An Olive Branch for an Eye

When I was snoozing this morning between alarm rings, I realized that there is a fundamental difference between Israel and the Palestinians that will prevent peace from occuring in the region.

While the Israeli government acts against the Palestinians when provoked, Israeli individuals don’t.

The bible says “an eye for an eye” but the people don’t implement it. That is, if every person who was personally vicitimized in any way (which, unfortunately, is almost everyone – there is not one person in Israel who hasn’t lost someone or has a friend who lost someone) in this conflict (general conflict, not the recent Lebanese war) were to implement  the “eye for an eye” rationale, both our peoples would be wiped off the earth.

The Palestinians need to put faith in their elected government. For heaven’s sake – they have a government! Why all the resistance organizations? Put faith in your elected government to “revenge” for you or act in your name.

If you continue to take “an eye for an eye” literally (or whatever the Quran says), then this will never end.

Smile When You Hear Death to Israel

What is it about saying Death to Israel that makes so many people feel so good?

Why is it, that so many people find so many ways to say it?

You can literally hear a new one every day. Sometimes twice.This was, in fact, Death to Israel Weekend on the radical Islamist network. On Friday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar kicked things off at a rally in Khan Yunis, bringing down the house by declaring that Israel is “an abomination in the Middle East” that will someday “disappear.”“We will never recognize Israel, and in the end the [fate of] Zionists will be like that of the Crusaders, the Persians and the English, who left,” said Zahar, a founding father of Hamas.

“We want all of Palestine, every centimeter, from the river to the sea, from Rosh Hanikra to Rafah. If we can form a state within the 1967 borders we will do so, but this doesn’t mean that we will relinquish our right to every centimeter of Palestine’s land.”

There it is. No room for us Jews. No room for our history, our past presence here. No room for our common ancestry with the Palestinians. No room for Abraham. He was, after all, not from here. He was from Mesopotamia. Let him go back.

A Response to Bloggers Seeing Israel in the Wrong

This post is actually a comment I left on someone else’s post. I’ve decide to post it on my blog as well since I feel that it contains a lot of important information and points I would like to make. I have posted several other similar comments on other sites, so I will probably post these in the future. This is the post in almost its entirety (minus a personal commendation to the blogger himself).

Not ALL Israeli soldiers are saints, but hardly any army in the world can claim that. It’s enough just to mention the pictures from Iraq with the
US and British soldiers to prove that point. However for the most part these are 18-year-old kids and 35-year-old men who would like nothing more than to be at home.

As for the wall. If you ask almost any Israeli (and I’m not talking about any extremists or fundamenstalists), you will hear that in an ideal world we wouldn’t need to wall. It’s uglying up our country as well. We don’t want it. but the documented proof is that stince that wall has gone up, the amount of suicide bombers making it into Israel has decreased dramatically.

The Palestinian government is doing a great job (I’m being completely serious here) in stopping terrorists. I know they do a lot to make sure they don’t get through, and they work religiously with Israel on this. (Again, I am being serious.) When you couple that together with the roadblocks and the border points, they are extremely efficient together at stopping ALMOST all the suicide bombers from getting through into
Israel.

Unfortunately, the system is not yet working perfectly. In an ideal world, and the world that Israelis hope is nearby, Israel won’t have to put up roadblocks anymore and we would be able to depend 100% on the Palestinian government to stop any potential terrorism from entering our country.

Weekend Rocket and Mortar Shell Tally

So far this weekend, 7 Qassam rockets and 5 mortar shells have been fired at Israel, mostly hitting the town of Sderot. Sderot gets Qassams fired at it almost on a daily basis, and has been for years. For those of you who are wondering, Sderot is not what anyone would call “the territories” and were Israel to withdraw to the ’67 lines, Sderot would remain in Israel. That is, of course, other than those who think that Israel has no right to exist in the first place. 

In other “positive” news, Palestinian Foreign Minister al-Zahar stated during a Hamas rally that Israel is “an abcess” on the Middle East, which has no historical, religious, or cultural justification, and Hamas will never recognize the Zionist state. 

How are we supposed to make peace with a government that doesn’t recognize our right to exist? And as if that’s not enough, al-Zahar said yesterday that Hamas has not ruled out the option of kidnapping more Israeli soldiers to attain the release of Palestinian security prisoners held in Israeli jails. For the record, these prisoners they want released – they all have blood on their hands, meaning they either physically carried out a terrorist attack, were caught on their way to carry one out (which happens more often than Israelis would like to consciously recognize), or helped plan one. 

I’m sure that when we release this prisoners to Hamas (AKA a terrorist organization who has claimed thousands of Israeli lives over the years) they will surely place these people in jail. 

Right. 

Better late than later

I was going to start this blog in the summer after I finished my studies for my masters degree, but 5 days before my last exam, the war in Lebanon broke out. Since I worked 15- to 17-hour days during the war, I delayed opening this blog, even though its importance back then outweighs now by far. On the other hand, the situation was so volatile that perhaps it’s better this way, and now I can begin with a “fresh” start. 

A little about myself first. I am originally from Houston, Texas and I moved to Israel in 2001, in the middle of the second Initifada. Since I lived in Israel from the ages of 8-14, it didn’t seem weird to me anyway. I double-majored in advertising/public relations and print journalism, and I just finished my masters degree in political science and public communications. 

I decided to start this blog for several reason, but first and foremost to have an outlet for my frustration regarding the portrayal of Israel in the media and world-wide public opinion. Also, I think that most people with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic remarks are mostly un-educated. By uneducated I do not meet did not complete middle school or college. I mean these are for the most part people who have not received a balanced report of the on-goings in the Middle East, and more specifically Israel. Therefore, in addition to current events news about Israel, I will also be posting good news aboutIsrael. Scientific breakthroughs, venture capital investments, and any other cool things going on. 

Did you know that any time there is a natural disaster Israel is among the first countries to offer search and rescue assistance? Israel always sends its squads – among the best in the world – to assist, though its assistance has been declined by fundamentalist Muslim countries. I will also be having updates in the blog about old current events stories. You know the kind, where Israel is accused of massacring thousands of Palestinians (The “Jenin Massacre” in April, 2002), but later on, when official UN reports come out saying no such massacre occurred, no one hears about it because, at best, it is reported by the obituaries. Or Israel flat-out killing a 13-year-old child only to later find out that it was Palestinian gunfire that did the job.  I will address both these cases later on, especially the “Jenin Massacre” since it is one of my case studies in my thesis. 

DId you know that we have rockets fired at us almost every single day and have for years? Didn’t think so, but I’ll keep you updated about that as well.

I hope you find this blog interesting and informative. I very much welcome any questions and suggestions you may have, and if I have the information and knowledge, I will post a blog about the requested topic. Feel free to email me at realisrael@gmail.com with any comments or questions.