Hillary, Who Should You Talk To About Jericho's Conditions?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                               

                                            Jordan Valley where Jericho is

Hillary Clinton commented in her new book, Hard Choices, some slamming comments about Israel in their conduct with the city of Jericho.

" Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accuses Israel of being an occupying force in her new memoir  and claims that the Jewish state denies “dignity and self determination” to Palestinians in the West Bank.
Clinton recalls being surprised by what she termed “life under occupation for the Palestinians,” "  “When we left the city and visited Jericho, in the West Bank, I got my first glimpse of life under occupation for Palestinians, who were denied the dignity and self-determination that Americans take for granted,” Clinton writes."

Year she went through? 1981  Who was she with on this trip?  Husband Bill Clinton  Ronald Reagan was president then.   It made me stop to check Jericho out, since that seems to be what she is basing her case upon; one city.  The people of Jericho were denied dignity and self determination by Israel?  Really?  And Israel is at fault?  As I remember, Israel had just had to fight a war in 1973, the Yom Kippur War when attacked when everyone was in a synagogue and fasting for over 25 hours.  It was the most sacred day of the year when Jews were asking for forgiveness.

 Judea-Samaria are not "Occupied Territories"today.   Besides that, the 1967 War determined that the land belonged to Israel being they had been attacked and then surprised everyone by winning.  This little fact is not accepted by the West, even though it's a legal fact of international law.  It's because they invision a 2 state solution and that's it.  No matter what.  They don't care if the Palestinians goal is to destroy Israel.  There is no sign of any peaceful decisions from them.

 This is a city I've gone through many times back in the 80's when I lived in Haifa and Safed and would drive from there to Jerusalem.  The highways goes through Jericho. It was 92.46 miles from Safed to Jericho.   From Tel Aviv, Jericho it is only 65.244 miles.  From Jericho to Jerusalem is 15 miles, but the road isn't straight and so takes a longer time to drive.

It's a Palestinian city in the southern Jordan Valley and is unique because it is 82 feet below sea level. Jericho is in Judea-Samaria and is only 6 miles from the Jordan River, making it a favorite for Christians.

 "The modern Jericho, occupied in the 1967 Six Day War, was one 
of the land swaps for the sake of peace and came under the 

jurisdiction of the Palestinian authority in 1994.  But the beginning 

of the 2nd intifada in 2001changed everything, as one would guess. 

Israelis were, and remain prohibited from entering Jericho as 

well as all other areas under sole Palestinian jurisdiction."

Jericho was a part of the Gaza-Jericho discussions.   "A Gaza-Jericho entity could benefit from wealthy expatriate Palestinians investing in new and "existing" industrial (and service) establishments. Lately there have been moves to organize these wealthy expatriates to invest in the West Bank and 
Gaza; but there was a dispute within the Palestinian leadership as to whether economic development was desirable prior to political progress. Now it is assumed that it is, as the leadership has accepted Gaza and Jericho.  First, it will encourage economic development, on condition that it does not weaken the Palestinian claim to the rest of Judea-Samaria (the West Bank)."

 Jericho is one of the oldest settlements in the world.  It first traces back to the Neolithic Period of 5,000 BCE and was inhabited from the Chalcolithic and Canaanite times until it was destroyed by Joshua as told in Joshua 6 in the Tanakh/Bible.  Remember the song, Joshua and the Battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho?  And the walls came tumbling down.    The area was left desolate. Archeological excavations in the mound started in 1906 and continued regularly from 1930.

When the Jewish King Ahab ruled Israel from 870 BCE to 853 BCE, Hiel the Bethelite, as found in Kings 16:34, revived the city.  When King Herod ruled, the city was transferred from its former site near the spring to another one further away.  There Herod built himself a palace where he died.
                                                                           

Jericho was destroyed by the Romans in 68 CE and later rebuilt at its present location.  It depends on the finances from surrounding plantations which have been irrigated by streams from the Judean mountains since the Hellenistic Period.  It has become a center of balsam groves.  It used to be known as the City of Palms, and is now surrounded by orange groves and banana plantations.

One of Jericho’s primary sources of income is Christian tourism. A cable car takes Christian pilgrims up the hill to the Mount of Temptation, topped by a Greek Orthodox monastery with panoramic views of the region.

In 1994, Israel and the Palestinians signed an economic accord that enabled Palestinians in Jericho to open banks, collect taxes and engage in export and import in preparation for self-rule

In 1995 the Oasis Casino opened up and was the only legal gambling place in the area.  2,000 people came daily and 99% of them were Israelis.  In the year 2,000 is was shut down due to the terrorists.  They were using its roof to shoot at Israelis and Israeli sites.  In 1998, a $150 million casino-hotel was built in Jericho with the backing of Yasser Arafat.  It looks like Jericho was going to be the Las Vegas of the Palestine Strip.  

Since things have changed since 2007 with Hamas taking over Gaza and Fatah left to live in Ramallah and Judea and Samaria, they have ignored Jericho. 

 In 2010, Jericho, with its proximity to the Dead Sea, was declared the most popular destination among Palestinian tourists.The Jericho Agro-Industrial Park is a public-private enterprise being developed in the Jericho area. Agricultural processing companies are being offered financial concessions to lease plots of land in the park in a bid to boost Jericho's economy.

