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Wednesday, July 01, 2015

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: New federal law fights European boycotts of Israel
In plain English, this means U.S. courts cannot enforce judgements that doing business in or being based in the West Bank or Golan Heights violates international law, or particular European rules. There are not as of yet any such foreign judgements to speak of; indeed, legal challenges to business activities across the Green Line have consistently been rejected by European national courts. The real importance of the foreign judgements provision is establishing and strengthening U.S. state practice on this international legal issue.
That is, one underlying purpose behind the series of relatively minor EU restrictions on business across the Green Line is to establish an entirely novel principle of international law (applicable only to Israel): that these areas are for completely off limits for Israelis. The Europeans claim the mere presence (forget habitation) of Israelis in these areas can be a crime under international law. The new law rejects this contention, event to point that it will not recognize foreign judgements arising from it. This would include, for example, the purchase of property in the West Bank by Americans.
Finally, another under-appreciated provision states that boycotts and divestment of Israel by governments violates the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, the cornerstone of international trade law. Such a finding by a major third-parrty state should make the EU quite worried about the possibility of Israel challenging their impending restrictions in the World Trade Organization’s dispute resolution mechanism.
More broadly, the law – and the state laws it will spawn – represents a major refutation of the conventional wisdom that boycott pressure on Israel is growing irreversibly and ineluctably. In this account, it is Israel’s policies, rather than the single-minded animosity of its opponents, that fuels boycott efforts, and nothing short and changing those policies will help. In short, in this view, the boycott pressure is at least in part legitimate. This view was championed by the left-wing J-Street group, which opposed the Roskam Amendment. They did not manage to convince a single congressman. Despite the efforts of such ostensibly pro-Israel groups, Americans understand that the movement to single out Israel for economic punishment is unreasonable, discriminatory, dangerous to Israel’s security, and contrary to long-standing U.S. policy.
State Department backs away from anti-BDS law’s language
The US State Department backed away Tuesday from controversial language included in the anti-BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama a day earlier, indicating official discomfort with a clause that critics say intentionally blurs the lines between Israel and the West Bank.
“By conflating Israel and “Israeli-controlled territories,” a provision of the Trade Promotion Authority legislation runs counter to longstanding US policy towards the occupied territories, including with regard to settlement activity,” State Department Spokesman Jack Kirby wrote in a statement issued Tuesday afternoon. “Every US administration since 1967 – Democrat and Republican alike – has opposed Israeli settlement activity beyond the 1967 lines. This administration is no different. The US government has never defended or supported Israeli settlements and activity associated with them and, by extension, does not pursue policies or activities that would legitimize them.”
Kirby’s comments referred to the part of the Trade Promotion Authority law which sponsors said were designed to discourage European governments from participating in BDS activities by leveraging the incentive of free trade with the US.
The provisions require US trade negotiators to make rejection of BDS a principal trade objective in Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations with the European Union, instructing them to discourage “politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from or sanction Israel and to seek the elimination of politically motivated non-tariff barriers on Israeli goods, services, or other commerce imposed on the State of Israel.”
Lawless Administration Won’t Enforce Law Against Israel Boycotts
Kirby is right that the U.S. government has never formally recognized the right of Jews to live in Jerusalem or the West Bank. But he’s wrong to assert that President Obama’s policies are entirely consistent with that of his predecessors. This administration has made an issue of the existence of 40-year-old neighborhoods in Jerusalem in a way that is unprecedented since it treats the presence of Jews in parts of Israel’s capital as being just as illegitimate as the most remote West Bank settlement. Moreover, no previous administration has ever considered boycotts of Israel, whether of the entire country or of the half million Jews who live on the other side of the 1967 lines as legitimate. Kirby’s statement is an implicit endorsement of some Israel boycotts while opposing others.
Nor does the focus on settlements aid the cause of peace as the administration claims. Israel has already made far-reaching offers of withdrawal from the West Bank including statehood that has been repeatedly rejected by the Palestinians. The refusal to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn is the obstacle to peace, not the presence of Jews in Jerusalem or the West Bank.
As I have written previously, the notion that it is okay to boycott some Jews but not others is one that sends a dangerous signal to Israel’s enemies. Once it is deemed lawful to anathematize parts of the Israeli economy, it is a slippery slope to treating all such boycotts as legitimate. Since the original Arab boycott that sought to strangle the Israeli economy was only broken by U.S. efforts to ban trade with those who enforced the boycott, a Congressional effort to move against BDS now was entirely in keeping with longstanding U.S. policy. But since this administration is obsessed with the idea of banning settlements, it is prepared to let a Europe in which a rising tide of anti-Semitism has fueled support for BDS activity get away with such boycotts.
This is a disgrace, but any thought of a legal challenge to the decision is a waste of time. Since the U.S. Supreme Court gave President Obama the right to invalidate laws about Israeli rights to Jerusalem in a decision handed down earlier this month, he can be confident that he will be granted similar latitude to ignore anti-BDS law.
But it isn’t just friends of Israel who should be outraged about this decision. This is an administration that views law enforcement as an option, not an imperative. Just as he did on immigration, where he ignored the will of Congress and used executive orders to effectively annul legislation by not enforcing those concerning illegal immigrants, President Obama regards his personal opinion as being above the law. That is a dangerous tendency to substitute his preferences for the rule of law ought to scare all Americans, regardless of their views about trade or Israel.

