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(YouTube Video from Rabbi Jeremy Fine, giving sermon about recent conflict in Israel) https://rabbijeremyfine.com/about/ https://youtu.be/W8DCdQ9U40c

by Sharon Wrobel A study of the first two days of the recent clashes between Israel and Hamas showed that more than 70% of the casualties caused by Israeli airstrikes were militant operatives, and that 21% of the total deaths on those days were caused by errant Hamas rockets. The preliminary study, released on Friday by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), analyzed the names and identities of 74 Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip between May 10 and May 12, based on death notices by various Palestinian sources, including Hamas. The group’s breakdown of the casualties showed that 16 died as a result of errant rockets that were fired by Hamas but which landed in Gaza. Those deaths included two Fatah operatives, seven people with unknown civilian-combatant status, and seven minors. Out of the remaining 58 deaths, which were caused by Israeli strikes, 42 were identified as terrorist activists; among the operatives were 30 Hamas militants, 8 Fatah operatives and 3 Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) operatives. The other 16 deaths included six people listed with unknown civilian-combatant status; nine women or minors; and one 67-year-old male civilian. The findings show that “out of those killed in Gaza on the first two days of the conflict as a result of Israeli attacks, about two thirds were terrorists and that many of the civilians who lost their lives in Gaza on those two days were hit by Palestinian fire. The full research is still ongoing,” Brig. Gen. (Res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, director of the ITIC, told The Algemeiner. Among the killed militants listed were Jamaa Tahla, head of Hamas’s cyber command; Jamal Zebeda, Hamas’ head of projects responsible for rocket development; Bassem Issa, Gaza City Brigade commander since 2017 and senior military official in the city; and Hazem Al-Khatib, head of Hamas’ engineering and production division. The study was released after Israel and Hamas agreed to a bilateral ceasefire on May 21, which put an end to 11 days of rocket fire and violence. During the operation, named Guardian of the Walls, which started on May 10, about 4,340 rockets were fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip toward Israel, with 640 of them falling within Gaza. In response, Israel struck a total of 1,600 military targets, including 340 rocket launchers and destroyed more than 60 miles of underground terror tunnels in the Gaza Strip. The hostilities claimed the lives of 12 Israelis, including one Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier. According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, about 250 Palestinians were killed as a result of Israeli attacks. The Gaza ministry does not provide specifics beyond selective information on the number of dead women and children, and does not distinguish between civilians and combatants killed. “This time even fewer sources in the Gaza Strip (the Ministry of Health, and terrorist organizations) than in previous operations have made the deaths of terrorist operatives public. With the exception of senior activists on whose deaths official announcements were published on behalf of the militant groups to which they belonged,” the ITIC study found. “The Hamas administration is trying to create a false impression that the vast majority of those killed were uninvolved civilians. The Ministry of Health in Gaza emphasizes in announcements and in its publications the number of women, children and the elderly killed and unlike in the past it does not publish detailed lists that include the names of those killed. On social networks and Arab media channels a large number of killed terrorist operatives are listed as ‘civilians’ for the same reason.” The ITIC analysis is based on Palestinian sources, photographs, social media tributes, and official feeds of Palestinian groups. As an example, the study cited information by the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, which reported that at 6:10 p.m. on May 10, a shell hit the house of Attallah Almasri, in Beit Hanoun city, killing eight Palestinians, including six children, and injuring 18 more, of whom 10 were children. The Al Mezan Center did not attribute the incident to an Israeli air strike. On May 10, the clashes were triggered by Hamas firing rockets towards Jerusalem after a 6 p.m. “ultimatum” elapsed which had called for Israel to withdraw security forces from the Temple Mount and release Palestinian prisoners. An Israeli security official said that the deaths of civilians in Gaza shortly after the Jerusalem attacks were caused by failed Hamas rockets, occurring before Israel commenced retaliatory airstrikes against the terrorist group hours later. The ITIC said that due to the fact that the Israeli army used missiles during the hostilities rather than rockets or shells, it can be assumed that the May 10 attack can be attributed to terror organizations. According to Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid, at least 50 Palestinians died in Gaza as a result of failed rockets by Hamas and 150 fighters were killed during the 11 days of clashes. The Israeli army has estimated the death toll of militant operatives at 200. “In most of the statistics and reports by various sources including the Gaza Health Ministry and Palestinian NGOs or human rights groups they don’t distinguish in their casualties reports between civilians and fighters,” Eid told The Algemeiner. “They have their own agenda and it is not a humanitarian agenda. Not one Palestinian was reported to be killed by Gaza rockets by these sources.”

