Category: Terror

Palestinian Terrorism and its Tragedies

5/3/2016

A scene from St. Sgt. Tuvia Yanai Weissman funeral, murdered by a Palestinian terrorist while grocery shopping.

The Edith “Pat” Wolfson Endowment was created in 2005 to provide financial assistance to children in Israel who have lost at least one of their parents. Since the program’s inception, I have made it a priority to carefully consider, with lay input, who the recipient will be each year and personally deliver the check to the child’s guardian.

By all accounts it would have been easier—both on my schedule and emotions—to send the check along with a letter of explanation or to simply make a deposit of the modest sum directly into the guardian’s account. But, from the outset, I felt that doing so would be a path for the fainthearted, an abdication of professional integrity and would conveniently avert an opportunity to make a personal and organizational connection with Israelis who have suffered tremendous loss.

"Nearly all of the 10 [Wolfson Endowment] presentations have been made to victims of Palestinian terrorism, and not one of the encounters, usually in their living rooms, was an easy experience"

St. Sgt. Tuvia Yanai Weissman

Nearly all of the 10 presentations have been made to victims of Palestinian terrorism, and not one of the encounters, usually in their living rooms, was an easy experience. The process begins with a cautious telephone call to broach our intention to make the grant (at least one guardian refused our largess) and set a meeting to hand over the grant check. I made the latest, particularly heartbreaking presentation, last week just before the Passover holiday to Yael Weissman for the benefit of her 7-month old daughter, Neta. Their husband and father, St. Sgt. Tuvia Yanai Weissman (21), was murdered on Thursday, Feb. 18, while trying to protect them and other shoppers from two 14-year old, knife-wielding Palestinian terrorists at the Rami Levy supermarket at Sha’ar Binyamin.

Weissman—a combat sergeant in the IDF’s Nahal Brigade, was on a week-long leave, shopping for the upcoming Shabbat with Yael and Neta when he heard screams from a different aisle. Realizing immediately that a terrorist attack was in progress, Weissman, unarmed, ran to confront the terrorists as other shoppers fled. He was the first to reach the terrorists who had begun their stabbing spree but he was the only victim to die of his wounds. I made the drive to the secluded Binyamin settlement of Ma’aleh Michmas in the quiet, late morning—the Judean Hills were vibrant in the spring sun. With Neta—a sweet, calm, playful infant—embraced in her arms and Yael's older sister, who had just undergone an operation to remove a grown from her head' in the kitchen, Yael told me that she and Yanai were childhood sweethearts who grew up in Michmas, married, and made their home there near both sets of parents. A witness herself to the attack, she vividly remembers every detail as it unfolded. The investigation confirmed that the death toll would have been much higher had Yanai not bravely confronted the terrorists barehanded. She was overwhelmed with the expression of support for her and Neta by B’nai B’rith and other organizations and individuals.

The hardest part of this and my other encounters with these bereaved families is bringing the meeting to an end and continuing with my day’s work, knowing that that while perhaps momentarily buoyed by the expression of care and concern by a major international Jewish organization, I would rejoin my hectic reality while the victims will need to spend a lifetime confronting their loss.

This was the case with previous years' recipients. Laren Sayif’s father, Druze Police Sgt. Zidan Sayif, was killed in November 2014 as he confronted two Palestinian terrorists who were engaging in a gruesome knife and meat cleaver attack on worshipers at the Kehilat B’nai Torah synagogue in Har Nof, Jerusalem. That attack left 24 children without their fathers and, in recognition of the scope of the tragedy, B’nai B’rith used the B’nai B’rith International Emergency Fund to make an exceptional second grant that year to the four children of one of the four victims, Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky, Chief Warrant Officer Kasahun Baynesian, 39, of Netivot, served in the Northern Brigade of the Gaza Division and was killed during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, along with three other soldiers, when his military jeep was hit with an anti-tank missile fired by a Gazan terrorist squad, which used a cross-border tunnel to infiltrate southern Israel on July 17. He left behind four children—the youngest born after his death. Yossi Shushan was killed on Augusut 20, 2011 by a Grad rocket fired from Gaza and left behind three children. Udi and Ruth Fogel who were murdered, along with three children, in their beds in the settlement of Itamar on Friday night, March 11, 2011. They left three surviving children. These heartbreaking stories repeat themselves for all of the ten victims whose orphans the fund has touched over the years.