Friday, June 26, 2015

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Time to call out those aiding the Israel pogrom
We know that the NGOs are the instruments of the Soviet-inspired psychological warfare campaign to bend the collective Western mind with systematic falsehoods and blood libels about Israel.
What we haven’t done is hold to account those who have enabled these institutions and groups to do these wicked things, and who have given them traction.
Israel and its defenders should be publicly calling out those Western governments which fund these NGOs, and demanding that they stop funding such demonization and incitement to Israel’s destruction.
Most of these Israeli NGOs are part of the New Israel Fund’s network. The NIF should be ostracized. If an organism has ingested poison it must expel it or else it may die.
UN Watch points out that since its establishment the UNHRC has condemned Israel more than the rest of the world combined. Why are the UK and US still members of this travesty of a human rights arbiter? As long as they participate in it, they validate and legitimize it. As long as Israel’s allies keep silent in the face of the libels against Israel pouring out of the NGOs, UN and other international bodies and their own media and universities, those governmental allies are themselves implicitly conniving at this delegitimization campaign. As long as they continue to fund these NGOs, they too have blood on their hands.
The Davis report is just the latest manifestation of the surreal nightmare through which we are living, in which much of the world has been turned into one giant pogrom, both physical and intellectual, against the Jewish state. To fight it, we must not only delegitimize the delegitimizers but hold their enablers’ feet to the fire, too.
Caroline Glick: The Iranian-American nuclear project
If the US fails to reverse Obama’s policies toward Iran in the next two years, it is hard to see how it will be able to rebuild its strategic posture in the future.
The pace of change in the region and the world is too rapid today to rely on past achievements as a basis for future power.
As for Israel, it is now clear that there is no “crisis” in Israel-US relations. The Obama administration is betraying Israel. The centerpiece of Obama’s foreign policy is his desire to transform Iran’s illicit nuclear program, which endangers Israel’s existence, into a legal Iranian-American nuclear program that endangers Israel’s existence.
Consequently, the last thing Israel should worry about is upsetting Obama. To convince fence-sitting Democratic senators to vote against Obama’s Iran deal, Israel should expose all the ruinous details of the nuclear agreement. Israel should let the American people know how the deal endangers not just Israel, but their soldiers, and indeed, the US homeland itself.
By doing so, Israel stands a chance of separating the issue of Democratic support for Obama from Democratic opposition to the nuclear deal. Obama wants this deal to be about himself. Israel needs to explain how it is about America.
At the end of the day, what we now know about US collaboration with Iran brings home – yet again – the sad fact that the only chance Israel has ever had of preventing Iran from getting the bomb is to destroy the mullahs’ nuclear installations itself. If Israel can still conduct such an operation, it makes sense for it to be carried out before Iran’s nuclear program officially becomes the Iranian-American nuclear project.
Martin Sherman: The logical lacunae of the Left - Ari Shavit at AJC
One of the annual program’s highlights is the Forum’s Great Debate, which this year featured The Jerusalem Post’s Caroline B. Glick and Haaretz’s Ari Shavit, on whether the two-state formula offers a constructive solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, or is merely a dangerous delusion.
Unsurprisingly, Glick gave a feisty repudiation of the conceptual rationale and practical feasibility of any resolution based on the two-state principle. My strong misgivings regarding the alternative one-state paradigm she proposes are well known, but while I differ on what should be done, I always find her arguments as to what shouldn’t be done powerful and persuasive.
But it is on her opponent, Ari Shavit, that I should like to focus in the ensuing paragraphs.
At the start of the debate, Glick showered lavish praise on him, describing him as “a shining example, of what is best on the Left.” She continued that although “from a policy prescription he remains entirely true to his tribe... he represents the best of his tribe,” adding, with a wry reference to his fellow ideologues’ tendency to disregard recalcitrant realities, “because from time to time, he can make room for facts that are uncomfortable to his tribe.”
Sadly, in his address Shavit displayed scant signs of such virtues.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

From Ian:

