Mr Obama: How many children...?

Five days ago, terrorists went in to a family home in Itamar and murdered five - FIVE - members of the Fogel family.


3-month-old Hadas


4-year-old Elad


Yoav , 11


Mother Ruth Fogel


Father Udi Fogel


All murdered by terrorists who are being feted within their own community for the cowardly butchering of sleeping innocents.

“This is one of the most brutal attacks we’ve ever seen,” said an Israeli army officer, adding the children “were literally slaughtered.” (here)

The White House put out the following statement:

WASHINGTON - The United States on Saturday called the stabbing deaths of five Israelis in the West Bank settlement of Itamar a terrorist attack and urged the Palestinian Authority to "unequivocally" condemn the killings.

"We condemn in the strongest possible terms the murder of five Israelis in a terrorist attack in the northern West Bank, and we offer our condolences to their loved ones and to the Israeli people," the White House said in a statement.

I have seen minimal reporting in the msm, who mostly neglected to give the ages of these latest victims of terrorism within Israel's borders. Sadly, we have all come to expect this selective 'reporting' from the msm, especially in all matters relating to Israel.

During his time at 1600, BHO has proved to have very little grip on the reality of leadership that should come with the title "President." The people of Iran held up placards pleading to the western world to "Help us," and the Libyans fight their own homegrown tyrant and plead for at the least a 'no fly zone' so Ghaddafi cannot rain bombs down on the innocents.

Terrorism is running amok across the world, and often it is hard to find BHO even 'present.' Apparently in the aftermath of these horrific murders, Obama does 'condemn...this terrorist attack.' He actually used the word 'terrorism,' it is being reported, and this is a good first step.

Talk is cheap.

Am I suggesting that BHO offer the US military might to intervene in countries where despots are killing their own innocent victims? No, of course not, but at the very least I would like to see some concrete action, from the supposed leader of the free world. Instead, he appears to be very busy doing....what?

Since he took power, BHO and his Secretary of State have continued to utter stern words towards Israel, to the point that Israel surely knows they needn't look to a historical ally for support. But this latest from the BHO administration as terrorists murder more Israelis, should leave no doubt about the US 'commitment' to Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with Haim Fogel on the phone Saturday evening to offer condolences and support.

"It's a cold-blooded massacre of innocent children and parents," the prime minister said. "I, and the entire nation of Israel, embrace you and the three grandchildren who survived the horror. I promise to do everything we can in order to assist you at these terrible times."

(here at Ynet News)

Do I expect BHO to call the surviving members of the Fogel family directly? No, but I would expect that the President of the USA would - at the very least - go on the public record not only denouncing the massacre of Hadas, Elad, Yoav, Ruth and Udi, but also publicly committing to re-examine the gazillion dollars a year the US pours into Gaza, the breeding ground of terrorists who murder Israelis.

Nothing. And the silence is deafening, from where I sit.

I have a suggestion for a presidential gesture that BHO could make: immediately stop sending any US foreign "aid" into Gaza, and any other place that supports terrorists. No more money funneled into regimes that not only harbour and support those who commit such atrocities, but also celebrate the murders of innocents. That includes governments who kill their own citizens who dare to aspire to live in a free democracy.

As the Fogel children and their parents were being butchered, the cash registers to terrorist regimes which harbour the murderers were still ringing with the intake of millions of dollars from the US. I know that the US ignored the calls for aid money to stop as long as Gilad Shalit is still held prisoner; those calls fell on deaf ears in the BHO administration.

Every.single.day Israelis are barraged with rockets fired on them by terrorists. Every day, the children and families of Israel have to live in constant vigilance against terrorist attacks. The Fogel family have paid a terrible price at the hands of murdering criminals, who any decent person would denounce. And that is ALL I, as a private citizen, can do: denounce this evil, LOUDLY.

Barack Obama is not a private citizen. He is the President of the US. He does have it within his powers to make a very effective statement against this latest terrorism by stopping all aid money into Israel's enemies, immediately.

Will he take this very public stand? To date, the answer is obvious.

I have no doubt that Israel will take care of business in response to this latest outrage. BHO? I expect him to just shrug, along with the rest of the world. And my heart hurts and I stand and mourn - with Israel.

How MANY children will have to be murdered, Mr Obama?




[Update: In related news

Dutch MPs want to stop subsidising Palestinian Authority

The Dutch parliament want the Netherlands to stop subsidising the Palestinian Authority if it fails to take measures to end the glorification of terrorism. A motion put forward by two Christian parties the Christian Union and the orthodox SGP in the Dutch parliament today was supported by a majority of MPs.

MPs have also urged the cabinet to lobby for European Union subsidies to be stopped if no action is taken. The CU/SGP motion was supported by coalition parties, the conservative VVD and Christian Democrats, and by the Freedom Party...

More here.

( H/T One of my Danish nephews for this.)

