Jerusalem

"[M]any Jewish prayers speak of Jerusalem, Zion and the land of Israel. Jews are told not to forget Jerusalem, the site of the temple, which is a major tenet of Judaism. The Jewish calendar, holidays and festivals all originated in Israel and revolve around Israel's seasons. Jews pray toward Jerusalem and say the words, 'Next year in Jerusalem' every Passover since 70CE. The Jewish religion, culture and history make clear that it is only in the land of Israel that a Jewish state can be built" [source].

"And Hamas and Gaza are finally, finally being honest with the world. Proudly, they will tell you they fired four rockets at Jerusalem - they do not love Jerusalem, who would bomb her streets, riot and set fire to her forests" [source].

"Violence will not shake us from our determination and all you prove by bombing Jerusalem is that you don't deserve it and you have no rights to it. ... whatever small amount of rights the Arabs had to Jerusalem as one of the three centers of their religion is gone. Jerusalem will never be yours; you don't deserve it" [source].

"[T]wo days ago, Palestinians fired on the holy city of Jerusalem... if you love something, you don't try to destroy it" [source].

The Propaganda War

"The effort to destroy the Jewish state has many fronts. ... the most insidious, is comprised of the propaganda arm of the Palestinian movement. And this front thrives for only one reason - the complicity of the world press and the so-called 'international community'.  It was the propaganda arm that staged the 'Freedom Flotilla'. But there have been many previous productions: The propaganda arm was responsible for the photo-shopped images of damage to Lebanon during the 2006 war, the staged 'death' of 12-year-old Muhammad Al Durrah, the 'massacre' at Jenin, and the 'war crimes' in Gaza. In each and every case, the 'news' of Israeli atrocities was broadcast far and wide by organizations like Reuters, AP, CNN, and AFP. The United Nations has offered its imprimatur to every libel. The truth see[ms] always to have a case of laryngitis" [source].

Restraint and Proportionate Response

"Foreign Secretary Hague was correct to condemn the Hamas rocket attacks, saying the 'people of Israel have the right to live without constant fear for their security.'  But in the next sentence, he, like many other world leaders, predictably urged for 'restraint'. Can you imagine if even one rocket was fired on London? Or Washington, Paris or Moscow? What kind of 'restraint' would they show? The fact of the matter is there is no such thing as 'restraint' or a 'proportionate response' to terrorism, to brutal murderers who idolise death and see every Jew as a target. ... No nation can accept such incessant terror against its people and Israel is entitled to take whatever action we deem necessary to protect our civilians from Palestinian terror" [source].

"We often hear the term 'disproportionate' bandied about to condemn and demonise the efforts of a military tasked to defend its country against unprovoked aggression. The term isn't a bad one. The IDF does act disproportionately. It acts disproportionately to defend the lives of civilians on both sides. It invests millions into defensive projects such as Iron Dome ... In times of active conflict, it does all it can to exclusively target combatants" [source].

"They are also bringing back the accusation that Israel is using 'disproportionate' means to combat Hamas because [Operation Protective Edge] has seen (so far) 53 Palestinians killed and no Israelis. I will repeat again, as I did in 2008 [Operation Cast Lead] and 2012 [Operation Pillar of Cloud], that this is nonsense. Proportionality has nothing to do with the relative number of casualties in a conflict. In international law, an army may use force proportionate to what is required to achieve its objective. The IDF's objective here is to stop the rocket fire, and its restraint in avoiding collateral damage is far greater than [is] customary among developed nations" [source].

"The standing rebuke to Israel is that its counter-attacks against Hamas targets in Gaza produce more casualties than the Palestinian barrage exacts from Israel. ... Israeli counter-attacks are always called disproportionate though the last thing the Palestinians would want is for the IDF to respond in kind with attacks that, like those of Hamas, aim to kill civilians. The notion that Israel needs to apologise for the inaccuracy of Hamas rockets or the success of the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system is absurd" [source].

Islam: A Religion of Death

"We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children.  We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.  We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us" [Golda Meir].

"The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms there would be no more war" [Benjamin Netanyahu, 2006].

"The real opponents of Zionism can never be placated by any diplomatic formula: Their objection to the Jews is that the Jews exist, and in this particular case, that they exist in Palestine" [Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president].

