There's a major asterisk next to this one because William Arkin had <a href="https://twitter.com/OrinKerr/status/1557464955602890753">formerly claimed</a> at Newsweek that his sources told him AG Garland hadn't approved the Mar-a-Lago raid.


	And plenty of people got burned by that.


	This story claims that the FBI raid <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-sought-documents-trump-hoarded-years-including-about-russiagate-1734280">targeted </a>specific documents.

<blockquote>
	
		"The&nbsp;FBI&nbsp;raid on Mar-a-Lago last Monday was specifically intended to recover&nbsp;Donald Trump's personal "stash" of hidden documents, two high-level U.S. intelligence officials tell&nbsp;Newsweek.

	
		To justify the unprecedented raid on a former president's residence and protect the source who revealed the existence of Trump's private hoard, agents went into Trump's residence on the pretext that they were seeking&nbsp;all&nbsp;government documents, says one official who has been involved in the investigation. But the true target was this private stash, which Justice Department officials feared Donald Trump might weaponize."
</blockquote>


	According to Arkin, these documents involved Russiagate.

<blockquote>
	
		"The sought-after documents deal with a variety of intelligence matters of interest to the former president, the officials suggest—including material that Trump apparently thought would exonerate him of any claims of Russian collusion in 2016 or any other election-related charges."

	
		"Trump was particularly interested in matters related to the Russia hoax and the wrong-doings of the deep state," one former Trump official tells&nbsp;Newsweek. "I think he felt, and I agree, that these are facts that the American people need to know." The official says Trump may have been planning to use them as part of a 2024 run for the presidency.
</blockquote>


	Is it true? Who knows. Arkin's sources were wrong about Garland. And that's a very basic thing. But it would provide a certain motive power for the controversy. It would explain why Trump wanted certain documents and why the Biden administration might want to seize them.


	Of course just because something sounds plausible, doesn't mean that it's actually true.

Did FBI Raid Seek "Exonerating" Russiagate Materials?

There's a major asterisk next to this one because William Arkin had formerly claimed at Newsweek that his sources told him AG Garland hadn't approved the Mar-a

Did FBI Raid Seek "Exonerating" Russiagate Materials?

The engine of Holocaust denial is a desire to kill Jews. Otherwise why bother?


	There's a fringe of conspirazoids, the sorts of people who believe that the moon landing was faked,&nbsp;that UFOs can be found in your backyard, and that 9/11 was carried out by the NYPD, and that Bigfoot killed JFK who are attracted to Holocaust denial among the many other conspiracy theory options.&nbsp;But the big leagues of Holocaust denials are associated with Nazism and Communism because they both specialized in the extermination of Jews.


	The "Palestinian" cause is a toxic inbreeding of Nazis and Communists.


	The Muslim Brotherhood, key players in the Arab Revolt, got a lot of their techniques from the Nazis. And the Nazi influence was felt most strongly in Egypt. But the "Palestinian" cause was manufactured by the Soviet Union.


	Mahmoud Abbas, the current dictator-for-life of the PLO, got his <a href="https://www.jpost.com/opinion/abbass-untranslated-book-480751">Holocaust denial training</a> from the USSR. Abbas wrote it as a "student" in the Soviet Union as part of the&nbsp;Palestinian-Soviet Friendship Foundation which was itself <a href="http://www.thetower.org/article/how-holocaust-denial-shaped-mahmoud-abbas-worldview/">crossbred with Nazi propagand</a>a.

<blockquote>
	
		&nbsp;PA President Mahmoud Abbas is profoundly fascinated by Nazi propaganda and has employed it in his own writings, particularly in his doctoral dissertation on the subject of the Holocaust, “The Other Face: The Secret Connections Between Nazism and the Leadership of the Zionist Movement,” which he wrote in Moscow in 1982. Two years later, Abbas published a book based on his dissertation. It is written in Arabic and, tellingly, has never been translated into any other language.

	
		There is a reason for this: The book is inspired by and based on the work of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust. While he was a fugitive in Argentina, Eichmann formulated and disseminated Nazi propaganda according to which the Holocaust was a Jewish-Nazi conspiracy that sacrificed Jewish lives in order to create a Jewish state in Palestine.&nbsp;
</blockquote>


	So what did the Germans really expect when they invited the head of a terror group responsible for the <a href="https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-714943">Munich Massacr</a>e?

<blockquote>
	
		At a news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, Abbas was asked by a reporter whether he plans to apologize to Israel and Germany for the 1972 Munich massacre, ahead of its 50th anniversary. Eleven members of the Israeli delegation and a German police officer were murdered after members of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, which was linked to&nbsp;Abbas’s Fatah party, took hostages at the Olympic Village on September 5, 1972.&nbsp;

	
		“If we want to go over the past, go ahead,” Abbas responded in Arabic. “I have 50 slaughters that Israel committed... 50 massacres, 50 slaughters, 50 holocausts,” saying the last word in English.

	
		While Scholz could be seen wincing at Abbas’s Holocaust reference, he did not immediately rebuke the Palestinian president, although he had earlier rejected his use of the word “apartheid” to describe Israeli policies.
</blockquote>


	Scholtz has since tepidly condemned Abbas' Holocaust denial.


	The debate about Holocaust denial is less important than the motive for it. Abbas responded to his role in the massacre of Jews with Holocaust denial. That's typical. It's the essence of the purpose that Holocaust denial is meant to serve.


	The "Palestinian" cause is about finishing the work that the Nazis began. It's why Hitler is so widely admired in the Palestinian Authority. "Palestinian" Holocaust denial, like most kinds, is about paving the way for justifying the future murder of Jews.

Abbas' Holocaust Denial Tour Hits Germany

The engine of Holocaust denial is a desire to kill Jews. Otherwise why bother?


	There's a fringe of conspirazoids, the sorts of people who believe that

Abbas' Holocaust Denial Tour Hits Germany

Here's the JTA&nbsp;very <a href="https://www.jta.org/2022/08/16/united-states/texas-school-district-orders-librarians-to-remove-a-version-of-anne-franks-diary-from-shelves">deliberately</a> pushing its political agenda of getting sexualized books to kids.

<blockquote>
	
		A school district in suburban Fort Worth, Texas, has ordered its librarians to remove an illustrated adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank” from their shelves and digital libraries, along with the Bible and dozens of other books that were challenged by parents last year...

	
		“Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation,”&nbsp;by Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman and illustrator David Polonsky, is a 2019 illustrated adaptation of the bestselling diary by the teenage Holocaust victim.&nbsp;The New York Times called the book&nbsp;“so engaging and effective that it’s easy to imagine it replacing the [original] ‘Diary’ in classrooms and among younger readers.”&nbsp;

	
		The parental challenge against the book came in February, and the district initially dismissed it, Hawes said. Hawes, who is not Jewish, is on a list of parents who can be called in to serve on a committee to review book challenges.

	
		“When we got ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ we thought, ‘This is a joke.’ But it wasn’t,” Hawes said, adding that the complaint was that “the book shouldn’t be read without parent supervision.” She suspected that the parent may have objected to the unabridged diary’s references to female genitalia,&nbsp;same-sex attraction&nbsp;and&nbsp;other sexual matters, which&nbsp;have been deemed “pornographic” by parental challenges in the past. But she couldn’t be sure because the parent who challenged the book didn’t show up to the meeting.
</blockquote>


	This is not Anne Frank's diary.


	This is a comic book based on a version of the diary that neither Anne nor her father wanted published.


	I've written about the abuse of Anne Frank's legacy multiple times. There's the famous play that eliminated her Jewishness. There's also the 'unabridged' diary. This is material that Frank wrote when she was younger that she then got rid of. Her father respectfully edited the diary when he fulfilled her wish to have it published. After his death, the "unabridged" diary containing sexual materials that neither the dead girl nor her father wanted to publish was gleefully put out there.


	The material that parents objected to in&nbsp;“Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation”, even assuming it's true to the unabridged version (I have no idea if it is) was also the material that Anne's older self censored and that her father got rid of. It doesn't belong in schools and shouldn't be in public view. It's an insult to her memory.


	Not everything people write as 13-year-olds should be out there. Nor should they be forced to live with it after death.&nbsp;


	The publishing interests pushing this claim that they have some moral right to dig up and publish material that Anne did not want out there for the "greater good".


	Getting it out of libraries and out of publication is a very good thing because it's effectively stolen material that was never meant for publication. It's no different than publishing sexual materials or photos of any other deceased person&nbsp;that they would have not wanted in the public realm.&nbsp;


	Exploiting the Holocaust to push a sexual agenda in schools is despicable. And using stolen writings from a murdered Jewish girl to do so is equally so.


	Anne Frank deserves better. So do our children.

This Version of Anne Frank's Diary Should Be Removed From Libraries

Here's the JTA&nbsp;very deliberately pushing its political agenda of getting sexualized books to kids.


	
		A school district in suburban Fort Worth,

This Version of Anne Frank's Diary Should Be Removed From Libraries

NY Gov Hochul Won't Lock Up Criminals, Will Ban Toy Guns

Toy guns don't kill people, violent criminals who aren't locked up kill people.


	But New York's Governor Hochul has made it clear that, along with

NY Gov Hochul Won't Lock Up Criminals, Will Ban Toy Guns

I remember the controversy over dropping Truth, Justice and the American Way. But that was just the beginning.


	This story involves Spider Man: Remastered, a game for Sony video game consoles that recently came to the personal computer. PCs have a vibrant modding community, much of which is based around a site known as 'Nexus'. While the game's fictional depiction of New York City contained the inevitable 'Pride' flags, a&nbsp;'modder' on that site reportedly figured out how to trigger an alternate graphic used in Muslim countries that would get rid of the flag. And he replaced the Pride flags with American flags.


	Anyone downloading the 'mod' would be able to replace all the 'Pride' flags with the Stars and Stripes.&nbsp;


	Since Spider Man: Remastered is a single-player game, it's an individual choice and nothing they did would have any impact on anyone else playing the game.


	Despite hosting a variety of violent and sexual mods,&nbsp;Nexus, the modding site, responded by banning the 'modder' declaring that sort of thing isn't welcome here. The ban however has only made the mod <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/woup7g/nexus_mods_removes_spiderman_mod_that_replaces/">more popular </a>and it's being distributed across a variety of sites.


	While it's been a while since Gamergate hit the scene, the struggle between the social justice elites and gamers has never actually gone away. Gaming journalism has become much less relevant since, but at the same time corporate wokeness has become more rigidly policed.&nbsp;


	And the one thing you can't do in even the most violent games, as Rockstar's GTA 6 series and its studios are reportedly being remade to be sensitive and politically correct, is be proud of being an American.

Pride Flags, Yes, American Flags, No in Spiderman Game

I remember the controversy over dropping Truth, Justice and the American Way. But that was just the beginning.


	This story involves Spider Man: Remastered

Pride Flags, Yes, American Flags, No in Spiderman Game

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2011/11/Liz-Ashkelon.jpg"><img title="Liz Ashkelon" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2011/11/Liz-Ashkelon.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="374" /></a>
Sixteen-year-old Liz Sheetrit and her family stand in their homes with shell-shocked expressions as they point to their burnt front yard and shattered kitchen window. "I can't believe this happened to us," Liz exclaims. A Grad rocket fired from Gaza struck the family's street this past Saturday night, damaging four homes in their neighborhood, leaving a splattering of shrapnel holes, shattered glass, and pieces of metal stuck in the housing exterior.
<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2011/11/Ashkelon-destruction3.jpg"><img title="Ashkelon-destruction3" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2011/11/Ashkelon-destruction3.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="300" /></a>
Liz says she feels only slightly lucky. She and her family were thankfully not home at the time of the explosion but her dog, which was home at the time of the explosion, harbored some marks from the attack.
The Sheetrit family and the other neighborhood families are lucky for another reason too. They live in relatively new homes, all of which have bomb shelters. "Our neighbors entered their shelter as soon as the alarm went off. If they had been anywhere near the kitchen or living room, someone could have been seriously injured," Liz's father said.
More than fifty percent of Ashkelon's residents live in older buildings that were built without shelters, according to a municipal spokesperson, Yossi Assoulin.
"But thanks to the Iron Dome, residents here, even during Grad rocket attacks from Gaza, haven't lost their sense of security," explains Assoulin.
The Iron Dome is a mobile air defensive system that was developed in Israel to intercept incoming Palestinian rockets through a special radar detecting system. Although the system has been criticized for its steep operating costs, it has become an important tool in defending Israeli civilians by successfully shooting down countless rockets. Israel plans to invest $1 billion in the Iron Dome missile defense system in coming years, of which the US Congress has approved to provide $205 million.
However, the defense system offers no guarantees.
On the same day that the Sheetrit family's home was struck by rocket shrapnel, an Ashkelon man, Moshe Ami, a father of four, was killed in a rocket attack on his way home. The air raid siren, which gives Ashkelon residents about 25 seconds to find cover, went off as Ami was driving home in the heart of the city along Rabin Road. Unable to make it to the shelter in time, a piece of shrapnel from the rocket explosion mortally struck Ami and he later died of his wounds in Ashkelon's Barzilai Medical Center.
In addition to Ashkelon, a city of over 120,000, the barrage of Grad missiles also struck Be'er Sheva, Ofakim, and Ashdod, considered major metropolitan areas of Israel's south. The rockets hit an Ashdod school and caused extensive damage to countless buildings and homes in residential neighborhoods across the region. Twenty Israelis were hospitalized for shock and injury including a baby.
A total of 35 projectiles including Iranian-made Grads and mortar shells struck Israel this past Saturday.
Elad, an Ashkelon taxi driver, who was born and raised in the city, said that Saturday night was a nightmarish experience. "Working as a taxi driver during these kinds of terror attacks is the worst experience. While everyone else stays at home and in their shelters, we have to go out to make our living."
"There's no way we can make peace now," the Israeli taxi driver continued. "There is no one to make peace with. How many more rocket attacks are needed to prove that?"

