Truth - the first casualty of conflict!

The following has been received from my good friend in Israel. It is unlikely that anyone will learn of it in the MSM!

“Hypocrisy and lies fuelled by an obsessive hatred for Israel”,  is Benjamin Netanyahu’s description of United Nations Human Rights Council’s condemnation of Israel.

Ravid Elfassi, who served as served as an officer in the IDF’s Golani Brigade was given 90 seconds,  yes  just  90  seconds,  to  present  Israel’s  case  before  the  UN  HRC.   He  spoke  on  behalf of the  

organisation:“MyTruth”.   

     

In his 90 seconds he said the following:

“The hardest lesson that I learned during my military career was that while we put our lives on the line to protect our families and children, Hamas and other terror organizations use their own children as human shields and cannon fodder,” said Ravid Elfassi at the council in Geneva. “This is not an isolated event. It’s their standard operating procedure.”

My Truth collects signed testimonies and photographs from combat operations between 2004-2018 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that attest to the use of human shields and other human rights violations by Hamas and other terror groups.

Elfassi only had 90 seconds to present his testimony to the council, but in the short amount of time he was given, he told the council of salaries paid to Palestinian terrorists sitting in Israeli jails by the Palestinian Authority and the murder of the Fogel family, who were killed by a Palestinian terrorist in their home in 2011.

“It has been said that terrorism in the eyes of one person is a freedom fighter in the eyes of another, but how can you consider yourself a freedom fighter, for stabbing a three-month-old baby, Hadas Fogel, in front of her parents? How can someone call himself a Jihadi, a “holy” warrior, for taking the life of a child? These are the fanatics who we as IDF soldiers are fighting against on a daily basis,” he said.

Elfassi, who continues to serve as a combat officer in his reserve duty, also spoke of the use of women and children as human shields by Hamas – a tactic the group continues to use to this day during the weekly, violent Great March of Return.

“In 2007, I was sent on a mission in Gaza to seek out a Hamas squad which was launching rockets at Israeli cities. With my own eyes, I witnessed as Hamas sent out six- and seven-year-old children to search for me and my men. When these children found us, Hamas opened heavy fire using AK-47s and RPGs, while the children were still between us and them,” Elfassi said of an incident he witnessed during his IDF service.

“If the United Nations truly wishes to investigate terrorism and human rights, I implore you to look at the My Truth report, which details the use of human shields by terror organizations,” he said. “If so, you might better understand the reality that we as IDF soldiers confront – and which is too often neglected by this forum.”

My Truth, which days earlier spoke at a panel at the United Nations along UN Watch and NGO Monitor, has documented dozens of testimonies from former combat soldiers, including several who just recently finished their military service and were posted along the Gaza border fence during the Great Return Marches.

On Friday the UNHCR voted to adopt a report accusing Israel of human rights violations, including war crimes, for its response to violent riots and attacks as part of the weekly Great March of Return along the Gaza border fence.

The Council’s 40th session voted by a margin of 23 to 8, with 15 abstentions and one absence to adopt the 252-page report conducted by the Commission of Inquiry which claims that 183 Palestinians, including 35 children, have been killed in the clashes, and that the majority were unarmed.

ISIS v. Israel

No, the title is not suggesting that this post has to do with a direct confrontation between ISIS (aka Daesh) and the nation of Israel.  I suspect that any unbiased writer would have no difficulty in predicting the outcome of such a conflict!  (Clue: Israel would not come out of it as second-best!!).

However, in the last couple of days, I have viewed two specific photographs that clearly display the difference between these two entities.  The first has also appeared in today's online Daily Express.

The executioner is in the act of beheading a 15 year-old boy - in front of a large crowd, including many teenagers.  Ayham Hussein was handed the death sentence after being tried in a strict Sharia law court.   ISIS thugs had found the teenager listening to a portable compact disc player inside his dad's shop in an open-air market in western Mosul, in Iraq.  Sentenced to death - for listening to music!  No words of mine could ever suitably describe such an act!  Those responsible will, in eternity, if not before, answer for such a crime - because their's was the crime; the boy was innocent of any crime - certainly in any civilised society.

The second picture was e-mailed to me from the Scottish Friends of Israel.

In his short life, Mohammed al-Farra has known just one home: the yellow-painted children's ward in Israel's Tel Hashomer hospital.  Born in Gaza with a rare genetic disease, Mohammed's hands and feet were amputated because of complications from his condition, and the 3½ year-old moves about in a tiny red wheelchair. His parents abandoned him, and the Palestinian government won't pay for his care, so he lives at the hospital with his grandfather.  

