You are going to get all kinds of inaccurate accounts about the vicious Palestinian attack on a group of Israeli hikers a few days ago, so let’s set the record straight. About 60 Israeli hikers left Har Bracha in Samaria, which is entirely under Israeli civil and security control, to visit some places of interest in what is called under Oslo “Area B,” which is under civil Palestinian control, but completely under Israeli security control. Israelis are allowed in this area and do not need special permission from the IDF. They certainly don’t need permission from Palestinians.

As they were walking, they were surrounded and attacked by Palestinian rioters, who threw rocks at them. The head of nearby Gilad Farm’s emergency response squad came to the aid of the hikers. At approximately 8:20 AM, a Palestinian terrorist seized the gun of one of the security team, opening fire and killing 32-year-old Benayahu Melet, who leaves behind a wife and two daughters, aged 13 and 12, respectively.The other Israeli killed, one of the hikers, was 27-year-old Major Yuval Ezra, an Artillery Battery Commander. The IDF conducted a manhunt for the terrorist, locating and killing him after the shooting incident. May their memories be blessed.

Last night, the IDF arrested about 80 Palestinians across the West Bank, 40 of them from the village of Tel, from which the terrorists who carried out yesterday’s shooting attack came. The Fatah terrorist organization, headed by Abu Mazen, brazenly admits the “four heroic martyrs” killed in this clash from Tel were members of Fatah and praised them for their actions, including the one who seized the weapon—Farouk Adnan Ramadhan, now dead—who carried out the shooting. As I wrote I my recent column Oslo is Dead, Should We Bury the Corpse? in Moment Magazine, the time has come for Israel to take over the entire area. You can’t make peace with Islamic terror  So take back the land. All of it.

Because it’s time to face the facts. The Fakestinians don’t want a “homeland.” If they did, they’d have moved to Jordan long ago. They want to destroy Israel and the Jewish people. That is why when Jews visited the Temple Mount for Tisha B’Av, our day of mourning for the destruction of our Temple, on which spot the colonizing Muslims saw fit to insultingly build their Al Aksa Mosque, it was referred to by the Palestinians as “an invasion by settlers.” They have absolutely no respect for anyone else’s religious feelings but their own. That is why when the Muslims conquered Constantinople, they turned the great Hagia Sophia Church into a mosque. That is why when Israel turned over Gaza to the them, the Palestinians destroyed and desecrated every synagogue building.

Does anyone remember the Japanese terrorist Kozo Okamoto? He arrived in Lod Aiport in 1972, took out a submachine gun (security getting on the plane was apparently nonexistent in those years) and opened fire, killing 24 innocent people on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). It was an Air France flight. Sixteen victims were pilgrims from Puerto Rico, another eight were Israelis, including chemistry professor Aharon Katzir, brother of Ephraim Katzir, Israel’s fourth president. Okamoto was one of three terrorists, and the only one who survived. Although sentenced to three life terms, he was released by Israel in a hostage exchange, after serving only 13 years. He went on to live in Dahieh in Beirut (yes, the one Israel keeps bombing) and was supported by the terrorist organization until his death at 78, this week. May he rot in hell where his true punishment will begin.

Is Donald Trump getting cold feet, again? The last two nights have seen no bombing. The always “reliable” NY Times tells us the American army is afraid to start because it is low on drone interceptors…What?! But of course, despite our air flights being disrupted; despite our need to host dozens of huge American refueling jets, we in Israel will apparently be the last to know if and when the Americans FINALLY do what must be done.

Every day it seems I’m confronted online about another brutal act of antisemitism against my people someplace in the world. Whether it’s blatant murders of Jews by knife weilding Jihadis in Mamdani’s New Yorkistan, or abused Jewish attendees at London’s Pride Parade, or Israelis speaking Hebrew in Greece being assaulted (in that case the attacker was laid out flat by the Israelis, still…), there is a climate of hatred, fear, and intimidation everywhere in the world. Jews are taking off their kippot, hiding their Magan David necklaces, even removing the mezuzahs from their doorposts.

After the Fast of the 9th of Av, when the destruction of Jewish life reached its zenith perhaps in the ancient world, we recite some very comforting prophecies. My favorite is this one from Zechariah 8:23:

It will be in those days that ten men of many languages will cling, they will cling to the hem of a Jewish man and they will say: Let us go up with you, for we have heard that God is with you.

I have no idea what it will take for that prophecy to come true, but it will come true, I have no doubt. Just as the fog blinding the world to the horror of Nazism eventually lifted (although temporarily, it seems) it did lift, and all the Holocaust Museums were built, the wreaths laid, the promises made. But it didn’t disappear. The fog is once again settling over mankind, its pursuit of evil crying out from every corner of the earth.

The two-hundred and fifty thousand little girls horrifically tortured and debased in Great Britain while their people slept. The daily atrocities among Nigerian Christians. Thousands of young Iranians executed for no reason. Wherever you look, there is violence, corruption, extortion, bribery. Mankind hates the Jews because mankind hates the God of Israel, who sees what they’re doing. It won’t go on indefinitely, because if so, what is the point of allowing the sun to rise each morning over such a world? Why would our Dear God bother?

The incomparable Melanie Phillips says that Jews must stop telling themselves the same kind of lies that have consumed the West. This is what she suggests we say. I suggest every Jew say it daily outloud, resolutely, and unashamedly.

Now, please repeat after me: [We hold these truths to be self-evident]

• Everything that Israel does is in accordance with international law.
• The Jews are the indigenous people of the whole land, and the Arabs are the colonialists.
• There is no such thing as the Palestinians. They were invented only to steal the history and identity of the Jews in the land.
• Jews alone have the legal and historical right to the land of Israel.
• Anyone who supports the Palestinian cause, supports the demonization of the Jews, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Thank you Melanie.

Repeat.

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