Bernard-Henri Levy: A yellow star for the Jewish state?
Is this just a detail that can be safely ignored on the grounds that BDS targets “only” the territories, the Jewish settlements being built there, and the goods that the settlers produce? This is another sucker trap.
Here, too, it is enough to read the movement’s founding declaration of July 9, 2005, which specifies that one of its “three objectives” is to “protect” the “rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.” In fact and in law, that would amount to establishing on those lands a new Arab country that could be counted on, in short order, to undergo an ethnic cleansing that would make it judenfrei.
And, finally, how can I refrain from reminding those whose memory is as full of holes as their thinking that the idea of boycotting Israel is not as new as it appears? In fact, it is older than the Jewish state, having emerged on December 2, 1945, from a decision by the Arab League, which then wasted no time in relying on that decision to reject the United Nations’ dual resolution to establish two states. Among the promoters of this brilliant idea were Nazi war criminals who had settled in Syria and Egypt, where they gave their new masters lessons in marking Jewish shops and businesses.
A comparison is not an argument. And the meaning of a slogan does not reside entirely in its genealogy. But words do have a history. As do debates. And it is better to know that history, if we wish to avoid repeating its ugliest scenes.
The truth is that the BDS movement is nothing more than a sinister caricature of the anti-totalitarian and anti-apartheid struggles. It is a campaign whose instigators have no aim other than to discriminate against, delegitimize, and vilify an Israel that in their mind never stopped wearing its yellow star.
To activists of good faith who may have been taken in by duplicitous representations of the movement, I would say only that there are too many noble causes in need of assistance to allow oneself to be enlisted in a dubious one. Those worthy causes include fighting the jihadist decapitators, saving the women and girls enslaved by Boko Haram, defending the Middle East’s imperiled Christians and Arab democrats, and, of course, striving for a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Labour’s Hamas connection
Among the Labour mainstream, complacency about Corbyn has been replaced by a rising sense of anger. “He claims he is a socialist, yet the first principle of socialism is supposed to be equality,” says James Bloodworth, editor of the influential Labour website Left Foot Forward. “Is he deluded enough to think that anti-Semitic terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah care a jot for the human rights of women, of gay people and of Jews?”
Bloodworth continues: “He needs to clarify his past statements as a matter of urgency. If he still stands by the things he has said, anyone genuinely interested in human rights cannot support him.”
But he is not alone in his affection for hardline Islamists. A seam of similar feeling runs through the British political establishment, particularly on the left.
The Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) is a British campaign group that — according to the Tel Aviv-based Meir Amit Terrorism and Intelligence Center — is affiliated to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2009, it welcomed the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as its guest speaker at its annual conference; and it has long enjoyed the patronage of MPs.
At a PRC event held at Parliament in 2013, Corbyn took the stage alongside Baroness Jenny Tonge, who was forced to resign from her position in the Liberal party after saying that if she were Palestinian, she “might just consider” becoming a suicide bomber; and Lord Nazir Ahmed, who after causing a deadly road accident by texting behind the wheel, blamed his prison sentence on a Jewish conspiracy.
A surprising number of other British politicians, including Andy Slaughter, Sir Gerald Kaufman and Crispin Blunt, have visited Hamas leaders in Gaza, and some — George Galloway included — have made sizable donations to the terror group. Now that Corbyn’s star is rising, this loose collective of pro-Islamist MPs may have a new representative at the top table. (h/t Yenta Press)
 Landmark anti-BDS law passes final Senate legislative hurdle
After weeks of legislative drama, a trade bill containing provisions opposing the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel cleared its final legislative hurdle Wednesday afternoon. The anti-BDS language, passed as part of the controversial Trade Promotion Authority legislation, is expected to be signed into law by President Barack Obama, who had pushed Congress to pass the trade bill as soon as possible.
Two amendments opposing BDS in Europe – one sponsored by Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin and Republican Sen. Rob Portman and the other by Republican Representative Peter Roskam and Democratic Representative Juan Vargas – were included in a trade authorization package that was considered must-pass legislation for the administration.
The president needed Congress’s vote to authorize him to negotiate trade deals with so-called “fast-track authority,” but ten days ago House Democrats turned on the president and defeated a key portion of the trade deal package.
After quick legislative maneuvering last week, House Republicans passed the authorization part of the bill – the part that the president needed most urgently and that Republicans tend to support – and then passed the revised House version back to the Senate for approval. On Wednesday afternoon, the Senate gave the controversial legislation its final approval, sending trade authorization to the president’s desk to be signed into law.
Roskam: If you want free trade with the U.S., you can't boycott Israel


Tuesday, June 23, 2015

From Ian:

Michael Lumish: The Jewish Ghetto in Hebron
The city of Hebron (or Hevron) is among the most ancient of Jewish cities and is the home of the Tomb of the Patriarchs where Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah are said to be buried.
Today Jews inhabit about 3 percent of this old Jewish town and the Arab residents very definitely do not want them there.
My friend Yosef, of Love of the Land, alerted us to this:
Jews peacefully confronted this racial and religious persecution, showing their objection by leaving their ghetto which comprises approximately 3-percent of the city to walk quietly through the marketplace. They were faced with threats, physical and verbal intimidation, followed by stones -- for no other reason than that they dared to cross the line in protest of apartheid. Israeli residents then left the market as the hostile population chanted Allah Hu Akbar, pushing against the gate which protects the Jewish population from their neighbors. Stun grenades afterward were necessary to scatter the threatening mob.
The video below is a production of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and therefore in its opening blurb suggests that Jews walking through Hebron represent some sort-of assault on the great Arab majority in that city. Those Jews were protected by Jewish soldiers, which is why the video focuses on soldiers.
At about the 40 second mark the Arabs start chanting "Alahu Akbar! Alahu Akbar!" which, given recent history - if not ancient history - is essentially a call for violence.
Establishing a Palestinian Islamist State
The United Nations' verdict of guilty to Israel, in its "Schabas Report," issued yesterday, was written even before the trial began.
Only the wide-eyed West still does not believe that Mahmoud Abbas is telling the truth when he assures the Palestinians of his intent to destroy Israel.
All public opinion polls in the Palestinian Authority (PA) indicate that if elections were held today, Hamas -- whose only openly-stated reason for existing is to destroy Israel -- would win in a landslide, as in 2006. Gaza has already been lost to Hamas and perhaps soon to ISIS. All evidence reveals that to establish a Palestinian state now would turn it into an Islamist terrorist entity.
Abbas thought that forming a Unity Government with Hamas would give the PA a unified front with which to harvest more money and diplomatic concessions from Europe. But last summer, Abbas was informed of a Hamas murder plot against him.
Jewish Home revives bill limiting foreign funds for left-wing groups
Knesset member Yinon Magal (Jewish Home) on Tuesday presented a new version of a controversial bill aiming to limit foreign funding for organizations that support the prosecution of IDF officers in international courts or campaign for boycotts of Israeli institutions or products.
The proposed legislation stipulates that Israeli non-government organizations receiving funding from foreign governments of over $50,000 will pay a 37 percent tax on the contribution, the Walla news site reported. The bill also adds that Israeli government ministries and the army must avoid collaboration with such NGOs.
“It is important to remember that the law is supposed to maintain our identity as a sovereign state that acts according to the will of the majority and not the agendas of foreign governments or on behalf of organizations that spend tens of millions in order to tarnish our reputation,” Magal said, according to Walla.
The bill, Magel continued, aimed to “make it difficult for those organizations that voluntarily serve the perceptions of foreign governments, those organizations that submit information to the haters of Israel, who make a fortune from tattling on settlers and IDF soldiers and slander Israel’s name in the world.”
Uri Ariel Cancels National Service Volunteers for Leftwing NGOs
It’s turning into a banner day for Bayit Yehudi in the Knesset as they take on the leftwing NGOs.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Uri Ariel (Bayit Yehudi), who is also in charge of Sherut Leumi (National Service), instructed the managing director of the Sherut Leumi Authority Sar-Shalom Gerbi to cancel all national service programs for NGOs who acted against IDF soldiers, according to a report in Srugim.
Ariel’s decision came in response to the UN’s Schabes anti-Israel report that relied on reports and testimony from dozens of leftwing NGOs.
Ariel explained that the whole point of National Service is to serve the state of Israel and its citizens. He explained he will not allow a situation where Israel finances programs that act against Israel’s own soldiers.

