JERUSALEM FALLOUT: Arab Students at Tel-Aviv University Call for “Intifada”

Arab students at Tel-Aviv University called for”Intifada” against Israel during a protest held last week at the university’s campus in response to President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

“With spirit and blood we will redeem you, Al-Aqsa; We will fight and teach them a lesson via the sword and force; We will school them through the ways of Intifada; Israel is a terror state; Resist, resist,” were among the slogans chanted by some 50 Arab students who gathered at the university’s Entin Square to protest.

A counter demonstration was held by activists from the Zionist organization Im Tirtzu, who waved Israeli flags and sang Israeli songs including “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem, and “Jerusalem of Gold.”

Last week, Arab students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem held a protest where they issued calls including “Zionists leave, our land is Arab and free” and “Palestine is Arab from the river to the sea.” The protest was joined by Joint List MK Yousef Jabareen who told the protesters to be “proud of our struggle.”




Similar protests were also held last week by Arab students at Ben-Gurion University and Haifa University.

“What we have seen take place on Israeli campuses over the past week is disgraceful,” said Im Tirtzu Chairman Matan Peleg. “On campus grounds, students are openly inciting violence and are calling for the destruction of the State of Israel with impunity. This is a dangerous precedent that will result in violence if not stopped immediately by the heads of the universities.”

“The writing is on the wall and we cannot ignore it,” Peleg added.

A Palestinian State? What could possibly go wrong?

There is precious little reason to believe that any Palestinian state established in areas evacuated by Israel would not swiftly degenerate into a mega-Gaza overlooking greater Tel Aviv.

 

The nightmare stories of the Likud are well known. After all, they promised rockets from Gaza as well. For a year, Gaza has been largely under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. There has not been a single rocket. Nor will there be any ... – Yitzhak Rabin, Radio interview, July 24, 1995. 

 

In the history of international politics, there have been numerous ideas that proved both myopic and moronic. But few—if any—have proved more so than the ill-conceived idea of foisting statehood on the Palestinian-Arabs. Compounding the folly of this fatal fiasco is the fact that it was not only completely predictable—but persistently predicted.

 

Particularly puzzling—indeed perverse—is the fact that any prospective Palestinian state is almost certainly likely to embody the very antithesis of the values invoked for its inception by the liberal-Left Establishment.

 

Corrupt kleptocracy or tyrannical theocracy

 

After all, there is little reason to believe that any such state would be anything other than a misogynistic, homophobic Muslim majority tyranny and a bastion for Islamist terror groups–whose hallmarks would be gender discrimination against woman/girls; persecution of homosexuals, prosecution of political dissidents, and suppression of non-Muslim faiths. Indeed, its liberal-Left devotees have certainly never provided any remotely compelling argument why it would not be. Neither has the empirical precedent set since the ill-considered 1993 Oslo Accords began the ill-fated process of prodding the unprepared Palestinian-Arabs towards self-government.

 

After all, since Arafat’s triumphant return to Gaza in July 1994, despite massive financial aid, almost unanimous international endorsement, and a series of Israeli governments, whose pliant leniency towards repeated Palestinian malfeasance exceeded the bounds of reason and common sense, the Palestinian-Arabs have failed to create anything remotely resembling a sustainable, productive society. Indeed, all they have managed to produce is a corrupt keptocracy under Fatah and a tyrannical theocracy under Hamas.

 

Thus, after a quarter-century, notwithstanding the huge advantages it enjoyed —that, arguably far outstrip those that any other national liberation movement has had at its disposal—the Palestinian-Arab leadership has little to show for its efforts. All it has brought its people is an untenable and divided entity, with a dysfunctional polity, barely capable of holding even municipal elections; and an emaciated economy, crippled by corruption and cronyism, with a minuscule private sector and bloated public one, patently unsustainable without the largesse of its alleged “oppressor”, Israel.

 

Gaza: The gravest indictment of two-statism.

 

Gaza, where the misguided experiment in two-statsim was first initiated back in 1994, sparking a surge of deluded optimism, has now become its gravest indictment—for both Jews and Arab alike.

 

For Arabs in Gaza, the specter of “humanitarian disaster” hovers over the general population, awash in untreated sewage flows, with well over 90% of the water supply unfit for drinking, electrical power available for only a few hours a day, and unemployment rates soaring to anything between 40-60%. Accordingly, there should be no surprise that a recent Palestinian poll found that only 6% of Gazans had a positive perception of prevailing conditions in the enclave, while almost 80% considered them bad or very bad.