BY BEN SALES MAY 26, 20215:26 PM (JTA) — When actor Mark Ruffalo apologized on Monday for posts that “suggested Israel is committing ‘genocide,’” it wasn’t clear what comments of his own he was speaking about. But he drew attention to a loaded word that has leapt into public discourse in the past two weeks, during and after the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Accusations that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza have flown freely, from seasoned activists to the Palestinian foreign minister to people wading into the Israeli-Palestinian issue for the first time on social media. Tweets with the words “Israel” and “genocide” appeared as often as thousands of times per hour on Twitter during the 11-day conflict, in which more than 250 Palestinians and a dozen Israelis were killed. But even human rights lawyers who have been deeply critical of Israeli policy and actions in Gaza and the West Bank say the genocide term doesn’t apply. As some Palestinian advocates are newly making the case that Israeli policy in Gaza fits some definitions of genocide, Jewish and Israeli human rights lawyers across the political spectrum use words like “ridiculous” and “baseless” to describe the accusation. Israel’s policy “doesn’t even begin to meet the threshold of what genocide is, and I think it cheapens the very important and grave concept of genocide,” said Michael Sfard, a prominent Israeli human rights attorney who wrote a legal opinion last year arguing that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid in the West Bank. Meanwhile, some Jews say that hearing the country be accused of genocide feels like a special affront given its connection to the Holocaust, the Nazi genocide against Jews that gave rise to the term. “Specifically picking the crime the Jewish people have suffered, perhaps more than any other people in history, is not only to accuse us of a great crime but to negate our suffering as a people,” said Eugene Kontorovich, an international law scholar who has defended Israel’s wartime conduct. According to an analysis provided to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by the Network Contagion Research Institute, which studies the spread of hate online, tweets including the words “Israel” and “genocide” were posted hundreds of times per hour throughout the fighting. At one point on May 14, tweets with those two words were shared more than 2,000 times per hour. One tweet about “the ongoing Israeli genocide in Palestine” was shared more than 3,700 times. The genocide charge was far from the only criticism of Israel that went viral during this period. But it was perhaps the most extreme — and widely disputed. “First and foremost, in order to commit the crime of genocide, one needs to have an intention to exterminate, in whole or in part, a group,” Sfard said. “And in the 30 years of my activism and more than 20 years of litigation, I haven’t seen a shred of evidence that Israeli officials and decision makers hold such an intention.” According to the United Nations, “genocide” consists of “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” That can include killing members of the group, inflicting serious bodily harm on them, preventing births, forcibly transferring their children or creating “conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Some Palestinian advocates say that definition applies in Gaza. Noura Erakat, a human rights lawyer and assistant professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University, wrote a Twitter thread to her 108,000 followers last week explaining why she believes Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians and trying “to eliminate their presence & destroy their nation.” “The whole world stays silent and turns a blind eye to the genocide of whole Palestinian families,” Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad Al-Maliki said at the United Nations last week. Israeli U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan walked out of Al-Maliki’s speech. Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American international human rights attorney, told JTA that she used to avoid describing Israeli actions as genocide because when she did, some people “will automatically just have this visceral reaction that shuts you out instead of actually listening to you” because the word is so strong and because, for Jews, it evokes the Holocaust. Now, however, she is reconsidering. Arraf said that given the ongoing Israeli oppression of Palestinians that she observes, the question of whether Israel is committing genocide deserves to be investigated. “I don’t think it’s a secret that Israel does not want the Palestinian people there,” she said. “The actions are so vicious and brutal that it’s almost wrong to shy away from calling it what it seems like it is now. It might cause some people to close it off or blow it off or become just defensive, but I’m not sure that that’s necessarily a sufficient reason to hold back from calling it what it looks like.” Pro-Palestinian activists have accused Israel of genocide before — and sparked backlash from Jewish groups and others. During the 2014 Gaza War, Steven Salaita, a Palestinian-American professor, lost a tenured position he had been hired for at the University of Illinois following a series of critical tweets about Israel, including one that said, “The word ‘genocide’ is more germane the more news we hear.” And in 2016, the Movement for Black Lives put out a detailed policy platform that condemned “the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.” The platform led a range of Jewish organizations to distance themselves from the larger Black Lives Matter movement, a loose network of which the Movement for Black Lives is one group. During the racial justice protests in 2020, hundreds of Jewish organizations, including some that had voiced criticism in 2016, signed a statement supporting Black Lives Matter. This month, the spike in genocide accusations comes amid a rise in antisemitism around the world. In the United States, according to the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic incidents rose 75% during the second week of the Israel-Gaza conflict compared to the week before it began. According to the ADL, the week starting May 17 saw 124 reported incidents of antisemitic harassment, vandalism or assault, compared to 68 two weeks earlier. The Secure Community Network, a Jewish security group, reported that antisemitism increased 80% in the past month. “Connecting invective that we’re seeing in online spaces to the real-world violence that we’ve seen is difficult to gauge,” said Oren Segal, the director of the ADL’s Center on Extremism. But, he added, “When you portray your opponents as those who are engaging in the worst types of crimes against a people, you’re going to create anger against those people you are accusing of doing that.” Sari Bashi, a human rights lawyer and prominent activist for the rights of Palestinians in Gaza, said Israel’s military conduct in Gaza was “wrong and unlawful” — but not genocide. (She also said that Hamas committed war crimes by firing rockets at Israeli civilian populations but not “terrorism,” politically motivated violence usually perpetrated outside the confines of an armed conflict.) Bashi said the increase in accusations of genocide is a function of people trying to find strong language to register their outrage at Israel’s actions in Gaza. “There’s a tendency for people to take words that are strong and to use them to describe actions they find objectionable, whether or not they fit,” she said. “I think people often throw around strong terms. I don’t think you hear international lawyers or human rights groups issuing reports analyzing why it’s genocide because it’s not.”