Saturday, June 20, 2015

From Ian:

Israeli man killed in West Bank terror attack
An Israeli man who was critically injured Friday afternoon in a shooting attack in the West Bank succumbed to his wounds later Friday. He was named as Danny Gonen, 25, from the central city of Lod.
Gonen was shot in the upper body near the settlement of Dolev, northwest of Jerusalem. He was found unconscious and transferred to Tel Hashomer Hospital by IDF helicopter where he died over an hour after the attack.
Gonen was an electrical engineering student and the eldest of five siblings.
A second man, whose identity was not immediately made public, was moderately hurt in the attack and was being treated at Tel Hashomer.
The two men were traveling in their car after visiting a spring near Dolev, when they were flagged down by a Palestinian man, seemingly asking them for assistance. He then pulled a gun out of a bag he was carrying and opened fire on them at point-blank range, mortally wounding Gonen.
“The Palestinian asked for information regarding a nearby spring moments before drawing a gun and shooting the passengers at close range,” according to a statement released by the IDF.
Michael Oren: Why Obama is wrong about Iran being 'rational' on nukes
Simply put: Those in the “rational” camp see a regime that wants to remain in power and achieve regional hegemony and will therefore cooperate, rather than languish under international sanctions that threaten to deny it both. The other side cannot accept that religious fanatics who deny the Holocaust, blame all evil on the Jews and pledge to annihilate the 6 million of them in Israel can be trusted with a nuclear program capable of producing the world's most destructive weapon in a single year.
The rational/irrational dispute was ever-present in the intimate discussions between the United States and Israel on the Iranian nuclear issue during my term as Israel's ambassador to Washington, from 2009 to the end of 2013. I took part in those talks and was impressed by their candor. Experts assessed the progress in Iran's program: the growing number of centrifuges in its expanding underground facilities, the rising stockpile of enriched uranium that could be used in not one but several bombs, and the time that would be required for Iran to “break out” or “sneak out” from international inspectors and become a nuclear power.
Both nations' technical estimates on Iran largely dovetailed. Where the two sides differed was over the nature of the Islamic Republic. The Americans tended to see Iranian leaders as logical actors who understood that the world would never allow them to attain nuclear weapons and would penalize them mercilessly — even militarily — for any attempt to try.
By contrast, most Israelis viewed the ayatollahs as radical jihadists who claimed they took instructions from the Shiite “Hidden Imam,” tortured homosexuals and executed women accused of adultery, and strove to commit genocide against Jews. Israelis could not rule out the possibility that the Iranians would be willing to sacrifice half of their people as martyrs in a war intended to “wipe Israel off the map.”
The Americans tended to see Iranian leaders as logical actors... By contrast, most Israelis viewed the ayatollahs as radical jihadists. -
As famed Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis once observed, “Mutually assured destruction” for the Iranian regime “is not a deterrent — it's an inducement.”
How Obama Opened His Heart to the ‘Muslim World’
And got it stomped on. Israel’s former ambassador to the United States on the president’s naiveté as peacemaker, blinders to terrorism, and alienation of allies.
Yet, tragically perhaps, Obama — and his outreach to the Muslim world — would not be accepted. With the outbreak of the Arab Spring, the vision of a United States at peace with the Muslim Middle East was supplanted by a patchwork of policies — military intervention in Libya, aerial bombing in Iraq, indifference to Syria, and entanglement with Egypt. Drone strikes, many of them personally approved by the president, killed hundreds of terrorists, but also untold numbers of civilians. Indeed, the killing of a Muslim — Osama bin Laden — rather than reconciling with one, remains one of Obama’s most memorable achievements.
Diplomatically, too, Obama’s outreach to Muslims was largely rebuffed. During his term in office, support for America among the peoples of the Middle East — and especially among Turks and Palestinians — reached an all-time nadir. Back in 2007, President Bush succeeded in convening Israeli and Arab leaders, together with the representatives of some 40 states, at the Annapolis peace conference. In May 2015, Obama had difficulty convincing several Arab leaders to attend a Camp David summit on the Iranian issue. The president who pledged to bring Arabs and Israelis together ultimately did so not through peace, but out of their common anxiety over his support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and his determination to reach a nuclear accord with Iran.
Only Iran, in fact, still holds out the promise of sustaining Obama’s initial hopes for a fresh start with Muslims. “[I]f we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion,” he told the New Yorker, “you could see an equilibrium developing between [it and] Sunni … Gulf states.” The assumption that a nuclear deal with Iran will render it “a very successful regional power” capable of healing, rather than inflaming, historic schisms remained central to Obama’s thinking. That assumption was scarcely shared by Sunni Muslims, many of whom watched with deep concern at what they perceived as an emerging U.S.-Iranian alliance.
Six years after offering to “extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist,” President Obama has seen that hand repeatedly shunned by Muslims. His speeches no longer recall his Muslim family members, and only his detractors now mention his middle name. And yet, to a remarkable extent, his policies remain unchanged. He still argues forcibly for the right of Muslim women to wear — rather than refuse to wear — the veil and insists on calling “violent extremists” those who kill in Islam’s name. “All of us have a responsibility to refute the notion that groups like ISIL somehow represent Islam,” he declared in February, using an acronym for the Islamic State. The term “Muslim world” is still part of his vocabulary.
Historians will likely look back at Obama’s policy toward Islam with a combination of curiosity and incredulousness. While some may credit the president for his good intentions, others might fault him for being naïve and detached from a complex and increasingly lethal reality. For the Middle East continues to fracture and pose multiple threats to America and its allies. Even if he succeeds in concluding a nuclear deal with Iran, the expansion of the Islamic State and other jihadi movements will underscore the failure of Obama’s outreach to Muslims. The need to engage them — militarily, culturally, philanthropically, and even theologically — will meanwhile mount. The president’s successor, whether Democrat or Republican, will have to grapple with that reality from the moment she or he enters the White House. The first decision should be to recognize that those who kill in Islam’s name are not mere violent extremists but fanatics driven by a specific religion’s zeal. And their victims are anything but random.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