"While the Jews sanctify life, Palestinians glorify death. The asymmetry is lethal. For contrary to the calumny spread by its enemies, Israel's self-defense is hampered by the moral scrupulousness that instructs its military wherever possible to avoid killing civilians. By infernal contrast, Palestinians deliberately put their own civilians into harm's way and seek out Jewish civilians to kill, especially the young. ... Islamic fanatics do not fear death. They seek it out. We should be finding imaginative ways of doing what will really destroy them: using the weapons of the modernity they so deeply fear to subvert the cult of death that threatens us all" [source].

"You know the story about the Palestinian boy who got the transplant here? There was a boy... from Gaza and he needed an organ transplant and the mother brings him over here to Israel so we can save her little boy's life. And that's fine. I say it's fine if we can help them, if we can save a life, a child's life? Yes of course! Bring him. So whose organ gets transplanted? There is a Jewish boy, an Israeli boy who is killed in a terrorist attack and his father gives the ok to transplant his dead son, his murdered son's kidney or whatever they transplanted, into the Palestinian boy from Gaza, to save his life. And they say you know who will get your boy's kidney? It will be a boy from Gaza, from the place that dispatched the terrorist that killed your son. And he says, yes I know and I want to do it. I want to do it, so they'll see who we are and we'll have peace. We'll start with this boy and his mother. That's how we'll build the peace. So they do the transplant and the boy lives. And you know what the woman says? She says it on television so the whole world can see it and hear it. She's not ashamed. She says, you saved my son's life and you Jews have a right to be angry about what I'm going to say. That's your right and I don't care. Because now that you've saved him, when my son grows up, I want him to become a 'Martyr' and kill Jews, as many as he can! ... So when I see a woman on the television and she's crying because her child has been killed in this war, I'm a woman, my heart aches for any child who is killed, it's awful. But I think to myself, if this is the woman who wants her child to grow up so he can blow himself up while killing Jews, while trying to kill me or my mother or my brother or my neighbour, what's the tragedy? Is it that the child didn't live long enough to kill me? Is that the tragedy for her? Or is it that's she's afraid that if she doesn't raise him to kill Jews, the Hamas will kill her, or kill him. It's insane! Do you hear that? It's insane" [source].

"Israelis love life. It's simple really. ... It's a fight between those who yearn for peace, and those who fetishise war. It's a fight between those who love life, and those who crave death" [source].

"In the midst of her mourning period, bereaved mother Rachel Fraenkel released a statement that 'this is a horrifying act. There is no difference between blood and blood. Murder is murder. There is no justification and no atonement for murder.'  Contrast this with the response of the mother if one of the suspected Hamas murderers: 'If my son did this act, I'm proud of him.'  Such sentiments are routinely expressed by mothers of 'martyrs' engaged in killing Jews and reflect the Palestinian culture of hatred and death" [source].

"Maybe this whole thing isn't about the boys - maybe it is about the mothers. Theirs and ours. Ours showed grace this week and unlike me, they kept their anger to themselves. They were the definition of strength and dignity while the rest of us wanted to smash and scream and cry. Theirs showed pride in the agonies that others were caused; pride in the evil that their sons had done. There was no dignity, no grace. ... Their mothers and ours... yes, I'm sure many of their mothers mourn the deaths of their sons but too many celebrate the deaths of ours. And our mothers... blessed by Iris T'shura and blessed be Rachel Devorah and blessed by Bat Galim" [source].

Palestinians: The 'Occupation'

"The normally alleged justification for Palestinian violence - a reaction to 'the occupation' - does not stand up. Since 1995, over 95% of Judea and Samara (West Bank) Palestinians have lived under the administration of the Palestinian Authority, which controls all aspects of Palestinian life except for visas and external security. And since 2005, Palestinians in Gaza have controlled even these" [source].

"The Europeans put their own people on trial for 'hate speech' when they have said nothing but the truth; and yet they pour millions into non-stop propaganda and bloodthirsty hate-speech on our government-controlled TV - the only kind we have here. They fund any baseless sewage our leaders can think up. The usual claim is 'occupation', but the Israelis are only 'occupying' the West Bank because we - in the form of Jordan - occupied land promised to them, and then repeatedly attacked them. A more recent claim is 'settlements', but the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] was formed in 1964, before there were any 'settlements', so what exactly was it planning to 'liberate'? If you look at any Palestinian map to this day, it encompasses the entire country of Israel. To the Palestinian Authority and many Arabs and Muslims, all of Israel is one big 'settlement'. Last week, Fatah Central Committee member Tawfiq Tirawi said, 'Haifa, Jaffa, Acre and Nazareth are Palestinian, despite the American and the Israelis'. Next week it will be some other pretext" [source].

