to legitimate their opposition to the State of Israel.

But the Arab opposition to the Jewish state has nothing to do with the West Bank. And it has nothing to do with the fact that Israel isn't an Arab state. It is about Israel being Jewish instead of Muslim. It was the non-Muslim character of the state authorized by the League of Nations that led the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to declare jihad on the Jews of British mandatory Palestine in 1922. The Grand Mufti's call to arms resulted in years of local riots and the murder of many Jews. But when the United Nations declared the existence of the State of Israel in 1948, the entire Arab world rose up in arms and commenced an all-out war of extermination against the Jews of the Middle East. Since that time, the Arabs have instigated two more unlimited wars against Israel, two limited wars, two bloody intifadas, and a continuous reign of terror and carnage.

This unremitting hostility of the Arabs to the Jews of Israel has nothing to do with an "Arab-Israeli" dispute, nor does it have anything to do with Israeli settlements or territorial concessions. It is about the implacable hostility of Islam to any other belief system. The Islamic Arabs never revolted against the Islamic Turks, even though the Turks are not Arab and were in the habit of treating the Arabs like dirt. And the Islamic Arabs never waged a war of extermination against the Islamic Iranians, even though the Iranians are not Arab and are actively trying to dominate the Arab Middle East. Yet, for ninety years, the Arabs have been waging a genocidal war against the Jews, and that war started a quarter of a century before the modern State of Israel was even born.

So, the problem is not between Israelis and the Palestinian Arabs, as today's "elites" would have the world believe. Anyone who believes that is a deluded fool, and anyone who proclaims it is a perfidious knave if they know anything about history. The real problem is between imperial Islam on the one hand, and the freedom loving peoples of the world on the other. Given their history -- which includes two lengthy periods of slavery in Egypt and Babylon -- the Jews of Israel stand on the side of freedom. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the Arabs of the Middle East, and anyone who says otherwise is guilty of sheer sophistry.

Three Jewish Children

From: Caroline Glick

Ruth Fogel was in the bathroom when the Palestinian terrorists pounced on her husband Udi and their three-month-old daughter Hadas, slitting their throats as they lay in bed on Friday night in their home in Itamar.

The terrorists stabbed Ruth to death as she came out of the bathroom. With both parents and the newborn dead, they moved on to the other children, going into a bedroom where Ruth and Udi's sons Yoav (11) and Elad (4) were sleeping. They stabbed them through their hearts and slit their throats.

The murderers apparently missed another bedroom where the Fogels' other sons, eight-year-old Ro'i and two-year-old Yishai were asleep because they left them alive. The boys were found by their big sister, 12-year-old Tamar, when she returned home from a friend's house two hours after her family was massacred.

Tamar found Yishai standing over his parents' bodies screaming for them to wake up.

In his eulogy at the family's funeral on Sunday, former chief rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau told Tamar that her job from now on is to be her surviving brothers' mommy.

In a rare move, the Prime Minister's Office released photos of the Fogel family's blood-drenched corpses.

They are shown as they were found by security forces.

There was Hadas, dead on her parents' bed, next to her dead father Udi.

There was Elad, lying on a small throw rug wearing socks. His little hands were clenched into fists. What was a four-year-old to do against two grown men with knives? He clenched his fists. So did his big brother.

Maybe the Prime Minister's Office thought the pictures would shock the world. Maybe Binyamin Netanyahu thought the massacre of three little children would move someone to rethink their hatred of Israel.

That was the theme of his address to the nation Saturday night.

Netanyahu directed most of his words to the hostile world. He spoke to the leaders who rush to condemn Israel at the UN Security Council every time we assert our right to this land by permitting Jews to build homes. He demanded that they condemn the murder of Jewish children with the same enthusiasm and speed.

He shouldn't have bothered.

The government released the photos on Saturday night. Within hours, the social activism website My Israel posted a short video of the photographs on YouTube along with the names and ages of the victims.

Within two hours YouTube removed the video.

What was Netanyahu thinking? Didn't he get the memo that photos of murdered Jewish children are unacceptable? If they're published, someone might start thinking about the nature of Palestinian society.