From Ian:

UNRWA Chief Admits Hamas Hid Weapons in Facilities
Pierre Krahenbuhl, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, the UN body tasked with aiding "Palestinian refugees," admitted on Wednesday that Hamas terrorists hid weapons at UNRWA facilities during their terror war against Israel last summer.
"We were the ones who found the weapons caches in our facilities during inspections," Krahenbuhl told Yedioth Aharonoth in an interview. "The reason that the whole world knew about it is that we told them."
Krahenbuhl's reference is to at least three separate occasions in which rockets were found at UNRWA facilities. After the first finding of rockets at an UNRWA school, UNRWA workers reportedly called Hamas to come remove them.
Likewise, a booby-trapped UNRWA clinic was detonated, killing three IDF soldiers. Aside from the massive amounts of explosives hidden in the walls of the clinic, it was revealed that it stood on top of dozens of terror tunnels, showing how UNRWA is closely embedded with Hamas.
The UNRWA head continued, saying, "we knew the revelation would lead to harsh responses against us in Israel, but try to imagine what would happen if we weren't the ones who published it. The act of publishing proves we aren't ready to allow it and show restraint."
David Horovitz: Blaming Obama, ex-envoy Oren says aspects of US-Israel ties ‘in tatters’
He said the root of Israel’s problems with Obama lies in three aspects of the president’s abiding worldview: Obama’s “unprecedented support for the Palestinians,” the goal of “reconciling with what Obama calls the Muslim world,” and Obama’s “outreach, reconciling with Iran. From the get-go. You see that right from the beginning. He comes into office going after Iran.”
But the administration is also problematic, Oren added, because it “jettisoned the two core principles of the alliance, which were ‘no surprises’ and ‘no daylight.’ Obama said it: I’m putting daylight. And proceeds to put daylight, public daylight. And then surprises. I was told that with previous administrations,” said Oren, “we were always given advance copies of major policy speeches. The Cairo speech (that Obama delivered in 2009) was twice as long as the First Inaugural Address. It touched on issues that were vital to our security. We never had any preview.”
Given the deterioration in ties, and especially given Obama’s policy on Iran, Oren concluded in the interview that “we’re on our own,” facing what he termed “a broad spectrum of monumental threats all at the same time.” He said this conclusion was inescapable after Obama failed to act against Syria, and that it was at this point that “everyone” in Israel realized that Obama was not serious about his military option on Iran.
Still, Oren tried to put a brave gloss on Israel’s lonely position: “To me that’s a refreshing Zionist moment. We realize we’re on our own,” said Oren. “It’s a different topic, but I have a thing about this regional peace conference with the moderate Arab states that everyone keeps talking about here, certain parties. To me it’s running away from what I believe is an Israeli Zionist responsibility: taking our fate into our own hands. Waiting for the Saudis to somehow bring redemption? I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
Oren concludes the book by urging that bilateral ties be repaired, and says American and Israeli leaders “must restore those three ‘no’s’ — no surprises, no daylight, no public altercations — in their relations.”
Asked toward the end of the interview whether things would be better under a Hillary Clinton presidency, Oren said that Netanyahu had “a rapport” with her, and that “she understands certain things about Israel… She gets it.” Clinton and Republican candidate Jeb Bush both made major campaign speeches this week in which they promised US-Israel ties would improve if they were elected president next year.
From Clooney to Clinton: 20 revelations from Michael Oren’s new book
1. Netanyahu’s take on the Hebrew press: Criticized on all sides in the Israeli media for his 2009 speech at Bar Ilan University in support of a two-state solution, Netanyahu tells Oren, half in jest, “If I walked on the Sea of Galilee, the Israeli papers would write, ‘Bibi can’t swim.'”
3. Kissinger’s bleak assessment of Obama’s approach to the Middle East: Meeting with Henry Kissinger early in his term, Oren finds the ex-secretary of state gloomy over the president’s eagerness to reconcile with Iran. Surely, says Oren, the White House realizes that an “Iran with nuclear capabilities means the end of American hegemony in the Middle East?” Retorts Kissinger: “And what makes you think anybody in the White House still cares about American hegemony in the Middle East?”
4. Oren stunned by Obama’s attitude to the United States: Reading the president’s memoir “Dreams From My Father,” the ambassador says he scoured the book in vain “for some expression of reverence, even respect, for the country its author would someday lead” but finds none. Instead, in Oren’s reading, “the book criticizes Americans for their capitalism and consumer culture, for despoiling their environment and maintaining antiquated power structures.” He notes that Obama accused Americans traveling abroad of exhibiting “ignorance and arrogance” — the very same shortcomings, notes Oren dryly, that the president’s critics assigned to him.
7. Abbas’s no-peace stare: At the suggestion of veteran US official Dennis Ross, Vice President Biden, visiting Israel in 2010, asked Mahmoud Abbas, when he called on the Palestinian Authority president in Ramallah, to “look him in the eye and promise that he could make peace with Israel. Abbas refused.”
8. Closed Gates: Former US defense secretary Robert Gates had “a visceral dislike” of Netanyahu, writes Oren. He’d known Netanyahu since the prime minister was deputy FM, and back then thought him superficial, glib, arrogant and outlandishly ambitious. As an adviser to George H.W. Bush, Gates had gone so far as to recommend that the young Netanyahu be banned from the White House.

