Pro-Israel News

Published July 02, 2014

The three kidnapped teens, from left to right: Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaar and Naftali Fraenkel (photo credit: Courtesy)

The site where the bodies of three slain Israeli teens were found near Halhul (screen capture: YouTube)

Israeli searchers on Monday discovered the bodies of three Israeli teenagers, who were abducted on June 12, north of Hebron in the West Bank.

The bodies were found near Halhul on Monday afternoon. Israeli security forces, which had been conducting extensive searches in the area, sealed off the area and declared it a closed military zone. Hebron was also sealed off.

A search team from the local Kfar Etzion field school, along with IDF soldiers from an elite unit, found the teens. The local volunteers had been asking for two weeks to join the search.

Naftali Fraenkel, 16, Gil-ad Shaar, 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, were kidnapped on the night of June 12 at a hitchhiking post outside the settlement of Alon Shvut in the Etzion Bloc south of Jerusalem.

The bodies were found at about 5 p.m., bound and partially buried, in an open field in a hard to access area known as Wadi Tellem. The site was less than 20 kilometers (12 miles) from where the teens had been abducted.

The parents were informed on Monday evening that the bodies had been found. Relatives gathered in the three family homes; some spokespeople for the families thanked the Israeli security forces for their efforts to locate the teenagers, and thanked the public for their support and solidarity.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telephoned the families and expressed his condolences.

State Department spokeswoman Jan Psaki called the news of the killings “a tragedy,” and urged continued cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority’s security forces despite “the pain on the ground.”

The three Israeli teenagers had been killed soon after their abduction, and the bodies were apparently disposed of hurriedly. The bodies were not in a good condition when they were found, Channel 2 said. “It was a harrowing sight.”

Forensic experts identified the bodies at the scene. The bodies were flown to the Abu Kabir Institute for Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv on Monday evening for definitive identification. Israelis placed mourning candles outside the institute later Monday night.

Israel’s security cabinet convened in emergency session. Among other decisions, it was expected to demand that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas sever his unity government partnership with Hamas.

Israeli authorities on Thursday had named two Hamas members as prime suspects in the kidnapping.

The two, Amer Abu Aysha and Marwan Kawasme, have been missing from their homes in Hebron’s Hares neighborhood ever since the kidnapping took place. The two were allegedly in the car in which the three were abducted.

The two were still at large on Monday night, and Israel’s security forces were making intensive efforts to track them down.

IDF troops surrounded the homes of the two suspects late on Monday evening.

Hamas leaders in the Hebron area were reported to have made themselves scarce, anticipating that they would be sought by the security forces. Hamas has not taken responsibility for the kidnapping and killings; a Hamas spokesman was quoted warning on Monday night that “any Israeli response will open the gates of hell.”

IDF Chief of General Staff Benny Gantz was in the Halhul area, overseeing the ongoing operation.

Hamas officials in Hebron confirmed the two suspects were members, and said Israeli troops had targeted the men’s homes since the beginning of Operation Brother’s Keeper. The officials said troops had entered the homes several times, conducting intense searches and confiscating items as evidence.

On Sunday night, tens of thousands of people crowded into Rabin Square in Tel Aviv to show support for the families of the three kidnapped teenagers, under the banner “Singing Together for Their Return.” President-elect Reuven Rivlin and the parents of the kidnapped teens highlighted the speaker list.

Since the start of Operation Brother’s Keeper to find them, 18 days of searches had seen the arrests of over 400 Palestinians, a majority of them members of Hamas.

 

 

A man holds up an image of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinians rally in the center of the West Bank city of Nablus in support of Abbas during his visit to Washington, Monday, March 17, 2014. (photo credit: Jaafar/Ashtiyeh/AFP)

Palestinian support for a two-state solution with Israel has dropped to below the 30 percent mark, according to a new poll commissioned by the US-based think tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, though most respondents said they were opposed to violent resistance.

Marking a notable shift in Palestinian public opinion, 60 percent of the population surveyed in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (55% and 68%, respectively) said that the five-year goal “should be to work toward reclaiming all of historic Palestine, from the river to the sea,” according to the poll, a position meaning the elimination of Israel. Meanwhile, less than 30% (31% in the West Bank, 22% in Gaza) would like to “end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza to achieve a two-state solution.”

In contrast, 53% of Palestinians supported the two-state solution in a December 2013 poll conducted by the Hebrew University.

Numerous other statistics from the survey confirmed the downward trend of support for a two-state solution as an end to the conflict. Two-thirds of respondents said that a two-state solution would be “part of a ‘program of stages,’ to liberate all of historic Palestine later” and that “resistance should continue until all of historic Palestine is liberated.”

On a more promising note, a majority of respondents registered opposition to violent resistance against Israel, particularly in the Gaza Strip, where 70% said Hamas should maintain a ceasefire with Israel and 57% said that Hamas should accede to the PA unity government’s renunciation of violence. In the West Bank 56% said that Hamas should adhere to the ceasefire and 50% said it should renounce violence altogether.

