Israeli I.D.F. disaster-relief specialists in quake-hit, south Turkey, rescue 10 civilians; Set up early field hospital

Overnight, Home Front Command search and rescue experts pull 26-year-old woman, 65-year-old man out of collapsed buildings in Kahramanmaraş

by EMANUEL FABIAN in The Times of Israel 8 February '23

I.D.F. Search and Rescue teams work to find survivors of Turkish earthquake on Tues 8 February 

Israeli military search and rescue teams working since a devastating earthquake struck southeastern Turkey earlier this week have so far pulled out ten Turkish civilians from the rubble, the Israel Defense Forces said Thursday morning.

The IDF Home Front Command delegation began work on Tuesday, a day after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the region and killed thousands of people.

Meanwhile, a second IDF delegation that landed in the country on Wednesday began establishing a field hospital on the outskirts of the city of Kahramanmaraş overnight.

The IDF said 15 Air Force cargo planes ferried hundreds of tons of equipment and some 230 participants — including search and rescue experts, military medics and Health Ministry doctors, nurses and paramedics — to Turkey to set up the hospital.

The first IDF delegation of 150 search and rescue experts continued to work to rescue civilians trapped under the rubble, saving a 26-year-old woman and a 65-year-old man in the predawn hours of Thursday in the quake-stricken city, also known as Marash.

The military published footage of the rescues.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday afternoon, the head of the aid delegation, Col. (Res.) Golan Vach, said the Israeli teams had seen successes. Vach said such IDF aid delegations usually last between nine and 14 days, and in this case, were ready to stay that long.

Several delegations of Israeli medics from emergency organizations have also headed to Turkey to assist local authorities in treating victims of the earthquake.

The Foreign Ministry was weighing an additional flight to Turkey containing humanitarian items and medicine.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel also plans to send aid to Syria, including tents, medication, and blankets. But Syrian sources vigorously denied requesting aid from Israel, and IDF spokesman Ran Kochav told reporters that the military was not involved in potential aid to Syria.

Israel considers Syria a hostile state, and the two do not have diplomatic ties. However, during the neighboring country’s bloody civil war, the IDF carried out a massive humanitarian operation to aid Syrian civilians.

The earthquake death toll was at least 16,000 people in both Turkey and Syria as of Thursday morning.

Hundreds were still believed to be trapped under rubble, and the toll was expected to rise as rescue workers searched through mounds of wreckage in cities and towns across the area.

(Article continues)

Was the airplane of Israel's new chief of the disputed territories sabotaged?

Brig. Gen. Munir Amar's (left) plane crashes 7-weeks into governing Territories

Israeli Brigadier General Munir Amar, chief of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Unit (COGAT), was killed on Friday when the light plane he piloted crashed into a cliff about fifteen minutes after takeoff, Israeli news site Ynet reported. Gen. Amar, the only person aboard, had only assumed the role from a Jewish Israeli 7-weeks ago.

COGAT's website describes the unit as "responsible for implementing the government's policy in Judea and Samaria and vis-à-vis the Gaza Strip" and "constitutes the civilian authority for residential zoning and infrastructure and is responsible for addressing the needs of Israeli settlements in the West Bank."

Amar's predecessor, Brig. Gen. David Menachem, had lead constant efforts to improve and develop the economy and infrastructure of Judea and Samaria, assist the local population, and maintain Israel's security.

Examples include introducing initiatives to develop the agriculture, hi-tech and export sectors in Judea and Samaria; increasing the number of Palestinian workers in Israel; 
facilitating the entrance of Palestinian men over 55 and women over 50 into Israel without requiring a permit; and generally increasing cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians.


Before assuming his COGAT position on February 3rd, Amar served as commander of the IDF's Arab-speaking Sword Battalion, commander of the Hermon Brigade, and commander of the Home Front Command's Northern District.

Amar, 47, was a married father of three and a resident of the Druze town of Julis in the western Galilee, Israeli news site Walla reported.

Source: i24 News 25 March 2016

Winds of War: Will Israel Strike Iran Soon?

If US talks don't clearly disarm Iran by end of May- will Obama put the world's safety before his re-election?

Chris Mitchell of Christian Broadcasting News in Jerusalem has produced
Winds of War: Will Israel Strike Iran Soon? a video news story with text:

So far, negotiations with Iran and six nations, including the U.S., have produced nothing. Channel 10's Alon Ben-David said the next round on May 23 is crucial.

"I think it's a make or break meeting … and if we won't see a determined international front against the Iranians or some sort of international effort to persuade the Iranians to step down, I don't want to be in the shoes of the Israeli prime minister, but he might have to take a tough decision," Ben-Zion continued.

That decision will take into account the possible outcome of November's U.S. presidential election.

"So I think that Netanyahu fears that after Nov. 12, Obama is not going to be a partner he can count on," he said. "And you can see the rough exchange between those two gentlemen is very little trust between those two leaders unfortunately."

"This is one of the reasons Israel feels that time is running out, that something needs to be decided before November," he said.