Ashkelon's mayor Benny Vaknin said on Sunday that the type of missiles fired on Saturday caused much greater destruction than past rockets. "These types of rockets are much more accurate and capable of great devastation, damaging concrete building and roads. Within six months, we have experienced three rounds of destructive rocket attacks, in late April, August and now, October. We need to rethink how to address this situation."
Vaknin refused to allow Ashkelon students to attend schools on Tuesday, for the third day in a row. On Sunday, over 200,000 students in Be'er Sheva, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Kiryat Malachi, Sderot and other communities closed down schools because of continued rocket threats.  On Tuesday, Vaknin said he is not taking any chances "endangering children's lives."
Most of Ashkelon's schools are not protected against rocket attacks. The city has close to 30,000 students in its education system including 6,000 college students at Ashkelon's Academic College.
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for most of the rocket attacks during the weekend. According to an analysis by Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Tomeh, the Islamic Jihad organization has become a major player in Gaza thanks to the financial and military help of Iran and Syria. Hamas has taken second seat during the current fighting, allowing Egypt instead to mediate a cease-fire between Islamic Jihad and Israel. "Some Palestinians in the Gaza Strip said on Sunday that Hamas is probably afraid of violent confrontation with Islamic Jihad, whose members have managed to smuggle into the Gaza Strip new weapons stolen from Libya."
Islamic Jihad's leader in Syria, Ramadan Abdullah recently attended Iran's Fifth International Conference in Support of the Palestinian Intifada earlier in October, where he stated that jihad and resistance are the only "options" for the Palestinians. Islamic Jihad has called for the destruction of Israel on numerous occasions.
Israel Defense Forces were able to identify and strike an Islamic Jihad rocket cell in Gaza earlier on Saturday, killing five terrorists, including a senior commander responsible for rocket production facilities. Israel's Channel 10 reported late Saturday night that Islamic Jihad's Quds Brigades said the first wave of rockets was its "initial response" to the strike on its rocket cell, and that "the enemy should expect the worst in the coming hours."
Meanwhile, Liz Sheetrit hopes that life will return to normal for her family and neighbors. "We are trying to get back to a routine, but no one can guarantee that rockets won't strike here once again."
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.

Ashkelon -- The New Sderot?

Sixteen-year-old  Liz Sheetrit and her family stand in their homes with shell-shocked  expressions as they point to their burnt front yard and shattered

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2011/05/nakba.gif"><img title="nakba" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2011/05/nakba.gif" alt="" width="375" height="285" /></a>
As I celebrated Israel's Independence Day last week, I did so warily.  Recalling the night before, the 25,310 Israeli soldiers and civilians who died for this country during the past 63 years of its existence, makes one realize that independence cannot be taken for granted. Independence Day in Israel always falls the day after the country's Memorial Day to underscore the sacrifices made for the survival of this state.
It is also the day when I recall my childhood visits to my grandmother's apartment in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan.  My grandmother's entire family was killed in the Holocaust -- her mother, siblings, nephews and nieces.  In her apartment, she had photos of her deceased family covering the walls and the home she left behind. My grandmother, Yonah, or "dove" in English, never forgot her childhood home in the Polish town of Bledov.
But the only home Yonah would come to regard in her lifetime was Israel. It was the only state in the world she believed that would protect her from the atrocities that destroyed her family in Europe.  It was also the Biblical homeland that her religious Hasidic family dreamed of returning to for centuries.
And yet this story was not only exclusive to Jewish people living in Europe. My Israeli friends whose families come from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Libya and Egypt, have shared with me similar accounts of the fates of their families.  An estimated 900,000 Jews were forced to flee or were expelled by the Arab and Muslim leadership of the Middle East and North Africa in the 20th century. Their homes and properties were never to be seen again.  Half of Israel's population today is made of North African and Middle Eastern Jews (Mizrahim), who left behind well-established Jewish communities, some which had existed for thousands of years in the Levant.
I returned to Israel after I finished high school because I believed that this country was my future, just as much as it was my past and my present.  I was born in Jerusalem and no other city in the world will ever feel as home to me as this city. Following the footsteps of my grandfather's family, who made their home in this city in the late 1800s, has always been my dream. It's one that I'm still proudly fulfilling today.
But there is a narrative out there that leaves no room for my history or beliefs. It is a narrative that seeks the death and destruction of the Jewish State and manifests itself in many forms. The violent protests of Nakba Day, historical manipulations found in Mahmoud Abbas's Monday op-ed piece about Israel in The New York Times and Hamas's misleading messages to the media, are just a few recent examples.
These events contribute to the perpetuation of two often repeated lies: that the Arab world wants peace with the Jewish State and that Israel returning to the 1967 borders will magically resolve the conflict.

The Six Day War did not instigate the Arab-Israeli conflict; it was simply the continuation of the Arab nations' long-term goal to destroy Israel.  Indeed, the 1967 War in the Arab world was called an-Naksah or the "The Setback."  A Cairo radio broadcast proclaimed on May 17, 1967, that "All Egypt is now prepared to plunge into total war which will put an end to Israel," even before the war broke out a month later in June.
Indeed, the term Nakba itself was first used to refer to Israel's 1948 War of Independence. It was coined by a Syrian historian at the American University of Beirut, Constantin Zureiq, in his 1948 book called Ma'na al-Nakba (The Meaning of the Disaster). The disaster in Zureiq's eyes was centered on the fact that seven Arab nations went out to battle with the goal of eliminating Israel and preventing the partition. Instead, they suffered heavy losses and ended up with less territory.
When Ismail Haniya, the Hamas premier of Gaza, declared this past Sunday May 15 that the <a href="http://hamas/" target="_blank">Hamas</a> movement would not recognize the state of Israel, he was not referring to the Israeli borders of 1967.  According to Hamas's military website, Haniya asked hundreds of worshipers at Gaza city's main mosque during the dawn prayers, who were there to mark Nakba Day, "to pray for the end of the state of Israel." He also declared that the "the Zionist project in Palestine must end."
A very different line from Hamas was said to an American news source, NPR, two days later. <a href="http://hamas%27s/" target="_blank">Hamas's</a> Deputy Foreign Minister Ghazi Hamad stated that Hamas had moderated its views, was now seeking a peaceful solution to the conflict that entailed "a two-state solution with '67 borders."
What to believe?
You can only believe what you experience. On Nakba Day this year, a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv involving a truck driver from the town of Kfar Qasem wounded 16 people, killing a 29-year-old Israeli man about to be married. The driver, Isa Islam, plowed through southern Tel Aviv, ramming into vehicles and pedestrians, before crashing into a fence outside an elementary school in the morning. Witnesses reported that the man shouted "Allahu Akbar" and "death to the Jews."
Later in the day, Arab supporters and Palestinian protestors swarmed Israel's three hostile borders, with hundreds of Syrian protestors storming into northern Israel and staging violent riots that Israeli officials say were orchestrated by Syria and its Iranian-backed Lebanese ally, Hezbollah.
Nakba Day did one thing this year and that was reinforce hate and incitement among the Arab community against Israel, and strengthen a narrative that offers no peaceful solution -- or at least a solution that would recognize the Jewish people's national rights to live in Israel. Denying the history of millions of Israeli Jews who believe Israel to be their national homeland will forever remain a disastrous tactic in any attempt to resolve this Mideast conflict.
Anav Silverman, originally from Maine, works as an educator at Hebrew University's Secondary School of Education in Jerusalem and as a freelance writer.

Nakba Day: The Ugly Roadblock to Mideast Peace

As I celebrated Israel's Independence Day last week, I did so  warily.  Recalling the night before, the 25,310 Israeli soldiers and  civilians who died for

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2011/03/jerbomb.jpg"><img title="jerbomb" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2011/03/jerbomb.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="257" /></a>
Editor's note: The following is a personal account of the Jerusalem bombing that took place in Israel last week. The explosion happened 10 minutes away from the school she teaches in.
It's 7:30 in the morning. I leave the house, lock the door and walk down to the bus stop in Jerusalem. I'm not late and the bus is on time. A few minutes later, I enter the school with time to prepare for the next lesson.
A good start to the day so far.
But the atmosphere in the teacher's room is different. Sure there is the usual sipping (or gulping) of coffee and conversations about students and weather. But when I overhear one teacher remark that classes have been canceled in Ashdod, Israel's fifth largest city, something's amiss.
I soon learn that a Grad rocket fired from Gaza exploded on the coastal city during the night, prompting the decision to cancel school. It was the first time that the Israeli city of 200,000 residents was struck by a rocket in the past two years since Operation Cast Lead.
I enter my seventh grade English class, reworking my lesson to talk about the recent events. One student worriedly tells me she has family in Ashdod. "They're scared and so am I, for them," she says.
After the lesson, I go back to the teacher's room. The news only gets worse.
Be'er Sheva, southern Israel's largest city has also been struck. This time two Grad rockets exploded, one in a residential neighborhood, damaging a synagogue and several other buildings while a piece of shrapnel has penetrated an apartment and wounded a man. Countless people were sent into shock. Gaza's Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Be'er Sheva's mayor also decides to close the city's schools for the day.
We Jerusalem teachers continue on regularly with lessons, as terror continues to strike at southern Israel. It is hard to believe that following a massive 50-rocket strike from Gaza on Israeli border communities this past weekend, the rocket terror continues to reach deeper into Israel, harming more civilians.
It is only after 3:00 p.m. when we first hear that tragedy has also struck our city.

"There was an attack," a teacher, Tali, tells me. "Where now? " I ask. "Near the Jerusalem central bus station," she answers. I get a sinking feeling in my stomach.
The location of the explosion is about a 10-minute walk from our school, and it took place during the time of day when many students and teachers travel back home. A few minutes later, another fellow teacher receives a text message informing him that his tenth grade student has been injured and hospitalized. There is a small gathering outside the teachers' room. Several tenth grade students, friends of this injured boy, stand tense and fearful, looking for a teacher's reassurance. One stocky boy breaks downs into tears.
We find out later that their classmate was lightly injured in the foot by shrapnel from the explosion and thankfully suffered no heavier injuries. Close to 40 Israelis were injured in the attack and one woman was killed.
All this 10 minutes away from a school of 1,200 students.
It is surreal the way in which this Wednesday has ended. As I answer phone calls from frantic friends and my parents back in the U.S., calling to check if I'm OK, I can only reply that I'm fine and not to worry. I can't stop thinking about my own students, hoping and praying that they were out of harm's way.
Only a week and half ago, I was at the Fogel family's funeral, the five family members who were brutally killed in a terrorist attack carried out by Fatah's Al Aqsa Brigades on Friday night, March 13. The Israeli family, who was killed in their home in Itamar near Nabulus, had over 20,000 people come to pay their respects at their funeral.
The transition from relative quiet to unrest, from life to death, from joy to tears, can engulf cities in different parts of this country within a day.
One thing for sure is clear. Israel will have to respond to this wave of terror. Over 70 missile attacks, 45 people injured, a family murdered and hundreds of civilians in shock, cannot be ignored or silently accepted. When Israel does react, the international community and mainstream media will be quick to condemn the state as cruel and unreasonably aggressive. This is really the only consistent response that we can expect from the world, while we attempt to maintain a normal semblance of life, teaching and educating a future generation in Israel to love and not to fear.
Anav Silverman, originally from Maine, works as an educator at Hebrew University's Secondary School of Education in Jerusalem and as a free-lance writer.