In 1925, Christian friars opened a school for 100 pupils that became the Terra Santa School. The city has 22 state schools and a number of private schools

In 1946 the population was 3,000.  Arab refugees entered in 1948 and by 1961 had 61,000 living there. Demographics have varied widely depending on the dominant ethnic group and rule in the region over the past three thousand years. In a 1945 land and population survey by Sami Hadawi, 3,010 inhabitants is the figure given for Jericho, of which 94% (2840) were Arab and 6% (170) were Jews Then most of the refugees fled over the Jordan River before Israel's troops arrived during the Six Day War of 1967.  The census in 1967 showed that 8,500 were living in Jericho and 2,000 lived in its vicinity.  In the first census carried out by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), in 1997, Jericho's population was 14,674. Palestinian refugees constituted a significant 43.6% of the residents or 6,393 people.  The Christian community makes up around 1% of the population.

In the 2007 census by the PCBS, Jericho had a population of 18,346

May I remind Hillary that Israel has been shot at since 2001 from Gaza and what has she done to give Israelis the right of freedom to allow their children to go to school without fear of having 15 seconds to enter a bomb shelter when the siren screams the warning of incoming missile?  This year alone, the southern part of Israel has had 108 rockets fall into their little part of the world.  

The Palestinians are governing Judea-Samaria.  It's up to them to provide their own dignity.  Dignity comes from good accomplishments, good deeds.  You can't give people dignity.  They must earn their own.  They all voted in the Hamas terrorists to govern Gaza.  Israel had left Gaza. Do you expect Israel to honor them for such a decision?   Dignity is the state of being worthy, honored or esteemed.  

 Are a people worthy of being honored by Israel when they keep trying to kill Israelis with suicide bombing, rockets, missiles and mortars?  They are a people first led by the PLO terrorists who have now decided to follow Hamas terrorists.  Their government will be led by Hamas.  Left alone, Jericho was doing well before 2001 with the Casino.  They were making money off of the Israelis.  They had their dignity then, but the rest of their people certainly took it away and stopped a good thing-a connection between Jews and Arabs in business.  

Hillary, I don't know what you saw to make such a judgement, but if you saw and talked to the people and found them unlike Americans, it's because they aren't.  They don't think like Americans or Israelis.  They don't solve problems in our same ways.   They're living with their own decisions now, and perhaps they wish it was different.  Hindsight is now better than foresight.  

I'm disappointed in you.  You are damning Israel by your words, and it doesn't take much to put more stones on their backs.  One fly-by through Jericho in 1981, 33 years ago when I lived in Safed,  and you're being nasty towards Israel, and that city is not Israel's responsibility to make happy, now is it!   

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia  

http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/agreement%20on%20gaza%20strip%20and%20jericho%20area.aspx
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/gaza-jericho%20agreement%20annex%20iv%20-%20economic%20protoco.aspx
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vie/Jericho.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho
http://www.mapisrael.info/jericho
http://www.sonstoglory.com/bonniegaunt/bible/Jericho%20to%20Jerusalem.pdf
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/09/crossfire-heated-exchange-over-hillary-clinton-calling-west-bank-under-occupation/

The Palestine Union After One Week Cry "Attack!"

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

                Hamas's Al-Qassam Brigades Terrorists called on to fulfill their duty

Sir Arthur and Sir Lancelot, who lived in Camelot, loved each other.  All was well till Lancelot fell for Arthur's wife and ruined their friendship.   All is not going well with the Palestinian plans, either, with Fatah (old PLO) and Hamas, the old and the young terrorist groups who have united for the 2nd time to form a Palestinian government to my shock and awe with Obama's and Kerry's approval.

In the Palestinian Camelot, a united group who Fatah swears they have peaceful intentions and that all Obama and Kerry have to do is to watch them from afar, all that is  heard now  is rumbling of war.  Hamas has called on its armed wing of terrorists, the Al-Qassam Brigades,  who are in Judea and Samaria  and attack Israeli soldiers and civilians.  The reason is to help their men who are prisoners in Israel's jails for terrorism acts.  They think they can ease the plight of its prisoners by doing this.  Such convoluted thinking!
                                                                                 

                                                 Hamas terrorists

Hamas is asking Fatah people to take part in this attack.  They think that Jews must pay the price of being in  in "Palestine" with their blood until they are persuaded to change.  Right now the prisoners are on a hunger strike.  Israel is voting in the Knessett about force feeding them.  They are not about to let them die from hunger. (1) They're on a hunger strike because they haven't had a trial for terrorism.

 Israel says they're in jail for terrorism and can't risk a trial.  Israel says Palestinians suspected of security offences are sometimes jailed without trial to avoid any court proceedings that could expose sensitive intelligence information - a practice that has drawn international criticism."  So 300 are jailed for breaking and being caught in the act of security offenses.  Israel holds 5,000 in jail for acts of  terrorism.  Terrorists have been receiving salaries from their leaders.  The money must be coming from outside friends involved in the Muslim Brotherhood, etc.  

This was announced  after only one week after swearing in their unity government which was endorsed quickly by the USA and the EU.    Hussam Badran, Hamas spokesman,   wrote about this on his facebook page.

 The EU had the chutzpa to tell Israel that they should support the new Palestinian government in Ramallah. 

Have they ever told the Fatah and Hamas terrorists that they should recognize Israel or else?  No.  Jose Manuel Barroso of the EU said they should in the interest of a future peace deal.  That is putting the cart before the horse.  You don't make deals after you allow the crime to be committed.  Do you allow your teen-ager to stay out until 3am for a month without saying anything and then say, now you have to be in by 10pm and you'll get 3 meals a day?  He thinks that by becoming a legitimate and representative government they will be peaceful.  Has Iraq and Iran  always been peaceful?  No.  Is Syria peaceful?  No.  Has Lebanon been peaceful?  No, and they're the model for Palestine whereby a terror group, Hezbollah, is running the government.  Fatah and Hamas as a united front  haven't signed a peace agreements with Israel. They walked away from a peace deal.   Only Egypt and Jordan has.  Both Lebanon and Syria have missiles pointed at Israel.  Israel isn't about to help to create another state that is at war with them.