"We are getting very close to the moment of truth. There is a school of thought in most of the Israeli leadership that these are the last moments that anyone can do anything about the Iranian nuclear program," Ben-David said.

He emphasized that Iran is not just a danger to Israel.

"Just imagine the kind of organizations that exist in this region and then imagine them with the proliferation of nuclear weapons. That's not a safe world to live in," Ben-Zion concluded. "So I think there's an international interest in preventing Iran from getting that capability."

How laxity towards Islamism and anti-Zionism results in massacres of Jewish westerners

Muslim leaders, politicians, and journalists who have participated in the agenda of lies and hatred against Israel should today hang their heads in shame. - The Commentator March 21, 2012

For it is now clear that the killer was motivated by the same kind of lies about Israeli actions in Gaza that have been peddled and therefore legitimised for years by Muslim leaders in France and across Europe. 

Let us be clear. There has not been one single instance, ever, of the Israeli military deliberately targeting Palestinian children in a school in Gaza. Palestinian children have died in the overall conflict of course. But even that indirect responsibility lies with the people who have started all the wars, namely Palestinian terror groups such as Hamas. 

That is the incontrovertible truth of the matter. Yet you'd never know it if you listened to Europe's Muslim leaders who have whipped up the kind of hysteria against Israel in which the sort of attack that took place on Monday was always likely to take place.

Victims Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 30,with his sons Arieh, 5, &
Gabriel, 4, and Miriam Monsonego, principal's daughter, 7

From The Telegraph:
The al-Qaeda affiliated group who claimed responsibility for the attacks, Jund al-Khilafah, and the statement they posted on jihadist websites:

"On ... March 19th, our brother Yousef the Frenchman carried out an operation that shook the foundations of the Zionist Crusaders ... and filled their hearts with terror," said the statement apparently referring to the shooting of an Israeli-French teacher and three children at a Jewish school in France.
"We claim responsibility for these operations," said the statement, adding that Israel's "crimes ... will not go unpunished."

Henry Samuel, Telegraph's French correspondent, claims that Mohammed Merah filmed all his murders in gory detail, according to the prosecutor, and can be heard saying "you killed my brothers, I kill you!" in one execution.

Who did the civilian schoolteacher Rabbi Jonathan Sandler (who did not serve in the IDF) kill?  Which 'crimes' did French Muslim, Mohammed Merah believe he would avenge by blowing the brains out of Rabbi Sandler's children, aged 4 and 5, or 7-year old Miriam Mosonego?

According to the IDF Blog article, "Top Tweet on Gaza Proven False" from a week ago Monday, 12 March:

Two photos tweeted in the past 24 hours, both allegedly depicting the results of Israeli air strikes in Gaza in recent days, have been proven false. 

The photo first tweeted by Khulood Badawi (@KhuloodBadawi) and later by Diana Alzeer (@ManaraRam), allegedly depicting a Palestinian girl killed by an Israeli air strike yesterday, was proven to have originated in 2006 and to have had nothing at all to do with Israeli action. This photo is now the top tweet for #Gaza, with over 300 retweets. It is completely false.  

In fact, the photo was taken by Reuters on August 9, 2006. It was originally released with an incorrect caption, and then corrected a day later: 

A Palestinian man carries the body of three year-old Raja Abu Shaban, in Gaza August 9, 2006. The three-year-old girl who had been reported killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza on Wednesday actually died of an accident (she fell off of a swing), Palestinian medical workers said on Thursday. Workers at Gaza’s Shifa hospital said on August 10, 2006 that the initial mistake over the cause of death appeared to have arisen because the girl’s corpse was brought in at the same time as the bodies of the gunmen. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (Palestinian Territories) 

The original tweets, however, have already been picked up by hundreds of others and continue to circulate around the web, despite having been thoroughly disproved. (Honest Reporting). 


Melanie Philips addresses the mainstream media's complicity in rationalizing Muslim violence through "Laying the groundwork for the Toulouse massacre"

Not only are the media and ‘progressive’ commentators in the west desperate to sanitise Islamic terrorism and genocidal incitement; they also join in. The Toulouse jihadist said he was ‘seeking revenge for Palestinian children and French military postings overseas.’ 

But no Palestinian children have ever been targeted by Israel for murder. Quite the reverse: Israel regularly puts its own soldiers in harm’s way in order to any minimise civilian casualties in military operations against Palestinian terrorists and their infrastructure which it undertakes solely to protect its own people from further murderous Palestinian attacks. 

Any Palestinian child casualties in such operations occur solely as a tragic and inadvertent by-product of war – and as often as not because the Palestinians have put their own children in harm’s way. 

Yet this deranged belief that the Israelis deliberately kill Palestinian children is not only pumped out daily by the Arab and Muslim world inciting their people to hate Jews and to murder them as a holy act; not only do western progressives ignore this incitement and pretend instead that Islamic terrorism arises from legitimate ‘grievances’; these same western progressives themselves pump out precisely the same lies and incitement -- and then suggest that the deliberate murder of Jewish innocents is the moral equivalent of attempts by Israel to prevent the slaughter of yet more innocents.