Someone might consider the fact that in the Palestinian Authority, anti-Jewish propaganda is so ubiquitous and so murderous that killing the Fogel babies was an act of heroism. The baby killers knew that by murdering Udi, Ruth, Hadas, Yoav and Elad they would enter the pantheon of Palestinian heroes. They can expect to have a sports stadium or school in Ramallah or Hebron built for them by the Palestinian Authority and underwritten by American or European taxpayers.

And indeed, the murder of the Fogel children and their parents was greeted with jubilation in Gaza.

Carnivals were held in the streets as Hamas members handed out sweets.

Obviously YouTube managers are not interested in being held responsible for someone noticing that genocidal Jew hatred defines Palestinian society - and the Arab world as a whole. But they really have no reason to be concerned. Even if they had allowed the video to be posted for more than an hour, it wouldn't have made a difference.

The enlightened peoples of Europe, and growing numbers of Americans, have no interest in hearing or seeing anything that depicts Jews as good people, or even just as regular people. It is not that the cultured, intellectual A-listers in Europe and America share the Palestinians' genocidal hatred of the Jewish people.

The powerful newspaper editors, television commentators, playwrights, fashion designers, filmmakers and professors don't spend time thinking about how to prepare the next slaughter. They don't teach their children from the time they are Hadas and Elad Fogel's ages that they should strive to become mass murderers. They would never dream of doing these things.

They know there is a division of labor in contemporary anti-Semitism.

The job of the intellectual luminaries in Western high society today is to hate Jews the old-fashioned way, the way their greatgrandparents hated Jews back in the days of the early 20th century before that villain Adolf Hitler gave Jew hating a bad name.

Much has been made of the confluence of anti-Semitic bile pouring out of the chattering classes. From Mel Gibson to Julian Assange to Helen Thomas to Charlie Sheen to John Galliano, it seems like a day doesn't go by without some new celebrity exposing himself as a Jew hater.

It isn't that the beautiful people and their followers suddenly decided that Jews are not their cup of tea (or rail of cocaine). It's just that we have reached the point where people no longer feel embarrassed to parade their negative feelings towards Jews in public.

A DECADE ago, the revelation that French ambassador to Britain Daniel Bernard referred to Israel as "that shi**y little country," was shocking. Now it is standard fare. Everyone who is anyone will compare Israel to Nazi Germany without even realizing this is nothing but Holocaust denial.

The post-Holocaust dam reining in anti-Semitism burst in 2002. As Jewish children and parents like the Fogels were being murdered in their beds, on the streets, in discotheques, cafés and supermarkets throughout Israel, fashionable anti-Semites rejoiced at the opportunity to hate Jews in public again.

The collective Jew, Israel was accused of everything from genocide to infanticide to just plain nastiness.

Israel's leaders were caricatured as Fagin, Shylock, Pontius Pilate and Hitler on the front pages of newspapers throughout Europe. IDF soldiers were portrayed as Nazis, and Israeli families were dehumanized.

No longer civilians with an inherent right to live, in universities throughout the US and Europe, Israeli innocents were castigated as "extremist-Zionists" or "settlers" who basically deserved to be killed.

Professors whose "academic" achievements involved publishing sanitized postmodern versions of anti-Jewish Palestinian propaganda were granted tenure and rewarded with lucrative book contracts.

Today, when properly modulated, Jew hatred is a career maker. Take playwright Caryl Churchill's 1,300- word anti-Semitic monologue "Seven Jewish Children."

The script accuses the entire population of Israel of mass murders which were never committed.

For her efforts, Churchill became an international celebrity. The Royal Court Theater produced her anti- Jewish agitprop. The Guardian featured it on its home page. When Jewish groups demanded that The Guardian remove the blood libel from its website, the paper refused. Instead, it left the anti-Semitic propaganda on its homepage, but in a gesture of openmindedness, hosted a debate about whether or not "Seven Jewish Children" is anti-Semitic.

