3 Israeli Teens Missing, Presumed Kidnapped

[ScottL]

Kidnapped? Three Jewish Teens Disappear near Hebron in West Bank

By Paul Goldman TEL AVIV - Israeli soldiers were searching the West Bank on Friday after three Jewish teens — one of them an American citizen — vanished in a possible kidnapping.
An Israel police spokesman said one of the teens called authorities to say they had been abducted but did not provide further details, The Associated Press reported. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Israel Defense Forces told NBC News that they were building roadblocks on the road from Israel to Gaza with the idea that's where the teens might be taken if they were abducted.

“We are concentrating all of our intelligence efforts on trying to track down the missing individuals," IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Moti Almoz said in a statement.

The three youths attended a religious school. They were last seen late Thursday near the Jewish settlement of Gush Etzion, which is north of Hebron in the disputed West Bank.

One has U.S. citizenship, NBC News has learned.

Secretary of State John Kerry spoke with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the situation, according to a senior State Department official.
"We've seen the reports and are very concerned for their well-being," the official said.

"We are working with the government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to try to ensure that the situation is resolved quickly and that the three teenagers are safely reunited with their families," the official added. "We are giving this security cooperation our full encouragement."

Netanyahu's office said he told Kerry that the Palestinian Authority must be held responsible for the safety of the missing trio.

Adnan al-Dmairi, a spokesman for Palestinian security services in the West Bank, told Reuters the authority had "no knowledge" about the teens' disappearance.

"Three settlers are missing. Why is this the fault of the Palestinian Authority? We have nothing to do with this issue. If a natural disaster hits Israel, would we be responsible? This is mad and unacceptable,'' he said.
Israel Chief Rabbi David Lau said he spoke with family members of the missing students and "heard from them words of hope and prayer."

"I told them that the Israel people are embracing them and this fact is strengthening them. I'm praying that they receive good news over the course of the Sabbath," Lau said.

HAZEM BADER / AFP - Getty Images
Israeli soldiers secure the area around a burnt car reportedly connected to the disappearance of three Israeli teen settlers in the West Bank town of Hebron. NBC News' Catherine Chomiak contributed to this report.

 

[ScottL]

Op-Ed: "Someone Who is Out to Kill You" - Phyllis Chesler

First, some facts on the ground. Then, a brief Talmudic discussion of how civilized peoples are supposed to deal with someone who is “coming to kill you.”

Here’s what Israel just did: Last night, the IDF went door to door in cities in the 'West Bank' and confiscated a huge cache of weapons. Photos and a video show what they found in Nablus/Shechem, a city that has an ancient Jewish Biblical-era history. It is now a city ready for battle.

Here’s what members of the local Palestinian Arab community did: They posted anti-Jewish cartoons and posed their children giving three fingered salutes—one finger for each captured “Shalit.” And they baked cakes celebrating the kidnapping.

Here’s how Hamas sounded: Their spokesman, Mushir al-Masri, “warned the Zionists against committing any more stupidities, including their violations of international laws by their arresting of the Parliament speaker.” As of yesterday, Israel had arrested over 150 Palestinians, including the Hamas representatives in the newly formed Palestinian Unity Government. Al-Masri continued: “The resistance is the only route to freeing the (Palestinian) prisoners.” He said that he did not believe that the “lives of the three Israeli teens are actually worth “those of the 5,000 prisoners.”

Of course, Hamas officials also condemned Abbas for agreeing to help Israel look for its captives—and demanded that he instead “declare Jihad against the Zionists.”

What else did Israel do? The authorities cancelled visiting privileges for all Palestinian terrorist prisoners who, unlike the Israeli captives, have access to excellent medical care, other prisoners and visitors, literacy and university educations, exercise, prayer sites, and entertainment. According to Noam Shalit, Hamas kept his son, Gilad, in the dark and in isolation for five years. The Red Cross was not allowed to visit him. These privileges that Palestinian prisoners routinely enjoy will be returned when the three kidnapped boys are returned.

Israeli authorities are also considering re-incarcerating those terrorists whom they swapped out for Gilad Shalit as a dis-incentive to use kidnapping as a way of freeing terrorists with blood on their hands. Naturally, the Israeli left-wing media has condemned such measures and ideas. The Israeli Cabinet also discussed the possibility of declaring “null and void the 2011 deal which freed a thousand convicted Palestinian terrorists, including murderers, in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the soldier Hamas held hostage for five years.”

But mainly, here is what Israel has done: Both Israelis and Jews have surrounded the families of the kidnapped boys with prayers, love, food, support, and continue to stand vigil with them.