Palestinians: A Palestinian State

"Palestine is here, exactly where it always was. It has been lived in for 4000 years, by Arabs, Christians, Jews and anyone else who showed up. The Roman Emperor Augustus called it Iudaea. Later, in 135 CE, the Romans renamed it Syria Palaestina in an attempt to sever all connection to it by the Jews. It was part of the Ottoman Empire until its dissolution in 1918, then called Palestine again under the British Mandate. After Israel's war of Independence in 1948, it was and still is called Israel. There never has been a Palestinian state. Ever. The West Bank was Jordanian, the Golan Heights were Syrian and the Gaza Strip was Egyptian. The truth is the PA President Mahmoud Abbas has been trying to turn the State of Israel into the State of Palestine" [source].

"Remember there was no Palestine as a state. it was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community" [Newt Gringrich, December 2011, quoted at: source].

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan" [Zahir Muhsein, PLO executive committee member, 1977 interview with Dutch newspaper Trouw, quoted at: source].

"Every Palestinian... throughout Palestine can prove his Arab roots, whether from Saudi Arabia or Yemen or anywhere. ... Personally, half my family is Egyptian, we are all like that. ... Brothers, half the Palestinians are Egyptian and the other half are Saudis... Who are the Palestinians? ... We have families called al-Masri whose roots are Egyptian, Egyptian! We are Egyptian! We are Arab! We are Muslim!" [Fathi Hammad, Hamas Minister of the Interior and National Security, March 2012 televised address, quoted at: source].

Palestinians: History

"According to "Omar Ja'ara, a lecturer at Al-Najah University in Nablus and broadcast on PA TV, Moses as well as King Saul were Palestinian Muslims who conquered and claimed 'Palestine' for the benefit of Palestinians. ... [And] the actions of Moses and Saul represented 'the first Palestinian liberation through armed struggle to liberate Palestine... this is our logic and this is our culture.'  Of course it doesn't matter that Saul lived approximately 1,700 years before Muhammed was zygote. Facts play absolutely no role in Palestinian academia. Empirical data and evidence is ignored. Precedence is given to upholding a false, pernicious and viscerally anti-Semitic narrative that either denies historical fact or co-opts it" [source].

Palestinians: Moral Equivalence and Cycles of Violence

"To hell with moral equivalences and journalistic 'balance', it's time to decide which side you are on because it will sooner or later become that simple: life or death. Which path do you want humanity to follow in the decades ahead? Is it to push back and defeat, to obliterate religio-fascism, or bury yourself in a quagmire of misdirected human rights' qualms that are only appropriate for a society and culture that has the moral capacity to produce them?" [source].

"While the brutal deaths of three Jewish teens and a 15-year-old Palestinian Arab are tragic, the reaction of mainstream Israelis and lawmakers versus that in Palestinians society is as different as night and day. Palestinians were celebrating the kidnapping of Israeli teens, while Israelis were calling for the arrest of anyone, Jew or Arab, who commits violence against innocent civilians" [source].

"According to [prominent Palestinian human-rights activist ... Bassam] Eid, Palestinians in the West Bank [Judea and Samaria] were hoping the three boys would be traded for Palestinian prisoners. Asked whether [Palestinians] saw any difference between innocent schoolchildren being held captive ad violent terrorists with blood on their hands, he acknowledged that indeed they did not differentiate between them. 'It's no different than the IDF shooting at Palestinian teenagers', he responded, although, as UWI pointed out, the Israeli children were on their way home from school while the Palestinian teens shot - allegedly - by the IDF would have been throwing rocks or committing some form of aggression against soldiers or civilians. Nor do the Palestinians differentiae between civilian residents of Judea and Samaria and soldiers, Eid added" [source].

Palestinians: Collective Punishment

"Even as Israel sent its forces in a house-to-house search for the three missing teenagers, critical Palestinian and foreign voices were heard condemning Israel for imposing 'collective punishment' on Palestinian society. ... As IDF, police, and intelligence units probed Arab towns and villages in and around Hebron, acting on scant information, they were obstructed and hindered by the collective will and actions of local Palestinian residents. Collectively, [the Palestinians] refused to offer any information that would help lead Israel to the kidnappers or to the location of the boys. Collectively, local Palestinians, and those in Gaza, celebrated the abduction and disappearance of the young boys, as if this was a cause for revelry. Collectively, they complained about the efforts that were made to find the boys. Collectively, they interfered with attempts to bring the perpetrators to justice. ... To confirm. This was a collective Palestinian crime. The organizers and murderers of this terror act may be few in number, but we witnessed an outpouring of collective support from the bulk of Palestinian society and from the wider Palestinian supportive elite" [source].