 

For Jews in Israel, ever since governance of Gaza has been transferred to the Palestinian-Arabs, it has been a hotbed of terror from which numerous deadly attacks have emanated.

 

Israel’s unilateral 2005 evacuation of the entire area, with the demolition of over a score of thriving Jewish settlements and the erasure of every vestige of prior Jewish existence—including the exhuming of graves and the removal of graveyards for fear of desecration by Palestinian-Arab hordes—did little to temper the Judeophobic fervor of the Gazans.  Significantly, the only remnant of Jewish presence left by Israel were two dozen synagogues, which were all immediately razed to the ground by frenzied Arab mobs.

 

Huge enhancement of terrorist capabilities

 

Moreover, if there were any hopes that Israel’s departure from Gaza would spur the Palestinian-Arab leadership to divert the focus of its efforts from terror-related activity to constructive nation-building, they were soon to be dispelled.

 

Indeed, quite the opposite occurred. Exploiting the absence of the IDF, the Palestinian-Arab terror groups in Gaza embarked on a feverish drive to enhance their capabilities to inflict harm on Israel and Israelis. To illustrate the point, when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the rockets which the Palestinian terror groups had at their disposal, had a range of barely 5 km and a carried an explosive charge of around 5 kg. Today, they have missiles with ranges over 100 km and warheads of 100 kg—i.e. they have enhanced these capabilities by a factor of 10!

 

Moreover, they have developed additional abilities that were barely conceivable back in 2005—such as a naval strike force to attack Israel from the sea. But arguably the most menacing development is the excavation of an extensive array of tunnels underneath much of Gaza—including attack tunnels reaching into Israel to facilitate raids to murder or abduct Israeli citizens and soldiers.

 

Incessant terror attacks from Gaza forced Israel into three large-scale military operations (in 2008, 2012 and 2014) to restore some semblance of calm on its southern border—and a fourth round seems increasingly unavoidable as rockets continue to be fired at Israeli civilian centers.

 

Costly campaigns; considerable casualties

 

These campaigns inflicted considerable Israeli casualties—almost a hundred fatalities and well over a thousand wounded. The Palestinians suffered far higher losses—among other things, because of the tactics employed by Hamas of using civilians to shield their armed combatants.

 

Moreover, these campaigns cost the Israeli economy many billions of dollars—in direct military and civilian outlays, as well as lost production—as millions of Israelis remained huddled in shelters for weeks, with the country’s cities, towns and villages under repeated bombardment – see here, here and here. To this must be added the massive expense of protecting the civilian population from continual interbellum terror attacks—such as the need to build numerous fortified structures in homes, public buildings, educational centers and kindergartens.

 

Israel has, of course, also been forced to invest huge sums in a quest to find an effective response to the overhead threat of rockets/missiles and the underground menace of tunnels.

 

The former has resulted in the largely effective “Iron Dome” which has generally kept the Israeli civilian population safe from overhead attack—by intercepting generally very cheap, primitive projectiles with very expensive and sophisticated ones.

 

The underground tunnels have proved a more challenging problem, and Israel has diverted enormous resources in search of a solution to the threat they pose. Recent successes in discovering and destroying some of such tunnels suggest that good progress has been made in regard.

 

In addition to these technological efforts, Israel has undertaken the construction of a physical anti-tunnel barrier along the entire fifty-plus km border with Gaza, dubbed by the IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, the largest project” ever carried out in Israel’s military history. Reportedly planned to extend into the sea, this giant barrier will comprise a six meter wall above ground and an underground concrete barrier, replete with advanced sensors, reportedly reaching depths of 40 meters.

 

Now imagine a giant Gaza overlooking Tel Aviv

 

Accordingly given the resounding failure of the endeavor to confer self-determination on the Palestinian-Arabs—and the enormous cost incurred in contending with that failure—it seems utterly incomprehensible that not only do demands to persist with it continue—but also to greatly expand it!

 

For despite the Palestinian-Arabs proven inability to successfully meet the challenges of self-determination—even on a minuscule scale in Gaza—pressures still endure—in defiance common sense and intellectual integrity—to extend the experiment to the territory of Judea-Samaria.

 

The scale of this predestined folly is perhaps best illustrated by the size, cost and complexity of the previously mentioned anti-tunnel barrier under construction.

 

After all, if the IDF were to evacuate Judea-Samaria, there is little reason to believe that it would not follow the same path as Gaza and descend into tyrannical Islamist theocracy. Indeed, the proponents of such evacuation have not—and cannot—provide any persuasive assurance that it will not. Certainly, such an outcome cannot be discounted as totally implausible—and hence must be factored into Israel’s strategic planning as a possibility, with which it may well have to contend.