And, in response to rockets from Gaza, the IAF destroyed terrorist weapons storage targets in Gaza.

Here’s what Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah did: They froze the salaries of at least 40 Hamas members. Abbas et al are, perhaps, considering dismantling their unity pact with Hamas.

Here’s what Egypt has done: El Sisi’s Egypt assisting Israel in the search for the kidnapped boys. Egyptians are "destroying tunnels under its border with the Gaza Strip that could be used to smuggle them out." This was reported in Ha’aretz, but neither the Israelis or Egyptians would comment on this officially

Otherwise, the Arab media, both in English and Arabic, continue to refer to the Israeli captives as “settlers,” not as human beings or teenagers or civilians.

Here’s what the European Union (EU) has done: It remained absolutely silent for five days, but after PM Netanyahu “criticized” this, Chief European Foreign Policy Representative Catherine Ashton finally condemned the kidnapping. Please recall: Ashton was the diplomat who presided over the infamous Durban conference at which Jew-haters were allowed to run amuck in the name of “anti-racism.” However, she has still called upon both sides to play nicely—as if the Israeli civilian victims are morally equivalent to the Palestinian terrorists.

Here’s what the United States has done: Early on, American Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the kidnapping. President Obama has said nothing. It seems he might be considering an alliance with Iran against the Sunni Islamists in Iraq. One cannot make this up.

For millennia, Jews have been persecuted, exploited, and massacred in every country in which they once lived in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and central Asia. Since the early twentieth century, Jews have been massacred and attacked in the Holy Land by Arabs and, from 1948 on, subsequently attacked by Arab armies and Arab-funded anti-Zionist propaganda. Palestinians and Islamist Jihadists also attacked Israeli and Jewish people and sites in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, India, Africa, and the Far East by bombing Jewish centers, stabbing and shooting Jews, blowing up synagogues, etc. That’s only the Sunni Muslims. Iran, a country run by Shiite Muslims, has been calling for a genocidal war against the Jewish state ever since Khomeini took over.
These facts are in evidence.

How, then, should the Jews and the Jewish state respond?

I have been reading a very informative book by Rabbi D.B. Ganz titled Uncommon Sense: Solutions to Modern Political and Social Challenges Based on Ancient Jewish Wisdom (The Talmud). In the Biblical ook of Samuel (the prophet), King Saul’s unilateral decision to “act with compassion when the cruelty of execution was appropriate, (later led to) a great deal of cruelty.”

Rabbi Ganz gives a number of examples to illustrate this problem but then goes further. In the Talmud (tractate Shavuos 39a), the question is raised as to whether the family of someone who sins (a robber, a rapist, an idol worshipper, etc.) is also responsible for those sins and/or should also be held morally or criminally liable.

Rabbi Ganz then discussed what we might call the “bystander” or “collaborator” phenomenon. If relatives, friends, neighbors, and people in general know that such crimes are going on but do nothing to stop them—including turning in the wrong-doer; if presumably “good” men (and women) do nothing, then they, too, are empowering evil to flourish in the world. So said Edmund Burke. Rabbi Ganz writes: “Despots also require the cooperation of the army, police force, and government bureaucracies.

As such, the morals of the leader can only stray so far from the morals of the general populace. If so, when a country’s government commits well-publicized murderous acts, it is all but certain that the underlying lack of ethics was largely shared by the people of the country and their (the despot or sinner’s) families. This makes them complicit, despite not having participating in the actual wrongdoing.”

What Rabbi Ganz, his revered teacher, and their interpretation of the Talmud are saying is this: “The civilians in whose midst terrorists reside share the responsibility for their murders… and if so, the Talmudic advice, 'If one is coming to kill you, rise up and kill him' (in self-defense) applies to those civilians as well.”

Listen carefully. If one is “coming” to kill you—even if they have not yet arrived… self-defense is in order.
As we know from all the blaring headlines, social media, United Nations resolutions, and BDS campaigns (to name only a few ), the terrorists have the support of their people, their police, their leaders—and a serious global cheering squad.

I decided to ask a friend and colleague, Israeli-American Dr. Richard Landes, about his thoughts and feelings on Day Five. He said:
It is all painful and personal. Everyone knows someone who knows these boys.

One also feels helplessness in the face of this kind of mean hatred. Then, frustration, at seeing the rest of the world (New York Times, Hillary Clinton), blame us for, in trying to get (the boys back), harming the (non-existent) peace process. (This is hard) especially when they do nothing to help.