Teaching During Terror

Editor's note: The following is a personal account of the Jerusalem bombing that took  place in Israel last week. The explosion happened 10 minutes away from

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2010/12/zionismphoto3.gif"><img title="zionismphoto3" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2010/12/zionismphoto3.gif" alt="" width="375" height="370" /></a>
As the ideological and political battle rages in the headlines over the "Jewishness" of the Holy Land, I found myself walking on a street known as Kaf-Tet B’November, translated "November 29," in Jerusalem last week. Streets with this name exist in most cities across Israel, as the date marks one of the most significant events on the road to establishing the Jewish state.
On this date, sixty-three years ago at Lake Success in New York, the United Nations decided to terminate the British Mandate and partition the land into two independent states; Jewish and Arab.  The Jewish leadership in Israel accepted the partition plan, and the UN decision was met with joy and celebration by Jewish people around the world. In Rome, the Jewish community held a special prayer at the Arch of Titus, named after the Roman leader Titus, who, with his legions, exiled the Jewish people from the land of Israel 2,000 years earlier.
In the Middle East, the response was different. The partition plan or Resolution 181 was rejected by both the Arab states and the Arab leadership in then-Palestine.   Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Yemen and Saudi Arabia as well as Pakistan and India all voted against the resolution during the UN General Assembly. Thirty-three countries, including the United States, Norway, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador, all voted for the plan.
This past week, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina declared their recognition of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders, the territory captured by Israel in the Six Day War during its battles with Egyptian, Iraqi, Jordanian, and Syrian troops.
It is not the first time that such a declaration has been made.  In June 2009, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed a Palestinian state alongside Israel on two conditions—that the state would be demilitarized and that the Palestinian people recognize Israel as a state of the Jewish people.
But this is precisely the problem--the recognition and acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state in the Arab world is the underlying reason why the Arab-Israeli conflict cannot be instantaneously solved through peace negotiations and land deals.  As long as the state of Israel is Jewish in its identity, most Arab countries will continue to refuse to accept it.  This reality hasn’t changed since November 29, 1947.
Last week on November 27, the Fatah Revolutionary Council concluded its fifth convention with a declaration refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.  “The council affirms its rejection of the so-called Jewish state or any other formula that could achieve this goal,” said a statement issued by the council, which also praised Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who helped found Fatah, considered to be the moderate party in Palestinian politics today.
Even more disturbing now are the attempts to deny any Jewish historical claim to the land by Palestinian officials. It is not by mere coincidence that the holiest sites to the Jewish people, such the Tomb of Rachel, the Western Wall and the Caves of the Patriarchs in Hebron, have all been recently attributed as holy sites exclusive to Muslims. The Palestinian Authority published an official report on its website in November asserting that the Western Wall is Islamic property and not a holy site for Jews.  The report was taken down after condemnation from the US and Israel, who cited  the report as “incorrect and provocative.” The author of the report, Al-Mutawakil Taha, a civil servant in the PA Information Ministry still stands by his study despite the fact that the Western Wall has been the holiest site for prayer for the Jewish people for centuries as it was the outer wall of the biblical Temples.
But the international community in general is showing more and more support for the Islamic narrative of events.  The Paris-based United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared at the end of October that the Tomb of the biblical matriarch Rachel, located between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, was not a Jewish holy site, but the Mosque Bilel Ibn-Rabach. UNESCO, made up of 193 member states, also demanded that Israel remove from its list of Jewish heritage sites the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where in Jewish tradition the biblical Patriarchs were buried 4,000 years ago
UNESCO states that its main mission is “to build peace in the minds of men and women” and “encourage international peace and universal respect.”  It is difficult to understand exactly how this UN organization aims to fulfill that lofty goal here in the Middle East if it aims to deny the traditions of one people in favor of another. By rewriting thousands of years of age-old biblical tradition and catering only to one narrative, the UN concept of “universal respect” is merely fancy rhetoric in print.
A “just and durable peace in the Middle East” will only happen when there is international and local respect and acknowledgment for the roles that all three major religions have played in the region and this includes the role of Judaism.
As I walk on the street known as Kaf-Tet B’November in Jerusalem this Chanukah and see the flickering candles in the windows of Jewish homes, I think back to a time 2,000 years ago, when my ancestors here were denied their rights to follow Jewish tradition by the Syrian-Greeks who then occupied the land.  In the state of Israel today, however, freedom of religion exists for every person of faith.  It is the one spot in the Middle East where Muslims, Christians, and Jews are democratically guaranteed freedom of religion, a fact that many in the international community would do well to remember.
Anav Silverman is the international correspondent at Sderot Media Center: <a href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/">www.SderotMedia.org.il</a> and an educator at Hebrew University's Secondary School of Education.

Denying the "Jewishness" of the Holy Land

As the ideological and political battle rages in the headlines over the "Jewishness" of the Holy Land, I found myself walking on a street known as Kaf-Tet B’

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It becomes more apparent that with each passing year, the Arab-Israeli conflict gets a new facelift in the media headlines. Many notable news sources demonize Israel in the most "objective" manner possible, concentrating always on angles irrelevant to the real conflict. When foreign journalists come to Israel with their notebooks, pens, and preconceived notions, there is very little chance that their audience back home will have the opportunity to understand the conflict in an unbiased way. An overabundance of misinformation places Israel and her citizens into a very vulnerable position.
On the day that the settlement freeze expired, CNN featured the following headline in big bold lettering on its news site: “Palestinians: We fear Violent Israeli Settlers.” The article focused on one Palestinian family, using them as the only example to support the story’s sensational title.  What the article did not point out was that that for many Palestinians, settlement construction is a major part of their livelihood and that many are currently out of work due to the freeze. Even more sadly, stories highlighting friendly relations that do exist between Israeli settlers and Palestinians rarely appear in Western media.  <a href="http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/09/17/2475109/israelis-palestinians-unite-on.html" target="_blank">The first West Bank team in Israel’s amateur American football league</a>, which includes Israeli settlers and Palestinians, has largely been ignored by most mainstream news outlets, including CNN.
This sort of misrepresentation of the conflict is further strengthened with such articles, as “<a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2015602,00.html" target="_blank">Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace</a>,” published in Times on September 2. The author, Karl Vicks, writes that “the truth is that Israelis are no longer preoccupied [with peace],” rather, they are busy “making money and enjoying the rays of late summer.” Photos of Israelis smoking hookah on the Ashdod beach appear alongside the article. Vicks bases his argument primarily on two Israeli real-estate agents, Eli and Heli from Ashdod, whose viewpoints he uses to represent the opinions of close to six million other Israeli Jews.
But media networks aren’t the only ones assigning wrongful and misdirected blame as to who is at fault for Mideast tensions; government officials are also echoing their sentiments. Former US President Bill Clinton recently seized the opportunity to also assign blame to Israelis, but to a more specific sector-- the Russian immigrant population in Israel.  Clinton recently told US press that Israeli Russians “are the hardest-core people against the division of the land,” and “present a staggering problem” to peace.
In truth, the staggering problems facing the Middle East peace process have nothing to do with Israeli Russians, nor with the settler community.
The obstacles have all to do with the rising nuclear power of Iran and the republic’s fervent financial and military support of terrorist organizations in Gaza and Lebanon as well as in other areas across the world.
Without the financial support of Iran, Hamas’s network could not exist and would not be able to keep Gaza under its hold. With a $540 million budget for 2010, of which Iran provides the largest share, Hamas’s connection with Ahmadinejad’s government is rooted not only in money but in guns as well.

On a military level, Iran provides Hamas fighters with top military training and instruction from the commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Islamic Republic also engages in delivering weapons in single components to the Sinai, paying the Sinai Bedouins for transferring the weapons through the Gaza tunnels.
The results of the Iran-Hamas connection were revealed this past summer when Egyptian police took control of nine weapons caches across hideouts the Sinai Peninsula. The weapons caches, which were hidden in Rafah city and the port city, Al-Arish, were about to be smuggled into the Gaza Strip.
Nearly 200 anti-aircraft missiles, 90 artillery shells, 200 bullets of varying sizes and anti-tank landmines, machine guns and ammunitions were among the weapons found according to the Palestinian Ma’an news agency. Egyptian security also seized 100 kilograms of TNT explosives from a hideout in a Rafah cemetery as well as 500 smuggling tunnels. The large number of missiles indicates that Palestinian terror groups in Gaza may possess a higher number of projectiles than originally assumed.
<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/police-in-sinai-seize-nearly-200-missiles-ammunition-destined-for-gaza-strip-1.310744" target="_blank">Both Iran and Syria continue to be the chief sources for weapons bound for the Gaza Strip</a>, as Hamas builds a stockpile of rockets targeting close to one million Israelis in range.
But readers of the Newsweek article (June 1), “<a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/07/gaza-is-about-butter-not-guns.html" target="_blank">Gaza is about Butter, Not Guns,”</a> by Dan Ephron, would have gained a completely different understanding of this situation. Ephron highlights, what is in his view, are the economic benefits that Israel elicits from the blockade, while completely downplaying any security threats that Gaza terror groups pose to Israelis.
And the threats are very real. This past September alone, the number of Gaza rocket attacks on southern Israel sharply increased, with close to 20 Qassams and mortar rockets fired at residential areas in the western Negev and Ashkelon. <a href="http://sderotmedia.org.il/bin/content.cgi?ID=716&amp;q=3" target="_blank">One rocket struck between two day-care centers in on a southern Israeli kibbutz in the morning</a> on September 12, right before children were scheduled to arrive. No one was injured although one nursery sustained damages.
As articles blaming Israel for failed Mideast peace continue to stream into the headlines, it is clear that the Mideast reality will continue just as it always has-- with Iran as an increasing mobilizing force. With statements like that of Ahmed Jaabari, the leader of Hamas’ military wing, who threatened a wave of violence intended to derail the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks just two weeks ago, Israelis have no choice but to prepare themselves for war. For Israel, terror and war are always a few steps behind peace, whether mainstream media chooses to document this angle or not.
Anav Silverman, a native of Maine, writes from Jerusalem, Israel where she is an educator at Hebrew University's Secondary School of Education. She also works as an international correspondent at Sderot Media Center: <a href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/" target="_blank">www.SderotMedia.org.il</a> and has written for the BBC, Jerusalem Post, FrontPageMagazine, The Philadelphia Bulletin, The Huffington Post and other publications

The Iran-Hamas Connection

It  becomes more apparent that with each passing year, the Arab-Israeli  conflict gets a new facelift in the media headlines. Many  notable news sources

The Iran-Hamas Connection 

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When the Obama administration banned the terms Islamic extremism and jihad from US national security documents back on April 7, 2010, the United States began a new approach toward the war on terror. No longer would the ideological or religious elements that had driven the 9/11 attackers be emphasized.  Any terms insinuating the religious zeal that inspires and has inspired suicide bombers from Gaza, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere across the world, have been hastily filed away in the cabinet known as the ill-conceived Bush Doctrine.
Instead, the Obama adminsitration formulated a new set of terms to showcase the White House’s new and improved outreach to the Muslim world. On the same day that the Associated Press carried the ‘banned terms’ news release, the assistant to President Obama on Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John Brennan spoke with law students at New York University, where he referred to Jerusalem by its Arabic name, Al-Quds.
A month later on May 28, President Obama <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/7772598/Barack-Obama-declares-the-War-on-Terror-is-over.html">informed the world</a> that the “war on terror” was over. “Our long-term security will not come from our ability to instill fear in other peoples but through our capacity to speak to their hopes,” the US President explained in a message introducing his administration’s new national security strategy.  Terms like new partnerships, multilateral diplomacy, and tough engagement surfaced in the document, all leading to Obama’s point that “to succeed, we must face the world as it is.”
It would be safe to surmise that in Barack Obama’s world, there are no ideological-driven terrorists (only al-Qaeda), jihad against non-Muslims does not exist, and Jerusalem is a city exclusively rooted in an Islamic past, whose Jewish heritage starting from King David in 1000 BCE, bears no relevance at all to the Middle East today.
But for the residents in the southern region of Israel, the U.S. President’s attempts to recreate a new Middle East through glossed-up verbiage remains a very distant fantasy.
For the 111,000 residents of Ashkelon, located 21 kilometers (13 miles) away from the Gaza Strip, this past Friday, July 30, was a <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=183123">terrifying day</a>. An Iranian Grad missile launched from Gaza exploded in the heart of a residential neighborhood, damaging buildings and vehicles and sending two civilian Israelis hospitalized for shock.  A rocket alert that had residents racing to shelters, prevented more serious casualties.
The following Saturday night, July 31, an upgraded Qassam rocket fired against Sderot directly struck a children’s hydrotherapy rehabilitation center in Sderot’s Sapir College, setting off the Color Red alarm.  (<a href="https://mail.google.com/mail/html/compose/static_files/goog_1754519330">Sderot Media Center documented the terrible damage</a><a href="http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2010/08/01/vo.rockets.fired.at.gaza.cnn.html">, available on CNN</a>). The center, which provides therapy and workshops for hundreds of special-needs kids from across Israel until 10 at night on weekdays, was closed because of the Jewish Sabbath.

