Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Israeli Female Minister Orit Strook Who Told USA's Blinken Off

 Nadene Goldfoot                                

Minister Orit Malka Strook (Hebrewאוֹרִית מַלְכָּה סְטְרוֹק, born 15 March 1960) is an Israeli far-right politician. She serves as the Minister of National Missions in the thirty-seventh government and is a member of the Knesset for the Religious Zionist Party, and served as member of the Knesset for Tkuma (a faction within the Jewish Home) between 2013 and 2015.  Strook is also among the leaders of the Jewish settlement in Hebron, and she established the Israeli non-governmental organization Human Rights Organization of Judea and Samaria, which she headed between 2004 and 2012.

              Hebron; divided between Jews and Arabs  A total of 88% of the Jewish community here and 67% of 3,000-strong Kiryat Arba voted for one of their own – Kiryat Arba resident, former Kahane disciple and rising star of the Religious Zionist party, Itamar Ben-Gvir.

“I’m not a religious person. I don’t cover my hair or anything, I have LGBT friends,” said Elinor, a 24-year-old single mother who works at Kiryat Arba’s supermarket. “Like everyone else I voted for Netanyahu in the past and switched to Ben-Gvir this time because of the security situation.

“I think he’s become so popular because the rest of the country is starting to understand how dangerous it is and what we are going through here.”

So next time you call out Israelis for being bullying, gun-touting land-grabbers of their own ancient land,  and Palestinians for being fanatical suicide bombers, remember that there are normal people on the ground who have nothing to do with the wider agendas of their governments or religious factions but who see each other as neighbours and who are calling for the same thing – resolution and peace. The problem is that there just aren't enough of them.  Those Palestinians in power want to drive out the Jews.  

Hebron or Kiriath-Arba:  has a well-known ancient history to the Jews which is in Judah (today's half of the West Bank).  It's where Abraham bought the Cave of Machpelah for his family's burials from a Jebusite citizen and then he buried Sarah.  Joshua saw to it that it was a city of refuge and a Levitical city.  It was David's first capital.  There were 1,500 Jews living here in 1890 who established a yeshivot and religious schools.  The great Lithuanian yeshivot of Slobodka was transferred to Hebron in 1925.    

Orit Cohen (later Strook) was born to a family of lawyers from Jerusalem. Her middle name Malka was given to her in memory of her grandmother, the Hungarian Jewish poet Mária Kecskeméti. Growing up, Strook studied at the Hebrew University Secondary School. In the late 1970s, while she was in the 11th grade, Strook gradually became more religious, and eventually became a Baalat Teshuvah, embracing Orthodox Judaism. During that period, she began studying at the religious Zionist outreach organization and yeshiva Meir Institute. Shortly thereafter, she married Avraham Strook, a student of Rabbi Haim Drukman. The young couple briefly lived in the Israeli settlement of Yamit in the Sinai Peninsula, but after Sinai was handed over to Egypt in 1982 as part of the terms of the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty, and Yamit was evacuated, Strook and her family joined the Jewish settler community in Hebron.  She's the mother of 11 children and has 12 grandchildren.  

Biden's American Democratic government  of USA is plotzing over Israel's new rightist government of Netanyahu this year.  Far-right National Missions Minister, Orit Strock, criticized US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday, a day after he signaled that the White House is clearly concerned over initiatives by Israel’s new hardline government.

Blinken had a plan all mapped out on his visit to Jerusalem but conditions quickly changed.  This past week in Jerusalem has been particularly violent, after Israeli forces carried out their deadliest raid in the West Bank in years, killing nine Palestinians, including gunmen and a 61-year-old woman. Dozens more were injured.

  • Then on Friday, Israeli police say a Palestinian gunman killed seven people and wounded three outside a synagogue in Jerusalem's Neve Yaakov neighborhood. The next day, Israeli police say a 13-year-old Palestinian boy shot and wounded two people in East Jerusalem.
  • It's the latest escalation in a cycle of violence that doesn't show signs of stopping soon, with members of Netanyahu's far-right cabinet aggressively supporting settlement efforts that many say are an obstacle to peace.
  • And, to top it off, U.S. officials say Israel appears to be responsible for a drone attack on a military factory in Iran over the weekend.

Dear Mr. Blinken, I understand that you decided to 

give our prime minister a lesson in democracy,” the 

Religious Zionism lawmaker, Orit  tweeted.

“Well, democracy is first of all the duty of a country 

to determine its course according to the 

votes of its 

citizens, each of which is given equal 

weight, without 

foreign involvement,” Strock wrote.