What should Israel do? Use this as a chance to really hit 'West-Bank' Hamas infrastructure hard, and press the PA to behave like mensches (decent people) and pull out of the disastrous for peace Unity Government that they engaged in recently. Good luck with that.

Perhaps we should also turn to the Talmud and consider what is says about What Must Be Done.

 

[ScottL]

Pro-kidnapping salute gains steam on Palestinian, Arab social media

Even as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the kidnapping last week of three Israeli teens, and his security forces assist the Israeli army in its efforts to retrieve them, popular support for the abduction has continued to proliferate on Palestinian social media.

The “three Shalits” hashtag emerged online almost as quickly as #BringBackOurBoys, with Palestinians posting photos of themselves signaling a three-fingered victory sign, sometimes writing the words “three Shalits” in pen on their hands.

The new victory sign has quickly become a symbol of Palestinian defiance as the IDF expands its campaign across the West Bank.

Al-Quds, a Palestinian news agency, published an article on Wednesday describing the creative ways in which Arabs are celebrating the campaign through personal photographs, shaping the words out of string beans, or even carving them on a Libyan beach.

“The campaign has raised the slogan ‘three Shalits’ in support of capturing Israeli occupation soldiers and exchanging them for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails,” the article read. “While containing Palestinian messages, the campaign has spread to include Arab countries, as well as Arab and Palestinian ex-patriots the world over.”

On Twitter, one commenter wrote: “We don’t know anymore if the Hebronites really kidnapped the three Israelis or whether this is an Israeli lie. Hopefully it’s true.” Another wrote: “The people of Hebron could hide a shekel and no one but God would know where it is. All the more so three settler dogs.”

The new salute is reminiscent of the four-finger hand gesture used by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt following the ouster of president Mohammed Morsi last June, known as the Rabia sign.

Music is also being used to express Palestinian satisfaction over the abduction. A humorous clip titled “the capture of Shalits” by Abdul Rahman Al-Qaryouti was uploaded to YouTube on Monday, garnering over 7,000 views.

“Once we used to have a Shalit, now we have a handful of Shalits,” go the lyrics. “The Zionist in the West Bank is completely lost… Our heroes stepped on his soldiers. Victory is coming, O prisoners, salvation is coming, O prisoners.”

Some websites, however, have posted photos of ostensible pro-kidnap salutes that predate the kidnapping and/or are not related to the kidnapping. This widely circulated Facebook post, for instance, was initially posted on January 15, 2014.

The popular campaigns are the result of “an emotional impulse more than a rational one,” said Ramallah-based political scientist Sameeh Hamoudeh of Bir Zeit University.

“There’s a general sense that Israel only responds to force and that no [political] solution can be reached on the prisoners,” he told The Times of Israel, referring to Palestinian administrative detainees in Israeli prisons. “It stems from frustration with the Netanyahu government and its rejectionism concerning the prisoners, especially following his refusal to release the last batch of Palestinian prisoners [as part of the peace talks with Israel].”

 

[ScottL]

Palestinian sick culture of Jew hate

 

[Coldweather]

I think the people who took them are very bad and America should help find them and kill the bad

people who took them. I hope they get back home soon!

 

[ScottL]

PALESTINIAN DISEASED CULTURE OF JEW HATE:

Hamas Groups Run Brutal Summer Camps for Palestinian Kids (News.com-Australia)
Thousands of Palestinian kids are taking part in semi-military summer camps organized by Hamas in Gaza.
Pictures from inside these camps show children climbing bars above open flames.
The children also learn to shoot with a Kalashnikov rifle and anti-tank weapons.

Inside the Summer Camp for Child Terrorists (New York Post)

 

[ScottL]

Palestinian Children Celebrate the Kidnapping of Other Children - Ilya Meyer (Times of Israel)

Hamas is holding three Jewish teens whose sole crime is that they are Jewish.
Palestinian Arab society has so brainwashed its own children that they celebrate the kidnapping of other children.
What peace can there be with a society whose future leaders are today being taught that kidnapping children is a cause for celebration?

 

[ScottL]

Good vs Evil: Israeli Intel Exec Pioneers Hi-Tech with Palestinians. His Nephew, a U.S. Citizen, Is Abducted by Terrorists - Richard Behar (Forbes)
Last year I published a Forbes magazine cover story about Israeli-Palestinian joint ventures in high-tech, and had interviewed Yishai Fraenkel, general manager of the design and development center at Intel's headquarters in Jerusalem.
Intel - the world's #1 chipmaker - is Israel's largest private employer (9,855), as well as the country's largest-single industrial exporter ($3.8 billion).
When I spoke to him by phone on Thursday, I had just learned that his 16-year-old nephew Naftali - a dual Israeli-American citizen - was one of the three Israeli boys kidnapped a week before on his way home from school.

