An article recently appeared on Arutz Sheva quoting Deputy Defense Minister Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan (Jewish Home) and his response to a letter written by “Israeli high school seniors” calling on their peers not to enlist in the IDF.
The letter claims Israel "oppresses" Palestinian Authority Arabs, and the signatories refused "to have any part" in such "oppression." The rhetoric, however, was not that of some sixteen to eighteen-year-olds in high school, but of the terrorist group PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and the Israeli and American Far Left.
What’s that? The American Far Left?
"We will refuse to serve out of an obligation to our values of peace, and because of our knowledge that there is an alternative reality which we can create together," the letter read. "We call on our fellow students to ask themselves: Will IDF service advance this cause [of peace]?" it continues.
The proliferation of Jewish “peace” organizations that seek to undermine the Israel Defense Forces while claiming they are merely seeking peace has been resoundingly successful in America where they collude openly with groups that call for the destruction of Israel. Jewish Voice for Peace and J Street are given a “voice at the table” with other Jewish groups as if they are merely just some misguided peace-loving Jews instead of self-appointed revolutionaries who want the Jewish state dismantled. Not losing a beat, these groups are opening up on college campuses across the US as an adjunct to the Hamas front, Students for Justice in Palestine.
The destroy-Israel-at-all- costs cabal in America is moving into high schools and secondary schools to deconstruct the true image of Israel as a haven for the Jewish people, and a democratic country, describing it as an “oppressor” engaging in “genocide” of innocent “peace-loving” Arabs.
Many of the major communist organizations in the U.S. such as the International Action Center, United for Peace and Justice (the renamed U.S. Communist Party), and other subversive groups previously funded by Cuba and North Korea, and funded now by George Soros, gladly endorse the PLO and Hamas. An anomaly is J Street, whose head, Jeremy Ben-Ami was a public relations agent with Fenton Communications. Ben-Ami’s activities netted him $300,000 the first year he went into business for himself and founded J Street in his basement.as the only paid corporate officer. JStreet which is now opening chapters in colleges across the USA.
“The army is carrying out the government’s racist policy, which violates basic human rights and executes one law for Israelis and another law for Palestinians on the same territory,” the high schoolers allegedly wrote. Accusations of racism are a big seller on the news in the U.S., even when false.
Israel helps them by looking the other way and not taking them seriously enough.
Another new leftist Jewish organization has appeared. Called T'ruah, It is funded by George Soros and provides the link to the American Left, so that this high schoolers' letter may be a harbinger of things to come. T’ruah is funding another “peace group” that is training what it calls “hives”, 20 of them across the USA, mostly in college towns, aiming to recruit Jewish college students to protest the “occupation” as in the high school letter. They have adult organizers who get in mostly rich kids from secular Jewish families or teens who are already experienced activists in radical anti-U.S. groups to say they are the “new generation” who will make peace in the Middle East that us old fogeys haven’t been able to achieve.
Israel helps them by looking the other way and not taking them seriously enough.
The Center for Jewish Nonviolence is set up alongside T’ruah and supplies many of the young Jewish radicals active in If Not Now. Every Jewish kid who worked with radical groups in his locale can now join If Not Now and extend their bona fides as an international radical to attacking the Jewish people. As with the ISM, these young Jews say they are Palestinian-led and fighting the “horror” of the Israeli occupation.
The more active members of If Not Now are paid to train new members how to disrupt pro-Israel events by screaming and trespassing and stifling free speech. They have already included Friends of the IDF Fundraisers and Christians United for Israel events in churches as venues for disruption. They never condemn terrorism attacks by the Arabs against Jews, in fact, they laud as “heroes” the likes of Rasmea Odeh who murdered two college boys in a supermarket bombing in Israel. Many are already part of Jewish Voice for Peace. At “trainings” they teach high school and college kids disruption tactics in which everyone screams at the same time, everyone acts in mob fashion to attack Israel.
If Not Now has a program funded by T’ruah that sends high school and some college-aged Jewish kids over to Judea and Samaria, notably to one of the Palestinian squatter camps, Samud, with instructions to not only disrupt security activities the IDF soldiers need to carry out, but to also mob the soldiers and grab their guns - visible on You Tube. The If Not Now leader/organizer seen grabbing a soldier’s gun is Issac Cates, who has a history in the U.S. of participating in anarchist disruptions. He can be seen in videos forcing an IDF soldier to the ground and grabbing another soldier’s machine gun more than once until the soldier finally slaps his face. This was an Ahed Tamimi moment in reverse that may have encouraged Bassem Tamimi’s daughter to stage the latest assault in Bi’ilin
These trips are nothing new, the Olive Tree Initiative, Palestine Summer Encounter, Birthright Unplugged and many other trips professing to be for “peace” are all designed to call for an end of the “occupation” (to them, that is all of Israel).and offered by taxpayer funded U.S. colleges. But If Not Now is expanding this into grabbing soldiers’ guns and it should land them jail sentences, but their being internationals will exempt them from this as they ply their “direct action” against IDF troops and brings stories and videos home.
These signatories don’t offer to work in hospitals or help the poor.
Cates, an American, lived in Israel as an organizer and may even still be there despite Stop the ISM alerting Israeli intelligence.
That high school letter Deputy Minister Dahan discussed wasn’t just some Israeli kids at the sweet shop after school writing something. It was the PFLP and American radical anarchist groups creating yet another small cut in a death by a thousand small cuts being orchestrated against Israel. Israel needs to stop allowing outside subversive organizations free rein to try to bring down the Jewish state. The students who allegedly wrote it must be investigated to discover who really wrote it and even if some money changed hands for it to happen.
Since Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guard Corps from Iran create a wider battlefront in the Golan and Syria, Israeli military and political leaders see the high school letter as a minor thing not deserving of attention. But the letter is designed to undermine morale and the willingness among the younger generation to not serve and to aid the overall Arab goal.
When people like Issac Cates try to enter Israel, be they Jewish or not, they must be given the boot immediately. The authorities and school administrators must take strong measures to root out every student subversive who signed that letter. Free speech doesn’t mean Israelis must aid their own destruction.
A glimmer of hope is that some other high school students wrote their own letter in support of the IDF. However, those students also invited the draft dodgers to “dialog” about the issue. If they do meet, there won’t be a “dialog” with both sides seeking common ground, but just another bash "Israel the occupier" event used by the media to show “Jewish division” over the Israeli state’s existence..
Foreign states and organizations are using this subversion of the IDF to try to dismantle a Jewish state. Wake up, Israel.
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