Tuesday, June 09, 2015

From Ian:

Graphic anti-Israel display casts shadow over Amsterdam
Local visitors and tourists in Amsterdam's Dam Square were welcomed over the weekend by disturbing images of the bodies of Palestinian children supposedly killed by IDF soldiers – images posted by pro-Palestinian activists who also protested Israel in the square.
The display appeared in the famous square in the center of the city under the title "Save the Palestinian Children." Included in the display was a photo of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu representing Satan with red eyes and the teeth of a vampire dripping with blood over the body of a dead and bleeding Palestinian baby.
A blue Star of David appeared as a tattoo on the prime minister's forehead under the title, "Can't get enough." A side graphic listed numbers of the dead and wounded in Gaza during a specific time period.
Israeli Ambassador to Holland Haim Divon responded to the display saying, "This is indeed appalling, outrageous and repulsive. This is part of the smear campaign that provokes nausea and disgust. Unfortunately there are a number of groups whose hate for Israel knows no limits.
"They don't raise their voice when atrocities occur daily in our region or elsewhere." Divon concluded by saying that the embassy was looking at ways to convince the local government to take a firm stance on the issue. (h/t Yenta Press)
The truth about international law and BDS
The BDS folks, and the people among us here who are sort of in favor of "at least" boycotting Judea and Samaria, back up their argument using international law. Well, Judea and Samaria aren't "Palestinian territories" -- at most they are disputed territories: We also lay claim to them based on the juridical concept of "permission of the nations," history, justice and the Bible. These arguments were made by world-renowned legal scholars from the time of the Six-Day War in 1967 and onward.
In any case, the enemies of settlement on the central mountain ridge claim that international law prohibits helping the economic activity of an occupying force in belligerent territories. Well, here's a surprise: There is no such law. When the BDS storm was raging, Professor Eugene Kontorovich, an expert in international law and a senior member of the Kohelet Policy Forum, published a research paper in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law titled "Economic Dealings with Occupied Territories."
Kontorovich examined legal rulings and economic conduct of European nations and demonstrated that from a European perspective, there is no international law that forbids economic activity in occupied territories. European companies operate in Western Sahara, a region occupied by Morocco in 1979 and unrecognized by any country; the same goes for northern Cyprus, which was occupied by Turkey in 1974.
While Europe prohibits business dealings over the Green Line, it signs business contracts with Morocco that aid the Moroccans' presence ("the occupying force") in Western Sahara -- French firms included. They don't do that because they don't care about the law when it comes to Morocco, but because no such law exists!
French Islamists had Jewish store 'hit list' and nuclear bomb manual
Fourteen members of a banned Islamic group stood trial in Paris on Monday on terror charges after police found a “hit list” of Jewish stores marked "targets" in files belonging to its leader.
Several of the stores belonged to the Hyper Cacher chain, like the one in which four people were killed in a hostage drama two days after the Islamist killings at Charlie Hebdo, the satirical weekly.
The 14, all members of a now-banned Islamist group called Forsane Alizza ("The Knights of Pride" in Arabic), are charged with "criminal conspiracy related to a terrorist enterprise". Some also face charges of illegal possession of weapons. All face prison terms of ten years if found guilty.
The group was dismantled amid a crackdown on radicals shortly after a 2012 killing spree in southern France by Mohamed Merah, who attacked a Jewish school and soldiers, killing seven people before being gunned down by police.
The “hit list” was found during a March 2012 raid on the home of group leader Mohamed Achamlane, 37, in which they also seized an English-language manual on how to build a nuclear bomb, along with three demilitarised assault rifles, three revolvers and “easy recipes” for home-made explosives.
On Achamlane’s hard disk, investigators found a file called “target.txt”, containing the names of ten Jewish stories, five of which belonged to Hyper Cacher.