Israel Defence Forces former chief, Halutz, intimates about defending democracy against fundamentalist Islam

Former IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz intimated on Sept 11th perspectives that Israel and American military leaders face in defending freedom against militant Islam. Address given to American Associates of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, SouthWest Region in Los Angeles.

Newly-independent Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi addresses Israeli-American Leadership Council in California

Address presented to Israeli Leadership Council on March 20, 2011 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles.

Israel's humanity revealed in Haiti; Who has been misleading us about the Israeli nature?

By emerging out from under the distorting reporters of the Middle-East news industry, the IDF's (Israel Defense Forces) true colors are finally being seen with clarity. The integrity which US reporters observed by the IDF Medical Corps Delegation to Haiti shows makes one wonder: who has effectively tainted the world's perception of Israel's ethics for so long? (Photo by Joe Shalmoni courtesy Stand with Us)


The Muqata Blog posted and translated (from Hebrew) this letter from an Israeli soldier serving in Haiti to his parents:

The Delegation to Haiti

In the lifesaving IDF Medical Corps Delegation to Haiti which is housed in tents, doctors prevent disabilities. They administer aid to the sick, provide warmth, love, and a human touch. They love the wounded.

In the IDF Medical Corps Delegation to Haiti which is housed in tents located in the middle of a hell, every complex medical case has an ethics review board.

In the IDF Medical Corps Delegation to Haiti which is housed in tents, the chances of success are debated whether to amputate the entire leg of a child: the chances of a premature infant to survive while on a ventilator in a preemie unit in the tent.

In the IDF Medical Corps Delegation which came from Israel in the Middle East to Haiti, there are American volunteer doctors. They have no other useful installation in which to work in. A doctor and nurse from Germany came. They heard this is best hospital in Haiti. An emergency room team from Colombia arrived with all their equipment and asked if they could set up next to us to be part of our hospital. England is the enlightened country in Europe, the one which has an academic boycott of Israel; twenty British doctors and nurses asked to work with us.

All these people, without exception, stand together at the morning formation at 7 AM in the flag square. The flag of Israel. The flag of a country which was established after the USA was already superpower. After the British left a land under their control. After Colombia was already an established country. After the Holocaust against the Jewish people.

In the IDF Medical Corps Delegation to Haiti which is housed in tents, there are equal rights among all. Equal rights in Haiti, which was a nation of slaves, where even today there exists a great social divide between the rich and the poorest of the world's poor.

The IDF Medical Corps Delegation to Haiti which is housed in tents is the embodiment of ultimate human ethics. Brotherhood at its best. The epitome of the verse from the Biblical portion of Kedoshim, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

CBS and CNN online news editors downplay Israel's role in reporters' stories

Though CBS' Dr. Jennifer Ashton and CNN's Dr. Elizabeth Cohen's video news stories feature Israel's prominent M*A*S*H field hospital, you'd never know it by the omission of any reference to Israel or their field hospital in their story descriptions or blurbs. Why not? Because Israel doing a visibly humanitarian act contradicts their vilified casting of the country, culture, Army, and ethics?
The web editor does their best to marginalize Israel's role in the print story:

Also Monday, a local community hospital with three operating rooms re-opened and just three miles from the large and sophisticated field hospital set up by the Israeli military continues to treat patients and save lives.

Neither story mentions what the problem with America's field hospital is, or why the Israelis are being relied upon, but not recognized, for having to pick up U.S. slack.

In ABC News' Dr. Richard Besser's story, even though he features the Israeli Army field hospital as the saviours of his obstetric crisis, Israel is also omitted in the editors' description online. 3 TV networks news stories feature Israel favorably, 3 networks' websites omit it. Coincidence? Or journalistic-bias?

A tribute to the sacrifices of each Israeli (and their families) who lost their life fighting for freedom against Jihad

A dozen music videos to memorialize Israel's fallen sacrifices towards the defeat of the Jihad.

Israel Preparing for War with Syria

(IsraelNN.com) The IDF Deputy Commander of the Northern Command during the Second Lebanon War says Israel is learning from last summer and preparing for war. Speaking at a Monday conference at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, Gen. (res.) Eyal Ben-Reuven said the IDF is learning the mistakes of last summer's war and is preparing for a comprehensive war. Ben-Reuven said the war in Lebanon was justified, but turned out "bad" for Israel both militarily and politically. "It is not good that we failed," he said.

Ben-Reuven feels that Syria will expect to suffer losses in a coming conflict with Israel, "but will try to hit Israel's homefront in order to win diplomatic gains in peace talks that will follow, and also cause another split in Israeli society. The IDF will need a fast and strong ground forces operation to knock out the areas from where rockets are launched against Israel as quickly as possible - and the army is training for this."

Other speakers at the conference included former Police Commissioner Rafi Peled and former IDF Intelligence Chief Gen. (res.) Aharon Ze'evi-Farkash. Ze'evi-Farkash said that both Iran and Hizbullah simply need time to improve their military capacities against Israel.