From London, "Seven Jewish Children" went on tour in Europe and the US. In a bid to show how tolerant of dissent they are, Jewish communities in America hosted showings of the play, which portrays Jewish parents as monsters who train their children to become mass murderers.

"Seven Jewish Children's" success was repeated by the Turkish anti-Semitic action film "Valley of the Wolves- Palestine," which premiered on January 28 - International Holocaust Memorial Day. The hero of that film is a Turkish James Bond character who comes to Israel to avenge his brothers, who were killed by IDF forces on the Turkish-Hamas terror ship Mavi Marmara last May.

No doubt owing to the success of "Seven Jewish Children" and "Valley of the Wolves-Palestine" and other such initiatives, anti-Semitic art and entertainment is a growth sector in Europe.

Last month Britain struck again. Channel 4 produced a new piece of anti-Semitic bile - a four-part prime-time miniseries called "The Promise." It presents itself as an historical drama about Israel and the Palestinians, but its relationship with actual history begins and ends with the wardrobes.

In what has become the meme of all European and international left-liberal salons, the only good Jews in the mini-series are the ones who died in the Holocaust. From the show's perspective, every Jew who took up arms to liberate Israel from the British and defend it from the Arabs is a Nazi.

WHAT ALL this shows is that Netanyahu was wasting his time calling on world leaders to condemn the murder of the Fogel family. What does a condemnation mean? France and Britain condemned the massacre, along with the US. Does that exculpate the French and British for their embrace of anti-Semitism? Does it make them friends of the Jewish state?

And say a British playwright sees the YouTube censored photographs. No self-respecting British playwright will write a play called "Three Jewish Children" telling the story of how Palestinian parents do in fact teach their children to become mass murderers of Jews.

And if a playwright were to write such a play, The Royal Court Theater wouldn't produce it. The Guardian wouldn't post it on its website. Liberal Jewish community centers in America wouldn't show it, nor would university student organizations in Europe or America.

No, if someone wanted to use the photographs of Yoav's and Elad's mangled corpses and clenched little fists as inspiration to write a play or feature film about the fact that the Palestinians have no national identity outside their quest to annihilate the Jewish state, he would find no mass market.

The headlines describing the attack make all this clear.

From the BBC to CNN the Fogels were not described as Israelis. They were a "settler family." Their murderers were "alleged terrorists."

As far as the opinion makers of Europe and much of America are concerned, the Yoavs and Hadases and Elads of Israel have no right to live if they live in "a settlement."

So too, they believe that Palestinians have a right to murder Israelis who serve in the IDF and who believe that Jews should be able to live freely wherever we want because this land belongs to us.

Until these genteel Jew haters learn to think otherwise, Israel should neither seek nor care if they condemn this or any other act of Palestinian genocide. We shouldn't care about them at all.

Glenn Beck On Fogel Family Massacre

From: News Real Blog



This report by Glenn Beck on the the Palestinians’ massacre of a Jewish family on the West Bank gets it right — and he is the only major media figure who has. The silence of the rest of the media is a tribute to the success of the Islamic jihad in America in preventing the truth about Islamic Nazism from being told lest teller be accused of Islamophobia. Regarding the rest of the press, Mark Steyn as usual has written the last word:  ”Dead Jews Is No News”:

On Friday night, twelve-year old Tamar Fogel came home to find both her parents, Ruth and Udi Fogel, two brothers Yoav (11) and Elad (four), and her three-month old sister Hadas murdered in their beds. They had had their throats cut and been stabbed through the heart.
That’s not shocking: There is no shortage of young Muslim men who would enjoy slitting the throat of a three-month old baby, and then head home dreaming of the town square or soccer tournament to be named in their honor.
Back in Gaza, the citizenry celebrated the news by cheering and passing out sweets.
That’s not shocking, either: In the broader Palestinian death cult, there are untold legions who, while disinclined to murder Jews themselves, are content to revel in the glorious victory of others.
And out in the wider world there was a marked reluctance to cover the story.
And, if not exactly shocking, that was a useful reminder of how things have changed even in a few years. On 9/11, footage of Palestinians dancing in the streets and handing out candy turned up on the world’s TV screens, and that rancid old queen Arafat immediately went into damage-control mode and hastily arranged for himself to be filmed giving blood. This time round there was no need for damage-control, because there was no damage: The western media simply averted their eyes from their Palestinian house pets’ unfortunate effusions. The Israeli Government released raw footage from the murders, but YouTube yanked the video within two hours. The hip new “social media” are developing almost as exquisitely refined a sense of discretion as the old Social Register.