The Edith “Pat” Wolfson Endowment Fund has become an expression of caring for the victims of some of the worst terrorist atrocities that have left orphans over the last decade. The B’nai B’rith World Center will continue to execute this difficult and humbling task while seeking ways to maintain a meaningful relationship with those we have touched.

The B’nai B’rith World Center has administered the Edith “Pat” Wolfson Endowment Fund for Israeli Youth since its inception in 2005, with Schneider personally presenting the grant to the orphan’s surviving parent or legal guardian each year. The fund supports Israeli youth orphaned by war or terrorism.

Alan Schneider is the director of B’nai B’rith World Center in Jerusalem, which serves as the hub of B'nai B'rith International activities in Israel. The World Center is the key link between Israel and B'nai B'rith members and supporters around the world. To view some of his additional content, Click Here.

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Letter To USA Today On Palestinian Narrative vs. Presenting Facts

10/19/2015

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Daniel Mariaschin

Biased media coverage of the murderous attacks against Jews in Israel continues.

B’nai B’rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin sent the following letter to USA Today, including to the Standards Editor:

Letter to CNN about deeply biased coverage in Attacks on jews in Israel

10/15/2015

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Daniel S. Mariaschin

B’nai B’rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin wrote to CNN’s vice president of News Standards and Practices to point out deeply flawed and biased reporting in its recent coverage of the Palestinian attacks on Jews in Israel.

Read the letter here:

The report “New security measures considered amid continuing violence in Israel” goes through highly preposterous contortions to avoid using the word “terrorists” to describe the Palestinian perpetrators in the wave of murderous attacks on Jews.

The use of the nebulous “violence” to characterize the shootings, car attacks and knifings of Jews in recent days maliciously mischaracterizes the situation by omitting who is perpetrating these deadly attacks—Palestinians. And omitting who the victims are—Israelis.

The report states: “And neither side appears willing to back down.”

How are Israelis supposed to back down when the Palestinian government is openly and successfully inciting these unprovoked attacks across Israel? Where is the examination of this incitement?

This attempt at equalism is extremely offensive. The reporters’ transparent effort to protect the Palestinian terrorists is suspect throughout, including in this summary: “…one person died and eight were injured when a man drove into a bus stop, ran over three people, then get out of his car and began stabbing people.”

In just calling him a “man” the report blindly adheres to the Palestinian narrative. The “man” was a Palestinian, and the people he attacked were Jews. Why is that not in the story?

CNN’s incomplete and irresponsible reporting ignores the facts on the ground.

Why & How B’nai B’rith Advocates at the U.N. General Assembly

10/9/2015

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Oren Drori

As another year’s U.N. General Assembly’s General Debate session has recently wrapped up, B’nai B’rith has concluded our annual round of meetings with presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers at the sidelines of the UNGA session.

This week of meetings gives B’nai B’rith leadership access to world leaders and an opportunity to engage in advocacy on core issues of importance to B’nai B’rith, most critically: the safety and security of Israel and the Jewish people throughout the world, and our concerns about the Iranian nuclear deal and Iran’s continued support for terrorism.

In addition to meetings that B’nai B’rith requests on our own, B’nai B’rith also has the privilege of coordinating a number of Jewish organizations seeking joint UNGA meetings. B’nai B’rith is able to do so because of a number of factors.

First, B’nai B’rith has a long-standing position as the only Jewish organization with a full-time office dedicated solely to U.N. affairs, which allows us the opportunities to engage year-round with the diplomats in New York who arrange the meetings and the schedules for the visiting dignitaries.

