#rexw

It is a pity you are unable to distinguish between deliberate, targeted murder of civilians and inadvertent deaths of civilians caused during conflict between Israel and its many adversaries.

Tens of thousands of Jews and Arabs have inadvertently died as a result of conflict. The overwhelming number of murders have been visited on the Jews.

I have constantly expressed regret at the needless death and suffering visited on both Jews and Arabs as a result of the failure to resolve the conflict that has gone on for the last 90 years. Go back and read some of my articles.

Yes - the sword of Damocles is hanging over Tel Aviv - as it has for the last 73 years as the Arab League continues to deny the right of the Jews to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in their biblical and ancestral land as legally sanctioned by the League of Nations and the United Nations.

You no doubt would be handing out sweets if the Damoclean sword fell on Israel. You probably approved of the Gazan Arabs doing just that to celebrate the Fogel murders.

#csteele and #yuyutsu

Firstly #csteele - there are three surviving Fogel children - not two.

Secondly - No residential building of any significance has taken place in the existing settlements for about 15 months since the 10 month moratorium was put in place and was continued after it expired.

This did not stop the Fogel murders but only confirmed that hatred and the murder of Jews will continue - settlements or no settlements.

Thirdly - the murders of countless Jewish civilians also took place between 1948-1967 when there were no settlements - not even one Jew - in the West Bank and Gaza.

Arab brainwashing certainly can claim you as two of their greatest successes.

#LEGO

Outing yourself as a racist is something a lot of commentators on my articles would do well to readily admit. There are a lot of Jew haters out there - all of course using nom de plumes.

How you can suggest the Israelis are "unopologetically [sic]racist" when 20% (1.2 million) are Arabs who have rights to
1.vote,
2.elect their own parliamentary representatives,
3.peacefully assemble,
4.say what they like,
5.occupy positions in the judiciary and diplomatic corps
is outrageous.

More than a hundred million Arabs are crying out to be given these same rights at the moment in at least 6 "Arabs only" states. They are being brutally murdered for their trouble.

Arab brainwashing has apparently claimed you as another disciple.

#Rhys Jones

You, like rexw, need to rethink the enormous difference between murder and accidental death - both morally and legally.

Yes - the perpetrators of the Fogel murders have not been caught. I quoted Abbas to that effect in my article.

I was careful not to make that claim and regret you saw fit to suggest otherwise. I hope an unqualified apology is forthcoming.

The real thrust of my article was to point out the Palestinian Authority's official sanctioning and extolling of the killing culture that has led to the murder of thousands of innocent Jewish civilians at the hands of identified and convicted Arab terrorists.

Have you got anything constructive to say about that?

Rexw,

The settlers would not shed a tear if the sword fell on Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv, for your information, is the fort of the Israeli peace camp. If it was up to Tel-Aviv alone, then Israel would have withdrawn from the occupied territories many years ago, but Tel-Aviv is not Israel's capital and is not where decisions are made. One of the favourite settler slogans is that if not for them then Tel Aviv would be under attack. My answer to them is "I'll deal with the Arabs when they come, but better have them as neighbours than yourself!".

Lego also, please don't generalise: not all Israelis are racist.

On the matter of Gaza, it is not under occupation. Israel has left the place some years ago. Gaza is for every practical purpose an independent state that is at war with Israel and wishes to exterminate its people. Naturally Israel has to defend its citizens at present, irrespective of what wrongs were made in the past. I wish that the West-Bank was in the same situation, then you just watch how Gaza would seem like a picnic if Palestinians only dared to spit across the [1967] border.

David,

"No residential building of any significance has taken place in the existing settlements for about 15 months since the 10 month moratorium was put in place and was continued after it expired"

You mean no LEGAL building, and you don't count East-Jerusalem either. What are the existing buildings doing there in the first place?

"Arab brainwashing certainly can claim you as two of their greatest successes"

Ah, here we go, when things get tough it's time to blame the Arabs.
- I don't care about the Arabs: this is an internal Israeli matter. The occupation and settlers are ruining Israel from inside. If the settlers did not have the Arabs on their side they would have needed to invent them!

"the right of the Jews to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in their biblical and ancestral land"

Which you consider a sufficient reason to torment and ultimately ruin the contemporary citizens of Israel!?

