Sep 2

Written by: Dr. Ernie Moore
Thursday, September 02, 2010 

The items above deserve some commentary, so here is what we’ll do: in the text below, we’ll insert comments, then at the end we will close this piece out with some background on the peace talks, etc.

Settler praying at the Western Wall (Ernie Moore)

We took the photo above on one of our regular visits to the Western Wall. We were taking photos of bar mitzvahs that day, then spied this young man. He is from the West Bank areas. How do we know? The so-called settlers regularly arm themselves with M1 carbines.

Article begins:

After attack, Yishai to ease settlers’ gun controls

By REBECCA ANNA STOIL
02/09/2010

Move comes after it emerges that one of the victims had his gun permit revoked months prior to the attack.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai moved Wednesday to relax gun controls for West Bank residents after it emerged that Yitzhak Ames, one of four people killed in Tuesday night’s terrorist attack near Hebron, had his weapons permit revoked a few months prior to being murdered.

[EDM: A couple of areas are involved here: first is the admission that it is a basic right to allow citizens to provide for their own protection. That idea and that right is one of those “inalienable rights” that do not come from the pen of governments but from the Judeo-Christian foundations in the Scriptures.]

Yishai requested that Populations Registry head Amnon Ben-Ami act to relax conditions, including allowing settlers to acquire weapons without police approval, relying instead on professional opinions from the Interior Ministry, the Population Registry and the Immigration Authority.

[EDM: The change means that now West Bank Israelis can buy and carry weapons immediately without jumping through the hoops set up by a government official who doesn’t agree with the settlers’ choice of where to live.]

Ames had been licensed to carry a weapon through his employment as a security guard. Approximately six months ago, Ames’s weapon permit was suspended, allegedly due to his involvement in public disturbances.
“I instructed to immediately relax the registration of weapons to residents of Judea and Samaria,” Yishai explained Wednesday.
Within a few hours of Tuesday night’s terror attack, in which Ames and his wife as well as two other residents of Beit Hagai were gunned down near Kiryat Arba by Palestinian terrorists, settlers’ advocates railed against the fact that Ames’s personal weapon had been seized in late 2009.
Had Ames been armed at the time of the attack, they said, he could have defended himself and the other three people who sat with him in his vehicle.
Coalition chairman MK Ze’ev Elkin (Likud), who had known Ames since the two were students in the former Soviet Union, said that “it is absurd that Ames’s weapon was taken from him. He was a man who never raised his voice, who would never have hurt anybody.”
In an interview with Army Radio, Elkin said that Ames was very active in the movement to protect the Jewish heritage of the Temple Mount and to prepare for the establishment of the Third Temple, but emphasized that right-wing activism alone must not constitute grounds to seize weapons from West Bank residents.

[EDM: Here is the rub. Most of the Israelis living in the West Bank areas of Samaria and Judea are Orthodox Jews. They are very conservative and believe in Israel’s right to build another Temple on the Temple Mount. We discuss this movement extensively in our briefings.

[They are very unpopular with many, including the Shas Party. Why? Primarily because the people of the West Bank are members of an opposing political parties such as Likud, National Religious Party and others. These are nominally Ashkenazi Jews (European-based) as opposed to Shas Party’s primarily Sephardic Jews (African and Arabic based roots.) Though there is this: Today Shas’ political leader has announced that they believe the peace talks are fruitless because Hamas will not agree. And they also said that they oppose extending the building moratorium.

Ames’s attorney, Yitzhak Bam, said that in April, his client had appealed the decision to seize his weapon. Only last week, Bam sent an additional letter to the Interior Ministry demanding a response to Ames’s appeal.
“The fact that Ames’s right to carry a weapon was denied him as part of the activities of the Justice Ministry’s Special Team for Law Enforcement in Judea and Samaria, lead by Shai Nitzan, proves that the team does not engage in equal enforcement but in discrimination and ideological retribution,” complained Elkin.
“This team acts without any real authority and against government decisions,” he continued.

[EDM: We have reported in times past hearing government workers say with real emphasis (shouting), “The law is what I say the law is!” That this group can at will deny citizens in Israel their God-given right to protect themselves is outrageous.]