Second, B’nai B’rith is headquartered in Washington, D.C., an important diplomatic post for all countries, whose diplomats are usually close to the presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers in their capitals. Third, B’nai B’rith has a wide reach, as an organization with members and supporters around the world who can follow up on requests in their home countries.

The importance of these meetings cannot be understated. It is an indispensible component of B’nai B’rith’s U.N. work each year. These meetings offer B’nai B’rith leaders a chance, in some cases the only chance for that year, to engage directly with the leadership of many countries, and in a rather short period of time.

These meetings may not always produce tangible effects because we are a non-governmental organization (NGO), not a state. So, we cannot sign trade agreements or defense deals. Our role is to hold these governments to account, to advocate for the issues of top concern to the members of our organization and to engage in constructive dialogue with the leaders of states large and small.

Often, those issues include the threat posed to Israel, the Middle East and the world-at-large by Iran; terrorism; unilateral Palestinian actions that damage prospects for peace; and the ever-present and growing danger of anti-Semitism. Sometimes the discussion topics are more locally-focused, such as Holocaust-era restitution negotiations in countries that have not adequately addressed this issue.

Regardless of whether the meeting is friendly or business-like or even tense, though, each meeting has value, for B’nai B’rith and for our partners on the other side of the table. Our interlocutors do not necessarily always agree with our positions, but both sides benefit from the exchange of views.

Each September, appropriately, usually at the dawn of a new year on the Jewish calendar, B’nai B’rith reaches out to the world to engage in respectful and meaningful dialogue on pressing issues that confront the nations. And, once September passes, B’nai B’rith’s efforts to engage diplomatically continues throughout the year in New York, Washington and many other locations throughout the world.

A look At Nebi Salah & Israel's response to growing Palestinian violence

10/8/2015

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Alan Schneider

For anyone who has served in the Israeli army or who has children in active service, the viral video from an August 28 altercation between a lone Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier and a swarm of Palestinian women and children pummeling, clawing and biting him in an eventually successful effort to free 12-year-old Muhammad Tamimi—who he intended to arrest for throwing stones at troops—was emotionally wrenching.

Having just arrived that morning back to a sweltering Israel after a holiday in pleasantly cool Norway and pastoral Scotland, the images of this soldier left on his own for long minutes by his comrades as he tries to shake off the assailants—aided by some foreign instigators—while he is filmed from every possible angle by multiple still and video cameramen—left me with a sinking feeling.

This leads one to ask what can be done to better protect soldiers caught in this situation, and what best practices can be employed to counter such Palestinian-initiated, staged clashes, while unfriendly cameras are whirring and snapping away in a game of gotcha employed by much of the media covering the territories.

Indeed the staged—and therefore predictable—nature of the incident was recognized even by the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, two British newspapers that are quick to tar and feather Israel at every turn, usually without looking back, that were forced to change their initial critical headlines and even to remove the report entirely from their web site when it became clear that the soldiers' assailants are known provocateurs, particularly his teenage sister Ahed and their radical parents.

Some Israeli commentators such as Nachum Barnea in Yedioth/YNet used the incident to bemoan again the debilitating impact the "occupation" is having on the State of Israel and its young soldiers; others see an entirely different message in the images—that the fearlessness with which Palestinian women and children accost an Israeli soldier armed with an assault rifle proves that they know full well that even when being hit, wrestled to the ground and nearly disarmed, he will not use his weapon, debunking claims of widespread brutality.

A look at longer YouTube posts of the incident tells a more nuanced story, still undoubtedly partial and skewered: Nebi Salah, where the encounter took place, has been a focus of violent Palestinian demonstrations for a number of years. Fridays are their favorite days for instigators to drum up a few women and children, perhaps with the promise of monetary remuneration, to march down the short access road out of the village toward a spring over which the village and a nearby Jewish settlement, Halamish, have been feuding for years.