Wednesday, June 03, 2015

From Ian:

Netanyahu pans UK students for boycotting Israel but not IS
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back at the UK’s National Union of Students hours after it passed a motion to boycott Israel, calling the group hypocritical for singling out the Jewish state while it rejected an earlier motion to condemn the Islamic State group.
“They boycott Israel but they refuse to boycott ISIS. That tells you everything you want to know about the BDS movement. They condemn Israel and do not condemn ISIS; they condemn themselves,” Netanyahu said Wednesday, using acronyms for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and Islamic State, the radical terror group that has established a self-styled caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
“Israel has an exemplary democracy. We have academic freedom, press freedom, human rights. ISIS tramples human rights to the dust,” he said in remarks delivered alongside visiting Canadian Foreign Minister Robert Nicholson.
“It burns people alive in cages and the national student groups in Britain refuse to boycott ISIS and have boycotted Israel. It tells you everything you want to know about the BDS movement,” he said.
Netanyahu also took a swipe at Turkey and Iran for working to legitimize Hamas, the terror group that rules the Gaza Strip, at the United Nations.
“At the same time, in the UN, we’ve seen Turkey and Iran vote to give Hamas affiliate status – Hamas. Hamas fires rockets on our cities while hiding behind Palestinian civilians, hiding behind Palestinian children. It tells you about international hypocrisy a lot,” Netanyahu said, referring to a United Nation decision to support the Palestinian Return Center, which Israel alleges is linked to the Gaza Strip’s Hamas leaders.
Britain’s student union votes to boycott Israel
The NUC is the UK’s umbrella student organization for some 600 higher education institutions representing 7 million students.
The motion “condemns Israeli military presence in the West Bank and Gaza,” and calls on students to “co-ordinate a nationwide student day of action to commemorate UN Palestine Solidarity Day on 29 November,” the Jewish Chronicle reported.
“Justice for Palestine” also included amendment 518a, a provision proposed by the student union of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London formally aligning the student organization with the BDS initiative. After a heated debate, 19 Executive Council members voted in favor of the provision, 14 against and one abstained.
The Jewish Chronicle reported that the vote took place through a secret ballot, and was originally scheduled to take place at the NUC’s annual conference in April, but was postponed until June due to lack of time to debate the issue.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the decision had “little practical implications, since this body has already voiced anti-Israel opinions in the past.”
“Instead of expressing hatred, British students would benefit from studying history and understanding that the distance between conveying hate language and prejudice to committing despicable crimes is not that great,” the spokesperson said.
In the wake of the vote, the British Government restated its firm opposition to calls to boycott Israel.
In a statement, the deputy British ambassador to Israel, Dr. Rob Dixon, said: “We are deeply committed to promoting the UK’s trade and business ties with Israel, as part the flourishing partnership between the two countries. The reality is one of rapidly strengthening links between British and Israeli universities in science and academic cooperation.
“As David Cameron has said, the UK Government will never allow those who want to boycott Israel to shut down 60 years worth of vibrant exchange and partnership that does so much to make both our countries stronger,” the statement added.
'It's not politically correct to be anti-Semitic, but it's super-in to be anti-Israel'
The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is the new anti-Semitism and wants to destroy Israel, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Wednesday, in response to a motion to the agenda from coalition and opposition MKs calling to fight those who seek to delegitimize Israel.
The discussion was marked by shouting matches over whether BDS is an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic movement or simply seeks to bring an end to Israel's presence in areas liberated in 1967.
"BDS opposes Israel as the Jewish state. It wants to blacken us and destroy us as a Jewish and democratic state," Shaked explained. "The boycotters don't talk about Judea and Samaria, they talk about the state of Israel."
According to Shaked "it's not politically correct to be anti-Semitic today, but it's super-in to be anti-Israel," and as such, "people used to delegitimize the Jews and now they do it to our state."
"BDS is anti-Semitism in new clothes," she added.
Shaked called to fight back against BDS and "boycott the boycotters" and listed the many government ministries, including hers, that are taking part in the efforts to fight delegitimization, bringing MK Bassel Ghattas (Joint List) to interject: "It won't work."
"Israel will continue to be a light unto the nations," Shaked vowed.
Britain’s student union refused to boycott ISIS, yet passed motion boycotting Israel. #BeyondParody
The NUS executive council passed a motion put forward by the School of Oriental and African Studies students union just yesterday to boycott Israel, and voted to align themselves with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign – a movement whose leaders explicitly call for the end of the Jewish state.
(NUS has previously passed resolutions condemning UKIP and former Education Minister David Lammy)
Per Foxton, it seems clear that the ‘progressive’ student leaders at NUS who were concerned that condemning ISIS (the most barbaric movement on the planet) would stigmatize Muslims, yet evidently were unburdened by fears that their decision to single out the only Jewish state (and the only progressive democracy in the Mid-East) would stoke antisemitism – racism against Jews which reached record levels in the UK in 2014.
Though NUS’s boycott motion will have little if any effect on Israel, the impact on British Jews – the overwhelming majority of whom identify strongly with the Jewish state – may be significant. Such stunningly hypocritical campaigns which single out Israel – and only Israel – for condemnation are in effect telling Jews that they identify with a morally odious movement, an association which places them on the wrong side of history.
As we’ve argued previously, the moral distinction between the statements “Zionists are our misfortune” and “Jews are our misfortune” is increasingly meaningless, insofar as the lives of actual Jews are concerned.