“I will once again request that Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein order the immediate cessation of the team’s activities, and that he reconsider all of its previous decisions.”

EDM WRAPUP COMMENTARY:

Two points:

1. Settlements

2. Terrorism

SETTLEMENTS: IN 1967 Israel conquered 5 attacking nations, including Jordan. King Hussein was late getting into the war, but “pushed” by Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser, they attacked Israel. Prior to that, Israel’s Prime Minister Levi Eshkol sent a direct message to Hussein telling him that Israel would not attack him if he did not join the other nations attacking Israel.

Jordan attacked, and in the next week lost the entire kidney shaped area known as the West Bank.

Soon afterward, Israel’s government established communities along the Jordan River in a desert valley environment, as well as throughout Samaria and in some areas of the Negev along the Egyptian Border. (For more on this you can read Ben Zohar’s bio on Shimon Peres and Sharon’s book, Warrior.)

These communities got financial assistance, provision of weapons, communications equipment, building materials and even barbed wire, land mines and other protective materials. They were the cutting edge warning system of future attacks against the nation of Israel.

As we know, as the times change, state-based wars seem distant and elusive things and the fight turns into proxy-terrorist-based entities against Israel, the settlements don’t seem so necessary. Ergo, forces begin to undermine the people who were once placing themselves in constant and real danger for the sake of the Israel-dream. They are like those who when American wars are over, want to close the Veterans Administration and funding for vets in America.

Such attitudes are shameful.

TERRORISM:

The crux of the matter in the two days of shooting incidents (both from Hamas groups) are based on the fact that peace talks are going on in the United States right now. Terrorists cannot accept peace. If they do, then their raison d’etre ceases to exist. After all if your own people have agreed to peace, how can you then go on attacking a party they have accepted?!

The idea is that as Muslim Brotherhood terrorists murdered President Sadat in Egypt for making peace with Israel, so too Fatah (primarily), rose up in murderous attacks in Israel after the 2000 Camp David meetings where then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat East Jerusalem as a capital for the Arabs’ Palestinian Authority, virtually 95% of Samaria and Judea, and actual statehood for the Arabs.

Knowing that he could not carry it out, Arafat returned to Ramallah, just north east of Jerusalem. There he began what is known as the Second Intifada. Over one thousand innocent Israeli citizens were murdered by bombs, knives, guns and deceit.

We have seen the broken, bloodied and destroyed bodies and ruins from terrorist attacks. It is gruesome, and horrifying. It is uncivilized. That Hamas leaders in Gaza would deign to congratulate the killers of the four unarmed civilians in Israel demonstrates the kind of people they are. Uncivilized. Murderous. Uncaring for the peace and advancement of even their own people.

LOOK FOR MORE attacks. Abbas will talk tough, arrest his enemies inside the West Bank, and as usual, turn many guilty ones loose in a few days. The terrorists will continue to mount attacks. Israel will be dangerous – not so much in the areas where American tourists travel and visit. They are still primarily off limits. But Israel will be dangerous inside Samaria and Judea. In areas where Israeli citizens shop and go to school and live.

The cycle will elevate unless strong forces move against the terrorists and pinch their efforts off early. Israel is already at work in this area. Even, we believe, the Palestinian Security Forces will do some work attempting to find the real perpetrators. The primary reasons for the latter is that Hamas wants to overthrow Abbas’ Fatah control of the Palestinian Authority and turn it into a war-making entity all over the West Bank and Gaza.

On a side note: if that happens Israel would almost surely do what Ariel Sharon did in 2001 and wipe out the major structure and peace would come back to the land. But… that would no doubt be the end of the two-state idea.

AND THERE IS THIS: President Obama is losing the House, probably the Senate, his numbers are in the dump, and… when Presidents are in this position they jump to international venues to make themselves look better.

The problem with this is that it doesn’t change things at home. He is still losing. The peace talks look nice, but when they tank, Obama will be back in the ditch.

The winner, if there will be any, will be Hillary Clinton. She is acting in a leadership role, even sidelining George Mitchell, and seeming to be in control, at least in the talks opening stage.

Stay tuned.