Many here in Israel are quite upset at the attack on an IDF base by, supposedly, "hilltop youth". There was a break-in, an nofficer was injured, rocks were thrown, tires burned and military vehicles were vandalized.  Previously, after the demolition of three homes at Migron, there was also an invasion of an IDF base.

This is serious.  It is wrong and those guilty must be punished.

The Prime Minister considers this 'unprecedented'.

After all, who do these protestors think they are?  Do they think they can do what is done abroad?

Like in 2001, in England, when protesters invaded a 'Star Wars' base

ONE of the world's largest spy bases was invaded by scores of protesters who strolled past a lone guard to the theme of Mission Impossible yesterday.  Others breached the 9ft perimeter fencing at RAF Menwith Hill, near Harrogate, North Yorkshire.  The Greenpeace activists, some in fancy dress and "armed" with 7ft cardboard rockets, climbed on to the 70ft high water tower and chained themselves to railings.

Or as in 2003 there

In early March 8 anarchists in Cardiff invaded the BAE Systems munitions factory at Glascoed in Wales. They scaled a 3m high fence with the help of a homemade rope ladder. Splitting into three groups and dressed in appropriate white overalls they proceeded to make an inspection of the site... In Derby in England 14 activists entered the military port, occupying tanks and jeeps which were about to be sent to the Gulf...[a] bomber base in the UK, which is used for direct air raids on Iraq, is located at Fairford in Gloucestershire. Peace activists have been engaged in a steady campaign against its presence. The fence has been breached many times. On one occasion landing lights were destroyed on others the gates and parts of the fence were torn down. Activists who brought bicycles through the fence and cycled them up and down the runway blocked the runway at RAF Lakeheath. The runway at RAF Brize Norton was also blocked.

You can find incidents over the years in many other countries (in February 2010 in Italy, for example).  In 2009, in Bangor, we read that

Five protestors associated with an international peace movement were arrested Monday after cutting through three security fences to reach an area where nuclear missiles are stored at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor. Cited on suspicion of trespassing and destruction of government property were Bill Bischel, 81, a Catholic priest from Tacoma; Anne Montgomery, 83, a nun from New York; Susan Crane, 65, of Baltimore; Lynne Greenwald, 60, of Bremerton; and Steve Kelly, 60, of Oakland, Calif.

but in Israel, even the Prime Minister is out of proportion.

Indeed, I repeat, this is a serious matter and must be treated with firm application of the law.

But let's not think in hyperbole.  And it has happened in Israel before.  Yes.  And it cam from the far-Left.

Adam Keller of the Yesh Gvul and Uri Avenry Gush Shalom groups did something quite similar:

in April–May 1988, Reserve Corporal Adam Keller was charged with "Insubordination" and "Spreading of Propaganda Harmful to Military Discipline" in that while on active military duty he had written on 117 tanks and other military vehicles graffiti with the text: "Soldiers of the IDF, refuse to be occupiers and oppressors, refuse to serve in the occupied territories!"

So, let's not lose our heads.  The issue must be confronted.  Educators, Rabbis, community leaders must be involved.  Non-recognition of the state's institutions cannot be allowed to seep into the consciousness of our youth.  Negativism and defeatism is to be combatted.

But we cannot fall into a trap of self-flagellation.

^

Israel is facing an identity theft threat.

The "Islamic Temple Mount Denial Syndrome" has been around for years (see here, too).  I thought maybe it had come to an end.

Then there was Rachel's Tomb which, it was claimed, was really a mosque.  Even PM Netanyahu got upset about that.

And now, with the acceptance of UNESCO of an entity called "Palestine", the confrontation looms, as we learn:

West Bank religious sites first for world heritage request

Significant religious sites throughout the West Bank, including the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem and Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, will be among the first to be pushed forward for world heritage status now Palestine has been granted membership of UNESCO.

A Palestinian Authority spokesman there were many sites and shrines in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that until now had been unprotected because of a lack of recognition and funding.

''Now we will be able to protect them and make sure they are known around the world,'' he said. ''We believe that becoming a member of the UNESCO is an overdue right for a country that has such a significant amount of heritage sites.''

...The authority claims agreements such as the 1994 Paris Protocol severely restrict tourism and therefore economic development in the Palestinian territories.  Joseph's Tomb in Nablus - a site important to Christians, Jews and Muslims - has been at the centre of deep sectarian conflict. With UNESCO membership, the Palestinian Authority would now be responsible for ensuring the site was protected, the official said.

This resonated to my mind with a previous instance - the 1930 dispute over who 'owned' the rights at the Western Wall.

The Jewish case is contained in this memorandum (and a review is here).