A friend of mine living in Sderot and recently married, now pregnant, spoke to me after the rocket attack, telling me how the rocket alarm caught her completely off guard. She wonders how she will raise a child in an environment of bomb shelters and rocket sirens.  “These rocket launchers fire these rockets and hope to indiscriminately target anything,” she told me.
But if President Obama says that the war on terror is over, then it must also be over for Israel as well. In a Middle East without jihad and Islamic extremism, Jews and Christians are all on equal footing and Israel’s borders are magically secure.  What exactly unifies Iran, Syria, Libya and Lebanon? Along the Obama narrative, it must be their love for Israel and a Mideast education system that recognizes Israel as a legitimate Jewish state.
The truth is that as long as Israel “occupies” Al Quds (Jerusalem), Al Majdal (Ashkelon), Al Najd (Sderot), Al Khalil (Hebron), Tel Ar Rabee (Tel Aviv), as shown on tourist maps from the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, extremist elements will continue to fuel the Arab-Israeli conflict.  A Jewish state in the Levant is no more tolerated today in the Arab world even under Barak Obama’s policy shift, than it was in 1948.   As Iranian President Ahmedinejad made very clear this past February when meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad, “the Arab world will usher in a new Mideast without Zionists.”
But has the Obama administration’s friendly policies changed its image among Muslims in the Middle East, as the U.S. President has tried so hard to do?
According to an international survey conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, released in June, Muslim nations’ approval of President Obama has dropped, although numbers in some countries like Pakistan were quite low to begin with.  What the survey did show is that there was a slight rise in the number of Muslims who said that suicide bombings and other forms of violence against civilians were justified to protect Islam from its enemies.
At the end of the day, President Obama’s attempts to create a new Middle East through mere rhetoric, downplaying radical Islamist ideology in a war against terror that does not exist, seems to have convinced no one beyond the Oval Office and U.S. State Department.
Anav Silverman, a native of Maine, writes from Jerusalem, Israel where she is an instructor at Hebrew University's Secondary School of Education. She also works as an international correspondent at Sderot Media Center: <a href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/">www.SderotMedia.org.il</a>.

Obama's Deadly Mideast Delusions

When the Obama administration banned the terms Islamic extremism and jihad from US national security documents back on April 7, 2010, the United States began a

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For much of the world, 69-year-old Greta Berlin, spokesperson and co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement, is a hero. Berlin recently gained international attention for orchestrating the Gaza aid flotilla, calling Israel "a terrorist state" in interviews and articles.
Along with other leading members of her movement, mostly retired and well-to-do California-based women, Berlin has spewed anti-Israel hate rhetoric while simultaneously campaigning for the Palestinian cause.
According to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/03/grey-power-free-gaza" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>, Greta's colleagues are from the generation who protested in the 1960s as part of the anti-Vietnam movement. The four leading activists, who led communications and legal activities during the flotilla operation, were grey-haired grandmothers and pensioners aged between 65 and 85.
Back in August 2007, two months after Hamas's bloody military takeover of Gaza where Hamas killed off its political Fatah opponents, Berlin stated on Radio Free Europe (Aug. 13, 2007) that:
<blockquote>The world is busy starving the Palestinians of Gaza into submission, simply because they exercised their human right to vote democratically for the party they wanted in power. I find it obscene that, just because the US, Israel, the EU don't like the party's goals, they are suddenly called "terrorists."</blockquote>
 
It is ironic that these self-professed humanitarians, with Greta Berlin in the lead, choose to side with and support Hamas, the radical Islamic terrorist organization that seeks to drastically limit the rights of Gazan women and eradicate any form of liberalism in the Gaza Strip.
Since coming into power, Hamas has implemented strict religious decrees, in compliance with the Sharia Islamic law, into public life in the Gaza Strip. Last summer, Gaza's top judge ordered female lawyers to wear Muslim headscarves, to ensure that women dress in accordance Islamic law, which requires women to cover up in public and wear loose-fitting garments that show only their hands and faces.
The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32155614/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/" target="_blank">issued a statement</a> describing the new dress code for female lawyers a " dangerous violation of personal freedoms and women's rights."
Gazan female lawyer Sbubhiya Juma responded that the law was “dangerous” and " taking away our personal freedoms.”
Since Hamas's rise to power, modesty patrols scour Gaza beaches to ensure that both women and men are properly covered, admonishing and even arresting women who are not swimming in full-length robes. An increasing number of public schools are enforcing headscarves and cloaks as uniforms upon girls, sending girls attired in jeans back home.
From musical concerts to hair salons, Hamas has stamped its interpretation of Islamic Sharia law into every imaginable aspect of everyday life. Three months ago, in March 2010, Hamas banned men from working in women's beauty parlors and hair salons, which have been the target of explosions and other attacks since Hamas took over three years ago. Anyone breaking the new salon law, according to Hamas, will be arrested and tried.
In April, Hamas sent police to <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/hamas-security-forces-break-up-gaza-strip-s-first-major-hip-hop-concert-1.284849" target="_blank">break up the first major hip-hop</a> concert in Gaza. A Hamas policeman cited that the dancing routines were "immoral." Hamas forbids men and women from publicly dancing together and Hamas militants carrying Ak-47s have been reported to stop such dancing venues in the past.
Under the Hamas regime, groups of radical Islamic Salafis, or fundamentalist Muslims, associated with al-Qaeda and more extreme than Hamas ideologically, have been growing at an alarming rate. In May, masked gunmen stormed a UN summer camp for children after fundamentalist Muslims accused the UNRWA organization of “teaching schoolgirls fitness, dancing and immorality.” Such Salafi groups have targeted internet cafes, burned down institutions associated with Christianity, and have attacked foreign schools and wedding parties in Hamas‘s controlled Gaza Strip.
Hamas legislator and preacher, Yunis Al-Astal, noted that it wasn't a coincidence that youth were the targets of these strict Islamic laws. "We are working on young people, the next generation to be more correctly Islamic," Al-Astal has stated. Al-Astal was among those individuals banned from the UK’s Home Office for <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/named-and-shamed-the-16-barred-from-uk-1679127.html" target="_blank">hate incitement</a> in 2009.
Indeed, if this is the kind of “free” Gaza that Greta Berlin and those other liberal-minded Californian counterparts have in mind, one must question what is the real agenda of the Free Gaza Movement. As 21-year old Jihad Rostom <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8557251.stm" target="_blank">told BBC news</a> in March 2010, “Hamas wants to force themselves onto the people. They want the people to submit to them, this is their cover. They destroyed the reputation of Islam, by saying we’re doing this because it is religion. This is how they won the elections.”
Another Gazan resident, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4767634.stm" target="_blank">Lama Hourani</a> who campaigns for the rights of working women in Gaza also told BBC, that the way Hamas presents Islam, “the liberties of a woman are always subject to the consent of a male relative. They don’t look at men and women as equal.”
In her media campaigns to generate support for her Gaza narrative, Berlin (who also works as a media and presentations coach) fervently portrays Israel as “starving and humiliating“ Palestinians. One must question the rationality and objective behind Greta Berlin’s media campaigns. Does she truly support the children and women of Gaza or are they being used as an excuse to vent out her hatred against the existence of a Jewish state of Israel?
Berlin has said nothing about the treatment of Palestinian women under the Hamas regime in Gaza. There is no freedom of political expression or gender equality under radical Islamic Hamas and the extremist Salafi groups that want to control Gaza.
The political freedoms that Greta Berlin enjoys living in the USA as an American woman and the political freedoms enjoyed by women living in Israel -- Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike -- are almost non-existent for the women of Gaza and many other Muslim countries. This is a fact of life in Gaza that has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with Hamas’s interpretation and implementation of Sharia law.
It is shameful that women of Western and liberal mindsets do nothing to support the rights of Muslim women in countries where political freedoms are allotted only to the men who support the political parties in power. 
 
Anav Silverman, a native of Maine, writes from Jerusalem, Israel where she is an instructor at Hebrew University's Secondary School of Education. She also works as an international correspondent at Sderot Media Center: <a href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/" target="_blank">www.SderotMedia.org.il</a>

The Free Gaza Fraud

For much of the world, 69-year-old Greta Berlin, spokesperson and co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement, is a hero. Berlin recently gained international

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Scanning news reports this week, I was surprised to learn that according to much of the press, Turkey had been Israel's "staunchest ally in the Muslim world," until the Gaza aid flotilla debacle. According to the Associated Press, the UK's Daily Mail and other media, the Gaza aid flotilla crisis has irreparably damaged the "close" relationship between Israel and Turkey.
The fact is such reports are simply untrue and misleading. It was not the Gaza aid flotilla that irreparably damaged relations between Turkey and Israel. The relationship had already been under severe strain for the past seven years, since the now ultra-conservative Islamist AK Party led by Turkish Prime Minister Erodgan took power in 2002.
Indeed friendly relations between Turkey and Israel prior to the flotilla incident had already, for the most part, been over.
Turkey, the country that led the flotilla initiative, has shown absolutely no interest in continuing peaceful relations with Israel in the past year, resorting to hostile rhetoric and policies against the Jewish state. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan barred Israel from annual military exercises on Turkey's soil last year, while signing a military contract with Syria. At the <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/watch-turkey-pm-storms-off-stage-over-peres-remarks-on-gaza-1.267018" target="_blank">World Economic Forum in Davos </a> last year, the Turkish PM Erdogan verbally attacked Israeli president Shimon Peres about Gaza and stormed off the stage. In October 2009, Turkish national television aired a drama casting Israeli soldiers as sadists set to kill Palestinian children.
Not that Turkey's human rights' record is so squeaky clean. In 1974, <a href="http://www.moi.gov.cy/moi/pio/pio.nsf/a_problem_en/a_problem_en?OpenDocument" target="_blank">Turkey invaded northern Cyprus,</a> creating 160,000 Greek Cypriot refugees. Turkey still denies these refugees' rights to return to their homes, as well as access and use of their property. Since the Turkish invasion, a large number of Turks have been brought to occupy the homes of the Greek Cypriot refugees, in violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Convention.
In 2009, the <a href="http://dalje.com/en-world/cyprus-church-says-taking-turkey-to-rights-court/240254" target="_blank">Orthodox Church of Cyprus launched legal action</a> against Turkey for destroying 522 churches during the invasion. The Cyprus Church states that Turkey continues to destroy those remaining churches, converting them into "morgues, stables, night clubs, and chicken coops."
But in addition to human rights abuses, it is those who Turkey counts as its friends, not its enemies, that should truly worry the West.
Turkey has announced that it would not join any sanctions aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and has warmly welcomed Iranian president Ahmadinejad to its capital city. But in May, Turkey went a step further and actually attempted to <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2010/05/25/analysis_turkeys_iran_standoff_role_irks_allies/" target="_blank">forestall UN economic sanctions against Iran</a> much to the chagrin of the United States.
Back in February, the Turkish daily, <a href="http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-200505-gas-transfer-to-europe-key-in-turkey-iran-relations.html" target="_blank">Today's Zaman</a> wrote that the Turkish State Minister, Cedvet Yilmaz stated that his government was committed to working on improving relations with its neighbor Iran. The driving force behind this commitment, indicated Yilmaz, were the mutual gas transfer projects, which both Yilmaz and Iranian Foreign Minister, Manoucheher Mottaki agreed will bring both countries to a "historical era."
Turkey and Iran have signed a number of deals to facilitate the flow of gas through Turkey to Europe, including agreements to allocate some Iran's South Pars gas field to the Turkish Petroleum Corporation, where Iranian gas will be trasported across Turkey.
The Turkey-Iran pipeline transfers natural gas worth around $2 billion every year. "We believe that the projects for the tansfer of Iranian natural gas to Europe via Turkey will give a momentum to relations between the two largest economies in the world," Yilmaz has stated. Another Turkish government official, Zafer Caglayan, <a href="http://en.rian.ru/business/20100109/157502282.html" target="_blank">stated that bilateral trade</a> with Iran has grown to $10 billion in the past eight years.
But its not only economic ambitions or a record of human rights abuses that Turkey shares with Iran. Turkey's government has grown more and more totalitarian in recent years, seeking not only to control economic and political matters but also attitudes, values and beliefs of its population. According to a <a href="http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/04/turkey-global-erdogan-islam-opinions-columnists-melik-kaylan.html?partner=relatedstoriesbox" target="_blank">recent article in Forbes</a>, Melik Kaylan reports that the ruling pro-Islamic AK party has over 100,000 Turks wiretapped, thousands arrested and questioned, and over 200 reporters, intellectuals, academics and military officers jailed, all accused of a military coup.
"If you try to talk over the phone to people in Turkey about their current government, they will likely refuse to do so. The ruling pro-Islamic AK Party is now tapping phones so liberally that everyone is paranoid," writes Kaylan.
A <a href="http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/susan_brooks_thistlethwaite/2009/04/totalitarians_in_religious_clothing.html" target="_blank">Washington Post blogger writes</a> about similar observations of the Turkish government regime. Professor Susan Brook Thistelwaite reports that "far more Turkish women are wearing headscarves and religious dress than a decade ago. As one Turkish businessman observed about his university-age daughter, 'They want to put a headscarf on her mind.' He is thinking about sending his daughter to the United States to complete her education."
"Erdogan's administration has severely undermined the independence of the media, of the judiciary, of the banking system and has abolished long-standing rules prohibiting religious dress on university campuses. It is now moving on to re-write school textbooks to revise the country's secular history," writes Thistelwaite.
Indeed, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah presented the Turkish Prime Minister with one of the country's most prestigious prizes, the King Faisal International Prize, also known as the 'Arab Nobel Prize,' in March.  The prize was given to Erdogan for "rendering outstanding service to Islam by defending the causes of the Islamic nation, particularly the Palestinian cause." He received $200,000 in prize money.
The Palestinian cause has become a rallying banner for the Muslim world, serving as a means to distract the rest of the world from the human rights abuses that continue in countries like Turkey, Iran and Saudia Arabia, as well as from their growing economic power.
Indeed the humanitarian goods, among the weapons and arms, on the Gaza-bound flotilla should have gone to refugees elsewhere in the Middle East who have been displaced by Muslim powers. But then the incitement and hatred against Israel which unifies Muslims worldwide would have been lost. 
 
