FLAME.HOTLINE.

April 3, 2018

Palestinian assaults on Israel’s border provide perfect example of anti-Israel media bias

Dear Friend of FLAME:

Did you see this headline in Saturday’s New York Times?

Israeli Military Kills 15 Palestinians in Confrontations on Gaza Border

Of course, what really happened was this: Palestinian Terrorists Attack Israel’s Gaza Border, 15 Dead

Imagine if the U.S. border to Mexico were being attacked by 40,000 rioters whose goal is to overthrow the United States and reclaim Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. What if they were hurling Molotov cocktails, rolling burning tires and trying to cut holes in the border fence? How would our country respond?

We’d probably respond with leaflets and loudspeakers warning the militants to stay away from the border. If they didn’t stop rushing the border, we’d use tear gas, then rubber bullets. If they persisted and tried to tear down the border fence, we’d respond with live ammunition, and some would die. Which is exactly what happened when the terrorists attacked Israel last week.

The Israel Defense Forces have identified 10 of the 17 people killed as members of Hamas or other Palestinian terror groups. This was no family picnic or peaceful demonstration.

Nor was it a protest against Israeli border policies. Rather, as Hamas leaders told the protesters, the so-called March of Return marked a “new phase in the Palestinians’ national struggle on the road to liberating all of Palestine, from the river to the sea” (in other words, conquering Israel).

In fact, if Hamas had other, more practical goals—like relaxation of restrictions on access to Gaza’s borders—it should be protesting and attacking Egypt. Egypt controls the Rafah crossing to Gaza, which was open for less than 30 days in 2017, compared with some 280 days for the Erez crossing from Israel.

But this is not about borders, imports or foreign policy. The “March” symbolizes Palestinians’ determination to flood Israel with five million descendants of refugees from Israel’s war of independence, when the Jewish state was attacked by four Arab armies.

Indeed, ninety-eight percent of these Palestinian descendants have never set foot in Israel. They are the world’s only descendants of refugees who claim rights to land in their forefathers’ homeland after a war.

Which brings us to this week’s FLAME Hotline-featured article—a brief analysis of Palestinian motivations behind the March of Return written by David Horovitz, editor of the Times of Israel. Horovitz lists the many outrageous Palestinian demands you won’t read about in the New York Times or virtually any other mainstream media.

I think you’ll find Horovitz’s brief review of the conflict over Gaza useful as you speak to friends—as I did over Saturday dinner—who know nothing about Hamas’s strategy and behavior and little more about Israel’s enlightened, restrained response. I hope you’ll forward this article to friends, family and fellow congregants.

I hope you’ll also quickly review the P.S. immediately below, which describes FLAME’s latest hasbarah campaign—exposing Palestinian lies intended to dispossess Israel of its rights to a state in the Holy Land. I hope you agree with and will support this message.

Best regards,

Jim Sinkinson
President, Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME)

P.S.

As you may have read, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders spread blatant lies in the U.N. and other forums almost daily—about Jewish history in Jerusalem and the Holy Land in general, about Palestinian origins, Palestinian refugees and many other factual matters. No wonder FLAME has created a new editorial message—”Palestinian Mythology“—which is about to run in mainstream magazines and newspapers, including college newspapers, with a combined readership of some 10 million people. In addition, it is being sent to every member of the U.S. Congress and President Trump. If you agree that this kind of public relations effort on Israel’s behalf is critical, I urge you to support us. Remember: FLAME’s powerful ability to influence public opinion—and U.S. support of Israel—comes from individuals like you, one by one. I hope you’ll consider giving a donation now, as you’re able—with $500, $250, $100, or even $18. (Remember, your donation to FLAME is tax deductible.) To donate online, just go to donate now. Now, more than ever, we need your support to ensure that the American people, the U.S. Congress and President Trump stay focused on—and take actions against—Iran’s threat to our country, Israel and the entire world.

As of today, more than 15,000 Israel supporters receive the FLAME Hotline at no charge every week. If you’re not yet a subscriber, won’t you join us in receiving these timely updates, so you can more effectively tell the truth about Israel? Just go to free subscription.

Just in case anybody forgot what Hamas’s ‘March of Return’ is really all about

Gaza’s terrorist rulers make no secret of their agenda. They are out to destroy Israel. Suicide bombers, rockets, and tunnels have failed. So now it’s mass marches on the border

By David Horovitz, Times of Israel, March 31, 2018

Just in case anybody forgot, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip to the pre-1967 lines in 2005. It uprooted thousands of Israeli settlers from their homes. It dismantled all military infrastructure in the Strip. It has no physical presence there. It makes no territorial claims there.

Just in case anybody forgot, Hamas, an Islamist terrorist organization that avowedly seeks the destruction of Israel, seized power in Gaza in 2007 in a violent takeover from the forces of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Having attempted to terrorize Israel into capitulation with its strategic onslaught of suicide bombers in the Second Intifada, it has, since grabbing hold of Gaza, continued its efforts to terrorize Israel by firing thousands upon thousands of rockets indiscriminately across the border.

Were it not for the Iron Dome rocket defense system, much of Israel would, as Hamas had hoped, have been reduced to rubble.

Hamas has also been incessantly digging attack tunnels under the border—another terror avenue that Israel appears to have gradually been closing off with new technology and underground barriers.

Just in case anybody forgot, Hamas has cynically and relentlessly exploited Gazans—a large proportion of whom have supported it in elections—by storing its rockets near or even inside mosques and schools, firing rockets from residential areas, and digging tunnels from beneath homes and civilian institutions. It has subverted all materials that can be utilized for the manufacture of weaponry, necessitating a stringent Israeli security blockade whose main victims are ordinary Gazans.

Organizing and encouraging mass demonstrations at the border in the so-called “March of Return” to face off against Israeli troops, while sanctimoniously and disingenuously branding the campaign non-violent, is merely the latest iteration of Hamas’s cynical use of Gazans as the human shields for its aggression.

Just in case anybody forgot, demanding a “right of return” to Israel for tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants is nothing less than a call for the destruction of Israel by demographic means. No Israeli government could accept this demand, since it would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish-majority state. Israel’s position is that Palestinian refugees and their descendants would become citizens of a Palestinian state at the culmination of the peace process, just as Jews who fled or were forced out of Middle Eastern countries by hostile governments became citizens of Israel.

Just in case anybody forgot, the late prime minister Ariel Sharon oversaw the wrenching withdrawal from Gaza out of a declared desire to set Israel’s permanent borders, and did so unilaterally because he concluded that he could not reach a negotiated agreement with the Palestinian leadership. Had Gaza remained calm, and Sharon remained healthy, it is likely he would have ordered a pullout from much of the West Bank as well—paving the path to Palestinian statehood.

The rise of Hamas to power in Gaza, three rounds of bitter conflict, and an awareness that Israel would be isolated and unable to function if Hamas were to take over in the West Bank—with every location nationwide, notably including the airport, within range of rudimentary rockets—have buried unilateralism and rendered Israelis consensually terrified at the prospect of relinquishing adjacent territory. Thus Hamas, which purports to serve the Palestinian interest, doomed the prospect of Palestinian independence for the foreseeable future.

But Hamas, of course, is not interested in Palestinian independence. Again, it strives for the elimination of Israel.

So, finally, just in case anybody forgets the context for Friday’s latest escalation of violence, they need only listen to Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar setting out the ultimate goal. As he put it in an address to Gazans at the border on Friday, “The March of Return will continue… until we remove this transient border.” The protests “mark the beginning of a new phase in the Palestinian national struggle on the road to liberation and ‘return’… Our people can’t give up one inch of the land of Palestine.”