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January 27 A Promise KeptHaving promised (twice!) to post the video I filmed at the General Rehearsal for our Bach/Mendelssohn concert last month, I am finally about to fulfill that promise. Since starting this blog, I have been learning to do all sorts of things I never knew how to do before and to use software I never even knew I had - such as Windows Movie Maker. As I explained in a previous blog entry, I filmed this piece in two takes and it has taken me till now to learn the art of splicing them properly (almost
 ). I had assumed it would be a simple task of splicing two video clips. Imagine, then, how great was my surprise on discovering that WMM splits each clip into several smaller clips (each of them a different size and some, no more than a couple of seconds in length!). The hardest part of all was trimming what had originally been Take #2 at the point of overlap. I'm not sure, even now, that I got it perfectly right. Another difficulty was the fact that the filming was done using a small digital camera, designed for stills and having only a limited video capability. Worse, the audio capacity is even more severely limited and there is significant distortion, especially at the loudest parts. I haven't yet figured out a way to overcome that problem - short of buying a more sophisticated (and expensive) video camera - and any suggestions would be welcomed. That said, a promise is a promise and the film is good enough to give you a rough idea of how a concert "comes together" at a general rehearsal. So here it is.Enjoy it while you can. It won't be long before I'm back to my usual polemics
 ...January 24 Song of SongsThe guns having fallen silent (at least for the time being), the Muses can once more raise their voices. Last month (how long ago it now seems), I promised to post the video clip of the general rehearsal for the Bach and Mendelssohn concert we gave at the beginning of December. Unfortunately, the editing is proving somewhat more difficult than I had expected. Until I can overcome the problems, here is a little something I posted on YouTube this evening - the Jerusalem Oratorio Chamber Choir performing a lovely pastoral piece by Yechezkel Braun, to words from "The Song of Songs": Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south wind; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow forth. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.
I haven't given up on the Mendelssohn either, and will post it just as soon as I can. Meanwhile, enjoy...
January 21 Unilateral ceasefire - Unilateral FollyThe Israeli soldiers who received the order to cease firing couldn't understand why they weren't allowed to finish the job.
The citizens of Sderot, Netivot, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheba and the other towns and villages of the western Negev and along the Gaza border whose lives have been made hell for the past eight years by Kassam rockets fired at them from the Gaza Strip, couldn't understand why the Israeli government didn't allow the IDF to finish what it had started.
I sure as hell can't understand why, on the basis of some vague American, European and Egyptian promises to "do all they could" to help prevent the smuggling of weapons into Gaza by the Hamas Islamofascists, the IDF has now totally withdrawn from Gaza!!!
Does anyone understand it?
Hamas continued firing rockets into Israel even after they themselves declared a "unilateral" ceasefire. That was to be expected. After all, in order to continue to lie to their own people about their great "victory", they had to be able to claim to have fired the final shot.
But for our troops not only to cease firing but also to withdraw, without some definite, enforceable arrangement for preventing the continued smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip - that is folly bordering on insanity.
And Hamas hasn't wasted a minute. Today the last Israeli soldier left Gaza (well, the last except for Gilad Shalit, but that's another story, for my next blog entry). And what was Hamas' first prioritytoday?
Not to start rebuilding schools.
Not to start rebuilding hospitals.
Not to start rebuilding homes.
No, my friends. Their very first priority, today, as documented by Associated Press journalists, was to start rebuilding their weapons-smuggling tunnels.