The video shows a handful of Palestinian young men using the children and women as cover as they target IDF troops in the distance using potentially injurious high-velocity slings. The troops respond with tear gas as the Palestinians use their slings also to throw the canisters back at the troops.

Eventually, the troops advance uphill on the group when the 12-year old is caught by the soldier. These are scenes that have repeated themselves almost every Friday (I was witness to one about three years ago), which have raised renewed calls to train and deploy for just these kinds of situations.

That incident at Nebi Salah seems to have been a teaser for what has snowballed in recent weeks into a significant spurt of Palestinian stone and Molotov cocktail throwing in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, resulting already in one death of innocent Israeli motorist Alexander Levlovitz in Jerusalem, injury to a woman whose car overturned in Samaria and damage to cars, buses, train carriages and homes.

A flashpoint of the disturbances is the Temple Mount where both the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas have been agitating for violence in an apparent attempt to disrupt Rosh Hashanah and traditional Jewish mass pilgrimage to the Western Wall during the Jewish High Holidays and to revive attention to the Palestinian issue that has been overshadowed by events in Syria and the European refugee crisis.

Just weeks ago, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas called for violence by praising 'martyrs' spilling blood in Jerusalem to prevent Jews from entering the Temple Mount, saying, "the Al-Aqsa is ours...and they (Jews) have no right to defile it with their filthy feet." Israeli officials have reportedly blamed Turkey for hosting senior Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri who is responsible for remotely organizing terrorist attacks and funding the organization's incitement of Palestinian youth to attack Israelis.

Granted the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, has been the focus of much more Jewish interest in recent years, stoking general Muslim hysteria going back nearly a century about imaginary Jewish plots to undermine the mosques there. But this is a poor excuse.

In recent comments, Minister of Internal Security Gilad Erdan has accused Islamic rioters of barricading themselves in the Al Aqsa Mosque and turning Temple Mount into a "terror warehouse," stockpiled with makeshift bombs and rocks to use on police and Jewish worshipers in the Western Wall plaza below. He vowed to meticulously maintain the status quo under which all those who wish to visit Temple Mount will be allowed to do so.

In a rare emergency Friday meeting a few weeks ago, the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee authorized the call-up of 10,000 reserve Border Policemen in order to quell the violence. Other measures that are being considered are imposing a 100,000 NIS bond on the parents of all minors convicted of stone throwing that will be returned only if the child commits no further offenses for a year, reintroduction of the less-lethal Ruger small caliber gun for use by security forces and tighter restrictions on entry onto the mount by Palestinian agitators and lawbreakers. Recent restrictions, that permitted only men over 40 to enter, seem to have worked the trick and the crowd dispersed without incident after noon prayers.

True to form, Arab countries, even those Israel maintains close diplomatic relations with—Egypt and Jordan—and those who, it was thought, might be silent allies in the future against their common enemy Iran—were quick to join the choir condemning only Israel.

The U.N. Security Council played into this attitude the week before last, passing a unanimous statement that failed even to mention Palestinian violence and referred to the Temple Mount only by its Arabic name. Israel’s United Nations Ambassor Ron Prosor reacted aptly to the Security Council statement saying that “When the Palestinians set the Temple Mount ablaze, Mahmoud Abbas fuels the fire, and the Security Council fans the flames, it is a recipe for a regional explosion.”

The coming days will tell whether the measures instituted by the Israeli government will quell the unrest that put a general damper on the Jewish High Holiday spirit and caused untold pain to the family of Alexander Levlovitz, and other injured Israelis. Short of a miracle, the only choice left to Prime Minister Netanyahu is to meticulously uphold the status quo that allows Muslims to pray and non-Muslims to visit what is potentially the most explosive site in the world, bar none.

Just in recent days, a drive by shooting killed two young parents in front of their four children. In another attack, two Jewish men were murdered by Palestinian terrorists and a teenager was seriously wounded. With Palestinian terror attacks on the rise, Israel’s military needs to ensure it has appropriate responses in place.