Accordingly, if Israel’s evacuation of Gaza gave rise to the need to build a multi-billion shekel barrier to protect the sparsely populated, largely rural south, surely the evacuation of Judea-Samaria is likely to give rise to a need to construct a similar barrier to protect the heavily populated, largely urban areas, which would border the evacuated territories.

 

A giant Gaza overlooking Tel Aviv (cont.)

 

There would, however, be several significant differences.

 

For, unlike Gaza, which has a 50 km border with Israel, any prospective Palestinian-Arab entity in Judea-Samaria would have a frontier of anything up to 500 km (and possibly more, depending on the exact parameters of the evacuated areas).

 

Moreover, unlike Gaza, which has no topographical superiority over its surrounding environs, the limestone hills of Judea-Samaria dominate virtually all of Israel’s major airfields (civilian and military); main seaports and naval bases; vital infrastructure installations (power generation and transmission, water, communications and transportation systems); centers of civilian government and military command; and 80 percent of the civilian population and commercial activity.

 

Under these conditions, demilitarization is virtually irrelevant—as illustrated by the allegedly “demilitarized” Gaza. For even in the absence of a conventional air-force, navy, and armor, lightly armed renegades with improvised weapons could totally disrupt the socioeconomic routine of the nation at will, with or without the complicity of the incumbent regime, which given its despotic nature, would have little commitment to the welfare of the average citizen.

 

Faced with this grim prospect, any Israeli government would either have to resign itself to recurring paralysis of the economy, mounting civilian casualties and the disruption of life in the country, or respond repeatedly with massive retaliation, with the attendant collateral damage among the non-belligerent Palestinian-Arab population and international condemnation of its use of allegedly “disproportionate force.”

What could possible go wrong?

 

But it is not only demilitarization that is largely irrelevant. So too is the alleged sincerity of any prospective Palestinian “peace partner”. For whatever the deal struck, its durability cannot be assured.

Even in the unlikely event of some Palestinian, with the requisite authority and sincerity to conclude a binding deal with Israel, did emerge, he clearly could be removed from power – by ballot or bullet – as the Gaza precedent clearly demonstrates. All the perilous concessions made to him, on the assumption of his sincerity, would then accrue to a far more inimical successor, whose political credo is likely to be based on reneging on commitments made to the “heinous Zionist entity.”

 

Accordingly, based on both past precedent and sober political analysis, there is every reason to believe—and precious little not to—that any Palestinian state established in any area evacuated by Israel would swiftly degenerate into a mega-Gaza, overlooking greater Tel Aviv—with all the attendant perils such an outcome would entail.

 

So, in response to the question “What could possibly go wrong?” the answer must be “Pretty much everything”.

Hanukah: Celebrating Hebrew Sovereignty Over Eretz Yisrael

For an entire generation, the ancient Judeans waged a struggle for freedom, which, in terms of intensity, has almost no parallel in human history. It was among the first recorded wars of liberation and it laid a model for nearly every revolution that followed. With an unbreakable faith and willingness to sacrifice, a handful of valiant Hebrew fighters forged the eternal covenant that resistance to tyranny is the highest and truest service to HaShem.

In those years, the cultural colonization to which the Seleucid Empire aspired was at its peak. Hellenist values and practices were imposed on the native Hebrews by means of harsh edicts and the swords of foreign soldiers. The victimization of the weak, rampant debauchery and the desecration of the Temple were pinnacles of the Greek culture bestowed upon Judea. In Jerusalem, the urban upper class yearned to be citizens of Antioch and to transform their ancient city into an “enlightened” Greek Polis. When the uprising began, it arose from the mountain folk who remained loyal to the Torah and to the heritage of their fathers. They were led by the Hasmoneans – Matityahu and his five courageous sons. The flame of revolt was kindled in Modiin and quickly spread like wildfire through the hills of Judea. After Matityahu’s death, his third son Yehuda took command. He became the Maccabee and his guerrilla army moved in two decisive channels – resistance to foreign culture and armed struggle against foreign soldiers. Two wars with one goal of Hebrew independence in Judea.

The Maccabean revolt was not merely a struggle to revoke harsh decrees or secure freedom of worship. Hebrew sovereignty over Eretz Yisrael is the foundation for proper Torah observance (see Mishnah Torah Hilkhotanukah 3:1, the Ramban’s supplement to the Rambam’s Sefer HaMitzvot 4, Shulan Arukh Even HaEzer 75:6,Pesikta Rabati 34, Magid Mesharim Parshat Vayikra and esed L’Avraham 3:7) and HaShem’s Divine blueprint for mankind demands Jewish independence in the historic Jewish homeland.