I previously have gone into this here where I wrote about a White Paper, Command 3229 of November 19, 1928, just as Muslim-Jewish tension were escalating over mutual claims at the Western Wall after the pulling down of the mechitza on Yom Kippur. That White Paper affirmed that no benches or screens could be brought to the wall by Jews, since they had not been allowed during Ottoman rule.
a White Paper, Command 3682, 27 May 1930, which welcomed an investigation by an international commission of the conflicting claims to the Western Wall (see here) and that International Commission of Inquiry established by the British Mandatory authorities which then issued a report that resulted in unjust restrictions on Jews by the Western Wall in addition to awarding to the Muslim Waqf the ownership of the Wall and the small courtyard which served as the worship site.

What we are witnessing is a matter of identity theft. See here for what appears to be an article translated from the Arabic to comprehend their thinking.

If this is the culture UNESCO will be promoting at the initiative of its new member, there will be two outcomes.

The first is a reframing of the Arab-Israel conflict in terms of religion and national ethos.  To my mind, it is about time that will come to the fore.  Even Benny Morris now admits his reading of the 1947-1949 battles was wrong and that it was a jihadist struggle.

The second is the reorientation of Jewish concerns on our rights to Eretz-Yisrael.  This is Jewish land.  The state is a Jewish state.  The character of Zionism is Jewish nationalism with Jewish values, Jewish character, Jewish essence.  It does not mean any other ethnicity or religion is to be excluded or oppressed or ignored.  It simply means that the primary geist of the country is Jewish.

It may be difficult at the outset but good will come out of it in the form of a strengthened Jewish national character.

^

In covering political events as well as those of national importance, the media engages, perforce, in a mutual feeding/digesting phenomenon.  At the heart of the political news arena is public relations people pushing their stories while the media search for “commodifiable soundbites”.  While we usually are concerned with issues such as were all media sources being employed in producing the news about the Gilad Schalit campaign, was the public being provided with the full picture and what was neglected, there was a surprise when it was all over?

Almost unprecedentedly, as soon as solider Gilad crossed over from Hamas captivity, multiple media outlets - establishment as well as independent - indulged in an introspection fanfare that has been rare in Israel.

Nir Wolf of Israel Hayom focused on the assistance of the PR firm that Noam Schalit employed and whose main contribution was turning the soldier into "everyone's son" and in doing so, engaged in image castration.  Rationality was purposely ignored.  Channel One TV’s Ayala Chason admitted that the terminology such as 'the son of all of us' or 'the child' and not 'the soldier' pointed to a media bias “to elicit juicier emotions”.  What resulted was a symbol that was no longer the brave warrior defending the homeland but a tender child (which he may be) that needed our comfort and concern. 

The media willingly subverted not only the reality of the situation but perverted the consciousness of the price to be paid and the future that awaits us all.  Martin  Sherman described the press actions as “puerile, perverse and perfidious” and Caroline Glick insists that the “media are the strongest force in Israeli society” because they are “ideologically uniform” and act as a pack.  It was another full mobilization.

The media surrendered to emotion was the theme of Raviv Drucker’s analysis.  He added that, in doing so, the nation was “damaged”.  After the fact, he informs us that “the media went bankrupt…behaved emotionally, crazily and irrationally…It was psychosis.”

Involved in the PR effort, Tammy Shinkman defined her “codes of communication” as “the empowerment of emotions”.  Her strategy was to succeed in forging an empathy with the fear that anyone’s “child could leave and never return…You get a response when you reveal a personal side.”  As Glick phrased it: by choosing sides, the media ensured no substantive public debate.  The media was not only acting undemocratically but, combined with what she calls the “complicity” of the security services, we had a press putsch.  The personal undermined the public’s values.

There was, however, one very prominent incident which caused even Israel’s ‘lay-down-and-run-all-over-me’ media to get upset against the media; the Egyptian media, that is.  The short interview conducted by newswoman Shahira Amin for Egyptian TV released a torrent of criticism from the Israeli media.  This is rather puzzling, given the behavior of Israeli media in many other instances where an object of interest is near trampled, literally as well as figuratively, badgered, hounded and otherwise pilloried with no concern or respect.  While the ten minute interview was ethically outrageous and painful, despite claims that they were “a new low point in the media’s need for instant gratification regardless of the cost”, another low point was the pit-bull reactions to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s media presence.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was satirically mocked for his appearing in the photographs when Noam, Gilad’s father, first greeted his son.  Taken by the Government Press Office, they were, undeniably, publicity shots.  But Netanyahu’s political foes went berserk. Haaretz’s Yoram Melzer employed a near-expletive.  For Yedioth Ahronoth’s Ariana Melamed it was a “media circus” which was, to her taste, “nauseating and completely staged.” Guy Pines of Channel 10 TV was upset that Netanyahu used the pronoun “I” 37 times in his count.  The Photoshop computer program was used to create pictures of Netanyahu at the 1979 White House Peace Treaty signing, comparing him to the Forest Gump film character.

