Here’s a ‘guest’ essay. The original is from the website, abuyehuda: Vic Rosenthal, "Why don't we defend ourselves?", June 18, 2018. I've done some light editing.
“Great swaths of land in the Negev desert near the Gaza
strip, agricultural land and nature preserves formerly the habitats of numerous
endangered plant and animal species, have been reduced to ash and smoke by
Palestinian fire-kites and balloon-borne incendiary devices during the past few
weeks. The entire area is blackened with the smoke from fires that are being
set faster than Israeli firefighters can put them out.
Our powerful army dithers, ever pursuing its apparent goal
of fighting wars without hurting anyone. Today I understand that a car
belonging to one of the leaders of the bombing campaign was destroyed by an
“airstrike,” probably a drone-launched missile. The car was parked and empty.
That’ll teach him.
Israeli officials are afraid of the legal consequences of
taking effective action against those who are launching the kites and balloons.
They are afraid that they will be dragged into the International Criminal Court [if the army kills any of the “civilians” that are burning our country (even though Israel did not sign the treaty creating it and does not consider
itself bound by its decisions). Those under the age of 18 are counted as “children,”
and as you know, one of the themes of anti-IDF propaganda is the false claim
that we deliberately target children.
Purposely burning agricultural land is a war crime.
Attacking from heavily populated civilian areas and employing child soldiers
are war crimes. Hamas and PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) don’t care... Their whole strategic plan is to take advantage of the fact that Israel
considers herself bound by the laws of war, the Geneva Conventions and other
treaties, while they permit themselves to do anything that will kill Jews.
They don’t do it by themselves. They have help.
Israel is always required to fight an n+1...war, with n
representing the enemies that are shooting at us (Hamas, PIJ, Hezbollah, etc)...while the additional one is the international diplomatic and legal system,
led by our “friends” in the European Union.
In the past week, two Israeli communities in Judea and
Samaria have been partly demolished, because homes have been found to be built
on “private Palestinian land.” This means that – regardless of whether the land
was considered state land when the homes were built – a Palestinian claim,
sometimes not even by an individual owner, that the land was at one time used
for agricultural purposes by Palestinians, has been accepted by Israel’s
Supreme Court. The remedy is invariably that any structure that encroaches on
such land will be demolished in toto.
Recently, the Knesset passed a law (the “Regulation Law”)
that allows the state to financially compensate the Palestinian “owners” when
the land was not considered private at the time the structures were built,
instead of bulldozing the buildings (this can be tricky, since there usually
are no records that might prove ownership in the sense familiar to those living
in normal countries). This law didn’t apply in these cases, because the Supreme
Court had ordered the demolitions some months ago, before the law was passed.
The Court has now frozen the law awaiting its decision on various petitions
against it.
Naturally, our European friends and home-grown champions of
Palestinian rights were scandalized by this law. “It’s legalized land theft,”
they say. This is quite an exaggeration, since the law calls for the
Palestinians to be paid above-market value for the land, which they are not
using and may not have used for decades (if ever). Eminent domain proceedings
in the US, in which an owner can be evicted from property where he is living or
using for business, are far harsher. But my guess is that despite this, when the
Supreme Court rules on the petitions filed against it, they will overthrow the
law.
Now you may wonder who files these petitions, the ones
against the Regulation Law and the ones claiming that Israeli structures have
been built on “private Palestinian land.” The answer is that there is a whole
industry in Israel of “human rights” non-governmental organizations that
employs a battery of expensive and dedicated lawyers to fight the State of
Israel. Thanks to Israel’s extraordinary system in which any citizen may
petition the Supreme Court on almost any matter, regardless of whether he or
she is affected by it, left-wing groups like Peace Now, Yesh Din, and others
can and do involve themselves in these matters.
But who supports the organizations, pays their staffs and
their lawyers? Probably no more than a few percent of Israelis support what
most see as their extremist ideology. And yet left-wing NGOs are everywhere,
filming and trying to provoke IDF soldiers doing their duty, finding
Palestinians who will testify that their grandfathers worked the land on
such-and-such a hill where today an Israeli settlement stands, and filing
petition after petition in the Israeli courts, particularly the Supreme Court.
The money does not come from Israel. It doesn’t even come
from the Palestinians, whose leaders are happy to skim millions from the aid
they get from the US and Europe, primarily to live well or put into their Swiss
bank accounts. It comes, unsurprisingly, mostly from European governments,
where millions of Euros are funneled into organizations like Peace Now, Yesh
Din, B’tselem, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Breaking the Silence,
Adalah, and many others. Somewhat less important donors include the American
New Israel Fund and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
These foreign-funded NGOs are active in the Israeli and
international legal arenas, as well as the international propaganda campaign to
demonize and delegitimize the State of Israel. Some explicitly support BDS...
Today the NGO Monitor organization, which keeps track of
anti-Israel NGOs and their funding, released a report showing that the European
Union has given large grants (hundreds of thousands of Euros) to several NGOs
to press war crimes accusations against IDF officers and soldiers and other
Israeli officials in foreign courts. This sort of thing may in part explain the
timidity of the IDF to take effective action against the arsonists of Gaza.
While our Arab and Iranian enemies have had little success
in damaging our Jewish state with wars and terrorism, our European ones have
succeeded with their Euros to roll back settlement activities in Judea/Samaria,
resulting in the expulsion of Jews from their homes. They have fought tooth and
nail against our government’s efforts to deport illegal migrants, whom it
rightly considers a demographic and social threat. They have hamstrung the
IDF’s response to arson terrorism from Gaza, and turned the main concern of the
IDF from defeating our enemies to avoiding legal entanglements.
The message this sends to the terrorists of Hamas, the PLO,
and the PIJ is simple: you have a green light – the Jews are too weak to fight
back.
There are solutions to these problems. Two years ago, the
Knesset passed a relatively weak transparency law requiring some NGOs to report
contributions from foreign governments. It needs to be strengthened – in fact,
there is no reason for Israel to permit foreign governments to intervene in our
domestic affairs at all. Opponents will tell you, precisely inverting the truth,
that limiting the influence of foreign-funded NGOs is “anti-democratic,” as if
democracy requires subverting the will of Israeli voters! But there is only one
reason that such legislation is opposed in the Knesset, and that is because
some members are themselves treasonously sucking at the European teat. That has
to stop.
The Supreme Court has far too much power and zero
accountability. No other democratic country has such a situation. The balance
of power between the branches of government must be restored.
The other necessary change is a change of attitude. The more
Israel refrains from self-defense because of fear of the legal consequences,
the more she will be threatened with such consequences.
The cycle must be
broken, both because it prevents us from acting and because it broadcasts
weakness to our enemies. The arson kites need to be met with deadly force, not
endless debate. Jewish residents of the territories should have at least equal
rights as Arabs, and not be evicted from their homes as a result of legal
catch-22s. Illegal migrants should be deported…
The legal and diplomatic decks are stacked against us today,
partly because of our own actions. We need to get over it and defend ourselves.”[all emphasis is mine].
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