by Gene Trosper If you think the recent attacks on Israel was about land for peace, you are dead wrong. Israel was founded in 1948 and literally hours after Israel declared independence, all surrounding Arab nations attacked Israel with the goal of driving out the Jewish inhabitants. In fact, many of the Arabs living in Israel voluntarily left their homes, hoping they would return to a land free of Jewish presence. Of course, that didn't happen. Too many people focus on a timeline that begins with 1948, but when you go back before Israel's founding, numerous examples of genocidal behavior on the part of Arabs can be found, which destroys the popular narrative of poor, oppressed Palestinians who only want "their" land back. Try the 1834 looting of Safed. Just before the event took place, local Muslim cleric Muhammad Damoor said: "true believers would rise up in just wrath against the Jews, and despoil them of their gold and their silver and their jewels." Synagogues were burned, Jewish residents had everything stolen from them, and many were beaten, some to death. How about the 1929 Hebron massacre that saw 67 Jews killed in an unprovoked attack. Or maybe the 1938 Tiberias massacre which saw an Arab attack that resulted in 19 Jews killed, 11 of which were children? I can go on, but to continue the LIE that this is about land and NOT about genocidal Jew hatred is to be a party to evil.

DR. ALI AL NUAIMI , CHAIRMAN OF THE DEFENSE AFFAIRS, INTERIOR AND FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE OF THE UAE'S FEDERAL NATIONAL COUNCIL ON 6/7/21 AT 12:06 PM EDT https://www.newsweek.com/i-helped-broker-abraham-accords-its-time-free-palestinians-hamas-iran-opinion-1598198 Last August, we entered a new era: A 70-year stalemate was exchanged for an era of greater coexistence. The signing of the Abraham Accords between the United Arab Emirates and Israel that I helped broker was a bold, courageous move which promised to finally make progress where everything else had failed. After the recent conflict with Gaza, though, many thought the Abraham Accords was dead. Where was the promised peace, with rockets flying? To these skeptics, I would say, look at the bigger picture. The Abraham Accords are not about an Emirati and Israeli future but the whole region's future. The truth is, the Middle East conflict isn't between the Israelis and Palestinians but between Israel and Iran. Ask yourself who benefits from this conflict? The Palestinian people's rights and hopes have been hijacked by Hamas to serve an Iranian agenda. And it is against Iran's extremism that we must continue to fight. When the UAE leadership decided to move forward with the Abraham Accords, it was done with a strategic vision not only for the UAE but for the whole region. Skeptics thought the agreement was tied to the Trump administration, as if it might just fade away with the new administration. But there is no going back. We move forward with full speed and have already seen the added value of having such initiatives, not only for the UAE and Israel but for the whole region. Since the announcement of the Abraham Accords, we have seen that we can build bridges of trust and respect. We in the UAE had laid the foundations; we had already changed the education system and the narrative of the religious figures, readying our people for the path to peace. But it's not just about us. The people of the region are craving change, not least among them the Palestinian people, who are desperate for fresh leaders, leaders who can move beyond a rigid regime with an agenda that abuses the very people it rules. For this to happen, we also have to fight the war of propaganda—one that the Israelis lost in this last round of fighting between Israel and Hamas. I saw narratives coming from not only the Middle East but the West too, which represented a shift. One of the biggest errors in this narrative, which I saw repeated over and over in the media, was the way they speak about Gaza as if it's occupied by the Israelis. It's not: It's occupied by Hamas. And the Palestinian people in Gaza are suffering because of Hamas, not the Israelis. Unfortunately, though the propaganda of Hamas and Iran is not true, to the world, it is now dominant. Still, there is reason for hope. Twenty years ago, the Palestinian cause was priority number one in the region. Now, people in the Gulf see things differently. We still care. We still support support the Palestinians. We believe in the two-state solution. But people in the Gulf no longer believe that this should come at the expense of our national interest. Many activists responded to Hamas- and Jihad- influenced media and social media posts to say, we do care about