What should not be ignored were the media maneuvers of Hamas.  In October 2009, they released a 'proof of life' video – for which 20 female prisoners were set free, - showing him relatively healthy and coherent.  A second Hamas clip from April 2010, portrayed in devastating fashion, his father Noam wandering aimlessly down the years and getting visibly older and depicted an Israeli soldier who was abducted by the terrorist group in Gaza nearly four years ago, being returned to his father in Israel in a coffin.

Oddly, given the media hype about that video, the fact that Schalit was to be released without any further up-to-date film proof of his state of health and even life was indicative that the media had taken a decision to reduce as much as possible any matter that could interfere with the story line: Gilad is coming home.

At Pajama’s Media, Jonathan Speyer, in acknowledging that “Israel’s response does not typify that of Western democracies”, suggests that as a Western democracy, Israel “is forced by circumstance to require from its citizens a…willingness to sacrifice [more] than any comparable society. The result is a curious and possibly dysfunctional version of communal concern”.

The force of circumstance that is applied, of course, is done so by the media.  It amplifies opinions held by a minority, thrusts to the fore its own editorial bias and skews the reality by omission, by unfair and unbalanced presentation.  Instead of identifying with the threats of terror, war and hostility, the media adopted the imagery spoon-fed it: save the child. 

Moreover, the media guided the public’s interest in one direction. Benny Katz of the Semitic Action movement pointed out that “Not once did the media legitimize the option of an Entebbe-style rescue or the execution of Hamas prisoners until Gilad is free… it was all about Israel submitting to Hamas demands”.  According to Dror Eydar in Israel Hayom, the media had been engaged in the aestheticization of politics until a “shackled mutednes that was imposed on the public debate was lifted” and “suddenly, the media started to do its job…only after the details of the deal were ironed out”. 

In the end, the question of the media's involvement devolves to whether it was acting professionally, which was doubtful, and does the media feel any communal or national responsibility? 

Uzi Benjamin is sure, as he wrote in The Seventh Eye, that with the power-press-public axis as it is, there is no chance of the media acting different in the future. 

That is very bad news.

In covering political events as well as those of national importance, the media engages, perforce, in a mutual feeding/digesting phenomenon.  At the heart of the political news arena is public relations people pushing their stories while the media search for “commodifiable soundbites”.  While we usually are concerned with issues such as were all media sources being employed in producing the news about the Gilad Schalit campaign, was the public being provided with the full picture and what was neglected, there was a surprise when it was all over?

Almost unprecedentedly, as soon as solider Gilad crossed over from Hamas captivity, multiple media outlets - establishment as well as independent - indulged in an introspection fanfare that has been rare in Israel.

Nir Wolf of Israel Hayom focused on the assistance of the PR firm that Noam Schalit employed and whose main contribution was turning the soldier into "everyone's son" and in doing so, engaged in image castration.  Rationality was purposely ignored.  Channel One TV’s Ayala Chason admitted that the terminology such as 'the son of all of us' or 'the child' and not 'the soldier' pointed to a media bias “to elicit juicier emotions”.  What resulted was a symbol that was no longer the brave warrior defending the homeland but a tender child (which he may be) that needed our comfort and concern. 

The media willingly subverted not only the reality of the situation but perverted the consciousness of the price to be paid and the future that awaits us all.  Martin  Sherman described the press actions as “puerile, perverse and perfidious” and Caroline Glick insists that the “media are the strongest force in Israeli society” because they are “ideologically uniform” and act as a pack.  It was another full mobilization.

The media surrendered to emotion was the theme of Raviv Drucker’s analysis.  He added that, in doing so, the nation was “damaged”.  After the fact, he informs us that “the media went bankrupt…behaved emotionally, crazily and irrationally…It was psychosis.”

Involved in the PR effort, Tammy Shinkman defined her “codes of communication” as “the empowerment of emotions”.  Her strategy was to succeed in forging an empathy with the fear that anyone’s “child could leave and never return…You get a response when you reveal a personal side.”  As Glick phrased it: by choosing sides, the media ensured no substantive public debate.  The media was not only acting undemocratically but, combined with what she calls the “complicity” of the security services, we had a press putsch.  The personal undermined the public’s values.