The poll showed that a clear majority of Palestinians — 62% of the West Bank and 73% of Gazans — support nonviolent “popular resistance against the occupation” and see it as a useful tactic.

Perhaps surprisingly, Hamas seems to have gained little political clout for its alleged abduction of the three Israeli teenagers, despite popular support for the kidnapping on the street. Asked who should lead the Palestinian Authority in the next two years, 65% chose Fatah leaders, with Mahmoud Abbas leading (30%), then Marwan Baghouti (12%), Mohammed Dahlan (10%) and others (13% combined), while various Hamas leaders only won 9% of support in the West Bank and 15% in Gaza.

The Palestinian public also appeared to exhibit some short-term pragmatism, with over 80% saying they “definitely” or “probably” wanted to see more job opportunities for Palestinians in Israel. A majority said they also wanted Israeli companies to offer more jobs to Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza.

The Washington Institute said the poll was conducted by “a leading Palestinian pollster” on June 15-17 through face-to-face interviews among 1,200 adult Palestinians, with a 3% statistical margin of error.

As a Christian, I am deeply ashamed. Once again my community has condemned the Jewish people – and only the Jewish people – in the name of Jesus Christ. I cannot overstate my disgrace.

Of course, I could try to distance myself from the PC(USA) like most Christians do when confronted with anti-Jewish activity emanating from the church, saying: I’m not that kind of Christian – those people don’t speak for me. Although it’s true, they don’t (I am not, nor never have been a member of the denomination), such a cop-out at a moment like this is hardly in good taste.

Perhaps I could point out that I, like others, did everything in my power to stop the vote from passing. Or draw attention to the fact that out of 600-plus votes, divestment passed by a mere 7 — that a full 49% of the commissioners were good guys who came down on the right side of history.

I could place the vote in its larger context, showing it as the last gasp of adying denomination that grows smaller, older, and whiter every year. Indeed, as it stands today the denomination comprises less than two million people and speaks for less than one percent of all American Christians — barely a drop in the bucket when compared to the one billion Christians worldwide.

Or I could point out that the actual financial cost of divestment levied against the three affected companies (a combined $21 million) is hardly enough to cause panic in a board room. Or that, economically, the move will have no impact on Israel at all.

I could make any of these arguments to the Jewish people in hopes of explicating, exculpating, or mitigating the significance of the vote and my connection to it.

But I wouldn’t dare.

To most Jews, the nuances of Christianity and its various doctrines and subcultures don’t mean anything. There was a guy named Jesus, a wooden cross, some inquisitions – bottom line, a lot of Jews got killed.

We Christians cannot distance ourselves from bad behavior in the church by invoking sectarian or political arguments, or by claiming thatthose people really don’t speak in the name of Christianity. To our Jewish friends, it really doesn’t matter. Professed followers of Jesus are once again attacking them based on their Christian faith.

Instead we must ask the Jewish people for forgiveness in the name of Christianity writ large, acknowledging that we as a community have committed a serious sin.

A sin, you say? Surely I exaggerate. How could principled divestment from a few international businesses constitute a morally offensive act?

It’s simple – the PC(USA) divestment campaign was imbalanced and malicious from the start. It oversimplified one of the world’s most complicated conflicts; vilified Israel as uniquely evil among nations, likening it to apartheid South Africa despite all evidence to the contrary; exonerated Palestinians as innocent victims of Israeli aggression; ignored the blatant corruption, human rights abuses, and ethnic cleansing of numerous state and non-state actors both in the Middle East and around the world, all of which surpass Israel in every measurable indicator of oppression and tyranny; marshaled a range of political, historical, and theological arguments to condemn the idea of Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland; cloaked its hatred in Christian terms; and acted with arrogance and contempt for the Jewish people.

If PC(USA) leaders had divested from every company doing business with every flawed state in the world, that would have been one thing. The fact that they targeted Israel alone demonstrates the pure odium behind their actions.

I cannot imagine a greater desecration of the name of Christ – a Jewish man who lived a Jewish life in a Jewish land, who kept the commandments, and who wept over the city of Jerusalem.

For the dignity of his good name – not to mention the alienation and pain of the Jewish people in this hour – I call upon Christians of conviction to repent for this sin and endeavor to demonstrate their change of heart with more than just words. How each person responds is up to him or her, but the end result should be clear condemnation of the PC(USA) vote and practical efforts to heal the wound it has caused. We must send a message to any other Christians who are considering these kinds of vindictive measures that we shall not stand for them.

This battle may seem marginal, even unimportant, to some; however, I submit that the very credibility of our faith is at stake.

For too long we’ve been telling Jewish people about the beauty and power of Christianity, somehow expecting them to care.

Isn’t it time we start showing them what it’s all about?

 

 

By Gili Cohen and Eli Ashkenazi | Jun. 22, 2014