Leon's No News Bulletin 108 Sat 13th June 09

Dear Friends, shalom,

Last Sunday, after dropping Avishai off in Tel Aviv I continued to Shederot. I was pleased with my old Renault (1996).  No waiting for busses as I usually do but travelling in luxury in my own vehicle cruising down the new motorway connecting Tel Aviv with the South.

On the coast to my right I could see the towers of the Ashdod power station. I crossed over the new “Up to here and no further” junction just past the tel of Biblical Ashdod which dominates the view of the new industrial park here.

I remembered that one of my assignments in the tour guide’s course, about 30 years ago was to give an explanation of the battle of “Up to here and No Further”.

The name refers to the point where the once proud Egyptian army, eagerly marching towards their expected conquest of Tel Aviv was stopped dead in its tracks by a sudden burst of gunfire from a squadron of 5 spitfires which Israel was not known to possess, swooping out of the clear, blue sky.

At Ashkelon I veered left towards Kiriat Gat, once famous as the town where Goliath the giant Philistine enemy of Israel lived, today a town of new immigrants of the 1950’s now sparkling in the midst of green, farmland which was once desert.

Once Samson and David fought the Philistines here, the British fought the Turks and in 1948 the Israelis fought the Egyptians but now the clash of swords and the boom of canons is silent;

All that remains is the empty shell of Iraq Suidan, a fortress built by the British and handed over to the Arabs in the war of Independence in 1948 so that they would have control over all the desert area south of there and which offered powerful resistance to Israeli soldiers trying to push the Egyptian army away from their march to conquer Jerusalem.

Eventually the Israeli army outflanked them and trapped the entire Egyptian army in a pocket between here, Ashkelon and Kiriat Gat (called Faluja by the Arabs) this was the famous “Faluja Pocket” which brought the Egyptian Army to its knees and an end to the war of Independence in this part of the country. The Negev desert was securely in the hands of Israel.

After another few kilometers I reached Shederot, in the middle of all the ancient battle fields and only about 1 km East of Gaza. As if the Arabs haven’t realized that the wars are over they’re still lobbing rockets there from time to time. But nobody gave that a thought last Sunday.

Everybody was busy with the 8^th Shederot film festival. The first film I saw “Black Business” was about a crime clean up squad that murdered more than 1000 citizens of a village in the Cameroons.

The film’s impact comes from the pain and suffering shown vividly in the lines on the faces

of families whose children had disappeared; suspected of committing a crime, taken away suddenly and never seen again excepting in a few cases where the decayed bodies were found in some bushes.

Believe it or not, judging by the opinions of ordinary people interviewed by the director of the film, despite all the suffering, the majority of the people of Cameroons are still in favor of solving the crime problem with the criminal methods of the death squad.

They support police killing people, without trial, merely suspected by their neighbors for being criminals.

Unless the Cameroon nation rejects police terror methods the outside world can do almost nothing to stop police terror in the Cameroons.

President Barack Obama expressed the same idea concerning Islamic extremism, in his speech in Cairo.

It’s about time an American President made a clear statement like this:

"The sooner the extremists are isolated and unwelcome in Muslim communities,
the sooner we will all be safer."

He means that Moslem terrorism will only stop when the Moslems themselves demonstrate against it and he knows that this is difficult or well nigh impossible. That’s why he adds a promise to the Moslems:

“The first issue that we have to confront is violent extremism in all its forms. In Ankara, I made clear that America is not and never will be at war with Islam. (APPLAUSE)  We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject, the killing of innocent men, women, and children. And it is my first duty as president to protect the American people.”

“……none of us should tolerate these extremists. They have killed in many countries. They have killed people of different faiths but, more than any other, they have killed Muslims.”

“And finally, just as America can never tolerate violence by extremists, we must never alter or forget our principles

Six million Jews were killed, more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless. It is ignorant, and it is hateful. It's about preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead this region and the world down a hugely dangerous path.”

Wishing you a great no news day

Yours truly

Leon Gork

Come for a Jerusalem Walk with Leon Gork

Jerusalemwalks.com

legork@netvision.net.il

Tel: 052 3801867