Media Matters: Bias against Israel - again

In the midst of all the usual msm noise this past few days, five horrific murders - by terrorists - in Israel are again showing the blatant media biases against Israel. From The Algemeiner:

Itamar and British Media Bias

March 14, 2011 8:13 pm

I don’t own a television and I don’t buy newspapers. I do so mainly to save money, but also because I think that I end up better informed by seeking out information on the internet. A particularly striking example of this happened this week. Like many people I heard about the grizzly murders in Itamar on motzei Shabbat and I assumed that, since the brutal stabbing of children is something of a rarity, and matters Israeli are a veritable obsession for the British press, everyone else would have too. However, two conversations on Sunday with people who are neither ignorant nor apathetic quickly produced the response: ‘what murders?’

So I did some scouting. The killings were reported by some newspapers, though by no means all and always far from the front page. Nowhere on the news or in print were any pictures of the deceased shown, which is unusual for a media usually so keen to get footage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that they accept fairly obvious fakes. However, things only got really bad when I went onto the BBC website. Almost unbelievably, ‘Aunty’ (as people insist on calling it) reported the story as ‘Israel approves new Jewish settler homes in the West Bank’, mentioning down in paragraph three that this had followed the murder of the Fogels. It’s sometimes darkly joked that the world is more concerned with Jews building houses than Iranians building bombs, but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Britain’s state-funded broadcaster is more concerned with Jews building houses than Arabs breaking into a house and stabbing a three month old girl to death....

Go - now - and read the rest of this here.

Thus far, I have chosen not to add my own commentary, because the outrage I feel for this butchery prevents me from being any sort of articulate. Israeli Soldier's Mother wrote from her outrage, and her eloquence in the midst of this latest atrocity battering the Israeli family, is a must read:

A Choking Anger

"Did you hear?" Elie said when I came to the table moments after the Sabbath had ended.

"No, what?" I asked.

"Bad news," he said. And then he told me. "Two parents and three children. Stabbed. Itamar."

"Killed?" I asked, already feeling the horror starting to mount inside me.

"Yes," he answered quietly...

[...]


The anger, the rage that comes is almost more than I can stand. It chokes you. It fills you, infuriates you....

[...]

There are no words that can adequately describe the anger and the rage I am feeling and so there is no comfort. The world will forget, as it always does - each orphan, each infant. It sickens me beyond words....

Right now I have NO words to describe MY anger, my sorrow, at this latest evil, so go read the rest of Israeli Soldier's Mother's column here.

As you read, remember this: the innocent people of Israel live with these atrocities every.single.day. The msm is a willing accomplice in their part of the willful ignorance about the lives - the deaths of innocents - of the people of Israel.

And the world shrugs.

[Update:

As the world shrugs, and looks away, Israel National News is reporting on Yamar, the Fogel's 12 year old daughter.

"I Will Be Their Mother" Says 12 Year Old Tamar Fogel

by Uzi Baruch

The eldest daughter of the Fogel family, 12 year old Tamar, promised her relatives: "I will be strong and succeed in overcoming this. I understand the task that stands before me, and I will be a mother to my siblings". The orphaned youngster's words were quoted in the Hebrew daily Yisrael Hayom.

In their home in the town of Neve Tsuf in Samaria, Tsila and Chaim Fogel, parents of Udi, are sitting on low benches for the traditional “shiva” week of mourning alongside his three brothers and sister. There is a constant stream of comforters going in and out of the house, VIP's and ordinary citizens from all over Israel, whose hearts go out to the bereft family that lost son, daughter-in-law, and three young grandchildren in a barbaric terrorist slaughter on Friday night.

Chaim Fogel continues to retell the story of terrible hours from 3 a.m. on, when he received the horrific news, drove to Itamar, met his 12 year old granddaughter and then entered the family’s home. The authorities were forced to ask her to tell what she saw when she returned from her youth group activity to find her family’s bloodsoaked bodies at 12:30 a.m. Chaim himself had the heartbreaking task of identifying the bodies.

"We came to take the surviving grandchildren out of the Valley of Death, he said. I don’t wish on anyone in the world the sight I saw. It is horrendous, beyond description, beyond comprehension".

The grandparents recalled the last time they saw Udi, Ruti and the children, a week and a half ago on Saturday night. They celebrated the start of the month of Adar Bet in Itamar, danced, sang and laughed....

Read the rest here.

Israeli family murdered

Five family members killed in suspected terrorist attack at their home in Itamar settlement

According to police the suspect broke into a home in Itamar armed with a knife and killed the family of five people including parents and three children.

By Anshel Pfeffer and Yaniv Kubovich

Five members of an Israeli family were killed Friday night when a suspected terrorist broke into their home in the West Bank settlement of Itamar and stabbed them all to death.

According to police, the suspect broke into the house armed with a knife and stabbed the mother, father and three children, aged 11, three and an approximately one-month-old baby. Magen David Adom rescue services arrived at the scene and found them all dead.

It is believed that there were two other children in the house at the time of the attack, aged 4 and 2, who were not injured in the attack.

Extensive police forces and Israel Defense Forces are scanning the area for the suspect.

The family's 12-year-old daughter, who was at a youth group activity, returned to her home at approximately midnight and her calls for the door to be opened for her went unanswered. With the help of a neighbor, they managed to open the door and came upon the horrible murder scene.

The military blocked the entrance to the northern West Bank settlement of Itamar, as soldiers poured inside and a pair of ambulances departed...

Read the rest of this terrible story here.