US media, leave Beit El and Arutz Sheva alone
US media, leave Beit El and Arutz Sheva alone

The American press is busy in targeting Arutz Sheva and Beit El as a result of Donald’s Trump decision to appoint David Friedman as US ambassador to Israel. Mr. Friedman actually donated to the Beit El institutions and Arutz Sheva's office is located in Beit El.

As a writer for this platform, I feel the need to say to the liberal press: Take your hands off Arutz Sheva and Beit El.

Arutz 7 created a listening revolution when it ran a day-long telethon for the Pollards. Calls came not only from Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, but also from towns and kibbutzim like Ayelet Hashahar, Eilot and Gan Shmuel. Since then, Arutz Sheva has always fought hard for the sake of Israel's Jews and the State of Israel.

I cannot say the same for the Israeli mainstream media, which in my view has been guilty of many “sins”:

  • inciting against the religious people, haredi and religious Zionist, who have been targeted for stabbing all over Jerusalem and those who live in Judea and Samaria;
  • creating confusion in the mind of foreign public opinion as if there was an invisible line which divides between legitimate and illegitimate terror attacks;
  • downplaying the threat and the signs of a new Intifada;
  • sheltering Mahmoud Abbas’ anti-Semitic rhetoric for years;
  • slandering the Jews who want to pray on the Temple Mount;
  • sanctifying a new partition of the land of Israel;
  • crying out against Israel’s “disproportionate” use of force.

It was on these hills, the Bible says, that Jacob dreamed about a ladder reaching to heaven. But Beit El also has the dubious distinction of sustaining the first serious casualty of the Intifada
Should I go on? Here I am not talking about Haaretz’s extremists, but of most of the Israeli mainstream journalists.

Arutz Sheva provided much better service for Israel's Jews, it defended the interests and justification of the State of Israel - and is an address for the American Jewish patriots who care about the fate of this fragile and beautiful enclave in the Middle East.

Leave Beit El, from which Arutz Sheva broadcasts, alone as well.  It was when thinking of places like Beit El that Ariel Sharon described Israel as “the only place in the world where the Jews have the right and the power to defend themselves on their own”. Countless synagogues and churches in the United States have taken their name from Beit El, or Bethel, this landmark of biblical history. The traditional hymn “We are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” is part of the American school heritage. It was on these hills, the Bible says, that Jacob dreamed about a ladder reaching to heaven.

But Beit El also has the dubious distinction of sustaining the first serious casualty of the Intifada. In December 1987, Dov Kalmanovitz had a petrol bomb hurled into his car. He was burned severely, but survived. Haim Mizrahi, a yeshiva student, was seized, stabbed repeatedly, and his body burned. Those who stood strong in Beit El during those terrible days and continue to live there are Jewish heroes and the media must show them respect.

Beit El is a lighthouse of life on the border between survival and destruction. It is a microcosm of the State of Israel.