Netanyahu fails to appease Jewish settlers outraged by brutal attack

From: Christian Science Monitor

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved hundreds of new homes to be built in major settlement blocs. But settlers in farther-flung areas such as Itamar feel exposed, and threaten to take justice into their own hands.

• 

A general view of a construction site in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Modiin Illit, Monday, March 14. Israel said Sunday it has approved hundreds of settler homes after the stabbing deaths of an Israeli couple and three of their children in a West Bank settlement Friday night.

By Joshua Mitnick, Correspondent / March 14, 2011

Itamar, West Bank

The stabbing deaths of an Israeli couple and three of their children Friday night in the Jewish settlement of Itamar has stoked concern about a deterioration of a broad calm prevailing in the West Bank, as well as new blow to negotiations. Palestinian militants are suspected to be behind the attack, which took place in the northern West Bank near Nablus.

In a bid to mollify outraged settlers – including a small minority with a record of vigilantism – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved hundreds of new homes in the West Bank settlements over the weekend. A statement from his office said the projects are "measured" and are located in large settlement blocs near the border between the West Bank and Israel, areas which Israel insists it will keep under any deal with the Palestinians.

The Itamar attack is making it more difficult for Mr. Netanyahu to maneuver between hard-line coalition allies pressing for retribution and an international community that views Israel’s insistence on settlement activity as an obstacle to talks. The US criticized his government's announcement of new housing units, while settlers dismissed it as insufficient. They say Israel's relaxation of movement restrictions on Palestinians leaves them exposed, and prioritize security over Israel's ties with the US.

"What happens if you respond, will America do something to you?’’ challenged Tamar Fogel, the couple's 12-year-old daughter, when Netanyahu paid a condolence visit. She was not at home at the time of the attack, which two of her brothers also survived.

Dimmer prospects for new peace initiative

Though the peace process has been moribund for nearly six months, the announcement is expected to strengthen Palestinian resolve to refuse to talk amid settlement construction. That is likely to dim the prospects for a new Netanyahu diplomatic initiative for an interim peace accord, which would establish a Palestinian state on temporary borders – leaving the sensitive issue of final borders to be discussed later.

A dispute over Israel's refusal to stop building in the West Bank stymied talks in the fall after Israel ended a 10-month settlement freeze in September 2010.

"This makes a bad situation worse," says Yossi Alpher, the co-editor of Bitterlemons.org, an Israeli-Palestinian online opinion forum. "This attack allows him to fortify his coalition even more from the right."

PM visits Itamar: 'They shoot, we build'

From: Jerusalem Post

Netanyahu goes to homes of Fogel parents to give condolences; promises those responsible for terror attack will be found.

The terrorists shoot, and we build, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the parents of Ehud and Ruth Fogel on Sunday night during a shiva call, hours after the government’s settlement committee decided to approve the building of 400 -500 housing units in large settlement blocks.

“They say Eretz Yisrael is acquired through pain and suffering,” Netanyahu told the grieving parents, “but we didn’t think the pain and suffering would be so great. This heinous act has led all of us to say, ‘Enough.’ The security services are doing everything they can to find the murders, and we will find the criminals. They are not people, but beasts.”

Even as Netanyahu and the government devoted most of the cabinet’s discussion on Sunday to the attack and hearing briefings from Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz and the deputy head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), the decision to approve a few hundred houses in the settlement blocs became the major story in the international media.