Anav Silverman is a columnist and educator whose work has been published widely online and in print, both in Israel and internationally. She has appeared on Al Jazeera, BBC Radio, and CBS 2 and has contributed to BBC News, The Philadelphia Bulletin, <a href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/" target="_blank">Sderot Media Center</a>, Front Page Magazine, Bangor Daily News, Maariv, The Jerusalem Post, Ynet News, and other publications.

Jihadi State Rising

Scanning news reports this week, I was surprised to learn that according to much of the press, Turkey had been Israel's "staunchest ally in the Muslim world,"

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JERUSALEM 11.5.10: With two months until the end of the school year, several students at the religious AMIT high school of Sderot found themselves fulfilling a lifelong dream.  Rotem Timsit and nine other Sderot girls, high school-aged actresses, who are part of <a href="http://sderotmedia.org.il/bin/content.cgi?ID=193&amp;q=3" target="_blank">Sderot Media Center's Community Treatment Theater</a>, got to perform in the Knesset this past Tuesday.
In front of a full house which included Knesset speaker and MK Reuven Rivlin, former Defense Minister Amir Peretz and other MKs, as well as students from Boyar High School of Jerusalem, the girls performed Children of Qassam Avenue. A theatrical production that tells the story of teenage girls growing under rocket fire, the play is based on the true life experiences of the Sderot girls, who spent a year undergoing drama therapy to overcome PTSD symptoms resulting from rocket terror. “This is more than just a play,” said Noam Bedein, director of Sderot Media Center. “The idea of this production is to inspire a change in perception of the Sderot-Gaza conflict. The past decade of rocket attacks, and the tremendous psychological damage done to a population of young children and teenagers, is often completely ignored or overlooked by mainstream media both in Israel and internationally.”
"The first place to begin this change of perception is in the Knesset," said Bedein.  "We hope that our political leaders recognize the powerful advocacy tool we have established in this community theater concept. This is the only platform out there presenting Israel's side of the Sderot-Gaza conflict through the voices of Israeli youth who have suffered from Gaza rocket attacks. "
Knesset Speaker, Reuven Rivlin who invited the Sderot girls to perform in the Knesset stated that he personally appreciated the girls coming to share their painful reality through the art of theater.
"This production is something that was able to draw us all into a reality that is foreign to most of us. The war that took place in Sderot and the western Negev felt like a war taking place in another country," Rivlin stated. "The girls showed great talent in their performance but even more importantly they demonstrated to us what these Qassam rockets can do, that they are lethal and terrifying."
Former Defense Minister Amir Peretz, himself a resident of Sderot, noted that the rocket terror could have impacted the girls in two different ways: "the situation could have led them to a complete breakdown or generated resilience and strength as demonstrated here today."
"This message of resilience is for the entire state of Israel--we must remember that Sderot, a city of working class citizens, was able to withstand a terrible test while demonstrating unique courage in the face of continued rocket attacks," said Peretz.
Students of Boyar High School of Jerusalem who come from all over Israel, sat quietly during the entire performance, as many for the first time witnessed what life was like for fellow Israeli teenagers growing up in the rocket zone of Sderot and the western Negev. During the question-and-answer discussion after the performance, a Boyar student asked if any of the girls would remain in Sderot to raise their families and children. Sixteen-year old tenth grader, Rotem Timsit answered, "we still love our city and will continue to live in Sderot, and yes I can see myself raising my kids there."
For Rotem, the performance in the Knesset was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, which she hopes will continue. "We came to share our story and show the rest of Israel and especially our political leaders how a decade of rocket terror, condensed in this one-hour show, will not drive us out of Sderot."
Special thanks goes to Janet Lehr of New York for providing the funds for the Sderot Community Treatment Theater program. Sderot Media Center is currently looking for sponsors to continue the financial operation of the theater program.
Photo Credit: Jacob Shrybman, Sderot Media Center

Coming of Age Under Qassam Rockets

JERUSALEM 11.5.10: With two months until the end of the school year, several students at the religious AMIT high school of Sderot found themselves fulfilling a

Coming of Age Under Qassam Rockets 

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Four years ago, the <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,453691,00.html" target="_blank">International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust' </a>was held in Tehran on December 11, 2006. Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian Foreign Minister, stated at the time that the aim of the conference was to "neither to deny nor prove the Holocaust but to provide an appropriate scientific atmosphere for scholars to offer their opinions in freedom about a historical issue."
Those who contributed to the scientific atmosphere at the conference, included David Duke, a Ku Klux Klan leader and former US state representative, Robert Faurisson, a convicted Holocaust denier from France and a number of other academic professors and educators all engaged in Holocaust Denial research and rhetoric. One such professor, Dr. Fredrick Toben, an Australian citizen, runs an Internet site vilifying Jews while promoting that Nazis did not commit the mass murder of the Jewish people. Several right-extremist politicians from Germany's neo-Nazi NPD party were invited as well, although the German government barred them from attending.
However, the central purpose of the conference went beyond providing a friendly environment for international Holocaust deniers to share their twisted sentiments. The Iranian Foreign Minister elaborated that "If the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt. And if, during this review, it is proved that the Holocaust was a historical reality, then what is the reason for the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis' crimes?"
That argument has been reiterated time and time again by Ahmadinejad, notably in exclusive interviews he has granted with US television networks; <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykd-syzZ4ZY" target="_blank">NBC</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIc2fhDYG78" target="_blank">CBS</a>. In two major interviews with the American TV networks, Ahmadinejad smoothly skirted over the reporters' questions about his Holocaust Denial, always deflecting his responses back to Palestinian issues and the State of Israel instead.
The <a href="http://www.iranholocaustdenial.com/views/holocaust-denial-as-a-tool-of-iranian-policy-2.htm" target="_blank">Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center </a>calls Ahmadinejad's use of Holocaust Denial "a tool" of Iranian policy. "The Holocaust Denial campaign, as a main component of the Iranian regime's anti-Israeli policy, is not only an expression of the hatred for Jews which is rooted in Iranian politics and society, but also a clever, well planned strategy under Ahmadinejad." According to the IICC, Ahmedinejad uses the denial tactics to delegitimze the Zionist movement and the State of Israel as ideological and moral preparation for Israel destruction, as well as to increase Iranian influence among Palestinians while advancing Iranian aspirations for regional hegemony.
Indeed, Ahmadinjad's repeated rhetoric in promoting the Islamic Republic's anti-Israel agenda have been ultimately successful. Although the 'International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust' elicited much international condemnation in 2006, the Iranian President's repeated hateful rhetoric cause very few to flinch in the international community today.
Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel stated back in October 2008 that Ahmedinejad's annual appearances at the UN General Assembly demonstrates that the world has learned nothing from the Holocaust.
"Ten years ago, and less, the ruler of a country that announced its aspiration for Israel to be wiped off the map would not have dared appear and speak on the UN's podium," Wiesel stated in an <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1029904.html" target="_blank">Ha'aretz interview</a>. A few months later, at the Durban II conference, a member of Ahmadinejad's entourage accosted Wiesel screaming at the Holocaust survivor, <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1079949.html" target="_blank">'Zio-Nazi.'</a>
Furthermore, US President Obama's friendly attempts to forge dialogue with Iran, while simultaneously giving Israel a cold shoulder, have scored no points with Ahmadinejad. A warm message from President Obama marking the Iranian new year was met with scorn from the Iranian leader. As reported by <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6320IY20100403" target="_blank">Reuters</a> April 3, Ahmadinejad said the note contained "three or four beautiful words" but nothing new of substance.
"What changed? Your sanctions were lifted? The adverse propaganda was stopped? The pressure was alleviated? Did you change your attitude in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine," asked Ahmadinejad in a televised address. Iran supports Islamic insurgents targeting American troops in <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/11/iraq.main/index.html" target="_blank">Iraq </a>and <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1160166.html" target="_blank">Afghanistan</a> both financially and militarily.
While Obama has decided to pursue new UN sanctions in response to Ahmadinejad's continued rejections, Iran according to Ahmadinejad, could easily cope with such petroleum sanctions.
"You should know that the more hostile you are, the stronger an incentive our people will have, it will double," he said.
Although President Obama would like to believe that he is dealing with a rational leader with whom dialogue will eventually reach, Ahmadinejad has never been one for Western rationality. After his UN speech in 2005, the Iranian president told Iran's leading cleric Ayatollah Javadi Amoli that he sensed a light surrounding him while he was delivering his address to world leaders at the General Assembly. "For 27-28 minutes all the leaders did not blink. They were astonished as if a hand held them there and made them sit. It had opened their eyes and ears for the message of the Islamic Republic," Ahmedinejad reportedly stated in a video made about his experience that was widely distributed across Iran, as reported by Golnaz Esfandiari in <a href="http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1063353.html" target="_blank">Radio Free Europe</a>.
During his UN speech in 2005, Ahmadinejad called for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, who according to Muslim tradition is the final spiritual and political successor to Muhammad and savior of humankind who will return to lead an era of Islamic justice. The Iranian president has been quoted as saying that the "main mission of the revolution is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam."
If anything should be learned from Holocaust Memorial Day this year, it is that appeasement policies do not work with leaders like Hitler and Ahmadinjad. Seventy-two years ago, when France, Italy and  Britain's Neville Chamberlain, agreed to the Munich Agreement with Germany, the European powers wrongly believed that the annexation of Czechoslovakia would stop the Hitler war-machine. Following this appeasement agreement, over 60 million people were killed in the Second World War, a horrific tragedy that took root when no one bothered to heed Hitler's anti-Semitic rhetoric and tirades.
Anav Silverman is the International Correspondent for Sderot Media Center: <a href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/" target="_blank">www.SderotMedia.org.il</a>.
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Tolerating Ahmadinejad's Jew-Hate

Four years ago, the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust' was held in Tehran on December 11, 2006. Manouchehr Mottaki, the

