Dateline Jerusalem – On the 27th anniversary of the founding of the terrorist group Hamas, while Hamas celebrated by reaffirming its commitment to the destruction of Israel, the European Union took Hamas off its list of terrorist organizations. Immediately after, while Hamas celebrated with live demonstrations and displays of a myriad of its rockets, missiles, drones and arsenal of weapons, the E.U. voted to recognize “Palestine” as a state. An anti-Israel conference was being organized in Geneva.
In response, Hamas thanked the E.U. for the “big victory” in its “armed struggle” against Israel. Within two days, Hamas demonstrated its newly sanctioned armed resistance by sniper, machine gun, and rocket fire against Israel. Hamas fired on an Israeli patrol driving on Israel's side of the Gaza border, seriously injuring one of Israel's Bedouin Arab soldiers. Just prior to the attack, a rocket from Hamas-controlled Gaza was fired into Israel, the third launched at Israel since the so-called summer “ceasefire.”
For the first time since the recent summer war, Israel finally responded with retaliatory air strikes against a Hamas factory producing cement for the rebuilding of its terror tunnels used to infiltrate Israel. Palestinian sources confirmed that Hamas has been re-diverting building supplies and cement that were supposed to be for reconstruction of Gaza. Obviously Hamas sees the E.U.'s rulings as support for their commitment to the annihilation of Israel. Shortly before, Hamas again stated it never will recognize Israel and that it is committed to Israel's destruction. “This illusion called Israel will be removed,” said one of Hamas’s main leaders. “It will be removed at the hands of the Kassam Brigades,” the name for Hamas’s military wing and the logo on Hamas drones.
This Is Protection?
While Abbas’s Palestinian Authority falsely claims it will maintain security in Shechem (Nablus), Israel arrested seven P.A. terrorists, a cache of weapons and almost $70,000. Among the booty: Pipe bombs, knives, pistols, cartridges for M-16 semi-automatic rifles, Uzi sub-machine guns, and Kalashnikov rifles. So much for Abbas's commitment to protect Israel from terror. Just today an Israeli man and his 11-year-old daughter were fire-bombed in their car by Palestinians in Samaria. The child is in a life-threatening condition.
Against the backdrop of scrambling jets flying above my home and the lighting of my Chanukah menorah last week, I was reminded by a friend of a Chanukah message from Shimon the Maccabee as written in the First Book of Maccabees 15:33-34: “We have not taken a foreign land. Nor did we take the property of others. For this is the inheritance of our fathers, which was for some time unjustly possessed by our enemies. But we, having the opportunity, returned to us the inheritance of our fathers.” Israel is our inheritance. We as Israelis reiterate the words said after the Holocaust, “Never again.” For, never again will another Holocaust be allowed, nor the annihilation of Israel, despite what Europe, Iran, Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, ISIS, and our other enemies have planned for us.
L'hitraot. Shachar
