The Wall Street Journal reported information about the family that held Israeli hostages in Gaza. Almog Meir Jon, Andrei Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv were held in the home of the Al Jemal Banosiarat.
The article reveals how the family led its routine life during the time it held the captives in its home. The head of the family, a seventy-three-year-old doctor, Ahmad al Jemal, is a significant member of the community. In the mornings, he works in a communal clinic in the refugee camp, Nusyarat, and in the afternoons, works in a small private clinic of his own which services local residents with medical care. He is also the imam in the local mosque.
The mother of the family, Fatima, also works in the clinic. One of the sons, a columnist for Al Jazeera, Abdallah al Jemal, who lives with his wife and children in the same house, writes articles in English about the suffering of the Palestinians during the war — at the same time that the family is holding on to the hostages.
In these past few months, when the doctor finished his day, he would return to his home as usual, which he shared with his son and his family — and also the three prisoners which he was holding for Hamas. After the latter were rescued, they said that from their locked room they were able to hear the daily small-talk exchanges between the various family members.
The building on Yasaan St. where they were held, no longer exists. It was demolished by an aerial attack shortly after the Israeli soldiers stormed it to release the prisoners. Abdallah, his wife and his father were killed in that action. The local residents who spoke to the American paper confirmed the development of events.
A neighbor from the opposite apartment affirms that Abdallah's children survived. Several streets from the house of al-Jemal, Abu Nar, head of another family connected to Hamas which held Noa Argaman as hostage, was also killed and their building destroyed. This family was not as prominent in the community as the Al Jemal's.
Two ostensibly normal families, the kind which the 'enlightened' world, alongside the American president, refer to as noninvolved inhabitants, concerned for humanitarian relations. Regular, normal citizens — a doctor, journalist, secretary in a clinic — people who went off each day to work, while in a room in their home, they held Israeli citizens kidnapped from their homes, starved, beaten, degraded.
All for Hamas. These, then, are the people who deserve public concern for their well-being, comfort and lives...
Beat the Chareidim about the Army
Former minister Chaim Ramon, rummaged through the official documents publicized by the army, arriving at the conclusion that there is nothing to the call for chareidim to 'share the burden,' when about half of the regular eligible draftees do not enter the army.
Furthermore, he notes that of the chareidim who volunteered to enlist, the vast majority were not even accepted. From the few hundreds that remained, only about half were actually drafted.
Thus, according to army statistics, of all the chareidim who reported to the draft board, only 13% were actually accepted into the army!
The inevitable and sorry conclusion, maintains Chaim Ramon, is one: "It only comes to show that this whole subject is a political ploy. It is very clear that all the media crying out for 'equality in the national burden,' demanding the draft of chareidim, never bothered to study the facts of the Knesset and which I publicized. Apparently, these were of interest to the rightist camp and the chareidim themselves. Which confirms that this subject is a ploy being used to incite the public and garner public opinion while pitting one faction against the other.
"The draft is not the issue at all, as witnessed by the fact that the Arabs do not serve in the army and it doesn't interest anyone."
They will continue to incite, to malign and degrade, while we will continue to cleave to our own truth. The single Jewish truth is: Torah learning is supporting the world.