 A Hamas weapons-smuggling tunnelBecause, for Hamas, and all the other Islamofascists, killing Jews is more important than laying the foundations of a Palestinian state. Their whole raison d'etre is hatred. They don't care for the Palestinian people. That's just an excuse. And until the Palestinians recognise that fact - there will never be peace. Not for us - and not for them. January 16 A Time for PrayerI hadn't intended to post anything tonight, but this is urgent. I ask you all to pray for the recovery of seven-year-old Orel Elazar, critically wounded in the head by a piece of shrapnel from a Grad rocket fired from Hamasland, which landed on a main road in Beersheba yesterday (Thursday), wounding six people. Orel's mother, Angela, who was driving when the air-raid sirens went off, stopped the car and got out, in accordance with standing Civil Defence instructions. She and little Orel lay on the ground and Angela tried to shield him with her body. The first rocket left them shaken but physically unharmed but with the second missile, their luck ran out and a piece of shrapnel pierced the little boy's head. Now he is in critical condition in the children's Intensive Care Unit in Soroka Hospital, fighting for his life. By the time any of you read this post, it may even be too late. I pray not...Please join your prayers to mine.
Orel with his mother and uncle, in happier times.
January 09 Crimes of WarA little over an hour ago, today's three-hour "humanitarian truce" ended. In case anyone doesn't know what I am talking about, let me explain. For the past few days (since Tuesday or Wednesday, I'm not sure), Israel has been observing a three-hour truce from 1 pm to 4 pm, in order to enable food, medicines and other essential humanitarian aid, to be delivered to the citizens of Gaza. Hamas has continued to fire rockets at Israeli towns during the truce. The United Nations aid agencies have announced that they will no longer be delivering emergency aid, because their convoys have been fired on. They claim it was Israeli troops who fired on them. What is certain is that at 1 pm today, Israel sent in fifty trucks to Gaza, loaded with food and medicines for the Palestinians (against whom we are fighting, remember) - and that those trucks, loaded with humanitarian aid for their own people, were fired on by Hamas. Under the circumstances, I take leave to question the UN's claim that it was Israeli troops who fired on previous aid convoys.
Earlier this week, the whole world was horrified by the newsreel footage of a school in Gaza which was fired on by Israeli mortars, leaving over forty dead and many wounded. The school was functioning as a UN refugee centre and, according to the UN, Israel had been informed this was the case. This was the opportunity Hamas had been waiting for. "Israeli Massacre of the Innocents" screamed the international Press.
It was inevitable that something of this kind would happen sooner or later, given the Hamas policy of using the civilian population as human shields for their mortars and rocket launchers. Either way, they score a victory. If Israel refrains from firing back, in order to avoid civilian casualties, Hamas is free to fire on Israeli civilians with impunity, knowing that Israel will not fire back. But if Israel does respond in kind - as she is entitled to do under international law - and civilians are killed or wounded, then Hamas scores a huge public relations victory. The death of their own people is of no import - theirs is a religion that embraces martyrdom, even the unwilling martyrdom of others, that glorifies death. And beyond the public relations victory, pictures of dead and dying Palestinian women and children also has a demoralising effect on the Israeli public - because we Jews have a conscience, we embrace life as God's most precious gift.
The legal argument, that Israeli troops were returning fire after having been fired upon from the school building, while it would no doubt stand up in any War Crimes trial, pales before the sight of a dead Palestinian baby. And Hamas has counted on this from the very start.
Let me tell you, my friends - my heart bleeds at the sight of dead Palestinian women and children. There have indeed been war crimes committed in the course of the current conflict. And the world should certainly demand a reckoning. Those responsible should be put on trial and made to answer for what they have done. So let's start with the deliberate firing of Kassam rockets, over a period of eight years, on Israeli towns and villages (a manifestly civilian target) by Hamas. The deliberate targeting of civilians is prohibited both by the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and by the 1977 Protocols which extended the protection of the original conventions to civilians and applied them also to non-international conflicts and to so-called "wars of national liberation".
I therefore call for the Hamas leaders who ordered the deliberate bombing of Israel's civilian population, to be put on trial for war crimes.
Hamas deliberately used Palestinian civilians as human shields in order to hide their weaponry. They placed their rocket launchers in schools and refugee centres, they stockpiled weapons in mosques and hospitals, thus turning these places into legitimate military targets. Article 51(7) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions provides:
"The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points
or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield,
favour or impede military operations."
