By Barry Rosenfeld
Part One Part Two
Against the backdrop of failed peace talks, as the US government and Secretary of State John Kerry still hold out hope to bring the two parties back to the peace table, the Palestinian Israeli conflict has come to a broil. The bodies of the three abducted yeshiva (Jewish seminary) students Gil-Ad Shaer (16), Eyal Yifrah (19) and dual American-Israeli citizen Naftali Fraenkel (16) have been laid to rest a over a week ago but the finding of their bodies followed by the funeral, generated riots by belligerent extremist Jewish groups throughout the capital, leading to extended property damage and the violent death of another innocent youth, this time an Arab, Muhammed Abu Khdeir also 16, who lived in East Jerusalem. His burned body was discovered in the Jerusalem National Forest shortly after he went missing. At the same time in a bazaar twist, 15-year-old Tariq Abu Khdeir, Muhammed’s cousin who was visiting from Miami where he lives, was beaten and arrested by police after being caught up in a rock throwing incident. Six people were arrested Sunday in connection with the murder of Muhammed, all of them Jewish and are members of an Jewish extremist group.
In the south of the country hundreds of rockets and shells are falling on communities daily said by those responsible to be in retaliation for the 80 Hamas members arrested in Judea and Samaria (the so-called West Bank) many of whom had been released in exchange for the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in which 1,027 Palestinians were set free. Other accounts link it to the death of Abu Khdeir in line with statement by Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum. Last Monday night over 85 rockets were fired into Israel targeting over 15 communities, some as far north as the suburbs of Tel Aviv. Since January the number of rockets being fired from the Gaza Strip has exceeded 750+. What other country would stand by and allow itself to be pulverized with rockets and shells from over its border?
Still the US and the present administration have not given up hope of creating yet another Arab state in what was once British Mandate territory. To keep the recent peace process going, Israel gave into Palestinian and US demands and released yet more prisoners with blood on their hands, some of whom are even now working to destroy the Jewish state. Yet the one demand set forth by Israel has been ignored, that the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as the Jewish State. In fact, in an act of extreme hubris Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas not only refused to recognize the Holy Land as the Jewish homeland but joined forces with his arch enemy Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal to form a unity government, an organization that denies the very existence of Israel. At the same time the Palestinian Authority continues to go to great lengths to even deny any historic presence of Jews in the Land and have argued that their own roots go back to periods before Joshua, preceding the entrance of the Children of Israel into ancient Canaan. To do this they have made some ridiculous claims which will be examined in the next blog.
(To be continued)
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