Israel is reacting sanely, but not the USA or the West. I know.  Everybody is crazy except me.  In this case, I'm right.  The USA and EU are taking the opposite viewpoint from Israel  saying that the new Palestinian ministers were not affiliated with Hamas. Yet that is a lie!   The PM of Palestine is Hamas's Ismael Haniyah, who is not about to recognize Israel,  and his group in Gaza is still shooting rockets at southern Israel.  They just shot their 108th rocket the other day. Palestine has already said their government will be on the Lebanon style.  Lebanon allows their main terror group, Hezbollah to run their government!   The USA and EU do sloppy research and then act on it.  Is this the way to run foreign affairs?

Mahmoud Abbas, President,  has said the new government recognizes Israel, accepts past agreements with Israel and renounces terrorism.   I believe he said that a few years back which is why they have been ruling in Judea-Samaria on their own.  However, Hamas has a charter that has not been torn up which states their goal is to destroy Israel.  It's just like the Muslim Brotherhood's charter.  They have not changed their tune. Israel cannot accept Fatah while Hamas is not in agreement.  If they can't get their act together, they really don't deserve their own state.  Israel's different parties had to come together to form Israel.

Now we come to the prisoners.  Israel does not kill their prisoners like their neighbors usually do.  They are jailed.  125 are held in detention and have been on a hunger strike they started 7 weeks ago for political notoriety. They have grown to 300 now.   Their prison conditions are great considering they aren't living in a hotel, but a jail.  I wish they were in a Turkish prison instead.  Then they'd have something to complain about.  I've heard about that place when one of my distant relatives, Gene LePere nee Hirshhorn,  was imprisoned while on her holiday for buying a little statue from a hawker.  She was thrown in the woman's prison for years; had to cook her own food in there, too.  Her story about that prison was turned into a TV special several years back from her book, Never Pass This Way Again,  about it.

The Palestinian Arabs had demonstrations planned and did so yesterday on the 9th in Ramallah.  On a positive note, the PA (those of Fatah) suppressed the demonstrations.  They even had to physically  attack Hamas members that are the MP, Hassan Youssef and Fathi Qarawi. What they did was to stop cars who were in a procession in Ramallah and they took away their posters and flags that they brought with them to incite the public.   The PA police stopped the journalist Musib Said and took away his press card and camera and demanded that he delete his photo.  Well, well, well.  Fatah just earned a few points from me for this.

Of course, this made Hamas as mad as a wet hen at Fatah, so a Mr. Rajoub said that now their reconciliation is at a risk.  They felt the actions of Fatah was a stab in the back of the prisoner movement.  They consider this as serious and unjustified violation.  They don't realize it's a violation of the peace promised by Fatah, so they're not about to back Fatah's motivation.

Another problem in their Camelot,  which is the ancient Judah, state  Jews formed apart from Israel when King Solomon died in 920 BCE, about 3,000 years ago, is that of money.  50,000 civil servants of Hamas living in Gaza have not been receiving their salaries this past 7 years from Fatah.  Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas official, wants Fatah  to cover their salaries.  They had done this for PA civil servants who lived in Gaza, but these people have not actually worked for years in protest over Hamas's bloody takeover in 2007 when they kicked Fatah out of Gaza and took over!  My, they do rival us Jews in having so much chutzpah!

They owe lots of money to Israel as well for their electricity bill.  They have been receiving electricity but have stiffed Israel with the bill.  I think they'd better pay Israel first before they pay people who shoot rockets into Israel.
                                                                           
It's things like this that happen that enforce my belief in that there is a G-d.  Only something like this can happen to show the USA and EU that all is not hunky dory between Fatah and Hamas and that Palestine will be no peaceful Camelot.  Their own natures have to play a part in these events.  Israel has been saying this over and over and no one listens.  Hamas has to change before it can be trusted to be involved in the creation of a peaceful state.  Fatah will have their hands full to change the nature of their own people who they have been teaching to hate Jews.  Of course, they do handle things differently than Americans do.  They're pretty tough about stopping behaviors. like they did yesterday.   Still.....

Resource:  http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-calls-on-armed-wing-to-kill-soldiers-and-settlers/  This is the magazine that Stanley Goldfoot started in his youth.  Of course then there was no internet and it was a real magazine.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/mideast/israeli-law-force-feed-palestinian-hunger-strikers-gets-initial-nod-n127151 (1)
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4528941,00.html

Hezbollah's First USA Soldier Kidnapping, Lt. Col. William Higgins

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

The Lebanese Shiite terrorists, Hezbollah, kidnapped and murdered an American Lt. Colonel Marine in 1988.  It was on February 17, 1988, 26 years ago,  that Lt. Col. William Higgins came up missing as the Chief, Observer Group in Lebanon for the United nations Truce Supervision Organization.  He was driving on the coastal highway between Tyre and Naqoura in southern Lebanon, going home from returning from a meeting with a local leader of the Amal movement, when he was pulled from his vehicle by armed men. The Amal movement was a political group.  It is, by a small margin, the largest Shia party in parliament, having thirteen representatives to Hezbollah's twelve.  

 Amal is currently in an alliance which includes the Free Patriotic Movement, Hezbollah, and the Progressive Socialist Party. The Greek Catholic Archbishop of Beirut, Mgr. Grégoire Haddad, was among the founders of the Movement.

 I wonder if Major Haddad of Lebanon, of the Christian Militia was a relative of his.  He was a friend of Israel and guarded the border with his men.  He took his R and R in the Hospital in Haifa, Israel.  Israel promised to take care of his family if anything happened to him.  "Saad Haddad's daughter Arza (meaning "Cedar Tree" in Arabic) as a researcher in ballistics and rocket science at the Technion University in Haifa. She obtained master's degree in aeronautics in June 2012.  

