7/14/2014 - First Observations

To family and friends:

I have been getting lots of emails asking if things are ok and I thought I should send this quick update plus some reference information if you are interested.  thank you for your concerns.

first of all, we are fine.  Thank God for the ingenuity of Israel and the Jewish people with the Iron Dome.  It has, first of all, protected Israel from serious casualties. Nearly 1,000 missiles have been launched so far with almost no direct casualties.  Of course, with the sick world needing to compare #'s as if this is how you measure who is right and wrong, you would think Israel is almost doing something wrong protecting itself. (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/11/numbers-don-t-tell-the-mideast-story.html) As our Prime Minister says, Hamas uses people to protect their rockets and Israel uses rockets to protect their people. Also, Hamas has their fighters and leaders in the bunkers and civilians outside, while Israel does the opposite.  Just sick.   But its more than that -- Hamas promotes a perverted form of Islam that has become commonplace throughout the Middle East that focuses on a culture of death. (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/07/13/palestinian-delusions-fuels-conflict-hamas-israel-gaza/)  If you read the interviews of Arabs, including from East Jerusalem, they speak openly about this lust for death.  Their problem  does remind me of  Emperor Worship and the Kamikaze death cult of WW II (I wrote a short piece on this below).  Meanwhile, we have been so careful about keeping casualties to a minimum that even the PA's representative to the UN says so (he will probably regret this interview: http://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-un-rep-says-every-gaza-missile-a-crime-against-humanity/)

Hamas, is a fascist-Islamic terror dictatorship dedicated to the murder of all Jews (not just Israeli's -- as you may read their Charter below). Our Iron Dome has given Israel the time and ability to determine how to best deal with Hamas.  Isi Liebler really summarizes a lot of my feelings on the subject in this excellent article in the J-Post today as well as our how we feel about Obama and his ilk running U.S. foreign policy:
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Candidly-speaking-Obamas-ongoing-shameful-behavior-against-Israel-362630

So, don't go so nuts about what you read.  You need to expect this stuff from the Liberal press and their supporters.  (The New York Times is so out to lunch -- it has become macabre -- it oozes conceit and moral equivalence with every article. And skews the coverage for their own agenda (http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118605/new-york-times-israel-editorial-was-hack-job)

. But the worst part is a complete lack of understanding of the culture and mimes of the Middle East led by the #1 apologist for Obama's policies here: Tom Friedman -- who, when the scorecard will comes in, will show he was wrong almost every time) They cannot process the reality in order to fit it into their bizarre world-view.

The only impact of the war (it is a war -- and it is serious) was that Meryl and I were eating dinner with a bunch of our grandkids on Thurs. in Jerusalem when there was a code red and we had about 30 seconds to get to a shelter.  Somehow i did not make it (they did) and i was able to see the Iron Dome take out the rockets over the residential area where we live.  Sarah, our grand daughter -- being now very clingy (of course) said to me she did not want to die -- 9 years old.  and that is terrorism by definition.  it is not one mans terrorist is another man's freedom fighter here because one needs only read the charter of Hamas. it is essentially an antisemitic diatribe against all Jews (not Israelis). Christians will be next on their list.    The Charter of Fatah, who Abbas is the President, is pretty bad as well.  (you will see a lot of stuff from Fatah -- the whole "moderate" tag to Abbas is a whitewash by maintaining two separate organizations -- a complete farce and fiction that even many Israeli's don't get.)  Here is just one example of Abbas's Fatah organization (which is also firing missiles at us from Gaza -- I would think this is a war crime by Abbas, no? http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=12004. PMW is an excellent resource to see what they say to each other in Arabic.  Forget the English crap for world consumption.  It's what they say to their people that counts.  Anyway, here is the charter for Hamas.  http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/www.thejerusalemfund.org/carryover/documents/charter.html?chocaid=397.

I just hope that we can sustain the pressure from all those world special interests, including the U.S., to ensure an DE-militerized Gaza.  And a deal to withdraw from Judea and Samaria -- you've got to be kidding.  Oh, btw, i was wondering today how may Palestinians have been killed in Syria -- over 2,000!  not a peep from anyone. I wonder why.  This source is theirs, not ours:
http://www.islamicnewsdaily.com/country/gulf/syria/over-2000-palestinians-have-died-in-syrian-war/

I have left a few other tidbits below.

Hope you are okay.  For all those Jews embarrassed by our power, (such as J-Street and their ilk, but the worst offender in my mind is Jewish Voice for Peace (http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/) -- you can't make this stuff up -- I invite them to our life as Jews just 70 years ago as our grandparents were being murdered in Europe.  I like the power approach much better!! And, when I get a little depressed how we are viewed in the world, I just turn on Pat Condell - https://www.youtube.com/user/patcondell.

All the best,

Sam/Shmu

PS    feel free to forward to whomever (unless the politics makes you uncomfortable :))

A few more tidbits:

On Hamas and the cult of death:   I been thinking  about Hamas and this cult of death and it hit me yesterday that there is a very close parallel -- Japanese Emperor Worship before and during WW II.  I thought about it due to a video clip from Hamas that was made for propaganda purposes (it has a nice beat). https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HiUWgWjL24U    In the video, you have these guys fighting with the bandanas on their helmets.  It knew it looked familiar and then I realized that the Japanese Kamikaze did the same thing.  Then I thought about their cult of death and Emperor worship and I believe there are many, many similarities. Fascism requires these types of mimes. 

As we lived in Japan and my dad was very involved in Japanese culture when he was a Jewish Chaplain for the USAF in Japan when the US still had a major presence and there was still a little of the hangover from WW II in the country.  The whole honor thing is similar as well.  The major difference that I can see that there is a very strong cultural idea of loss of face in Japan which allowed the Japanese to accept their fate and emerge from WW II a strong nation.  The Arab culture does not have that motif.

On Obama's decision to create a make-believe Islam:  one of the very bad things under the current admin was to strike the use of the words "radical", "extreme", for example, from the word Islam.  It has been an attempt to placate groups with major hidden agendas around radical Islam to curtail any debate about the Islamic issues in this war.  the Charter dispels this denial, for example.

Here is a CNN piece that accidentally showing the Israel side:  I love what the guard says:   what says is the key.. how we treat Israeli civilians vs Hamas.  it is so right on.  like Hitler in the bunker.   This radical Islam is out of control --

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/09/world/meast/mideast-daily-life/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Here are some resources you can use to better understand what is going on here and they speak for themselves.

general news:  www.jpost.com and timesofisrael.com

http://www.palwatch.org/  - they translate Arabic websites of the Palestinians so one can read what they are really saying (not what they say to the West)

http://www.camera.org/  they monitor how the liberal/left press distorts the ME coverage for political purposes.  The NYT takes the prize, btw.

www.algemeiner.com  they are a good compliment for in-depth news to the Jerusalem Post.

www.dailyalert.org  This is a good comprehensive resource of what is going on world wide in terms of Israel and antisemitism, which after almost 70 years, is a major problem in Europe (couched as anti-Zionism) and has metastasized in the Arab world into rampant anti-antisemitism.  Just see what happened yesterday and today in France. A local person who experienced this, called it a kristallnacht.

http://www.drudgereport.com/  boy does he nail it time after time.

my friend is writing this good blog on interesting issues: http://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/

and for a really good understanding of Islam and the issues surrounding this, try: http://www.danielpipes.org/