 

[superbeets]

[h=1]Israel launches airstrikes on a dozen Hamas sites in Gaza after factory is destroyed by Palestinian bombs[/h]

• Israeli military claims to have hit 12 sites connected to Islamic militants
• Attacks came hours after a paint factory in Sderot was hit by two bombs
• Tensions are high in the wake of Israeli teenagers' kidnapping

 

[superbeets]

Israel today carried out bombing raids on the Gaza Strip in revenge for a rocket attack on a factory by Islamic militants Hamas.
The country's foreign minister also suggested it might be necessary to re-occupy the territory in a bid to stop the continuous low-level attacks from Palestinian militias.
The latest airstrikes come at a time of high tensions in the region, after three Israeli teenagers were apparently kidnapped by Hamas.

Strike: A fireball shown rising from a site in the Gaza Strip after a bombing campaign by Israel

Target: The Israeli military claimed to have bombed a dozen sites linked to militant Islamists

This month alone, there have been 60 rockets fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip and 80 strikes on Gaza by the Israeli military, according to officials from the two territories.
Yesterday evening, a paint factory in the border town of Sderot was hit by two rockets fired from Gaza, setting it alight.

 

[superbeets]

Israel retaliated early this morning, targeting 12 sites in Gaza believed to be linked to militant activity.
Among the targets of the airstrikes were weapons factories and concealed rocket launchers, according to Israeli officials.

Dramatic: The sites hit apparently including weapons factories and concealed rocket launchers

Aftermath: A Palestinian militant inspects the damage today after the Israeli airstrikes

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet today: 'Over the weekend, the Israel Defense Forces attacked multiple targets in response to firing at Israel from the Gaza Strip.
'We are ready to expand this operation, if necessary.'
However, hardline foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman suggested that small-scale operations in Gaza might make Hamas stronger and that the only way to pacify the territory would be to occupy it again.
'The alternative is clear,' he said on Army Radio. 'Either with each round we attack terror infrastructure and they shoot, or we go to full occupation.'

Revenge: Israel's airstrikes came after a paint factory in the town of Sderot was hit by rockets from Gaza

Destruction: The factory saw much of its supply rendered unusable after the rocket attack

 

[superbeets]

Israel withdrew unilaterally from the Gaza Strip in 2005, but it has since become a haven for Hamas and a flashpoint for violence.
Earlier this month, tensions between Israel and the Palestinians increased when three boys were kidnapped from the West Bank settlement where they live.
Troops have been combing Palestinian neighbourhoods aggressively in an attempt to find the teenagers.

 

[ScottL]

Bodies Found :-(

 

[ScottL]

When you kill my child soldiers, it's your fault. When I kill your babies lying in their cribs, it's your fault. #PalLogic

 

[ScottL]

KILL THE JEWS! KILL THE JEWS! KILL THE JEWS! KILL THE JEWS!.... Settlements are the obstacle to peace. #ShitPalestiniansSay

 

[ScottL]

This recent ISIS violence is so tragic. No one is paying enough attention to me because of it! #ShitPalestiniansSay

 

[ScottL]

ISIS Flags Seen in Gaza (Algemeiner)
Mourners in Gaza were seen carrying black flags of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terror group at a funeral on Sunday for one of two terrorists Israel targeted in an airstrike on Friday, Ma'ariv reported.
The IDF said the two were behind volleys of rockets fired into Israel over the last two weeks, and belonged to the Salah e-Din Brigades of the Popular Front.

 

[Coldweather]

This be very bad. I think Hezbollah is responsible and Israel should should stop posturing and blow stuff

up. JUST MY OPINION on this here killing!

 

[superbeets]

Israel's Shin Bet security service earlier said the main suspects in the case were two men named Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisheh and that they were "Hamas operatives".

 

[superbeets]

Analysis: Yolande Knell, BBC News, JerusalemThis site where the teenagers' bodies were found is just 10 minutes' drive from where the young Israelis were last seen two-and-a-half weeks ago.

Halhul is a turnoff from Route 60 - a busy road connecting the southern West Bank with Jerusalem. I watched Israeli soldiers operate a roadblock at this junction in the first days of their search.

Israeli officials accuse the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas of killing the young Israelis. There are now calls for the group to be "eradicated".

These deaths are a tragedy for the families of the Israeli students, but they could also have deep political implications.