The Hezbollah captors called themselves the "Organization of the Oppressed on Earth" and announced his execution 529 days after his capture.  Being he was a Lt. Col. Marine, he knew a lot of important information.  This kidnapping must have been pre-planned, not a random move.  They might have thought of him as a walking encyclopedia and with that much info, should not have even been in Lebanon, but he was very interested in Lebanon and had wanted to be there.

This Marine was interrogated and tortured during his captivity, then finally murdered.  He was hung by his neck.  The UN adopted a Resolution 618 and demanded his release, but he was held only 1 1/2 years and was murdered.  Pictures were shown of his body by the terrorists and were televised around the world by videotape from his captors.  On July 6, 1990 he was declared dead.  His remains were dumped beside a mosque near a south Beirut hospital.  William was finally buried at Quantico National Cemetery on December 30, 1991.

This was pure terrorism.  There was no reason to kidnap a UN officer.  Also responsible were Iran and Syria, countries that gave sanctuary to the terrorists.

Lt. Col. Higgins was born in Danville, Kentucky and earned a Bachelor's degree from Miami U in Oxford, Ohio.  He was a scholarship student in the Navy ROTC.  He got his Master's degrees from Pepperdine U and Auburn U.  He also graduated from the Army Infantry Officers Advanced Course, the Air Force Command and Staff College, and the National War College.

He served in Vietnam in 1972 as an infantry battalion advisor to the Vietnamese Marine Corps and the next year served as a rifle company commander with B Companiy, 1st Battalion, 4th Marines.  .

Resource:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_R._Higgins
Myths and Facts, a concise record of the Arab-Israeli conflict by Mitchell G. Bard and Joel Himelfarb, p. 108-109
http://articles.philly.com/1989-08-01/news/26146569_1_huge-security-lapse-peacekeeping-force-william-richard-higgins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amal_Movement

Difference Between Terrorists and Defenders

Nadene Goldfoot                                                

                                        Avraham Stern of the Stern Group

Don't ever think that our groups in pre-Israel days were terrorists.  The Stern Gang/Group were not terrorists.  They were fighting against Arabs that had attacked Jewish families and homes and people on the streets in their resistance to having Jews back in the land again.  The movie, Exodus, made in 1960,  tells about this.  Sal Mineo was a main character of someone who joined the defenders of the Jews.

The difference between the PLO, the main terrorists that Israel was facing and the Stern Group or Haganah was their method and reasoning of fighting.  The Stern group only went into a village after warning them and only because they had been harboring terrorists, people who had been attacking them.  They shot back at those who shot at them first, wanting to skip any talk.  They did not harm anyone unless they were first attacked.  They practiced ethics.  They did not try to make people suffer.

They did not terrorize people but had organized themselves as a defensive unit.  The Balfour Declaration awarded a Jewish Homeland to the Jews and they intended to help keep Jews alive.

The Haganah, which in Hebrew means "defense" was a clandestine organization for Jewish self-defense in Palestine, clandestine because Britain was still the law and was against such things.  Before this group existed Ha-Shomer in 1920 which existed until 1948 when members were transferred to Tzeva Haganah le-Israel.  It came about when Jews realized they weren't being protected at all by the British.  After the Arab riots of 1929 , the British appeased the Arabs.  It was in 1931 when the Haganah split up, and the right-winged groups formed their own separate groups, then reunited with Haganah in 1936.  However, Irgun Tzevai Leumi did not rejoin them.  Military commando units were the Palmah.  From the end of 1947 the Haganah worked on defense against Arab attacks only and did not attack the British.

My cousin, Stanley Goldfoot, left South Africa at age 18 for Palestine in 1932.  On the ship, the Nazi swastika was raised.  He wasn't sure he'd get to see Palestine at that rate, but he did.  He was immediately approached by someone to join the Stern Group when he arrived. He soon became the Chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group.  The Stern Group put a bomb in the King David Hotel.

  Avraham Stern was the man who started his group.  He was born in 1907 and died in 1942.  He left another group, the Irgun Tzevai Leumi where he had been a leader to create his own group.  He did this because the other had refused to continue anti-British activities in Palestine during WWII.  The Stern Group was an underground organization later known as Lohame Herut Israel.  It was Britain who dubbed it the Stern Gang.  What they did basically was to carry out acts of sabotage.   Stern was killed by the British police while he was arrested, so who were the terrorists at that point?   Maybe he was trying to get away then.    All the Jewish defense groups were made up of amateurs.  Fighting was going on from November 1947.  Palestine was invaded by regular Arab armies in May 1948 when on the 15th, Israel was announced as a state.  It caused civilian villages to face each other armed with rifles, grenades and homemade Stens.

Teen aged Jewish girls and even children of 10 and 11 fought side by side with the men.  Arab peasants with just a few hours or maybe one day of training stormed into Jewish settlements blindly.  The only professional soldiers were Jordan's British-commanded Arab Legion.  Invaders came with artillery, tanks, planes but didn't know how to use them correctly.  The new Israelis  didn't  receive arms from abroad until the middle of the battle for survival.  They only won due to their unyielding spirit.

 A man named Yizernitzky of the Stern Group said that his view had always been that "a man who goes forth to kill another whom he does not know must believe one thing only--that by his act he will change the course of history."  It's not an easy thing to do for Jews, to suddenly kill others after 2,000 years of trying to stay alive without a country of their own and live on the whims of others.