I therefore call for the Hamas leaders who turned their own non-combatants into military targets, to be put on trial for war crimes.
Hamas terrorists fired on trucks carrying essential food and medical supplies being delivered to their own civilian population by Israel. I therefore call for the Hamas leaders, who denied emergency humanitarian aid to the civilian population of Gaza, to be put on trial for war crimes. January 05 CorrectionI owe my readers an apology for an error I made in my previous entry "The Numbers Game". I stated that the Israeli towns and villages of the western Negev have been subject to terrorist rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip for five years. I have been reminded that even before Hamas actually took power in Gaza, they were accustomed to commit these acts of aggression against Israeli civilians living within rocket range of the Gaza Strip. In fact, the rocket attacks - though less intensive - date back to the second intifada, which started in the year 2000. That's eight years, my friends, not five. I have corrected the blog entry in question. My deepest apologies to the citizens of Sderot and the other towns bordering Hamasland for my unintentional omission of a further three years of suffering. An Open Letter to Alexei Sayle, Annie Lennox and Bianca JaggerDear Mr Sayle, Ms Lennox and Ms Jagger,
Yesterday, all three of you saw fit to take part in an anti-Israel demonstration in London. All three of you were asked by the Sky News reporter (Sky News has least occasionally pays lip service to even-handedness, rather more so than the BBC) if you would not feel differently if you lived in Sderot. You, Mr Sayle, had sufficient honesty to reply "Probably". You, Ms Lennox, conceded that what has been happening in Sderot is, in your own words, "horrible" and you, Ms Jagger, (on the defensive?) hastened to tout your pro-human rights record and to claim that you have always condemned all violence against civilians. All three of you then qualified your replies with a "but..."
You then, all three of you, went on to claim that Israel's actions were disproportionate, that Israel was attacking innocent civilians, that one and a half million Palestinians were suffering, that Israel was basically at fault for starving the residents of Gaza by preventing "humanitaran aid" from reaching them, so what could they do but fire rockets, etc. etc. etc.
You, Mr Sayle, went on to display either incredible ignorance or monumental cynicism, by remarking that the citizens of Sderot could at least get away from the rockets by going away for the weekend (as if the Hamas terrorists only fire deadly rockets at the weekend) or (wait for this) - by moving elsewhere!!! You claim the Hamas home-made missiles only have a range of about 30 miles, so your solution is for the residents of Sderot to move out of reach. To where should they move, Mr Sayle? The circle of terror is widening. The Hamas murderers now have Iranian Grad missiles that can reach Beersheba. How long will it be before they have rockets that can reach Tel Aviv? Have you ever actually looked at a map, Mr Sayle? Do you have any idea how small Israel actually is? It's about the size of Wales, Mr Sayle. Are you not aware that this is exactly what the Arabs have always wanted? For the Israelis to pack up and leave, go, disappear? In short, for Israel to cease to exist?
You also made some vague allusions to (unspecified) Israeli "provocations". What provocations, Mr Sayle? It was Hamas which opened hostilities by launching rockets at Israel's civilian population. That was the only reason Israel launched pre-emptive strikes at those known to be preparing and planning such attacks. Hamas terrorists also targeted the border passes through which humanitarian aid trucks passed (and continue to pass, even today). It was Hamas which refused to allow the free passage of vehicles carrying food and other essential supplies unless Israel agreed to allow Hamas to police the passes! The World Food Program informed Israel, in fact, that it would cease shipment of food to Gaza because the warehouses there are at full capacity! There is no shortage of humanitarian supplies in Gaza. Why don't you ask Hamas what they have done with the supplies, as well as with the huge sums of money Israel has transferred to Gaza over the past few weeks? You ended up by calling on British Jewry to boycott Israel. In response, I call on British Jewry to show their support for Israel by buying Israeli products on every possible occasion.