“Demonstrations, however legitimate they may be, 

are not equivalent to a ballot,” wrote Strock, in a very 

rare public rebuking of a senior US official by 

an Israeli government minister.  (I don't agree with Strock as 

demonstrations do a lot to cause officials to rethink their 

positions and just might change. I think Orit's 11 children take

a lot of her time.  She needs to read more history for 

seeing how demonstrations have changed countries).  

Anthony Blinken
                                     Yair Lapid 

While Blinken’s comments drew Strock’s ire, he won support 

from opposition leader Yair Lapid, former Prime 

Minister,  and naturally one of the fiercest critics of 

the government’s plans.

Following his meeting with Blinken, Lapid said their 

discussions were “first and foremost about the shared values 

of the principles of democracy and the 

preservation of 


democratic institutions.”

Lapid later responded to Strock’s comments, saying “the time 

has come for Netanyahu, with all his weakness, to at least put 

minister Strock in her place.”

“The Americans’ ‘foreign involvement’ that she is speaking out 

against includes $38 billion in aid, funding for Iron Dome 

batteries, Apache helicopters and the F-35 planes that are 

supposed to attack Iran,” Lapid tweeted.

The Netanyahu coalition is pushing a controversial overhaul 

that would increase government control over the judiciary. 

The plan has drawn intense criticism and 

warnings from 

leading financial and legal experts, as well as 

weekly mass 

protests and public petitions by various 

officials, 

professionals, and private companies.

Netanyahu insists that the sweeping plans will instead 

strengthen democracy and therefore the nation’s financial 

position, and says that he is carrying out the will of the voters.

What Blinken doesn't know is that ministers of the 

government in Israel might be females and females with lots 

of  chutzpa !   They tell it as they see it.  This 

year, it looks like

the religious party is speaking out.  They've 

had enough.  It's a 

Jewish country.  Their ancestors didn't wait 

2,000 years for nothing to return.  They love 

their ancient land as well as their Tel Aviv and 

also want it in peace.  


Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orit_Strook

https://www.israpundit.org/far-right-minister-slams-blinken-

netanyahu-doesnt-need-lesson-in-democracy/


How Hard Is it To Create Peace Talks between Palestinians and Israelis?

 Nadene Goldfoot                     

               Prime Ministers Rabin and Peres

Way back in 1992, Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres had worked together.  Peres had accepted Rabin's offer but the promised deadline of 6 to 9 months had had no progress.  The talks in Washington between Israel and the Palestinians from Judea-Samaria and east Jerusalem thought Israel offered too little and Israel thought their opponents were asking too much--notably to have East Jerusalem which Israel had taken back in 1967.  (Who wants to argue about Jerusalem being King David's city?)  


Then it happened, an incident that stopped the talks in 1992.  

On December 11, 1992, Nissim Toledano, a 29 year old Israeli border policeman was kidnapped as he was leaving home in Lod.  6 hours later, 2 masked men entered the office of the Muslim counterpart of the Red Cross, the Red Crescent in Judea-Samaria's town of El Bira.    The abduction and killing of Nissim Toledano began on 13 December 1992, when a squad of Hamas abducted Israeli border policeman Senior Sergeant Nissim Toledano in Lod. Although the captors demanded the release of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin for Toledano, Toledano was killed by his captors.   

 At about 4:30 am, 13 December 1992, a squad of Hamas terrorists kidnapped 29-year-old Israeli border policeman Senior Sergeant Nissim Toledano in Lod, as he walked from his home to attend his administrative job.  During the same day Hamas demanded that Sheikh Ahmed Yassin be released the same day until 9:00 pm in exchange for Toledano. Toledano's captors threatened to kill Toledano unless Yasin would be freed.Israel refused to negotiate until it received evidence that Toledano was alive and well.  Two days later, on 15 December 1992, Toledano's body was discovered near the communal Israeli settlement in the West Bank Kfar Adumim.Toledano's body was found bound and stabbed. Pathological findings indicated that Toledano was murdered two-to-six hours after the ultimatum expired. In addition, the findings indicated that the strangulation and stab wounds were not carried out at the site at which Toledano's body was discovered.                                  Nissim Toledano, Son of Meir and Hasiba. Meir was born in the city of Meknes, Morocco, on March 9, 1931. He studied in the “Kol Israel Haverim” school there, and was a member of a youth movement, from which he aspired to immigrate to Israel. They saw his enthusiasm as fleeting, but it was not long before he reached the age of seventeen, managed to escape from the family and together with his friends to the movement came to Israel in peace; This was in 1948. Upon arriving on the shores of Eretz Israel, he joined the combat  systems of the War of Independence. In 1951, after his parents’ pressure to return to them, he had to fulfill their request out of respect for them. Shortly after his arrival he took a wife on condition that his honeymoon be spent in Israel. Finally, he established his home in Israel and lived there, and found his bread in glass work. He fell on the 12th of Shvat 5719 (21.1.1959) while fulfilling his duties and was put to rest at the military cemetery in Kiryat Shaul. He left a wife and a daughter.                 