They did decide to do one terroristic type thing, and that was to assassinate Count Bernadette because he was such a threat to the future state of Israel.  They saw no way out and no way to change Bernadette's attitude.  To them Bernadotte was a symbol of foreign interference.  Almost all the Sternists had been in the British  jail. Stanley had been held in Acco with others.  He was a journalist.   Joshua Cohen, who reminds me of  Daniel Silva's hero, Gabriel Allon, at the young age of 19 was already a leader in the group. His feeling, which was the feeling of all of them, was that he did not hate or need to hate his enemies in order to kill them in cold blood and in good conscience.  But, he was reluctant to kill unless he thought this action was absolutely essential.  This was indeed, a war of survival, and they had been  waiting patiently for 2,000 years for such a day to come.  They couldn't be wishy-washy now.

The Stern Group/ Irgun  put a bomb in the King David Hotel on July 22, 1946.  They warned them first, but they refused to listen and there were deaths that shouldn't have been.  .  Actually, the Stern Group broke off from  Irgun and formed Lehi later.  Stanley and I met each other at the King David Hotel in 1981.

The results of amateurs fighting were not perfect.  Thousands died.  Prisoners were killed after capture.  Soldiers didn't obey orders.  Battles were won because of beshert, like when a Molotov cocktail struck the leading tank, or lost because fighters of one side couldn't understand each other's language.

Israel lost 7,000 to 10,000 of its fighters which was more than one out of every 100 Jews living in Israel then.  The Arabs lost more.

Terrorists are bred in the Arab communities to terrorize others into complying with their laws.  Over the last 50 years, Arab leaders have imprisoned, tortured and murdered thousands of their own citizens, and waged unnecessary wars that cost the lives of millions for the sake of some point or other.  They don't mind spilling others' blood in the worst ways possible in order to insert fear on a group.  I used to live in Israel and watched shows on TV from Syria.  At the end of programming at night, they showed the same thing, the soldiers of Syria going through their routines.  One time the soldiers were all lined up holding various animals in their hands and they did terrible things with them with their mouths to kill them.  This turned my stomach and certainly did frighten me, but it also left me thinking they were absolutely inhuman.  Their actions certainly were.  Here they were soldiers belonging to a state, not rogue terrorists, and they were in truth terrorists.
                                                                           

The PLO were the leading terrorists in Israel.  Arafat was their leader.  They became the Fatah group, still practicing terrorism with suicide bombings, etc.  Then part of them broke away to become Hamas and they kicked Fatah out of their Gaza who retreated to Judea and Samaria.One million Arabs were coming under Israeli rule and they decided to attack Israelis.  Fatah had a campaign of terror going on from Judea-Samaria.  From September to December 1967, 61 attacks were launched, most against civilian targets like factories, movie theaters and private homes.  Fatah changed their tactics after they found out the army was protecting Jews quite well and started attacking Jews and Israeli targets abroad.  In 1968 the first of many airplanes was hijacked.  Jordan permitted terrorists to launch raids into Israel from 1950 to 1967.  The PLO had a long history of brutal violence against innocent civilians.  From 1965 to now, hundreds of Israelis and other civilians have lost their lives in PLO terrorist attacks.

Examples
1. May 30, 1972, shot up Lod airport, murdered 27 civilians
2. 1972, killed 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich, West Germany
3. 1972, tried to mail letter bombs to Nixon, Wm Rogers and Melvin Laird
4.  March 1, 1973 murdered US Ambassador to Sudan Cleo Noel and George Moore
5. May 1974 took over a school in Maalot in northern Israel, massacred 2i7 Jewish schoolchildren and wounded 134.
6. March 11, 1978 PLO terrorists murdered American photographer on the beach, took a bus and shot and threw grenades from window at people they saw.  34 civilians dead and 82 wounded.
7. October 1985, murder of Leon Klinghoffer in a wheelchair on ship Achille Lauro
8. March 1988 Fatah almost got Sec.of State George Shultz with car bomb near Jerusalem hotel.

People practice terrorism on others for many reasons.  Mostly it is out of religious, political or ideological goals.  They deliberately target or disregard the safety of people they are not attacking like the neutrals or civilians.  Look at what Hamas is doing to the civilians of southern Israel, shooting rockets, missiles and mortars at them.  Usually the terrorists are politically motivated.

The Allies had promised the Jews a Jewish Homeland, thinking "if you can create and keep it," but we're not helping you.  They forced a people who were law abiding people, actually experts on following laws, and turned them into warriors.  That's what our Jews had to become, warriors, not terrorists.  They were once when they followed Joshua 3,5000 years ago  into Canaan and here they were again, following David Ben Gurion in creating a Jewish Homeland.  I bet they didn't know they had such a fighting spirit in them.

Now, Israel is facing the creation of Palestine by the Arabs, Arabs who are made up of the united Fatah-Hamas terrorists.  They plan a government like Lebanon's where Hezbollah is a major player.  So Hamas will be also in Palestine.  Just what the world needs.  a 49th Muslim majority state, and this one will be 100% radical Muslim.  They'd better watch their Ps and Qs, though.  The USA will be watching their actions.

Reference:  Genesis 1948, the first Arab-Israeli War by Dan Kurzman
The Strontg Horse, power, politics, and the clash of Arab Civilizations by Lee Smith
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4667.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_(1960_film)
Myths and Facts, a concise record of the Arab-Israeli conflict by Mitchell G. Bard and Joel Himelfarb p 70, 84, 154, 159

Middle East Competitive Terrorists: Leading Bad is now ISIS.

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                      

When Lee Smith wrote his book, "The Strong Horse, power, politics, and the clash of Arab civilizations, I  imagine he realized this phenomena also included the competitiveness of terrorist groups.  Now it's the Sunni against the Shia and everyone else.  

