Allow me to quote from the Al Qassam website of March 12, reporting on the brutal murders of five members of the Fogel family in the West Bank:
Five Israeli settlers were killed on Friday night in the West Bank illegal settlement of Itamar near the Palestinian city of Nablus.
Angry Palestinian attacked a home in the illegal settlement of Itamar near Nablus and killed Five settlers from one family before he escapes.
Many Israeli figures reached the place of the attack describing the accident as the most dengerious since years.
According to the International law Palestinian resistance factions have the full right to resist any kind of occupation on the land of Palestine, as well as the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people in West Bank and Gaza grant the Palestinian resistance factions to use all tools and means of resistance against the Israeli occupation forces and the armed Israeli settlers.
In 2008-2009 Israeli occupation forces conducted a massive horrific war against the Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the war caused of klling more than 1,400 Palestinian residents most were from civilians , women children and elders and caused of huge damage in infrastucutre and properties, what caused of a real crisis for the Gaza people.
Many of the rest of the world’s reporters have been less than forthright about the brutal murders. For some, this barbaric act was a mere blip on the radar screen, given the severity of the earthquake/tsunami/meltdown situation in Japan at the same time. For others, the murderers were called “intruders” or “suspected terrorists,” and the victims of the heinous crime were blamed for being “settlers.” Few media outlets reported that the victims were decapitated or stabbed through the heart, the murderers walked through Itamar for three hours on Shabbat looking for the “right” victims or citizens well within the established borders of Israel were murdered before the construction of the oft-criticized security barrier.
Where are the reporters when Israel engages in humanitarian aid every time there is a crisis anywhere in the world? Israelis have gone to Japan, Haiti and other scenes of disaster. They have welcomed the Chilean miners to visit Israel and see places considered sacred in their religion.
And one more thing: several days after the massacre in Itamar, IDF soldiers noticed a cab with Palestinian license plates speeding through Itamar. Its occupants included a Palestinian woman about to give birth to a baby with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. The soliders helped to deliver a healthy baby girl a short distance from where a three-month-old Israeli girl had been murdered. Did any reporter notice that Israelis choose life for all human beings?
With such disinformation circulating, is it any wonder that so many people have such distorted ideas about Israel? As McGill history professor Gil Troy so aptly put it in a letter to President Obama on his blog, “The Fogel massacre occurred during that intellectual abomination ‘Israel Apartheid Week.’ On campuses, which should be centers of complex, critical thought, pursuing truth, hotheads accused Israel of “genocide” – although the Palestinian population has nearly quadrupled since 1967 – and of “apartheid” and “racism” when this is a national conflict. Exaggeration, distortion, obsession and perversion of core values signify political fanaticism and bigotry. When such simplistic sloganeering and dehumanizing rhetoric becomes epidemic on our comfortable campuses, it is not surprising that it metastasizes into murder in the Middle East.”
In these days of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) to put pressure on Israel to end the occupation of the territories in the West Bank without a clear-cut path to peace, let us be mindful of the barbarism, disinformation and slaughter being perpetrated on the Israelis. Just as our Holocaust survivors had to tell their stories, we have to bear witness and tell the true stories of our Israeli brethren.
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