                                    Sheikh Ahmed Yassin

The kidnappers announced that they were members of Hamas's Islamic Resistance Movement and left a photocopy of Toledano's  identity card and a letter for the Israeli authorities demanding the release of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.  Since 1989, Yassin been serving a life sentence in an Israeli jail.  He was released in 1997. 

In 1987, during the First IntifadaHamas carried out its first attack against Israel in which two Israeli soldiers were abducted and killed. The Israel Defense Forces immediately arrested the founder of Hamas Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and sentenced him to life in prison for masterminding terrorist attacks. Hamas then began planning the capture of an Israeli soldier in order to seek the release of Yassin in a swap. 

The Sheikh was a quadriplegic and a fundamentalist clergyman  and leader of Hamas, which he had established in February 1988 in Gaza.  Like other Arabs, the sheikh rejected the state of Israel and so was against peace talks with it.  However, he was a rival of the PLO.  He, in competition, called on the Arabs to help him establish an Islamic state in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank (Judea-Samaria).  He had lots of followers who attacked, killed and kidnapped Israelis.  

In retaliation, Israel captured and jailed him, hoping that Hamas would collapse without his leadership.  That's when the Sheikh's followers then kidnapped Toledano to force Israel to release their leader.     

     Here, Arafat, Rabin and Peres received Oslo 1994 joint Nobel Peace Prize       

Oslo Peace Talks in 1993    The Oslo Accord in 1993  was an attempt in 1993 to set up a framework that would lead to the resolution of the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict. It was the first face-to-face agreement between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) 

Arab Men who kidnapped and murdered Israeli teenagers, school teachers and off-duty soldiers, Palestinian fighters who killed suspected collaborators and men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip with whom they had worked or lived side-by-side with for years are among the 104 prisoners expected to be released as a gesture to the PA for the resumption of peace talks.

A glance at the lists published by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club (PPC) and leaked to Israeli websites by Israeli officials shows Arab men responsible for terror attacks ranging from complicated, planned-out operations to hastily crafted acts of brutal violence directed at Israelis.

Deep within the list are the names of two Gaza Strip natives, Yusef Said al-Al and Ayman Taleb Abu Sitteh, who late at night on December 31, 1993, broke into the Ramle house of David Bublil after he and an acquaintance, Haim Weitzman, had turned in for the night. They stabbed the two men to death as they slept and then mutilated their bodies, cutting off their ears as souvenirs.


Resource; 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimon_Peres#:~:text=Shimon%20Peres%20(%2F%CA%83i%CB%90%CB%8C,Israel%20from%202007%20to%202014.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abduction_and_killing_of_Nissim_Toledano

Book:  Israel and Arabs by Ahron Bregman, and Jihan El-Tahri , p275-277.  

https://honorisraelsfallen.com/fallen/toledano-nissim/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_I_Accord

Palestinian Fatah Praises Murder of Seven At Synagogue and More

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Palestinians carry the body of a man, one of three killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Nablus, on February 8, 2022. (JAAFAR ASHTIYEH / AFP)

Israeli Security forces say men were members of cell that carried 

out shooting attacks against Israelis in recent weeks; gunmen 

belonged to Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.    

An article was written on February 8, 2022 about it just happening.  Aaron Boxerman wrote the article for The Times Of Israel.  

Israeli security forces operating in the West Bank city of Nablus on Tuesday killed three Palestinian gunmen allegedly responsible for recent shooting attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians, Israeli defense officials announced. 

 “A terrorist cell from the Nablus (Shechem) in bible,  area was eliminated. . Nablus was in Jordanian territory from 1948-1967, with Arabs taking over.  For decades it has been the center of fanatical Arab attacks on Jews.  The cell is responsible for a series of shooting attacks in the area against the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli civilians in recent weeks,” the Shin Bet security service and the Border Police said in a joint statement.                      

Israel's Shabak-(Shin Bet) has also worked closely with the Israeli Air Force in "targeted killings" of field commanders and senior leaders of Palestinian militant factions of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and Fatah. These killings are usually done by helicopter gunships. Both the IAF commanders and Shabak agents sit together in the command center to monitor the operations. 

Militants attend the funeral of Palestinian Osama Soboh who was killed by Israeli forces during clashes in a raid, in Burqin in the West Bank.