the Palestinians—but we don't care about these terrorist organizations. What the public doesn't understand is who is behind so much of the media they read—who is funding this misguided narrative, which only serves to protect Hamas, and ultimately, Iran. This past conflict with Gaza should be the last war. We should all learn to speak one language: the language of peace. Now is the time to not just talk the talk, but for us all to walk the walk. Hamas and the Palestinian leadership have hijacked the minds of 2 million Palestinians to sell their political and terrorist agendas. We want the Palestinian people to enjoy what we enjoy, to have what we have and create a better future for a new generation. But we have to do this together, with all the stakeholders in the region, from NGOs to schools, religious leaders and governments. We cannot do this alone. Dr. Ali al Nuaimi is chairman of the Defense Affairs, Interior and Foreign Relations Committee of the UAE's Federal National Council, a representative legislature whose 40 members, half elected indirectly and half appointed, serve in an advisory role to the emirates' leadership.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/307095 https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/bill-maher-defends-israel-on-his-hbo-show-you-cant-learn-history-from-instagram Comedian Bill Maher hits back after Israel is accused of 'apartheid,' 'war crimes.' 'Hamas's charter just says they want to wipe out Israel.' https://youtu.be/qONHQ_ePIB4 https://youtu.be/4wFQB-oeKGs https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=306607757763548 https://youtu.be/YIbXJsgKU3Q Comedian Bill Maher REUTERS/Danny Moloshok "Real Time" host Bill Maher on Friday night defended Israel's actions during the recent Operation Guardian of the Walls, Fox News reported. "One of the frustrations I had while I was off is that I was watching this war go on in Israel … and it was frustrating to me because there was no one on liberal media to defend Israel, really," Maher, 65, said at a panel discussion. "We've become this country now that we're kind of one-sided on this issue. And I'd also like to say off the bat I don't think kids understand -- and when I say kids I mean the younger generations – you can't learn history from Instagram. "There's just not enough space." Responding to The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's claim that Israel committed "possible war crimes," Maher said: "Well, Gaza fired 4,000 rockets into Israel. What would you say Israel should have done instead of what they did?" Hamas, Maher pointed out, "purposely put the rockets in civilian places. That's their strategy." Maher also added that, "The Jews have been in that area of the world since about 1200 B.C., way before the first Muslim or Arab walked the earth." "I mean, Jerusalem was their capital. So if it's who got there first, it's not even close. The Jews were the ones who were occupied by everybody; the Romans took over at some point and then the Persians and the Byzantines and then the Ottomans. So yes, there was colonization going on there. Beginning in the 19th century, they started to return to Palestine, which was never an Arab country. There was never a country called Palestine that was a distinct Arab country." According to Fox News, Maher then pointed out that under the proposed 1947 plan, the Arabs would have had a "good part of the country," calling the Arabs "the people who rejected the half a loaf and continue to attack." "Hamas's charter says they just want to wipe out Israel. Their negotiation position is 'You all die.' The two-state solution has been on the table a number of times. There could be an Arab capital in East Jerusalem now if Yasser Arafat had accepted that in 2003. He did not. "I mean, they have rejected this and went to war time and time again," he emphasized, "And, you know, as far as Gaza goes, it's amazing to me that the progressives think that they're being progressive by taking that side of it, the Bella Hadids of the world, these influencers. "I just want to say in February of this year, a Hamas court ruled that a unmarried woman cannot travel in Gaza without the permission of a male guardian. Really? That's where the progressives are? Bella Hadid and her friends would run screaming to Tel Aviv if they had to live in Gaza for one day." Maher also noted that neither Britain nor Holland had any claim to South Africa, while in Israel the situation is different, Fox News said. "The Israelis, they have made mistakes, but it's an ‘apartheid’ state because they keep getting attacked! If they don't keep a tight lid on this s---, they get killed! That seems like something different!" he said.