According to a statement put out by the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministerial Committee on Settlements – which includes the prime minister, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Home Front Minister Matan Vilna’i, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Ministerwithout- Portfolio Bennie Begin – decided on Saturday night to a approve a few hundred housing units in Gush Etzion, Ma’aleh Adumim, Ariel and Modi’in Illit. The statement termed this “measured building” of a few hundred units inside the settlement blocs.

The units approved are among projects that the government stopped in various stages of planning in efforts to get the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table, and reportedly include 48 units in Gush Etzion, 300 in Modi’in Illit and fewer than 100 each in Ariel and Ma’aleh Adumim.

Sources in the Prime Minister’s Office said the announcement did not come as a surprise to Washington. Robert Serry, the UN’s Middle East envoy, was quoted as having condemned the move.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai said in the cabinet meeting that this number was not enough, and that there should be at least 5,000 units – 1,000 for each murder.

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said that he was pleased with the move, and hopes that “there will be other decisions like this in the future.”

The decision met with mixed response in the settlements. Danny Dayan, the head of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, termed the decision a “small step in the right direction,” but that the government should approve further projects and build a new neighborhood in Itamar as a memorial for the victims.

Dayan said this was the first time the Netanyahu government approved new homes, and it was “deeply troubling that it requires the murder of children in the arms of their parents” for this to happen.

Ma’aleh Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel reportedly said it was wrong to connect the permits to the murders, and that building in the settlement blocs did not need to be done under the cover of murdered Israelis.

On Saturday night, in a public statement after the attack, Netanyahu said, “Terrorism will not determine the settlement map; we will.”

Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev said there was no contradiction between the announcement to build in the settlement blocs and the prime minister’s stated desire to move forward with the diplomatic process.

“All of this is taking place inside the large settlements,” he said. “In every peace plan that has been put on the table in the last 18 years, the large settlement blocs remain a part of Israel in the final-status agreement.”

During the cabinet meeting, the attack on Itamar turned into a discussion of the price to be paid for the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit when Vice Premier and Regional Development Minister Silvan Shalom wondered aloud whether, if and when the murderers of the Fogels are captured, they will be on the top of the list Hamas will demand for Schalit’s freedom.

Netanyahu, according to government officials, launched into a explanation of the government’s policy that “dangerous” prisoners will not be released from prison and allowed back into Judea and Samaria because that – as has been the case in the past when Palestinians terrorists were released in prisoner exchanges – would lead to additional attacks in the West Bank, as well as inside the Green Line.

Fogel Family Murder A Call To Third Intifada?

From: American Power

There's a glut of important news of happenings around the world, but given the scale of the atrocity in the West Bank, the response to the Fogel family massacre among progressives and the lamestream media is pathetic, if not predictable.

Importantly, despite the stern denials of the PA leadership, the Palestinian street has once again expressed the true sentiment toward Israel and Middle East peace. At Ynet, "Facebook page calls for 3rd intifada." There's a video a the link, anonymously sourced and in Arabic, announcing the launch of a new Intifada on May 15, the alleged anniversary of the Nakba. And at Commentary, "So, Who Controls the Palestinian Street?" Frankly, the it's one big happy family of Muslim fanatics: "Palestine Today: Stabbing of 3 year old, infant 'heroic and courageous'." Contrast that to the rituals denials and fake denunciation of violence: "Palestinian Arabs' new meme: 'We would never kill children!'"

In related news, last night I was ready to post this video from My Israel, "Massacre of the Israeli Fogel family by a Palestinian terrorist – Names and Faces." But just as I was about to publish, the clip was taken down by YouTube: "Video of Friday’s slaying of Jews by Palestinians banned by YouTube and Facebook." Pamela has the video, plus photos from the scene, "Islamic Jew Hatred: **GRAPHIC** Muslims Stab Jewish family of Five to Death." And Israel Matzav posts the statement from the Fogel family on the release of the Itamar photos:

Dear colleagues,

These photos were released by the family. They have given full permission for their use and they to ask you to report on the horrific reality of murdering children and babies in their sleep, simply because they are Jewish.

https://picasaweb.google.com/picsyesha/Itamar

The photos are high resolution and can be reproduced in your website and newspaper.