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It is not every day that Human Rights Watch (HRW) comes out with a report that accurately highlights Hamas war crimes against Israel, but in the case of the Thai worker killed by a Gaza rocket on March 18, 2009, HRW did just that.
The tragic story of Manee Singmueangphon , a Thai migrant worker who was killed when a rocket struck an Israeli greenhouse north of Gaza on Thursday March 18, was barely given any in-depth coverage in the mainstream media. Most news reports simply stated that a Thai migrant worker was killed in a rocket attack, not even giving the victim a name.
Indeed, almost no western leader  or human rights organization directed words of  condemnation to the Islamic terrorists who fired the rockets that killed Manee, a 33-year old husband and father with children back in Thailand, and sent shock waves among his fellow Thai and Nepalese workers. In an <a href="http://sderotmedia.org.il/bin/content.cgi?ID=620&amp;q=3" target="_blank">interview with Sderot Media Center</a>, a friend and coworker of Manee indicated that the rocket attack made him question whether working in Israel was worth the money.  "Money is not worth this kind of danger," the Nepalese worker stated in shock.
Over 70 people around the site of the rocket attack sought therapy treatment for shock and trauma, including 20 workers from Sderot.
Those foreign officials who did voice condemnation glazed over very general statements that held no one in Gaza responsible for the rocket attack. Catherine Ashton, the top EU diplomat who happened to be entering Gaza at the time the rocket was fired at Israeli civilians on the other side, responded that she condemned “any kind of violence,” while UN Chief Ban Ki-moon stressed that all acts of violence are “totally unacceptable.”
Indeed, is ‘unacceptable ‘really the most appropriate term to describe the murder of another human being at the hand of radical Islamic terrorists?  And is it morally right to allow the Hamas government that controls the area in which the rocket was launched to get away with so not so much as a finger wagging from the global community?
If the Thai national would have been killed in Gaza, in an Israeli defense operation, world reaction would have been far stronger condemning the attack.
Human Rights Watch, however, made it clear in its March 19 report titled <a href="http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HRW/d500e5e3670a7f963c1d1eac4220a487.htm" target="_blank">Gaza: End Impunity for Indiscriminate Rocket Attacks</a>, that Hamas bared sole responsibility for violating laws of war.  “Hamas as the de facto authority in Gaza has the responsibility to stop indiscriminate rocket attacks into Israel,” according to Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at HRW.
The HRW report stated that “deliberate or indiscriminate attacks against civilians are serious violations of the laws of war. Such attacks committed willfully, that is, intentionally or recklessly, are war crimes that are subject to criminal prosecution.”
Ansar al-Sunna, the al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group initially took responsibility for the attack, citing that the rocket fire was in response to Israel’s “Judaization" of Islamic holy places in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum also stated that Israel “bears the responsibility for the rocket attacks because it “has launched a war against the Palestinian people and against holy cites and the al-Aqasa mosque.”
Interestingly, the so called more moderate Fatah’s military wing, the Al Aqsa Brigades, also claimed responsibility for the attack.
These statements, however, did not faze Human Rights Watch. Stork called such explanations a “diversion.” “The laws of war never permit indiscriminate attacks regardless of the conduct of the other side,” he stated.
In general, the Western’s world attitude of toleration towards Islamic terrorists and terrorism has become a very worrying phenomenon.  The killing of the Hamas commander, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, was received by shocked disapproval  from the international community. Many news outlets, including AP, called his death a murder.
The fact that al-Mabhouh was key to moving arms made or funded by Iranian government to Hamas in Gaza, or for his role in the 1989 kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers, did not elicit any signs of outrage in a world where Islamic terrorists are not often brought to justice.
The underlying result of al-Mabhouh’s death is that a dangerous terrorist, abetting the radical Islamic jihadist organization, Hamas, which is responsible for thousands of Israeli civilian deaths and injuries, is no longer a threat to humanity. Britian, Australia, France and other western nations, however, simply slammed Israel, the accused agent behind the assassination for carrying out the attack by using fake foreign passports.  Not one word was said about the global need to successfully combat terrorism and bring terrorists to justice.
In order for terrorism to abate, the anger and words of condemnation and action need to be directed at those terrorists who commit these heinous acts. World leaders both in Europe and the West need to look beyond Islamic jihadist rhetoric and take a  firm stand against Islamic terrorists whether it be in Israel, Gaza, Iraq, Afganistan, Iran, Somalia and other areas, where women and children remain their constant targets.
It is time that the Western community begins to understand Israel’s position in regard to its security struggles against Islamic jihadist terrorism. A news report in <a href="http://gulfnews.com/news/region/palestinian-territories/gaza-hits-boiling-point-as-rockets-fly-across-borders-1.602060" target="_blank">GulfNews.com</a>, a United Arab Emirates publication, by Nasser Najjar on March 24, succinctly summed it best: “Because suicide bombing has become a nearly impossible means of resistance due to the isolation of the Gaza Strip and the more than 600 check points in the territories, launching rockets has become the most suitable military solution for the Palestinian factions.”
As long as the world tolerates those Islamic jihadists who fire rockets against innocent Israeli civilians and accepts their legitimization for it, terrorism will continue to strike innocent civilians everywhere. The killing of Manee Singmueangphon by a Gaza rocket should serve as a constant reminder that people of all nationalities are indiscriminate victims of Iranian-sponsored Islamic terrorism.
Anav Silverman is the International Correspondent for Sderot Media Center: <a href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/" target="_blank">www.SderotMedia.org.il</a>.

A Blind Eye for Hamas' Victims

It is not every day that Human Rights Watch (HRW) comes out with a report that accurately highlights Hamas war crimes against Israel, but in the case of the

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The Obama administration’s pursuit of Middle East peace has brought little if any promising results thus far. Assigning who is to blame for the stalled talks, however, seems to be a much easier task for the US administration. In typical fashion, Washington has laid responsibility for the failure in the recent launch of peace negotiations squarely on Israel’s shoulders, using the announcement of the 1,600 new homes built in eastern Jerusalem during VP Joe Biden’s visit, as the primary reason why peace talks were not progressing.
“We have to make clear to our Israeli friend and partner that the two state solution which we support…requires confidence building measures on both sides and the announcement of the settlements the very day the VP was there, was insulting  and unfortunate…” stated Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently.  Although Clinton attempted to smooth things over in her AIPAC address, she stated that the US was obligated to tell Israel the truth.
Clinton’s assessment of this current ‘obstacle’ to the Middle East peace process simply reveals how very little Washington truly understands of the conflict, especially by dressing the situation with terms like “confidence building.” The current problems in the Mideast conflict are beyond issues of mistrust.
As Palestinian demonstrations and continued rocket attacks in the past week have shown, deep currents of hate and ideological calls for destruction against Israel still continue to run strongly among Palestinian leaders.  The rededication of the Hurva synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem on March 15, originally constructed in the 18th century, was the most recent example of how Israel’s recognition of ancient Jewish landmarks in the Jewish state infuriates the radical Islamic leadership of Hamas and even the PA.
In response to the synagogue dedication, Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh declared that Jerusalem will “always remain Islamic.”  In addition, Hamas’s ambassador in Lebanon, Osama Hamadan, told Al-Jazeera  TV that the opening of the Hurva Synagogue was part of a larger Israeli attempt to “invent” a Jewish history for Jerusalem.  On March 16, Hamas declared a Day of Rage and defense of Al-Aqsa Mosque, as a way to further incite Palestinians and escalate tensions.
The continued incitement and hate-education of Israel is carried out not only by Hamas. Palestinian Media Watch recently reported that PA television is broadcasting a new children’s program called Chicks that teaches children about different areas of Palestine, using a map labeled only “Palestine” which depicts all of Israel.  Next to the map, written in English and Arabic is “Explore Your Country.” Education for a two-state solution does not exist on PA television programs for youth.
However, the most disturbing developments which Washington continues to steadfastly ignore is Iran’s continued financial and moral support of Hamas’s terrorist and incitement activities. Dr. Khalil Al Hayya, a Hamas leader who was interviewed earlier this year on Hamas’s military wing’s website, Iz a-din al-Qassam Brigades, stated that “Iran supports us financially, politically and morally without political price.”
Furthermore, the Iranian Intelligence Minister Hydar Maslahi recently called on Muslim countries to launch a so-called media intifada against Israel during a conference for the National and Islamic Solidarity for the Future of Palestine held in Teheran on February 28 (The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center). Maslahi stated that his ministry was willing to provide any assistance to Palestinian people who would carry out anti-Israel and anti-US propaganda campaigns through on-line social networking.
Until Washington recognizes the broader problems facing the Middle East at this time, including the continuing incitement that Palestinian leaders generate among their constituents, as well as “Islamizing” Israel’s Jewish history and refusing to recognize to recognize any “Jewish” rights to the land, the road to negotiations is near impossible.
Mainstream media and much of the world community have always maintained that Israel’s building of Jewish homes and settlements are the primary obstacles to peace talks.  To continue to believe so is not only irresponsible but dangerous on the part of the US government. A truly comprehensive peace process can be constructed only when the ideological issues that continue to fan the flames of hate are addressed. By not doing so, Washington is building another faulty foundation for a peace process that is bound for collapse.
Anav Silverman is the international correspondent for Sderot Media Center: <a href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/" target="_blank">www.SderotMedia.org.il</a>, a social media organization dedicated to bringing the voices of Sderot residents to the attention of the global community.

Palestinian Nazis and Double Standards

The Obama administration’s  pursuit of Middle East peace has brought little if any promising results thus  far. Assigning who is to blame for the stalled talks

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Although news reports have frequently described the situation in Sderot as back to normal—with real estate having gone up 20 to 30 percent, 1,400 new homes approved for construction, and families returning to the city—behind the headlines the impact of last year’s rocket war is still hammering away at the population. 
Hila Barzilai, the director of the Sderot Resilience Center (Merkaz Hosen) recently told Sderot Media Center that in the past six months following Operation Cast Lead, hundreds of Sderot children have turned to the resilience center for therapy treatment.
“These kids come to us with their parents to seek therapy for the trauma built up from years of rocket attacks,” says Barzilai. “These problems did not just begin post-Operation Cast Lead. We are talking about eight years of constant rocket attacks whose psychological effects are now emerging during this period of calm.”
Over 364 new patients arrived to the resilience center six months after Operation Cast Lead, according to Barzilai.
“We do everything possible to limit the long-lasting affects of these rocket attacks but it is a long and drawn-out process.”
The average recovery period for a child can take up to eight months or more, said Barzilai. One of the challenges of trauma patients face in the recovery process are the sporadic rocket attacks that still continue to hit Sderot and the western Negev region.
Barzilai notes in frustration that “it takes one rocket attack to destroy any progress in the patient’s therapy. The siren alert will trigger the flashbacks of terror and fear in the child or adult, which means that the therapy process has to start over again.”
The over 20 Gaza rockets fired in early January 2010, bought on a new wave of trauma patients to the center according to Barzilai, who also stated that this was the resilience center’s final year of operation due to financial issues.
Barzilai is not the only health professional in Sderot who has seen a sharp increase in the number of patients suffering from health issues during the calm.
Orna Hurwitz, the director of the Sderot Bon Tone Hearing Institute, told Sderot Media Center on Monday that hearing loss has become an ailment unique to Sderot and Gaza-border residents.
“The hearing impairments suffered by residents of Sderot are akin to the hearing loss that soldiers experience during war. The repeated blasts of the rocket explosions harm the ear drum to the point that many residents have to be treated for hearing loss, dizziness, tinnitus, and/or central auditory processing disorders,” says Hurwitz.
“Many of these victims do not seek out treatment for such internal injuries immediately. After a rocket attack, the first things that are treated are the physical injuries and the shock. Less noticeable are the internal injuries. Many victims therefore fail to realize that their hearing may have also been impaired.”
“It is during the calm and quiet—like this third ceasefire with Hamas—that residents are discovering that they have been injured in other ways.”
“Hearing loss is an especially sensitive subject,” said Horowitz. “It takes time for people to process that they have a hearing problem and many are embarrassed to seek help—especially the younger victims.”
The expensive cost for the treatment is another reason why Sderot residents do not get the necessary assistance. According to Horowitz, many low-income residents simply do not have the budget to purchase a hearing aid, which can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000, or seek more professional care.
“In Sderot, we have over 200 residents with hearing impairments as a result of rocket explosions. Most cannot afford the treatment that they need to get better.”
Horowitz says that although the city appears to be returning to some semblance of normalcy, “the beautiful new parks and playgrounds do nothing to address the real health issues of residents.”
“Hearing is one of the five basic senses that human beings need to live and enjoy life to the fullest. Although things may look normal on the outside at this moment, there are many residents here who continue to suffer in silence,” she says.
“Hearing loss among my patients has led to loss of jobs, depression, and strained family ties. It’s a never-ending battle that I see Sderot residents struggle with in my office every day.”
Anav Silverman is the international correspondent at Sderot Media Center, SderotMedia.com, a social media organization dedicated to bringing the voices of Sderot residents to the attention of the global community.