Dear David,

There are indeed three surviving Fogel children. I was aware of Shai but had been thinking of Tamar and Roi and their future nightmares. That wasn't quite reflected in the wording of my original post. It is hoped that Shai is too young to be burdened by any memories. A very small blessing perhaps in this horror. That being said I feel it is unfortunate the photographs of the slain family at the scene have been posted and propagated on the net, potentially to be accessed one day by the surviving children.

Now I asked you to respond to the proposition that the Israeli government had engaged in the same moral equivalence you accused Abbas of by claiming a just response to the killings was to announce another 500 illegal homes were to be built on Palestinian land.

You had three options, one to answer it, two to ignore it and three to both ignore it and attack me. My money was on the third and you have not disappointed calling me one of 'Arab brainwashing'(s) 'greatest successes'.

Enough said.

Dear rexw,

You are correct that there has been nobody directly implicated in the murders. There had been some talk of their former Thai house-boy being questioned but unlikely I would have thought.

I also agree there is measure of double standard being dealt here. As a tank commander Uri Fogel would have been fair game in Afghanistan or Pakistan, even at home with his family, and dealt with by a missile rather than a knife probably with similar 'collateral damage'. The IDF do have tighter controls over the risk to civilians but still far from what is acceptable.

However we make a grave mistake if we view this solely as a Jewish Occupiers vs Palestinian Terrorists issue. Perhaps we should think of it a more as a turf war between gangs, the Mexican Cartel hostilities is an example, though instead of drugs it is ideology that is being peddled.

Cont'

Cont'

Itamar is an illegal settlement deep inside the West Bank. Home to over a thousand settlers. A BBC report in 2002 describes the then population of 500 were mostly “members of Gush Emunim, a messianic settler movement which argues that there is a religious imperative for Jews to settle the West Bank.” The military wing of this organisation, the Gush Emunim Underground, was responsible for bomb attacks against Palestinian officials, a plan to low up the Dome of the Rock, and for planting six bombs under Arab buses in Jerusalem timed “to detonate on Friday afternoon as Muslim worshippers returned home from celebrating Isra and Mi'raj.”

The Underground was disbanded in the eighties. However there continues to be real tension between Itamar residents and the neighbouring Palestinian town of Awarta.

Awarta has a population of over 5,000 without running water or sewerage and an unemployment rate of over 35%. Until 2007 the farmers around Awarta were regularly attacked by Jewish settlers particularly during the annual olive harvest. “However, from 2007, when a group of Israeli activists — Rabbis for Human Rights — agreed to protect the farmers during the harvest, attacks came to an end.” Wikipedia

Last year two cousins from Awarta, both farmers, aged 18 and 19 were killed by IDF forces by multiple shots in the back at close range. The deeply suspicious incident is still under investigation. The murders in Itamar came nearly a year to the day after the Awarta murders/killings hardly justifying but possibly flagging the motivation of the individual responsible.

Permitting the incursions of these settlers, many holding abhorrent and incendiary views deep into Palestinian territory is a failure of the Israeli government. Responding by permitting more of the same needs to be condemned.

#Yuyutsu

Existing buildings have been constructed - and such activity is now being resumed - because Jews claim to have the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate and article 80 of the UN Charter. Sovereignty in the West Bank is still the subject of dispute between both Jewish and Arab claimants. The West Bank is only about 4% of the Mandate for Palestine in which sovereignty still remains unallocated between Arabs and Jews.

Criticize the political wisdom of Jews doing so if you wish - but not the legal basis on which they claim to be entitled to do so.

The Arabs have never accepted the legally binding decisions in international law of the League of Nations and the United Nations. This has affected their whole thinking on the territory once known as Palestine. That is their prerogative - but where has it got them?

Their leaders' blindness has only caused untold suffering to the Palestinian Arabs that could have been avoided had they chosen compromise to conflict. Their "all or nothing at all" approach has been - and continues to be - a disaster.

Had the Arabs created a Palestinian State in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem at any time between 1948-1967 - when they had driven out all the Jews then living there - the issue would now not be on the international agenda. Trying to now achieve this State - 44 years after that unique opportunity was lost - is proving to be a hopeless exercise after 18 years of trying.

I guess the world will ultimately come to understand the folly of pursuing the Bush Roadmap. Regrettably many Jews and Arabs are still to die, be wounded and traumatized until the international community seeks a different solution to the future of the West Bank.