Mohammed was rushed to Israel as a newborn for emergency treatment. His genetic disorder left him with a weakened immune system and crippled his bowels, doctors say, and an infection destroyed his hands and feet, requiring them to be amputated.   In the midst of his treatment, his mother abandoned Mohammed because her husband, ashamed of their son, threatened to take a second wife if she didn't leave the baby and return to their home in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis, al-Farra said. In Gaza, polygamy is permitted but isn't common. But it's a powerful threat to women fearful of competing against newer wives.  Now Mohammed spends his days undergoing treatment and learning how to use prosthetic limbs, while his 55-year-old grandfather cares for him. Mohammed's Israeli doctors, who've grown attached to the boy, fund-raise to cover his bills, allowing him and his grandfather to live in the sunny pediatric ward.

Two children; two cultures; two situations; two outcomes.   For ISIS/Daesh, death for listening to music; for another Arab Muslim boy, life because of the dedication, love, and concern, of Israel and its medical staff.

Such stories could, of course, be multiplied many times over.  Sadly, although ISIS/Daesh do have their evil actions publicised, you will rarely find the "western" media informing people of the situation of children such as Mohammed al-Farra.  To do so, of course, might cause the unthinking among us to realise that the bias against the State and Nation of Israel is unfounded.

I believe, as a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth - Himself born and raised as a Jew; tried and falsely convicted, as a Jew; crucified as King of the Jews (in accordance with prophecy: see Isaiah 53) - I have a moral, and even spiritual, obligation to support Israel.  I may not agree with every policy decision of the Israeli government (although I would gladly exchange the current incumbent of 10 Downing Street, for Mr Netanyahu!) but, as Corrie ten Boom's father reminded her at the time of the Holocaust: "They are still the apple of His eye"! (see Deut.32:10; Ps.17:8; Zech.2:8 - the reference is to the keen sensibility of the eye, and denotes the careful protection, and security, of Almighty God - HaShem).

If you have a heart for Israel, please do all that you can to publicise the truth and, of course, pray for the peace of Jerusalem - Sh’alu shalom yerushalayim.

Murder most foul.

The callous, and agonising, murder of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Khdeir, has shocked many - and rightly so.  However, it is interesting and significant, that the Israeli authorities moved so quickly to investigate the murder - and have already arrested six Israeli suspects, three of whom have reportedly confessed to the heinous crime committed, it appears, for 'nationalistic' reasons.  Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has already said that Khieder’s killers would “face the full weight of the law.”

This is in stark contrast to the response of the Palestinian Authority on the abduction, and murder, of the three Jewish teenagers whose bodies were discovered a week ago.   I have not read, or heard, of any attempt by the PA to investigate those killings.  Rather, there was commendation in Palestine for whoever may have been responsible!

The other, related, news item has been the brutal attack on Tariq Abu Khieder, the American cousin of Mohammed Khdeir - allegedly by members of the Israeli Border Police.  I say 'allegedly' because although the three men involved were in police uniforms, they were also masked!   Uniforms, of course, may be easily obtained, or copied.  What I find interesting, if not suspicious, is that the boy who was attacked was the cousin of a murdered boy; that he is an American who was on holiday; and that there just happened to be two separate mobile 'phone video recordings made, from two different angles, by people who, one is led to believe, just happened to be in those locations!

What is also interesting is that the USA are reported to have put pressure on Israel concerning this shocking event.  Presumably, this is because an American is involved.  However, another American citizen, Saeed Abedini, is languishing in an Iranian jail.  He had often made trips back to his native country in order to visit his parents and extended family. Before leaving for America, he spent many years in Iran as a Christian leader and community organizer developing underground home church communities for converts.

It was in September 2012, while in his homeland to help build a secular orphanage, that he was pulled off a bus by authorities, imprisoned and sent before a judge in what supporters say was a sham trial.  The treatment to which he has since been subjected makes even that suffered by Tariq Abu Khieder (whoever is found to be responsible) mild by comparison!  One has to wonder why the USA is, and has been, so silent with regard to a Christian citizen, when it is read to move so quickly on behalf of the son of Muslim citizens!

Many of us, who love Israel, are concerned that a few Jewish extremists would murder a Palestinian child; we are concerned that it may, in fact, have been Israeli security officers who assaulted his young cousin; and we continue to prayerfully support the parents of those three murdered Israeli teenagers.  Perhaps you will join with us!