Palestinian Rockets and the Children of Sderot

Although news reports have frequently described the situation in Sderot as back to normal—with real estate having gone up 20 to 30 percent, 1,400 new homes

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The past year brought a fresh wave of anti-Israel rhetoric and accusations, most of which cited Israel’s "siege" of Gaza during last winter’s <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3646673,00.html">Operation Cast Lead </a>as evidence of Israel’s injustice toward the Palestinians. The international press frequently echoed calls by human rights groups and activists to “end Israel’s illegal blockade” and “liberate Gaza.” Such messages have been conceived to undermine Israel and present a very misleading picture of the actual Gaza conflict.
In a typical blockade, no supplies would be allowed to enter into enemy territory. Similarly, most English dictionaries define siege as an “act or process of surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help and supplies.” But in fact Israel has allowed substantial shipments of aid into Gaza. Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website has reported that in 2009 alone, Israel allowed 703, 224 tons of humanitarian aid and 105,600,128 liters of fuel to be delivered into the Gaza Strip following Operation Cast Lead.
“The IDF invested major resources to enable the flow of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip,” said Col. Moshe Levi, the head of the IDF’s Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration, in November 2009. According to Levi, humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip increased by 900 percent compared to the previous year. Over 22, 893 humanitarian aid trucks entered into Gaza throughout 2009.
All of this has been pointedly ignored by Israel’s critics. Most recently, the Gaza Freedom March illustrated the way in which pro-Palestinian organizations and left-wing groups have been able to use the international press and media to communicate their Gaza narrative using the “blockade” and “siege” narrative. Organized by <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6149">Code Pink</a>’s co-founder, <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=626">Medea Benjamin</a>, who also happens to be Jewish, the Gaza Freedom March received worldwide media attention as protestors set to break the “siege” of Gaza.
The march was able to attract some well-known celebrities, like Roger Walters of Pink Floyd and American novelist Alice Walker. But it was not the support of these two celebrities and others like them that attracted the attention of the press. The Gaza Freedom March organizers had <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2096">Hedy Epstein</a>, an 85-year old Holocaust survivor and pro-Palestinian activist affiliated with the radical <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6233">International Solidarity Movement</a>, put in the spotlight for their cause. When Epstein declared a hunger strike to support the Gaza Freedom March, she became an instant international poster girl for the march and made headlines across the world. In its reports about the Gaza Freedom March, the Huffington Post quoted Epstein explaining her support for the Palestinians by likening Israel to Nazi Germany. “[E]everything is due to the Holocaust,” Epstein explained. “But Israel is not being persecuted now. Israel is now the persecutor.”
Unfortunately, those who support the Gaza Freedom March and Palestinian rights, like Hedy Epstein and Medea Benjamin, disregard the other side of the Mideast conflict. Operation Cast Lead took place to stop the thousands of Gaza rockets striking Israeli schools, playgrounds, homes and communities each year. Equally absurd is the way such groups ignore Israeli policies that are set to ensure Palestinians’ access to humanitarian aid and goods – despite the fact that Palestinian terror attacks continue on the Israeli border crossings through which these goods pass.
The original intention of the Gaza Freedom March protestors was to demonstrate that Israel was the sole cause of hardship for Gaza’s Palestinians. Inadvertently, the Gaza Freedom March actually brought to light the siege-like policies of Hamas, the extremist Islamic regime that took over Gaza in 2007.
Haaretz reported earlier this month the Hamas government imposed a “siege” of its own on Gaza residents, prohibiting them from providing lodgings to several hundred international protestors. According to the article, “tough, Hamas security men,” accompanied the peaceful activists during their visit to Gaza and blocked them from speaking with ordinary Gazan residents. “The march turned into nothing more than a ritual, an opportunity for Hamas cabinet ministers to get decent media coverage in the company of Western demonstrators. Hamas hijacked the initiative and we gave in,” said one protestor quoted in the article.
There were barely any Palestinians who took part in the Gaza Freedom March, and absolutely no Palestinian women. Italian photojournalist Anna Selini reported that most of the marchers were international supporters. “Hamas did not encourage, even discouraged local people from participating,” Selini said. Haaretz has similarly reported that activists got the impression that “non-Hamas residents live in fear, and are afraid to speak or identify themselves by name.
This is not surprising. In December 2008, the Hamas parliament imposed Islamic Sharia law onto the Palestinian judicial system. Hamas punishments for Palestinian offenders include whipping, severing hands for stealing, crucifixion and even hanging. Few if any among the 1,300 international protestors of Israel’s alleged repression of Gaza realized that their message of freedom for Gaza would have been far more effective had it been directed towards Hamas.
Anav Silverman is the international correspondent for <a href="http://sderotmedia.org.il/">Sderot Media Center</a>, a social media organization dedicated to bringing the voices of Sderot and Negev residents to the attention of the global community.</div>

Eyeless in Gaza

The past year brought a fresh wave of anti-Israel rhetoric and accusations, most of which cited Israel’s "siege" of Gaza during last winter’s Operation Cast

Eyeless in Gaza 

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Sderot, Israel:  Hours before the new year, as hundreds of pro-Palestinian and Arab demonstrators gathered at the Erez Crossing chanting "Katyushas on Ma'alot, Qassams on Sderot," Israeli demonstrators at another Gaza viewpoint a few meters away gathered together to communicate a very different message.
"A New Decade for Hope and Peace," was the theme behind the Sderot Rally for Hope, initiated by Sderot Media Center, a social media organization dedicated to bringing the voices of Sderot residents to the attention of the international community. Over 300 supporters, including Israeli youth and international students from France, Australia, South Africa, United States and Canada, were led by the Sderot mayor, David Buskila, and the Israeli Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, Yuli Edelstein.
The marchers, carrying Israeli and international flags, along with signs that read "Children for Hope, Not for War," trekked up a muddy hill to release white balloons with peace messages that children from a local Sderot Elementary School had written to Gaza children a day before.
Edelstein noted that the there has been a year of relative quiet following Operation Cast Lead, "with only 286 rockets fired at Israel."
Sderot mayor, David Buskila, stated on the hilltop that "we want the leaders of Hamas to know, who  are unfortunately are still continuing to prepare for war, that Sderot residents come today in peace. And we will never leave this part of Israel."
Earlier in the day, Hamas leader, Ismail Al-Haniyeh spoke to Gaza supporters gathered on both sides of the Erez Crossing via Israeli Arab MK Tal A-Sana's mobile phone. Haniyeh stated that Palestinians would never stop fighting for a state and that Hamas had become even stronger thanks to international support. On the Gaza side, 100 participants in the Gaza Freedom March, mobilized by Jewish activist, Medea Benjamin, gathered together to show solidarity exclusively with Gazans.
Other anti-Israel rhetoric that came out of the Gaza solidarity demonstrations were directed from Israeli-Arab MK Jamal Zahalka, who stated in front of international press that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak "enjoys classical music and killing children in Gaza."
Back in Sderot, marchers convened together in the only rocket-proof theater in the western Negev, to hear 22-year old Sderot resident, Moshe Amar perform John Lennon's song, Imagine. Amar also shared his family's harrowing experience following a direct Qassam explosion on their home two years on December 13, 2007, which destroyed their home. Both US President Barack Obama and US Senator John McCain visited the site of the Amars' home during their US presidential campaign in 2008.
"Try to imagine that everything you love, the things that are supposed to be the most secure in your life-- your home and your family—are directly terrorized," said Amar to the audience. "For almost a year, we were left homeless. To this day, that Qassam attack still traumatizes my family—we will never be the same."
The Sderot Rally for Hope also featured a former member of the Zambian Parliament, the Hon. Dr. Saviour Chishimba, who is also the 2011 Presidential candidate for Zambia's United Progressive People's Party.
Mr. Chishimba told the Sderot rally supporters that " There is no single nation in the world that would allow a single rocket to be fired onto her soils and just watch without retaliation. Israel has a right to defend her territorial integrity and the right to exist. Hamas is a terrorist group, which should not be given power to govern anywhere in the world."
"It is time that Africa stand up with Israel," Mr. Chishimba concluded.
Anav Silverman works as the International Correspondent for Sderot Media Center, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/" target="_blank">www.SderotMedia.org.il</a> a social media organization based in Sderot, Israel that reports on the human reality in the Sderot region.

Sderot Children Send New Year Messages to Gaza - by Anav Silverman

Sderot, Israel:  Hours before the new year, as hundreds of pro-Palestinian and Arab demonstrators gathered at the Erez Crossing chanting "Katyushas on Ma'alot

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This year, Jewish residents in the Israeli city of Sderot celebrated the holiday of Hanukkah by lighting a menorah built out of steel Qassam rockets. The rockets, which were stored away at the Sderot Police Station, are some of the thousands of Palestinian rockets that have exploded on the Israeli city in the past nine years.  It was a symbolic act; one that reflected the strength of spirit that has come to define the city’s inhabitants.
For some Sderot residents, however, the celebration of Hannukah, which commemorates the re-dedication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and the Jewish people’s defeat of the Syrian Greeks over 2,000 years ago, brings back more recent memories of hardship.
Aliza Amar lights the candles of her family’s Menorah with the face of a mother who has weathered a great deal in the past year.  It is a cold and windy night in Sderot, as the Amar family gathers together to celebrate the seventh night of Hannukah.
It was around this time two years ago that a Qassam rocket directly struck the Amars’ home, injuring Aliza and leaving the family homeless for almost a year. The rocket attack took place on the eighth day of Hanukkah, Dec. 13, 2007, and only the Amars' Menorah and Jewish holy books were found completely intact.
“All the memories from that difficult period come flooding back during this holiday,” says Aliza, a mother of four children. “The Qassam rocket that destroyed our home, destroyed our way of life. It was a terrifying time. My husband and I had to relocate our family to a tiny apartment temporarily, get the kids into therapy, and find time to recover from the initial shock and injuries. We are still reeling from the impact of that attack to this day.”
Amar points to the entrance to the front yard which was only completed in the last month. “I haven’t had a front yard with a garden for almost two years. The first thing we had built after the rocket explosion was a new bomb shelter. All the other repairs had to wait.”
“We’ve invested almost $80,000, from our own savings and taken loans from the bank in order to rebuild our home, “ Amar tiredly explains.  She says she doesn’t expect the government to reimburse her family for the reconstruction of their home.
Since Operation Cast Lead ended on January 18, rocket fire has significantly decreased, giving Sderot and area residents some time to breathe. But the Amars do not believe in the permanence of the ceasefire.  “We all know that this is the quiet before the storm,” says Pinchas, Aliza’s husband.
Aliza is quick to point out that the rocket fire has not stopped completely. “ A week doesn’t go by without one rocket attack. Although the media does not report these rocket attacks, Hamas is still firing at Sderot to remind us what they are capable of.”
“Even if we hear the Code Red siren go off just once a week, and not five times a day as in the past, it is still unnerving,” adds Aliza.  “Especially for the kids.”
Hamas announced last month year that it had reached an agreement with other Gaza militant groups to stop all rocket fire at southern Israel.  However, during the week of Hanukkah, four rockets from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip were fired at southern Israel. In the last attack, which took place on the fifth day of Hanukkah, December 17, rockets struck an open area in Sderot, sending residents racing to shelter.
Although the ceasefire has brought back better economic tidings to Sderot; the price of real estate has gone up about 30% as many residents have returned, the post traumatic stress disorder symptoms(PTSD) still affect a large majority of the population.  According to the director of the Sderot Mental Health Center, Dr. Adrianna Katz, the quiet periods bring more Sderot residents seeking therapy.
“The number of patients keeps growing every day and the occasional rocket attack and siren only exacerbate the PTSD symptoms,” Dr. Katz says. People who felt they were fine during rocket escalations suddenly discover that they are not.”
Indeed, Aliza Amar’s daughter, Shavit, 15, is one of the countless teenagers in Sderot who still has trouble sleeping at nights.
Both Aliza Amar and her husband light up when I ask about US President Barack Obama’s visit to their home during his presidential campaign in July 2008.
“When President Obama was here, he seemed very empathetic to our situation,” says Aliza. “I believed in him then. He listened to what we had to say and he even said that we deserve a future of security, peace, and hope.”
“I just hope that President Obama does not forget us now because we still feel like targets in Hamas’s hands.”
Anav Silverman is the International Correspondent for Sderot Media Center: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/" target="_blank">www.SderotMedia.org.il</a>, a social media organization dedicated to bringing the voices of Sderot residents to the attention of the global community.

Sderot Celebrates Hanukkah - by Anav Silverman

This year, Jewish residents in the Israeli city of Sderot celebrated the holiday of Hanukkah by lighting a menorah built out of steel Qassam rockets. The