The Hasmoneans were determined. After several Judean victories and the liberation of Jerusalem, the Seleucid Syrian-Greeks offered a truce. Freedom of worship would be restored to the natives in exchange for ending their armed struggle for independence. There were some Jewish leaders naïve enough to accept the terms. A misunderstanding of our Torah caused those weak in spirit and tired of war to believe that they had already achieved their objectives. The Hasmonean faction, however, understood their obligation to liberate the Land of Israel from foreign rule. They also knew that without full political independence, there could be no lasting peace or real freedom of worship, as the spirit of Greece could again seek to dominate. Yehuda declared that the revolution must continue until Judea would be free from foreign influence and foreign soldiers. After nearly three decades of ferocious conflict, the Hasmoneans triumphed and the Kingdom of Israel was restored (Hilkhot anukah 3:1).

When the Seleucid-Greek Empire began to persecute Israel, the devout heroism of Matityahu and his sons awakened within their people aspirations for self-rule. This desire for freedom – which had not strongly surfaced prior to the oppression – was catalyzed by the persecution and the fierce backlash it provoked. National independence was eventually declared and this declaration itself served as a sacred barrier against the forces of Hellenization as the very desire for self-determination psychologically impedes assimilation into the culture of an occupying power. Yet without Matityahu and his sons – the warrior-priests who imbued the political ideal with spiritual content – the revolution would have lacked sufficient force to keep fighting and withstand the prolonged hardships of war. This is demonstrated through the miracle of the oil. The pure cruse with the seal of the High Priest shone brightly, its light permeating the collective soul of the Hebrew Nation and bestowing upon Israel the strength to fight on.

Perhaps the most important lesson of anukah is that light is not merely another creation but rather Creation’s ultimate goal. The Maharal of Prague teaches in Ner Mitzvah that the world was created deficient so that mankind could actively participate as partners in its perfection. Human beings are given free will in order that we choose to involve ourselves in bringing the world to its ultimate goal. As the main protagonist in the drama of human history, Israel is tasked with revealing this truth, thereby leading mankind to its predestined ideal state.

Israel’s mission of bringing the world to the awareness of HaShem can only be accomplished through the Jewish people sovereignty over Eretz Yisrael with the Torah serving as our national constitution. Only through this specific formula can Israel thin the veils of human perception and reveal the Divine light constantly present in our world, leading mankind to recognize and experience HaShem as the infinite Whole that creates, sustains and permeates all.




While the light of G-D’s Truth is always present, it is often hidden from man’s consciousness by curtains of perception. It is Israel’s task to remove those curtains and to reveal the Divine light – to bring the world to a state of perfection where all humankind achieves ultimate fulfillment and expression through a higher awareness of our relationship to HaShem.

Although G-D’s presence is hidden in day-to-day events, He continues to work through the system that He created in order to return that very system back to the full expression of His Ideal. Through a Divinely guided historical process, all of existence is sanctified and brought to the collective awareness of its inner relationship to its fundamental Source. Not only supernatural miracles but also the entire world, with all of its natural laws, is being pulled toward Creation’s ultimate goal through the story of Israel’s national rebirth on our native soil. The full restoration of the Hebrew Kingdom in our homeland will dissolve the remaining veils and bring all humanity to finally recognize themselves as unique aspects and expressions of a much greater Reality.

Rabbi Moshe aim Lutzatto teaches in Derekh HaShem that G-D placed forces of evil into our story as an essential ingredient enabling free will and human growth. These dark forces have been tasked with working to prevent Israel from bringing Creation to its goal. Throughout history, this evil has manifested itself as four main human empires, each attempting in its own unique way to impede Israel from reaching our full potential as the nation that will express the Divine Ideal in all spheres of human existence. This is the inner battle between light and darkness raging through the annals of human civilization.

The four empires – Babylon, Persia, Greece and Edom – that have dominated the globe throughout most of world history emerged from the inherently deficient nature of existence and aim to maintain the curtains of perception through preventing Israel from reaching our full national potential. Each of these empires, however, has had it’s own unique method for obstructing the Jewish mission.

Knowing that the Hebrews must be in Eretz Yisrael in order to fulfill our national function in Creation, the Babylonians worked to physically separate us from our land. They forcibly uprooted us from our borders and then graciously provided us with material prosperity on foreign soil. This simple separation from our homeland, although Jews remained Torah observant in the Diaspora, was enough to prevent HaShem’s light from being revealed. The soil of Babylon was simply not conducive to Israel accomplishing our Divine historic mission.