And you, Ms Lennox. You admit that what has been going on in the south of Israel is "horrible" (generous of you). Why, then, the qualification? What was Israel supposed to do, after years of deliberate targeting of her civilian population by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists? How about you, Ms Jagger, who (so you claim) have always condemned violence against civilian populations. Where were you when Qassam rockets were being fired on almost a daily basis on Sderot? I don't recall any expressions of righteous indignation from you then. Tell me, the three of you - where was the urgency to act when it was Israeli women and children who were the victims of war crimes committed by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad? You were silent then. Now you rush to lead demonstrations and to be interviewed by the BBC and Sky News. It was only when a television reporter put a direct question to you that you hurried to pay lip service to even-handedness.
In short, Mr Sayle, Ms Lennox and Ms Jagger - what a pack of hypocrites you are... January 03 The Numbers GameBenjamin Disraeli used to say, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics". He might have been prophesying the media coverage of Operation Cast Lead (or any other Arab-Israeli military campaign, for that matter). I have written before on this space about the twisted use of numbers in the propaganda war against Israel. But nothing changes, after all and pictures of dead Palestinian civilians are much hotter news, sell more newspapers and garner higher ratings than pictures of the destroyed rocket-launchers they were protecting (willingly or not) with their own bodies.
Israeli civilians have been killed by Hamas terrorist missiles. It is true that the number of Palestinians killed is higher (we will just have to take it on trust that they really were civilians, I suppose - the Palestinians have always been so truthful about this, after all...), but proportionality, in law and in logic, is measured, not by the actual damage caused to the side accused of disproportionality, but by the potential damage thatwould have been caused had that side not taken action. So let's just examine that, shall we?
Forty minutes ago, a Grad rocket fired from the Gaza Strip scored a direct hit on an eight-storey apartment block in Ashdod. By some miracle, only two people were slightly wounded. Thirteen others are being treated for shock and trauma. Another rocket, from the same volley, hit a house in Ashkelon. My aunt lives in Ashkelon. She doesn't have a bomb shelter.
Let me give you a few more examples:
On Wednesday, a Hamas terrorist rocket aimed at Beersheba, scored a direct hit on a school. Miraculously, no-one was hurt, because the Beersheba Municipality had decided that morning that there would be no school that day, so the place was empty. Do you know why that decision was taken, my friends? It was because the day before, a Hamas terrorist rocket landed on a kindergarten in the same neighbourhood. Again, by the merest luck, the toddlers had left shortly before (but I doubt the Hamas terrorists knew that when they fired their missiles).
Hamas deliberately targets civilians . The Palestinian civilians killed by Israel, on the other hand, were not deliberately targeted but died because Hamas chose to use them as human shields. This kind of terrorist rocket attack has been going on for EIGHT YEARS. When Israel responded with pre-emptive attacks on the rocket-launchers, we were accused of being assassins. When we adopted the policy of closing the border passes and applying economic sanctions (exactly as the West did to Iraq prior to the war), we were accused of collective punishment and of starving the civilian population (even though we did allow essential food and medical supplies in). Every time the Hamas terrorists fired rockets at our civilian population, the governments of the U.S.A and of the E.U. urged us to display restraint. For how long, my friends? How long were we supposed to let them continue to bomb and shell our cities and trust to luck that only 2 or 3 Israelis would be killed (for the sake of preserving "proportionality")? How long would you wait if it was your cities that were being bombed, my friends? How long would you wait before striking back, not in retaliation but to take out their rocket launchers and destroy their terrorist infrastructure? Would you wait 8 years? Would you wait 8 months? 8 weeks? Would you wait even 8 days? Ah, but isn't it strange, I hear some of you say, that Israel has such low casualty figures, despite the thousands of terrorist missiles that have been fired at us from Hamasland over the past eight years? Such luck is simply too good to be true.
Luck? Well, maybe. Or maybe something more. Maybe - just maybe - Someone up there is looking out for us. Maybe He is protecting His own. |
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