The Israeli army said its soldiers, especially the Duvdevan special forces, in cooperation with the police and border police units, and the Shin Bet security agency, carried out the massive operations in the West Bank to arrest  Hamas terrorist members.  The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Resistance Committees, Hamas movement and various Palestinian factions denounced the Israeli escalation and vowed retaliation to avenge the death of the slain Palestinians.

(photo credit: RANEEN SAWAFTA/ REUTERS)

Shabak's task is to give intelligence about when and where the target will be available for a strike and then react to IAF drone feedback to ensure the men at the location are indeed the correct targets. 

The USA under Obama took out Osama bin Laden.  Osama bin Laden, also spelled Usāmah ibn Lādin, (born 1957, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia—died May 2, 2011, Abbottabad, Pakistan), founder of the militant Islamist organization al-Qaeda and mastermind of numerous terrorist attacks against the United States and other Western powers, including the 2000 suicide bombing of the U.S. warship Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden and the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C.  Obama had one;  Israel is faced with people like Osama all the time.  

Israeli troops rarely conduct such operations in broad daylight inside major Palestinian cities. Even more unusually, the dead gunmen belonged to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a coalition of armed groups associated with the Palestinian Authority’s ruling Fatah party.  In a statement widely circulated in Palestinian media, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades vowed revenge for its members’ deaths. The Times of Israel could not independently confirm the statement’s authenticity.  “The blood of [our] martyrs will not be wasted, and the response will come, God willing, and blood will be met with blood,” the terror group said in a statement.  

Of course.  One major killing and there is revenge to take place from the other side.  That's how it keeps on happening.  And if Israel doesn't take revenge or punishment for the Palestinian killings, the Palestinians will take it as a weakness and kill Jews more and more.  

There's a war going on between the Palestinians and Israel.  Palestinian leadership is Fatah, the same old PLO of Arafat which is now in Abbas's hands. One way to confront their killings and expose them, is the Palestinian Media Watch  https://palwatch.org/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

 On 8th of February, 2022, Abbas openly calls on Palestinians to murder Israelis.  Maurice Hirsch, Adv.  | After Israel killed three terrorists who had already carried out a number of terror attacks and were planning another imminent attack, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas called on Palestinians to “dish out to them twice as much as we’ve received.”  When calling to “dish out to them twice as much as we’ve received,” Abbas is literally calling for the murder of at least 6 Israelis! Openly calling for the murder of Israelis in response to Israel neutralizing three terrorists, is something Abbas reserves for his Arabic speaking audience.  In a speech broadcast during a memorial event for the three terrorists, Abbas rewrote history, whitewashing the terrorists and their actions, claiming that the call for revenge was justified because “We are the ones attacked. We don’t attack anyone”:                            

Arab Center, Washington, DC. The Palestinian National Council (PNC), the legislative arm of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), held its 23rd full session in Ramallah, Palestine on April 30, 2018, after a 22-year hiatus, where the language is Arabic.  

This is a problem the West does not appreciate.  The Palestinians say things in Arabic that they wouldn't dare say in English.  

The Palestinians attack Jews, then scream when Israel responds in kind. They don't just scream, they attack doubly hard.   The three neutralized terrorists, Adham Mabrouka Al-Shishani, Muhammad Al-Dakhil, and Ashraf Mubaslat, were all members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the internationally designated terror wing of Fatah, headed by Abbas.

It's a killing group started in 1959 by Arafat with Mahmoud Abbas and others.  They took over the PLO in 1968 and remain the PLO's largest  faction.  The Brigades  group was actually founded in 2000 after the outbreak of the 2nd Intifada.  Most Fatah operatives work in this group.  They practice guerilla warfar, shootings, bombings, and rocket and suicide attacks.  They executed 214 terrorist attacks in just 2003 and 2004, 33 suicide bombings (2000-2005), and the 1st female bomber on January 27, 1992.  5 more female suicide bombers dispatched (2002-2005) and 47 suicide bombers foiled and arrested in 2005.  

Official Fatah Spokesman Hussein Hamayel reiterated that the killing of the terrorists would “not pass in silence” and called to carry out popular resistance - a term used by Palestinians, which also refers to the use of violence and terror: 

Al Jazeera reported that Palestinian Authority condemns the assassination of three Palestinians in occupied West Bank, calling it a ‘heinous crime’.Israeli forces have killed three Palestinians in Nablus in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said, drawing condemnation from the Palestinian Authority (PA).