For more information, pls contact Roni Arazi, spokesman of the Yesha Council, Israel; 972-54-566-5999.

Plus, it turns out Power Line picks up my post from last night, "Scenes From a Massacre."

And at Los Angeles Times, "Israel vows to expand settlements after stabbings":

As thousands of Israelis gathered Sunday to bury five members of a family of Jewish settlers who were stabbed to death in their beds over the weekend, the government said it would respond to the attack by building an additional 500 homes in the West Bank.

Israeli security forces continued their manhunt for unknown infiltrators who broke into the heavily guarded settlement of Itamar, south of Nablus, and killed Udi and Ruth Fogel and three of their children, including an infant. The military has named no suspects, but officials are blaming Palestinian militants for the attack.

The government decision to expand housing construction in several large settlement blocs was intended to signal that Israel's presence in the West Bank will not be deterred by violence, officials said.

"This murder reminds everyone that the struggle and conflict is not about Israel's borders or about independence of a repressed nation, but a struggle for our existence," Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon said at the funeral. "In this difficult hour we must rise from the rubble and do the most natural thing — continue building and developing Israel."

Plus, at Jerusalem Post, "PM visits Itamar victims' families: 'They shoot, we build'."

Added: More from Israel Matzav, "The New York Times blames the 'settlers'."

Update on Fogel Family Massacre: Palestinians Call for New Violent Uprising Against Israel

From: Theo Spark

The full report is at the link: "Palestinians Call for New Violent Uprising, a 'Third Intifada' — Israel Says 'Murders Are Reminder of Struggle for Our Existence'."

The Fogel family issued a statement on the graphic images of the murders:

Dear colleagues,

These photos were released by the family. They have given full permission for their use and they to ask you to report on the horrific reality of murdering children and babies in their sleep, simply because they are Jewish.

https://picasaweb.google.com/picsyesha/Itamar

The photos are high resolution and can be reproduced in your website and newspaper.

Check back for updates throughout the night.

The Itamar Terror Attack and the Double Standard of the ‘Pro-Peace’ Left (Updated)

The Itamar Terror Attack and the Double Standard of the ‘Pro-Peace’ Left (Updated): At +927 magazine (of all places), Dimi Reider notes that many left-wing, pro-Palestinian activists and organizations have either ignored or been noticeably subdued in their response to the vicious terrorist attack against an Israeli family in Itamar:

The activist Left’s confused and muted response reveals a shameful double standard — one that is not necessarily thought-out and intentioned, but one that needs to be urgently confronted and weeded out. It demonstrates that despite political awareness and commitment to human rights and international law, our community has yielded to one of the most common afflictions of a conflict area, and dehumanized an entire community, consciously or subconsciously rendering it second-class, semi-legitimate target for brutal violence.

While some major left-wing groups like J Street and Americans for Peace Now have condemned the attack, organizations like the Foundation for Middle East Peace, the Shalom Center, Tikkun, and Meretz USA have yet to speak out against it.

Other alleged “pro-peace” activist organizations have regrettably used their statements on the brutal murder as an excuse to criticize the settlements and the Israeli government.

The Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, for example, expressed its “deep sadness and sorrow” over the killing, but then added that it viewed the attack “as a part of the escalation generated and mobilized by the policies and actions of the Israeli occupation. These policies created the circumstances for committing these heinous actions. Therefore, we believe that the Israeli government bears full responsibility for the occupation and its consequences.”

The Jerusalem Fund’s Palestine Center has used the murder as an opportunity to post “Random #Israel Settler Violence facts” on Twitter, and promote its “ongoing research project” on “settler violence.”

These organizations are usually vociferous in their condemnation of the Israeli military defense and settlement construction, and their lack of a strong response to a Palestinian terrorist attack is appallingly hypocritical. Reider writes that the activist left “must find a way of loudly and unreservedly condemning atrocities” committed against Israelis living in the settlements. And the fact that he even needs to point that out is a sad testament to a movement that claims to care about peace.