Palestinians: Genocide

"So, are we actually accusing the Jews of 'genocide' while it is we who are striving [to] kill all of them and drive them 'into the sea'? Are the Europeans actually buying this nonsense? We all ask ourselves: If Europeans like to feel so righteous about themselves, then why are they acting as the accomplices and accessories to criminals? Does that not make them criminals too?" [source].

"If we are going to be honest with ourselves, as we can see here every day on the ground, Israel has never called for the destruction of the Palestinians; and research strongly suggests that they have never tried to 'destroy the Palestinians' or any other ethnic group - not Christians, Muslims, Kurds, Yazidis or Copts. Israel has never said or done anything that indicated any plan to destroy the Palestinian people. On the contrary, Israel, while protecting itself, has done its utmost not to harm Palestinian civilians, even though it could inflict untold damage if it wished. We laugh about how fortunate we are to have Israel as our 'enemy'; that everyone should have an enemy like that. Can you imagine what a massacre of the Jews - and Christians and others - would be like if Iran or ISIS had the weapons Israel has? On the contrary, it is we, the Palestinians, who for decades have been calling for the destruction of the 'Zionist entity' and for driving the Jews into the sea. Some of us still act to achieve that aim" [source].

Hamas

"Hamas, whose very raison d'etre is the destruction of Israel and which is recognised as a terrorist organisation both by the EU and UK, has invested millions of dollars [of received] aid (including British tax payer dollars) into more rockets" [source].

Hamas: Human Shields

"Like in past operations, the Israeli military has given advance warning to civilians in Gaza to evacuate homes or areas that would be hit, but recently we have seen pamphlets being distributed by Hamas urging citizens to instead of finding safety, to head to the roof, to act as human shields. More than 30 Palestinians have been killed, and over 230 wounded since the start of Operation Protective Edge. My heart breaks for the families who have lost loved ones during this operation, and the innocent women and children who are brought up to the roofs of their homes by their loved ones to try to stop the IAF from destroying their homes. But what kind of culture urges their citizens to run towards danger instead of running for safety?" [source].

"In Gaza, children are crammed into targeted buildings. Sometimes forced to wait on rooftops, children are then ejected from these buildings, forced to 'escort' targeted militants - with no guaranteed for their personal safety. A human shield. A shield of hate. It is a perverse strategy - a sick practice which is stomach-churning to even describe. For Hamas, their nation's own children are expendable in a murderous struggle to kill innocents. ... Hamas are guilty of a double war crime. They fire upon civilian areas from civilian areas. They endanger their own people while considering all Israelis as legitimate targets" [source].

"Those Palestinians 'civilians' who went BACK into the home of a Palestinian terrorist to protect the building and got hurt, become accomplices. We don't protect our buildings, we protect our lives. We don't put our leaders in bunkers, we put our children there" [source].

Alleged Jewish Terrorism

"For centuries, Muslims had been able to incite the Arabic-speaking masses to anti-Jewish attacks by invoking the racially prejudiced 'holy words' and by spreading inflammatory fabrications about the Jews.  In 1948, ... the Arab masses believed that, with independence, the Jews would turn the tables on the Arabs and would take retribution from them for the persecution that the Jewish dhimmi had suffered at Arab hands in the past. The few 'acts of reprisals' by outraged Jews, in response to the Arab violence designed to prevent the Jews' statehood, were novel and unexpected. For so long the dhimmi had exhibited 'incredible restraint'. Word of the Jews' counterattacks was broadcast far and wide, embellished, and vastly exaggerated" [Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine, JKAP Publications, 1984, p395].

Why 'Hip Hip Hurray' is a No No!

