Dateline Jerusalem – I am home after a 15½-hour non-stop flight from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv. For the first time in 7½ years, I was not physically searched at the airport. One of my two pieces of luggage was physically inspected, though, according to a card from TSA left inside my suitcase. Either security is getting lax — I do not think that is the case — or they finally realize I am just a grandmother, not a threat to anyone.
I left Los Angeles on Tuesday with news on television of the horrific murder of rabbis praying in a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem earlier that day. Har Nof is not in any “disputed” area of Jerusalem. In Western Jerusalem, it overlooks the Jerusalem Forest. All of Israel seems to be “disputed” and claimed by the Palestinians. Three of the murdered rabbis were Americans, one British. The fifth person senselessly murdered was a Druze police officer who had come to their rescue. Several worshippers were seriously injured. The Arab terrorists who committed the atrocity swung axes, meat cleavers, knives, and they had guns used in a shootout with the police.
Response to the brutal attack was varied but predictable, especially from the media. The British newspaper The Guardian published a Reuters story referring to the perpetrators of the attack as “two men,” avoiding the word “Palestinians.” The BBC continually portrays Palestinians as victims and Jews as aggressors. During last summer’s war, they showed graphic pictures of bloodshed provided to them by Hamas. This time they refused to show pictures of the Jewish victims of the synagogue atrocity. The BBC anchor told Knesset member Naftali Bennett, who tried to show a picture of the massacre, that the BBC did not want to see the picture. He told Bennett to put it down. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. had a headline that referred to Jerusalem police killing two Palestinians, downplaying the murders of the Jewish worshippers while making it seem as those Jewish police were harassing the Palestinian terrorists. CNN claimed it was a “deadly attack on a Jerusalem mosque” instead of a synagogue. One of its TV anchors parroted Hamas by claiming that all Israelis, whether children or elderly, are soldiers and therefore fair game. The New York Times avoided any reference to terror or terrorism. Boston Globe headlines made it seem the terrorists were victims of Jews in prayer with headlines like “2 Palestinian assailants also killed in violence at synagogue.” At CBS’s This Morning, anchor Nora O'Donnell falsely claimed that the Palestinians were in a shootout with police at a “contested religious site” in Jerusalem. Since when is a synagogue in Western Jerusalem a “contested religious site”?
Predictable and Hateful
Responses from Arabs were predictable. Jordan's parliament opened their House of Representatives session with a prayer honoring the Palestinian terrorists who murdered the rabbis and the Druze police officer. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) openly praised the terrorists and called for all-out war against Israel. An Abbas advisor blessed the terrorists and the type of weapons they used, whether it be axes, kitchen knives or “wheels of your cars.” He, too, called for a religious war against Israel. Although the U.N. Security Council condemned the attack, UNRWA workers openly lauded the terrorist perpetrators of this ghastly murder.
Why the violence and massacres of Jews in Israel? Arabs are being incited to commit these atrocities. Just last week, the official Palestinian Authority (Abbas/Fatah controlled) daily newspaper published an article blaming rabbis for threats to Arabs. No wonder rabbis praying in a synagogue were targeted by the terrorists. No wonder all Israeli civilians are fair game when Hamas and CNN claim that every Israeli is a soldier, be they infants who are “potential soldiers” persons in their 90s who may have once been a soldier. Most disgusting of all was when an allegedly “non-biased” and “respected” CNN tried to show a moral equivalence between terrorists and Israel's response to them. CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield said that “soldiers come in all forms.”
“Everyone is a soldier,” she said, when confronted about the synagogue massacre that took the lives of rabbis who were not in the military and beyond military age.
Not only are Palestinians and Israeli Arabs being incited to murder Israeli civilians, they are smuggling in weapons in the guise of Christmas decorations. Just this week, “Christmas decorations” in a container from China to Arabs in Israel included 18,000 firecrackers such as large roman candles, 5200 commando knives, 4300 taser-flashlight devices, and 1000 swords. Israeli police said it was the largest weapons seizure in recent times. The firecrackers have been used by Palestinian rioters along with Molotov cocktails and rocks to be thrown at Israeli police, soldiers, and civilians. The firecrackers are able to penetrate police protective gear and shields, causing severe burns. One police officer lost two fingers.
In spite of these harrowing events, Israelis are going about their daily lives as usual. Perhaps Israelis are more observant, more cognizant of their surroundings. They are upbeat and happy, though. They pull together as a people. They refuse to allow terrorists to psychologically win a war against them. When I was in the States, my 9-year-old granddaughter asked if I were afraid to live in Israel. I told her I was not. I was looking forward to returning home. I felt very safe in Israel. I feel safer here than when I travel outside Israel. I continue to encourage my family and friends to visit Israel and its magnificence.
L'hitraot. Shachar