The Persians had a different approach. Haman convinced his king to completely annihilate the Jews. By removing the bearers of HaShem’s light from the world, he believed he could succeed in snuffing out the Divine flame.

The Greeks did not try to remove the Jews from our homeland, nor did they initially attempt a physical destruction. Instead, the spirit of Greece sought to pollute Israel’s culture by reducing G-D’s Torah to the level of a human wisdom on par with other notable wisdoms of the time. The Torah’s Divinity was viewed as a threat to Greek philosophy, which valued human intellect above all else and could not tolerate wisdom beyond mortal comprehension. Unsatisfied with the success of this spiritual assault, the Seleucid Syrian-Greeks then sought to forcibly sever the Hebrew Nation from our authentic culture through the brutal enforcement of cruel decrees against adherence to Torah Law.

These three empires each attacked an essential component to Israel fulfilling our national purpose. The fourth antagonist, however, which first emerged as the Roman Empire and has since taken on several manifestations, is a combination of all three attempts in a much more destructive and concentrated form.

Throughout the last two thousand years, the Western world (Edom) has tried its hand at all three methods on countless occasions. Three recent examples are the terrible Holocaust in Europe less than a century ago, the British Empire restricting Jewish entry to our homeland and the Soviet Union forcibly separating its Jews from their Torah. The international community’s insistence on not permitting Israel to assert sovereignty over the whole of our country and the resources spent by Western governments on diluting the State of Israel’s authentic Jewish character are just two modern expressions of this evil force, subconsciously aware that its end is at hand. A candle flickers brightest immediately before it is extinguished and today the world seems ready to amass itself against Jerusalem. As Israel experiences a national rebirth on our native soil, the forces of darkness are gathering their strength to wage a final war to snuff out our light. In the wake of Israel’s triumph, Edom’s depravity will be exposed and mankind’s thinking will be liberated from the cultural tyranny of two thousand years. Concepts of righteousness, morality and truth will be elevated to meanings of newer and higher significance as Israel draws back the curtains of perception and reveals HaShem’s light to all of mankind.

BREAKING: One Stabbed Outside Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station, Response to Trump’s Announcement

In an apparent response to Trump’s announcement that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, a terrorist attacked a security guard at Jerusalem’s heavily trafficked Central Bus Station.  The guard was stabbed in the chest and in serious condition.

Police are reporting that the terrorist has been neutralized.




Abbas has called for days of rage and although this failed to spur large-scale intifada style protests and attacks, it evidently has inspired lone wolf attackers.  The question remains on whether today’s attack is the beginning of something larger or just a one-off.  Much depends on Israel’s response to the attack.  If the government comes down hard on Arab neighborhoods, it will force the local leaders to reassess their encouragement of anti-Israel riots.

 

Arab Students at Hebrew U Call to Expel the “Zionists” from Israel

Arab students at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University called to expel the “Zionists” from Israel during a protest held yesterday at the university’s Mount Scopus campus.

“Palestine is Arab from the river to the sea; Zionists leave, our land is Arab and free; We will not give up, Israel is a terrorist; Raise up your hand and scream, death is better than humiliation,” were among the slogans chanted by the Arab students affiliated with the Joint List.

The protestors were joined by Joint List member of Knesset, Yousef Jabareen, who told the protestors to “keep on fighting for coexistence. We should be proud of our struggle.”




On the other side of the barricade stood students from the Zionist organization Im Tirtzu, who organized a counter demonstration. The students waved Israeli flags and sang Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem.

The protest was called in response to a clash yesterday between Arab and Jewish students over a memorial erected by students from Im Tirtzu for Sgt. Ron Kukia, who was murdered last week in Arad.

Arab students responded to the memorial by approaching it while waving a Palestinian flag in protest, prompting an altercation.

“What we have seen in Hebrew University over the past few days is disgraceful,” said Tom Nisani, national branch coordinator for Im Tirtzu who was present at the protest. “Under the guise of free speech, Arab students are calling for the destruction of Israel and are inciting violence. The university must take this incitement seriously and immediately discipline those students responsible.”

Last month Arab students held a similar protest over the Israeli presence in the Golan Heights, during which they chanted slogans including “Zionists, out” and “There is no solution, but to get rid of the occupier.”

In May, Arab students staged a protest in solidarity with Palestinian security prisoners where they waved photos of convicted terrorists and called for “Intifada.”