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For a growing Jewish political lobby group that claims to represent Americans “who support Israel and its desire for security as the Jewish homeland,” J Street seems to be advocating the very opposite of those sentiments.
A look into J Street’s donor list and a quick perusal through the organization’s website clearly reveals a very questionable pro-Israel policy.
According to the U.S. Federal Election Commission, donors to J Street’s political action committee (JStreet PAC) hail from forums aligned against Israel. J Street’s donors are affiliated with the National Iranian American Council, ‘Stop the Occupation’, AMIDEAST, the US State Department and the Arab American Institute—establishments not exactly known for pro-Israel views.
Among the many private Jewish and Christian donors to J Street, there are also a number of Islamic and pro-Iranian activists, as well as Palestinian-and-Arab American businessmen. One such example is Zahi Khouri, a major Palestinian businessman with a Coke franchise in the West Bank.  Khouri actually decried Israel’s attempts towards economic peace with the Palestinians in an article he wrote in the New York Times on September 9.
In regard to the recent Gaza conflict, it is J Street’s address of Israel’s side that truly casts some doubt on its ‘pro-Israel’ stance. J Street’s website features a section titled “J Street’s Response to the Gaza Crisis” (note, the word, crisis). The organization lists a number of statements and articles condemning Israel’s military response to the rocket attacks, calling it “disproportional,” “counterproductive” and “deepening the cycle of violence.” No such criticism exists for Hamas’s rocket warfare and even more disturbing is the website’s lack of information about the destructive impact of the Gaza rockets on Israeli civilians.
For J Street, the issue of the Gaza conflict is not even about Gaza but Israel’s military response to Palestinian rocket terrorism.
According to the J Street website, “ The right question to ask…is whether the specific actions taken by Israel in Gaza actually serve Israel's legitimate long-term security interests and America's best interests. In this case, J Street believes they may well not.” 
J Street offers one solution to stop Gaza rocket fire against Israel and that is temporary ceasefires.  J Street asserts that “Israel too recognizes that in the end, the only way to truly halt rocket fire into southern Israel is a diplomatic solution.” To back their point, J Street uses the Hamas ceasefire of 2008. “Throughout the 6-month ceasefire between Hamas and Israel that began on June 19, 2008, there was not a single Israeli casualty,” according to the J Street website.
J Street could not be more wrong in its assessment. During the 2008 ceasefire, Hamas built up its rocket infrastructure, expanded its tunnel smuggling system, conducted massive smuggling of Iranian weapons, and trained its soldiers to ultimately prepare for rocket war against Israel. Six weeks before the ceasefire was to end, Hamas fired more than 500 rockets against civilian populated areas in the western Negev region. The rockets shattered normal life for Sderot residents as their homes, properties, and businesses were heavily damaged. Hundreds of Israeli residents suffered shock and trauma as well as physical injuries during the ‘ceasefire’ period.
J Street asserts that ceasefires are “positive first steps in the long road to a lasting two-state solution.” The organization deliberately overlooks that three ceasefires between Hamas and Israel have all contributed to the strengthening of the Islamic government regime in Gaza, since Hamas came to power in 2006.
The Jewish lobby justifies Palestinian rocket fire against civilian Israelis. J Street explains on their website that the “Palestinian people nurture an anger that leads some to armed struggle.”
Not once does J Street point out that Palestinians who commit terror acts against Israel adhere to a radical Islamic ideology that teaches them to do so, nor that key players, like Iran and Syria, are heavily involved in supporting the terror war against Israel.  Of course, J Street also refrains from mentioning that Hamas’s charter calls for the complete destruction of Israel.
Indeed, if J-Street was “so clearly grounded in Jewish values and a desire to support the State of Israel,” as its executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami  has declared (Jerusalem Post: August 14, 2009), one would expect that the Jewish lobby work with concrete facts instead of distorting the Middle East reality to fit their left-wing agenda.  More importantly, one would imagine that J Street, which labels itself as a “primarily Jewish organization,” would at least empathize with the suffering of Israelis living under Gaza rocket fire.
J Street’s main objectives-- to conclusively support a two-state solution, ramp up America’s world image, and support President Obama's administration, overrides any sense of obligation to the Jewish people of Sderot and the rest of Israel.  With a $3 million budget and a growing donors list, J-Street’s work as a pro-Palestinian organization, dedicated to Mideast policies that will weaken Israel and delegitimize the Jewish democracy, may be more damaging to Israel in the long term than Hamas rocket warfare.
Anav Silverman is the international corresspondent for Sderot Media Center, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/" target="_blank">www.SderotMedia.org.il</a>, a media advocacy organization dedicated to bringing the voices of Sderot residents to the attention of the global community.

Will the Real J-Street Please Stand Up? - by Anav Silverman

For a growing Jewish political lobby group that claims to represent Americans “who support Israel and its desire for security as the Jewish homeland,” J Street

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Sderot, Israel: If you heard Color Red siren alerts in Sderot on Wednesday night, October 14, it was not because rockets were being fired from Gaza, as the 19,000 residents of Sderot have had to endure during the past eight years.
Instead, the siren alerts were part of a play produced by the <a href="http://sderotmedia.org.il/bin/content.cgi?ID=512&amp;q=1&amp;s=2" target="_blank">Sderot Media Center (SMC) Community Treatment Theater program</a>, called Children of Qassam Avenue. The play, which incorporates both the serious and comical aspects of Sderot life and features a hilariously entertaining Moroccan grandmother, had the audience both laughing and crying.
"The play was a phenomenal success," stated Sderot child psychologist and recently resigned director of the Sderot Resilience Center, Dalia Yosef.
"The positive impact of the theater therapy process clearly showed in the way these girls performed tonight--full of confidence and assurance," stated Yosef.
The young actresses performed before a home audience of 200 people, including visitors from Jerusalem, Ra’anana and Efrat. Sderot mayor, David Bouskilla opened the evening, praising the girls and the people of Sderot for their continuing strength and resiliency in the face of uncertain times.
Yosef also noted that the timing of the Sderot Community Treatment Theater was also significant. "It is during these times of quiet when treatment therapy is most effective.
The ceasefires gives trauma victims the opportunity to acquire coping skills in a less-stressful environment, necessary for dealing with future rocket attacks," said Yosef.
The Sderot high school girls who participated in the drama therapy program are students at the religious AMIT high schools of Sderot. Principal Rabbi Roni said that the Sderot Community Treatment program was a turning point for the girls who participated in the project. "It is hard to believe that the confident and expressive girls who performed tonight were the same quiet and insecure students one year ago," he said.
The theater therapy program, which began in December 2008, was temporarily halted by the rocket escalation, but resumed after Operation Cast Lead ended. The Sderot students spent ten months in intensive drama therapy sessions, meeting after school with a psychologist, social worker and SMC theater director, Livnat Shlesinger. "In the beginning it was hard for the girls to open up, but after a couple of meetings, the girls began to feel more comfortable," said psychologist Debbie Gross who worked with the traumatized girls.
"Once the girls began to express their feelings of the fear and loneliness, they began to realize that they were not alone--there were others like them who were experienced the same trauma and panic induced by constant strain of living in a rocket environment," said Gross.
"Sharing their experiences with each other was the first step in helping them realize how to better cope with eight years of built-up rocket trauma."
There is a scene in the play that depicts a teenage girl forced to take a one-minute shower because of the rocket siren going off. Leora, one of the performers, explained that in one session, the girls spoke of their fear of not being able to hear the rocket alert with the water running in a shower. "We felt that it was important to show how normal things that make up someone’s daily routine like taking a shower can become a traumatizing experience here in Sderot. We wanted to get across how the rocket fire impacts every part of our life," said Leora.
The play was written under the direction of SMC theater director, Livnat Shlesinger and producer, Meital Ohayon both of whom live in Sderot and have endured countless rocket attacks of their own. Shlesinger’s best friend, Ella Abuksis was killed by a Qassam attack in Sderot two years ago. "This production was a very personal experience for all of us," Shlesinger stated. "Each scene in the play is a scene from our own reality."
Both Gross and Yosef both agreed that the arts of theater is one of the most effective ways to get trauma victims to express their feeling and come to terms with the past.
"The success of this play and the amazing performance that these Sderot girls gave tonight, have provided the girls with a positive experience that will hopefully help them move forward onto more stable ground in the future," said Gross.
Raya Hanokayev, another performer, explained that the theater project gave her the opportunity to learn how to be in more control. "I learned how to manage the feelings of terror that I experience every time the alert sounds. At the same time, my dream of becoming an actress has also come true."
Sderot Media Center is fundraising to bring the play to cities across Israel and eventually to the Knesset. One primary goal of the theater therapy program is to share the stories of Sderot teenagers with audiences across Israel and eventually abroad. "The theater program aims to raise awareness to the traumatic to the post-trauma symptoms affecting the youth of region due to years of Qassam fire" said Sderot Media Center director, Noam Bedein.

Acting Revitalizes Sderot's Traumatized Girls - by Anav Silverman

Sderot,  Israel: If you heard Color Red siren alerts in Sderot on Wednesday night, October 14, it was not because rockets were being fired from Gaza, as the 19

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When the head of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict, Judge Richard Goldstone, appeared on Al Jazeera after releasing the findings of his commission’s report last week, he shed some more light on the purpose of his mission’s report. Speaking with the Al Jazeera interviewer, Goldstone elucidated that he personally hoped that the commission’s report would ultimately lead to prosecutions of Israel and Palestinian armed forces in the International Criminal Court. Such prosecutions would hold Israel accountable for alleged human rights violations that the UN has worked for years to expose.
Goldstone explained in the interview that it is the obligation of the international community to hold sovereign states accountable of alleged human rights violations.
Of course, this is most ironic when the Human Rights Council that established Goldstone’s Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict is composed of countries that have frequently and freely violated international human rights laws, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Syria and Somalia.
Throughout the Al Jazeera interview, graphic video footage of wounded Gazans continually popped up next to Goldstone’s face. At one point in the interview, the Al Jazeera reporter worriedly asked Goldstone if Israel could indeed be prosecuted as it never signed the statute recognizing The Hague when it was set up in 2002. Goldstone resolutely assured her that Israel could indeed be prosecuted as long as the UN Security Council was involved.
The Al Jazeera interviewer also made sure to note how the ‘unsophisticated’ Palestinian rockets were incomparable to Israeli military measures.
While the Al Jazeera reporter’s questions and Goldstone’s answers were formatted to highlight Israel’s offenses, one must ask--has the UN report really accomplished anything?
Blasting Israel for human rights violations has done absolutely nothing to advance the quality of life for Palestinians in Gaza and Israelis living in the south. Considering the countless UN resolutions and international condemnations against Israel as well as thousands of pages in reports accusing Israel of war crimes, residents of both sides of the Gaza border continue to live under the same difficult conditions.
One must then ask what is the actual purpose of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council and these UN commissions—do they truly work on behalf of the Palestinian people or to simply delegitimize the Jewish state of Israel? If the Goldstone Commission believed that by holding Israel exclusively accountable for the Palestinian situation would solve the region’s problems, the commission is completely incorrect.
By assigning the majority of the blame on Israel, the Goldstone Commission, like other UN investigative ventures in the past years,  ignores one critical factor that has fueled the continued hostilities of the Middle East.
That factor is that a generation of Palestinian children under the Hamas regime are being prepared for war -- not peace -- with Israel.
Each year, the Hamas government spends millions of dollars inculcating Palestinian children into a hate culture that celebrates Palestinian martyrs who have killed civilian Israeli Jews and who have terrorized countless innocent Jewish fathers, mothers, and children.
Most recently, Hamas summer camps for Palestinian children were established to advance this hate-agenda. The 2009 summer camps entailed an intensive process of political and Islamic indoctrination implemented by senior Hamas figures and officials who visited the camps (according to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (IICC) report).
Hamas activist, Mahmoud Abu I’d stated that the objective of the camps was to prepare Palestinian children to take on the leadership path of victory and liberation upon themselves. Furthermore, participants in Hamas summer camps underwent semi-military training as seen in photographs published in Palestinian media. Such photos of Palestinian child-soldiers have surfaced as early as 2004.
The Safa News Agency, an independent Palestinian news agency, published photographs of Palestinian adolescents wearing Hamas caps, training with wooden and plastic rifles on August 11, 2009. In the background of the photos, the camps’ banners read “Allah is our goal, Muhammed is our role model, the Qur’an is our law, jihad is our path and death for the sake of Allah is our most exalted hope.”
This past summer, Hamas ran over 700 summer camps for over 100,000 Palestinian children in Gaza, according to a CNN report by Christiane Amanpour (CNN Special Report, Generation Islam, August 2009). The camps’ spokesman Amir Abu al-Amarin reported that the budget for the Hamas summer camps was estimated at $2 million (Al-Quds Al-Arabi, July 21, 2009).
With the start of the 2009 school year, Gaza’s children are continuing their education under a Hamas-influenced school system. This year, Hamas attacked the UNRWA education system for planning to include basic Holocaust studies in its 8th grade human rights curriculum. According to the IICC, Hamas spokesmen denounced UNRWA and called the Holocaust “a Zionist lie.” Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Yunes al-Astal went even further and called support for teaching Holocaust studies “a war crime” and “support and service to the Zionists.” (Filastin al-Yawm, August 30, 2009)
Hamas representatives have had no qualms flouting their Holocaust denial opinions and educational ideologies to the international press. Sami Abu Zuhri, another Hamas spokesman told Associated Press on August 31, 2009 that it was more important to teach Palestinians the “crimes of Israeli occupation.” And Abd al-Rahman al-Jamal, the head of the Palestinian Legislative Council’s education committee for Hamas, told a BBC correspondent that the Holocaust was “a big lie.” (BBC website, August 31, 2009)
Indeed, if the United Nations and the Goldstone Commission were truly concerned about improving the quality of life in Gaza, Hamas's efforts to establish a new generation of youth soldiers dedicated to destroying Israel should be the subject of an investigation.  Furthermore, a school system that inculcates hate into the hearts and minds of the young begs for an international outcry.
As long as the international community and the United Nations continue to ignore the hate-education system in Gaza, any real advancement for regional peace is generations away.  True justice for the children of Gaza and Israel will not emerge in The Hague, but rather in classrooms and summer camps that teach tolerance and respect.
In the meantime, Gaza’s children will grow up to be the martyrs in Hamas’s cocoon of hate, while much of the world community will continue to sanctimoniously point their finger at Israel.</div>

A U.N. Report and Double Standards - By Anav Silverman

When the head of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict, Judge Richard Goldstone, appeared on Al Jazeera after releasing the findings of his

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Acting Revitalizes Sderot's Traumatized Girls - by Anav Silverman

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