Today we see a group competing with Al Qaeda, the world's worst terrorists made up of Shias.  The new Islamic fundamentalists is Isis, a highly fanatical group of Sunni Muslims,  who have been  killing Shi'a Muslims and Christians whenever they get the opportunity that are seen in Iraq and Syria.  They just led an assault in the past 4 days. Their leader is Abu Bakr al-Baghdada, alias Abu Dua.  He's even worse than Ayman al-Zawahiri from Pakistan of al-Qaida.  

On Friday they attacked Mosul where they have been asking a tax from businesses.  This sounds like the 1920's in New York with "The Mafia."  200 people were killed who probably didn't want to pay up, but the government is covering up the number and said only 59 of which 21 were policemen and the others were the terrorists.                                                              

Isis took over the University of Anbar at Ramadi, a university of 10,000 students  in Iraq on Saturday.  They killed 52 people in Baghdad.  They're trying to create some sort of Caliphate in northern Syria and Iraq.  This is unsettling Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey who fear becoming targets.  Isn't this shades of the Iraq-Iran War of 1980-1988?  

This group is extremely violent.  A video shows them forcing families with sons in the Iraqi army to dig their own graves before they were shot, Nazi style violence.  

In Syria it is in an intra-jihadi civil war with Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-sham and other groups.  Isis controls Raqqa, a capital taken by their opposition and much of eastern Syria outside enclaves held by the Kurds close to the Turkish border.  More violence from Isis went on yesterday where 18 Kurds were killed in explosions in Iraq at the Kurds headquarters which is an ethnically mixed province of Diyala.  

They are known to have participated in the Iraq -Iran War that started September 1980 and ended in August 1988;  the Global War on Terrorism, the Iraqi insurgency, and the Syrian Civil War as one of the rebel groups.  The United States has been aiding some of the rebel groups in Syria.  It would be terrible if their money or arms got into their hands.  

This is all very important to Israel because Syria borders on their state.  Iraq is on Jordan and and Syria's border.  Of course Jordan is on Israel's border.

"Today there are differences in religious practice, traditions and customs, often related to jurisprudence between the Sunni and Shi'a.   Although all Muslim groups consider the Quran to be divine, Sunni and Shia have different opinions on hadith or the traditions and sayings of Mohammad

 Sectarian violence persists to this day from Pakistan to Yemen and is a major element of friction throughout the Middle East.  Tensions between communities have intensified during power struggles, such as the Bahraini uprising, the Iraq War, and most recently the Syrian Civil War."  Now there is this  new terrorist group who flex their muscles showing their power. 

I would bet that al-Qaeda could get the best of them because they are loaded with money.  Though Al-Qaeda operates from Pakistan and Afghanistan, ISIS is closer, in Iraq and Syria.  Al-Qaeda can also count on the Taliban for more manpower.  Syria must be in a mess with all these competing rebel terrorist groups attacking each other  vying for for power besides taking over parts of Syria.  

The nerve of some people to intimidate that Israel is the root of Middle East problems.  It's the Muslim family itself that cause their own headaches.  I lived in Israel from 1980 to the end of 1985, during the Iran-Iraq war.  The Correlates of War Project reported that 500,000 Iraqis died and 750,000 Iranians died in their war between each other, though it may not have been that high a number.  

Syria was a state made up of 22,505,000 population of both Sunni and Shi'a who followed the Hanafi and the Alevi  fiqh. Syria's history is of constant fighting.  In September 2007 Israel did hit their nuclear site without any reprisal from them.  This was going to be used against Israel.  By 2011 the Civil War started which is continuing.  

 Iraq was a state of 31,234,000 with both Shi'a and Sunni who followed Jafari and Hanafi fiqh.  The USA invaded Iraq in March 2003 because of the attack on the USA starting with the airplane that crashed into the Twin Towers in 2001 and were out to get Saddam Hussein.  Over 100,000 Iraqis died and the USA had a death count of 4,700.  Iraq has had a history of wars being it was part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1921 Faysal, son of Husssein Bin ali, the Sharif of Mecca, was crowned Iraq's first king.  

Resource:  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/battle-to-establish-islamic-state-across-iraq-and-syria-9510044.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia%E2%80%93Sunni_relations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14703995
http://www.cfr.org/iraq/timeline-iraq-war/p18876?gclid=CjkKEQjwttWcBRCuhYjhouveusIBEiQAwjy8IDzIODF_fDOlrXs3XEzDrdl_PNcmx90locl-ev2uyRPw_wcB
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14546763
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/06/10/3446907/isis-iraq-mosul/

How Taliban Differs From Al Qaeda

Nadene Goldfoot                                             

The Taliban is an Islamic fundamentalist political movement that started in Afghanistan when they were fighting against the Russians in 1996.  They continued to fight until 2001.  They believe in strict Sharia law.  Their practices have been very unfair towards women, part of their understanding of the law.   It formed a government of its own and ruled as "the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.  Taliban is interpreted as "students of Islamic knowledge,"   which shows that they are knee deep into their Sharia law as a main goal.  They used Kandahar as their capital.  Only Pakistan, its neighbor, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates gave it recognition.  Their spiritual leader since 1994 is Mohammed Omar.   The Taliban is made up of people called Pashtos.  Many Pashtos have claimed to be the Lost Tribes of Israel.  Their culture backs this up with many showing practices of the Jewish culture, but they have no interest in regaining their past religion.  It's more likely they would be adamant to indoctrinate all Jews to Islam instead, and they will not hesitate to fight against Israel.  They see it as part of their Sharia law.    Not all Pashtos are Taliban members, either.  Many have suffered under them.  
                                                             
"The Taliban have been accused of using terrorism as a specific tactic to further their ideological and political goals. According to the United Nations, the Taliban and their allies were responsible for 75% of Afghan civilian casualties in 2010, 80% in 2011, and 80% in 2012.  