There was, however, one very prominent incident which caused even Israel’s ‘lay-down-and-run-all-over-me’ media to get upset against the media; the Egyptian media, that is.  The short interview conducted by newswoman Shahira Amin for Egyptian TV released a torrent of criticism from the Israeli media.  This is rather puzzling, given the behavior of Israeli media in many other instances where an object of interest is near trampled, literally as well as figuratively, badgered, hounded and otherwise pilloried with no concern or respect.  While the ten minute interview was ethically outrageous and painful, despite claims that they were “a new low point in the media’s need for instant gratification regardless of the cost”, another low point was the pit-bull reactions to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s media presence.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was satirically mocked for his appearing in the photographs when Noam, Gilad’s father, first greeted his son.  Taken by the Government Press Office, they were, undeniably, publicity shots.  But Netanyahu’s political foes went berserk. Haaretz’s Yoram Melzer employed a near-expletive.  For Yedioth Ahronoth’s Ariana Melamed it was a “media circus” which was, to her taste, “nauseating and completely staged.” Guy Pines of Channel 10 TV was upset that Netanyahu used the pronoun “I” 37 times in his count.  The Photoshop computer program was used to create pictures of Netanyahu at the 1979 White House Peace Treaty signing, comparing him to the Forest Gump film character.

What should not be ignored were the media maneuvers of Hamas.  In October 2009, they released a 'proof of life' video – for which 20 female prisoners were set free, - showing him relatively healthy and coherent.  A second Hamas clip from April 2010, portrayed in devastating fashion, his father Noam wandering aimlessly down the years and getting visibly older and depicted an Israeli soldier who was abducted by the terrorist group in Gaza nearly four years ago, being returned to his father in Israel in a coffin.

Oddly, given the media hype about that video, the fact that Schalit was to be released without any further up-to-date film proof of his state of health and even life was indicative that the media had taken a decision to reduce as much as possible any matter that could interfere with the story line: Gilad is coming home.

At Pajama’s Media, Jonathan Speyer, in acknowledging that “Israel’s response does not typify that of Western democracies”, suggests that as a Western democracy, Israel “is forced by circumstance to require from its citizens a…willingness to sacrifice [more] than any comparable society. The result is a curious and possibly dysfunctional version of communal concern”.

The force of circumstance that is applied, of course, is done so by the media.  It amplifies opinions held by a minority, thrusts to the fore its own editorial bias and skews the reality by omission, by unfair and unbalanced presentation.  Instead of identifying with the threats of terror, war and hostility, the media adopted the imagery spoon-fed it: save the child. 

Moreover, the media guided the public’s interest in one direction. Benny Katz of the Semitic Action movement pointed out that “Not once did the media legitimize the option of an Entebbe-style rescue or the execution of Hamas prisoners until Gilad is free… it was all about Israel submitting to Hamas demands”.  According to Dror Eydar in Israel Hayom, the media had been engaged in the aestheticization of politics until a “shackled mutednes that was imposed on the public debate was lifted” and “suddenly, the media started to do its job…only after the details of the deal were ironed out”. 

In the end, the question of the media's involvement devolves to whether it was acting professionally, which was doubtful, and does the media feel any communal or national responsibility? 

Uzi Benjamin is sure, as he wrote in The Seventh Eye, that with the power-press-public axis as it is, there is no chance of the media acting different in the future. 

That is very bad news.

In reading this article here at the news site, I became inquisitive and researched the court's judgments.

In a March High Court of Justice decision rendered by the President of the Supreme Court, Dorit Beinisch, and signed on by Judeges Gronis and Fogelman, the conclusion permitted the security barrier's location near and/or on Walaja village land and here is a key phrase:

בבית המשפט העליון בשבתו כבית משפט גבוה לצדק
בג"ץ 146/11

 בנסיבות אלה, ובשים לב לקביעותינו בפסק הדין בעניין הכפר וולג'ה באשר לתוואי המעודכן, נחה דעתנו כי המפקד הצבאי נתן דעתו למכלול השיקולים הרלוונטיים לקביעת תוואי גדר הביטחון נשוא העתירה, תוך שהוא מאזן באופן סביר ומידתי בין שלושת אלה: שיקולי ביטחון; החובה לשמור על זכויותיה וצרכיה של האוכלוסייה הפלסטינית; וכן שיקולים שעניינם הגנה

על זכויותיה הנטענות של העותרת

In translation:

"In these circumstances, and with our fixtures regarding the updated route as regards Walaja village, our mind is at ease that the Military Commander has paid proper attention to the varied relevant considerations in connection with fixing the route of the security barrier the subject of this appeal, in that he has balanced within a reasonable and measured manner between these three: the concerns of overall security; the obligation to protect the rights and needs of the Palestinian populace; as well as the protection of the [private and personal] rights claimed by the appellant...

safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.

Moreover, Article 5, actually demands that

The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of, the Government of any foreign Power.

The judges should simply write "Arabs".  That would be quite democratic.

^