“Three citizens were martyred as a result of direct shooting by Israeli forces in the city of Nablus,” the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. It identified the victims as Ashraf Mubaslat, Adham Mabrouka and Mohammad Dakhil, according to the Palestinian Wafa news agency.  “An eyewitness we spoke to said the [Israeli] army … fired at the car that the three Palestinians were using. She said that for more than a minute, she kept hearing gunshots being fired,” Al Jazeera’s Rania Zabaneh, reporting from Nablus, said.

“When we got to the location, the car was being towed away, it was totally riddled with bullets. At the hospital where the bodies were taken the doctors said they had a hard time recognising the victims because of the gunshots.  “The Israeli defence minister commended the army for doing this operation,” she said.   Witnesses told Anadolu Agency that the incident involved a member of Israel’s special forces in a civilian vehicle storming the city’s al-Makhfieh neighbourhood, and opening fire at the car.   The PA’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has called for an international investigation into the killings while the PA cabinet described it as a “heinous crime”.   The foreign ministry held the Israeli government and Prime Minister Neftali Bennett “fully and directly responsible for this crime”.  Note:  this happened-not on Netanyahu's watch.  He can't be blamed directly for this.

 They're fully aware that they started the "war" first, but of course, it's the Israelis who are so terrible, and they erase their actions quickly from their people's minds.  One thing they do for that bit of brain washing is to pass out candy to the crowds of Palestinians.  The children will remember that kills Jews and candy go together.  

    Palestinians celebrating their latest murder of Jews

Jubilant Palestinian Arabs celebrate their latest murder of Israeli Jews

Seven Israeli Jewish worshippers were murdered outside a

 Jerusalem synagogue on Friday night, the start of the Jewish 

sabbath, in the working-class orthodox neighborhood of Neve 

Ya’akov. Several others who were wounded remain in hospital.

Those killed included a teen and the synagogue sexton.  They

were:                                

The lady top left Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said 

another of the victims was a Ukrainian citizen, who was later named 

Irina Korolova.

Victims killed in a terror attack in Jerusalem on January 27,

 2023, clockwise from top right: Asher Natan, 14, Eli, 48, and 

Natali Mizrahi, 45, Ilya Sosansky, 26, Rafael Ben Eliyahu, 56, 

Irina Korolova, 59, and Shaul Hai, 68. (Courtesy)


Neve Yaakov fatalities were: Rafael Ben Eliyahu, Asher Natan, 14

, Shaul Hai, Irina Korolova, llya Sosansky and married couple Eli and 

Natali Mizrahi.  The attack left seven people dead, two of whom — Eli

 and Natali Mizrahi — were identified earlier in the day. The 

shooting was followed by another terror attack Saturday.

The third victim was named as Rafael Ben Eliyahu, 56. Ben Eliyahu,

a resident of the area, was survived by his wife and three children. He worked for the state-owned Israel Post.  The fourth victim of the shooting attack was identified as 14-year-old Asher Natan. There was no immediate further information

 about him.                         

Christopher Brown, 21, from Aquebogue, New York, was arrested and charged in connection with online threats to attack a New York City synagogue.  There were 3 men in on this attack.  “As alleged, the two defendants possessed a firearm, a high capacity magazine, ammunition, an 8” long military style knife, a swastika arm patch, a ski mask and a bullet proof vest, among other things,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement to CNN.“A potential tragedy was averted when they were intercepted by police officers at Penn Station, given that online postings indicated an intent to use these weapons at a Manhattan synagogue,” Bragg said.

As for the USAAccording to the FBI’s annual data on hate crimes, defined as criminal offenses which are motivated by bias, crimes targeting the Jewish community consistently constitute over half of all religion-based crimes. The number of hate crimes against Jews has ranged between 600 and 1,200 each year since the FBI began collecting data in the 1990s. There were 683 hate crimes against Jews in 2020, 963 in 2019 and 847 in 2018.  There were 293 total antisemitic incidents in 2022, according to a new report, rising from 207 overall in 2021.

Resource; 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/additional-victims-of-jerusalem-terror-shooting-idd-as-14-year-old-boy-father-of-3/

https://www.timesofisrael.com/soldiers-kill-3-palestinian-terror-suspects-in-west-bank-operation/

https://palwatch.org/page/30292

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/FMfcgzGrcPLnKVVzngkDpFzqPqFmhZTq

 Palestinian Media Watch  https://palwatch.org/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Triple West Bank assassination recalls darkest days of the Intifada

A joint report with The Intercept and Local Call investigates how Israeli forces carried out what appears to be their first assassination in the West Bank in 15 years, after they killed three Palestinian militants in Nablus.

Triple West Bank assassination recalls darkest days of the Intifada

A joint report with The Intercept and Local Call investigates how Israeli forces carried out what appears to be their first assassination in the West Bank in 15 years, after they killed three Palestinian militants in Nablus.