Between 1994 and 1999 about 80,000 to 100,000 Pakistanis trained and fought in 

Afghanistan on the side of the Taliban.  "The Taliban was ousted from power in December 2001 by the U.S. military and Afghani opposition forces in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the U.S."
                                                                      

 Since 2009, the Taliban took the hostage, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, and held him till now, exchanging him for 5 terrorists held in Gitmo called Gitmo detainees.  Reports are from TV that they are commanders, leaders, planners of terrorism, not just the common run of the mill variety  footmen terrorists who just take orders.  

All Qaeda                              

The Taliban are friends of al Qaeda and they work together.  "In 2001 alone, according to several international sources, 28,000-30,000 Pakistani nationals, 14,000-15,000 Afghan Taliban and 2,000-3,000 Al-Qaeda militants were fighting against anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan as a roughly 45,000 strong military force.  

The USA lists Al Qaeda as terrorists, and the Taliban is not listed, yet they fought together against forces that most likely were American.  They are brutal.   A  purported Al Qaeda Leader is said to have beheaded a  U.S. civilian in Iraq, and pictures of it are on the internet.  This is Osama bin Laden's group.  They operate a multinational stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global jihad and they interpret the sharia law in a very strict way, so they are good companions for the Taliban.  They're so nutty that they fought each other's  units in Syria as well as the Kurds.  "It has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations Security Council, NATO, the European Union, the United States, Russia, India and various other countries. 

Money has come to them from Osama bin Laden's wealth.  In 2001 Afghanistan was in a mess.  Osama bin Laden's source was only one of many.  Others such as Jamaa Al-Islamiyya and the Islamic Jihad also financed them.  Both are connected with Afghan-based Egyptians.  They also had money from selling heroin and from supporters in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia  who supplied a lot of their money,   and other Islamic countries.  

                                                                              

One of the Taliban terrorists is Noorullah Noori. 

 Noorullah Noori vowed to return to Afghanistan and fight Americans, according to NBC News.

Supposedly 5 dangerous terrorists were released in exchange for our American soldier that was held for 5 years.   They were to be taken to Qatar where the Taliban has an office, and are to live there for one year.   "Noori pushed to return to Afghanistan after learning that the U.S. had provided written assurances that no country would arrest any of the five freed for a year as long as they lived peacefully, one of his relatives told NBC News by telephone from Afghanistan.  

How do you get on the American  terrorist list?  Hamas is listed,  yet is being accepted as part of Palestine's government.  Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is listed.  Our State Department monitors terrorist groups around the world to identify them.  They look at actual terrorist attacks that they have carried out and if the group has been planning and making preparations for future acts of terrorism and has the capability and intent to carry out such acts..

The USA has been in Afghanistan since 2001 looking for Osama bin Laden who was behind the attack in the USA in New York City on the Twin Towers and in Washington DC on the Pentagon. Osama was a Saudi Arabian and member of the very rich bin Laden family.  ethnically he was a Yemeni Kindite.  He joined the mujahideen forces in Pakistan against the Soviets who were fighting in in Afghanistan.  

That was terrorism.  We've tried to get out of Afghanistan but here's the situation. We want to leave the policing there to their Afghan National Police who support their own army.  The police are mostly illiterates.  17% are on illegal drugs as tested in 2010.  They take bribes easily.  Nobody can build a good police force with such men to choose from.  1/4 of them quit every year anyway.  Afghan is having a rough time building their police force to take the place of our American soldiers. 

Back in 2001, the coordinator of a plot to blow up the American Embassy in Paris told the French Police that the Taliban formed a pact with Osama bin Laden 5 months ago and any terrorist attacks since then had their approval.  This shows that way back then that the Taliban and al Qaeda were working together.  

As far as I can see, there really is no difference between these two terrorists, except that al-Qaeda has more financial backing.  62% of al-Qaeda has university education.  "In 2006, it was estimated that al-Qaeda had several thousand commanders embedded in 40 different countries.  As of 2009, it was believed that no more than 200–300 members were still active commanders.   I think in the end they'll take the Taliban for a ride.  After committing the act of kidnapping a strayed American soldier, they should be put on the terrorist list, especially using him as a hostage for 5 years.  They've  messed with our army.    

Resource: http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm   who's a foreign terrorist?
 http://www.news.com.au/world/behind-the-war-of-words-surrounding-the-release-of-sergeant-bowe-bergdahl-are-a-number-of-myths-and-unknowns/story-fndir2ev-1226945531923
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/08/us/bowe-bergdahl-release/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/taliban.html
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/bowe-bergdahl-released/freed-taliban-commander-tells-relative-hell-fight-americans-again-n124451
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%93present)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6173.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/alqaeda.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/1360027/All-terrorist-acts-approved-by-Taliban.html

Personality Traits and Why They Differ in Muslims and Jews:

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                           

                                                  Abraham as pictured back in the 2nd millennium BCE

As I was fixing an egg for a late breakfast after writing an article for my other blog, I had an epiphany about why Muslims and Jews are so different from each other even though they only believe in one G-d.  It stemmed from a discussion on facebook with others, including a dear Muslim friend, as to why we Jews do discuss facts about Mohammad yet won't become Muslims.  I explained back that  we do think differently even though we both believe in just one G-d and that Moses, who Muslims accept as a prophet, told us not to accept prophets easily.  We've had lots of false prophets in our history already.  We couldn't accept Jesus and then we couldn't accept Mohammad.  We revere Moses.