"Around 135AD the Romans besieged Jerusalem and after a terrible period the city was subdued.  So costly was the siege that relieved Romans instituted a new toast at their feasts: 'Hierosolyma Est Perdita,' 'Jerusalem is destroyed,' the guests immediately greeting it with the shout Hurrah.  This is the origin of our 'Hep! Hep! Hurrah',  H.E.P, being the abbreviation of the three words, formed by their initial letters (on the principle known as Notarica, or Notricon).  To this day Hep or Hip is said by only one person, the rest joining in the shout which greets it!  In view of Psalm 122:6 and Psalm 129:5-6 it is better to say 'Praise the Lord'" [Peter, Crows Nest, NSW, source].

The Israeli/Gazan Conflict, Dec 2008-Jan 2009

"On the first day of Israel’s ground attack, approximately 30 Palestinians, almost all Hamas combatants, were killed. On the same day an Islamic suicide bomber blew herself up in a mosque in Iraq, killing 40 innocent Muslims. No protests. Little media coverage" [Alan M. Dershowitz, Hamas Deploys its 'CNN Strategy' on World, 7 Jan 2009].

"The moral inversion in the west is so egregious, so monstrous, that the better Israel is shown to behave the worse the vilification that rains down upon it. What other country in the world would show such restraint in the face of more than 6000 rocket attacks upon its citizens – 6000! – that it took seven years before going to war to put a stop to it? What other country would treat individuals – including proven terrorists – from that enemy territory in its own hospitals? What other country would continue to provide essential foodstuffs and other supplies to those enemies who continued to fire rockets at it? What other country, when finally forced to go to war to stop the attacks, would show such concern to avoid the loss of civilian life that it contacts the population in enemy territory -- even households containing identified terrorists – to warn them to flee from the imminent bombardment? And what other country would, for showing such unparalleled moral scrupulousness, be vilified and libelled as Israel is? Israel’s behaviour is moral, legal and proportionate. This conflict is revealing just who is on the side of morality, decency and sanity and who is not" [Melanie Phillips, The Moral Battleground, 4 Jan 2009].

(IsraelNN.com) "The IDF Spoeksman's Unit joined the popular YouTube video sharing website this week, opening a channel to let viewers see footage from the 'Cast Lead' operation in Gaza. The footage showed humanitarian aid entering Gaza via Israeli crossings and Israeli strikes on Hams targets. Supporters of Hamas-led Gaza quickly began reporting the IDF videos in an attempt to get them removed from the website. Some of the most popular videos were taken down, but not before being viewed by thousands. One of the videos that was removed by the YouTube management showed terrorists loading Grad missiles into a truck near a residential area. The terrorists were then taken out in an IAF strike. The video was picked up by the LiveLeak website. IDF spokesmen altered the IDF channel homepage to say, 'We are saddened that YouTube has taken down some of our exclusive footage showing the IDF's operational success in Operation Cast Lead against Hamas extremists in the Gaza Strip. As the State of Israel again faces those who would see it destroyed, it is imperative that we in the IDF show the world the inhumanity directed against us and our efforts to stop it. It is also worth noting that one of the videos removed had the highest number of hits (over 10,000) at the time of its removal" [Maayana Miskin, 30 Dec 2008].

The Israeli/Hezbollah War, 2006

"[A] former Speaker of the [American] House [of Representatives] said today's [July 16, 2006] deaths of eight Israelis from Hezbollah missile attacks is the equivalent of losing 500 Americans, based on population:  'Imagine we woke up this morning, and 500 Americans were dead in Miami from missiles fired from Cuba.  Do you think any American would say, 'No, we should have proportionate response.  We shouldn't overreact.'?  No we would say, 'Get rid of the missiles.'  John F. Kennedy, ... was prepared to go to nuclear war to stop missiles from being in Cuba. ... This idea that we have this one-sided war where the other team gets to plan how to kill us and we get to talk, is nuts'."

[NOTE FROM BAYITH: We believe the extract above to be a true comment on the world's hypocrisy concerning the situation faced by Israel during the summer of 2006, but please do not see our inclusion of this quote here as our legitimising or endorsing other aspects of this politician.]

"Thus saith the LORD,
which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night,
which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; the LORD of hosts is His name:
'If those ordinances depart from before me,' saith the LORD,
'then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before me forever'"
(Jeremiah 31:35-36)

"For the LORD will not cast off His people, neither will He forsake His inheritance"
(Psalm 94:14)

"They that trust in the LORD shall be as mount Zion which cannot be removed, but abideth forever.
As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about His people from henceforth even forever"
(Psalm 125:1-2)

© Elizabeth McDonald     https://www.bayith.org     bayith@blueyonder.co.uk