Then it dawned on me that Abraham's sons, Ishmael by Hagar the Egyptian and Isaac by his own relative, Sarah, were so entirely different in personality, most likely due to their genetic makeup.  Sarah was Abraham's niece and was his legitimate wife. You see, by this she had coh-ach, or strength and power.    Her father was Haran who was Abraham's brother.   Abraham had come from Ur which is in today's Iraq.  He had moved to land made up up Canaanites and Philistines.   Ishmael was actually sent away by Abraham who was persuaded to do so by Sarah who saw that their living arrangement wasn't working out.  Abraham had 2 women in his tent; his wife and his paramour, both with sons.   Hagar was being hurtful to Sarah since she was the younger one but not a legitimate wife with the due respect coming with that title.   There was a lot of friction going on between the children and the women.
                                                                           

                                                      Canaanites
                                                                               

  Ishmaelites buying young Joseph, son of Jacob and Rachel,  from his brothers who were jealous of him

Obviously Hagar and Ishmael went back towards Egypt to join up with the culture she had left.  According to Islamic tradition, she was an Egyptian princess and is dearly loved by the Muslims.    Ishmael did not get the continued lessons from Abraham on behavior and goals in life because he had to leave the fold. Had he received enough to be on his own and act wisely?  Wouldn't  he now be living in Paran where the Canaanites were idolaters?  Paran was the desert, the wilderness in the Negev desert.  Israelites traveled through it after they had left Mt. Sinai where they received the 10 Commandments.  It is in the NE of the traditional Mt. Sinai, south of Kadesh and goes from the shores of the Gulf of Elath and the Arabah.   As it is, Ishmaelites also had 12 tribes from Ishmael and they had settled in Northern Arabia between Egypt and the Assyrian border.  They traded with Egypt.  Modern Arabs claim this descent.  Abraham had left his family in Charan who also worshipped idols as well.  More likely, Abraham was worried about the morality of the Canaanites.  They did not have the same morality, ethics and modesty that affects one's entire nature.  That's why he didn't want his own sons to marry such women.    He wanted them to marry a woman of kindness and sensitivity.
                                                                         

Then we have the twins that Isaac fathered by Rebeccah;  Esau and Jacob,  who later had his name change to Israel.   Rebecca's mother was  Bethuel, sister of Laban.  Bethuel and Laban were Arameans from Paddan-aram.  They were Semites who invaded the Fertile Crescent in the 2nd half of the 2nd millennium BCE and roamed between the Persian Gulf and the Amanus Mountains.  Israelite patriarchs were of Aramaic origin and had ties of marriage with the tribes of Aram.   So Abraham was her great granduncle.   The two boys were as different as day and night.  Here I cannot blame the mother for the differing genes, so I figure that Abraham already had a bundle of different types in his genetic makeup to pass on.  No wonder Ishmael turned out differently from Isaac!

Esau was born first.  He surprised his family by having red hair and a ruddy complexion and was pretty hairy all over.  So he was the elder brother with special rights as the very first born, even though the difference in the 2 boys couldn't have been more than a few minutes, maybe 30 at the most.  He was to receive a birthright and a blessing, and in those days blessings were like words from the will, amounting to gifts received that Jacob would be denied.  Jacob tricked Esau into selling him his birthright, so I think he was the wittier one.  Esau fell for it because it wasn't something of value to him in the first place, not being a material thing, and because the sale brought him food and he was starving to death after doing a lot of hunting.

They had different personalities and interests, unlike the usual twins born today.  Esau was a hunter and furnished his family with meat.  Jacob was more introverted and hung around the tents thinking and cooking that we are told about.  Jacob is described as being more wholesome.

Esau and Jacob became enemies which ended up with Esau trying to even kill Jacob, his own twin!  We know today of twins who mourn and suffer and cannot even function when a twin dies, yet Esau had this hatred, this animosity toward Jacob for some pretty darn good reasons.  Jacob had tricked Esau out of his inheritance through knowing of Esau's attitude towards his father's philosophy about a G-d and not being impressed about it and not being able to wait but needed the instant reward of food.  Being Esau's twin, he knew his twin's mindset.

The birth of the twins was foretold to Rebecca by G-d.  "Two nations are in your womb.  Two regimes from your insides shall be separated.  The might shall pass from one regime to the other and the elder shall serve the younger."   So she understood they would have problems before they were even born.  It turned out that she did favor the younger, Jacob,  even though Isaac favored the older, Esau.  Being Rebecca was around them more in taking care of them, she was the one who watched how they behaved.

The story is a symbol written in Genesis of the two nations of Israel and the Arabs, specifically with Edom which Esau represents. Edom, (Idumea) was a country in the SE section around Mount Seir and was a mountainous area with fertile land.  It is south of the Dead Sea and bordered on the Red SEa at Elat and Ezion Geber.  They were hunters.   So already back when Moses wrote this, he was told, as it came to him through G-d, that there would be animosity between these 2 people and this is the explanation for it.   It's a true example of prophecy come true.

Jacob wound up out of fear of his twin's deadly hatred,  having to leave his homestead and go to his uncle Laban in Haran where he married his cousins  Leah. and then Rachel, his true love.    Later he had sons by their handmaids, Bilhah and Zilpah;  just like Abraham had done with Hagar.

I see that our 12 Tribes of Jacob were made up of 12 sons originally who had an assortment of genes, both from their father and from their assorted mothers.

We have found that both many of the Arabs and the Jews have the haplogroup J1c3d in their genetic makeup.  Scientists can see which is the branch of Arabs and which is of the Jews.  As in the past, we are still having a terrible time seeing eye to eye on situations other than there is but one G-d.  We're still as different as Esau and Jacob in our outlooks.  The world will turn on its heels when we finally really unite as one .

Resource: Tanakh, Genesis
New Jewish Encyclopedia
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/05/discord-in-abrahams-tent-over-control.html
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/10/inheritance-of-jacobs-birthright-to-whom.html