Monday, June 01, 2015

From Ian:

After FIFA tussle, PM warns of global campaign to ‘blacken Israel’s name’
Netanyahu made the comments Sunday at a meeting of his new Cabinet just two days after a Palestinian proposal to suspend Israel from world football was dropped at the last moment. Netanyahu warned that such efforts to boycott Israel continue. Palestinians accelerated their campaign to boycott Israel and Israeli-made products after peace talks collapsed last year.
“We are in the midst of a great struggle being waged against the state of Israel, an international campaign to blacken its name. It is not connected to our actions; it is connected to our very existence. It does not matter what we do; it matters what we symbolize and what we are,” Netanyahu said.
“I think that it is important to understand that these things do not stem from the fact that if only we were nicer or a little more generous — we are very generous, we have made many offers, we have made many concessions — that anything would change because this campaign to delegitimize Israel entails something much deeper that is being directed at us and seeks to deny our very right to live here,” he said.
The Israeli prime minister said the Palestinian boycott is reminiscent of similar attacks the Jewish people faced in the past.
PA teaches kids to despise Jews
The Palestinian Authority continues to destroy any chance for lasting peace by teaching children that Palestinians and Muslims are in conflict with Jews. The PA teaches that Jews have an intrinsically evil nature and that this conflict is part of Islam. The PA repeatedly sends the message that the conflict is much more than a conflict over territory.
On the latest broadcast of the official PA TV children's program The Best Home, a young girl recited a poem calling Jews "barbaric monkeys," "the most evil among creations," and those "who murdered Allah's pious prophets." Jews are said to be "throngs... brought up on spilling blood... impure... [and] filth."
In spite of all this, the girl, continuing her recital, declares she is not afraid of the Jews' "barbarity" because Jerusalem will "vomit out" the impure Jews. The poem continues, "My heart is my city and my Quran":
Jews are "barbaric monkeys," "most evil among creations," in poem recited by girl on PA TV


Child soldier promotes violence in Fatah video
Fatah reiterated on Facebook last month its adherence to violence and the use of weapons, by posting a music video with an armed child soldier and visuals of Fatah soldiers' military training and firing of rockets.
In the video, a young boy singer dressed in a military uniform is seen going through a training program like adult soldiers and brandishing different weapons. Promoting child soldiers is forbidden according to international humanitarian law.
In the video, the boy soldier sings about the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades' soldier, praising him and his weapons:
Child soldier encourages violence against Israel in Fatah Facebook ‎music video


Fatah threatens Israel with war in video showing armed fighters training for battle


Friday, May 29, 2015

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: Universities Should be Unsafe for Political Correctness
The current code word being tossed around to protect political correctness from competition in the marketplace of ideas is “unsafe.”
“I feel unsafe” has become the argument stopper on many university campuses. Efforts have been made to shut down controversial events or speakers, some of which have succeeded, at MIT, the University of Michigan, Northeastern University, Oxford, Hampshire College, Smith College, and other great universities on the grounds that students would feel “unsafe.” Students must, of course, be and feel physically safe in their dorms, classrooms and campuses. That’s what university and city police are for: to protect against physical assaults and threats. But no one on a university campus should be or feel safe or protected when it comes to the never-ending war of ideas.
An important role of the university is to challenge every idea, every truth, every sacred notion, even if challenge makes students (or faculty) feel intellectually uncomfortable, unsettled, or unsafe. There must be no safe spaces in the classroom or auditorium that protect members of the university community from dangerous, disturbing or even emotionally unsettling ideas.
The depraved indifference of ‘two-statism’
Under these conditions, demilitarization is virtually irrelevant. Even lightly armed renegades with improvised weapons could disrupt the socioeconomic routine of the nation at will, with or without the complicity of the incumbent regime, which due to its despotic nature would have little commitment to the welfare of the average citizen.
Definitely depraved indifference
Faced with this grim prospect, any Israeli government would either have to resign itself to recurring paralysis of the economy, mounting civilian casualties and the disruption of life in the country, or respond repeatedly with massive retaliation, with the attendant collateral damage among the non-belligerent Palestinian-Arab population and international condemnation of its use of “disproportionate force.”
It is uncertain – perhaps unlikely – that the fabric of Israeli society could withstand the strain for long...
The fact that other, more palatable, outcomes may be possible is of no real relevance. Unless two-staters can provide some plausible argument as to how such grave consequences can be averted with a significant degree of certainty, it will be increasingly difficult not to have grave doubts as to the nature of their motives. After all, as the introductory citation from Yossi Beilin, arch-architect of the Oslo Accords, demonstrates, two-staters were aware that their policy might be unsuccessful. Yet despite it clearly failing their own “test of blood,” despite the clear and present danger it entails, they persist in it.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile calls for a Palestinian state with concern for the security and well-being of the Jewish nation-state – and increasingly difficult to deny that “depraved indifference” is becoming an ever-more apt characterization of “two-stater” behavior.
 Sarah Honig: The Holy See’s unholy sanctimony
Despite Israel’s exemplary attributes of sovereignty, the Vatican remained sour, begrudging and glacially aloof – and that again is resorting to understatement.
So whereas a Palestinian state is recognized prematurely – before actual self-determination – it took the Vatican a whopping 45-and-a-half years after the fact to bring itself to officially recognize Jewish self-determination. Egypt – Israel’s bitter foe for decades – beat the Vatican by 14 years.
Only in late December 1993 did the Vatican finally deign to recognize the Israel that was born in mid-May 1948. Moreover, the Vatican’s ultra-belated recognition remained hesitant, as if the ecclesiastical bureaucracy’s gut instincts prevented it from at all stomaching the notion of Jewish sovereignty.
The difference screams to High Heaven and anyone who denies a brazen double standard simply refuses to admit the truth staring us all in the face.
The adjective which most immediately comes to mind to describe the Vatican’s blatant bias is sanctimonious. Its dictionary definitions are “affecting piety, making a display of holiness, showing false righteousness, marked by hypocritical virtue.” All the above fit the Holy See to a tee to say nothing of the fact that sanctimonious originates from the Latin sanctimonia (sanctity) and sanctus (holy).
Galling pontifical predispositions or preconceptions were even abundantly evident during the visit here last year of apparent nice-guy Pope Francis.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

From Ian:

Michael Totten: The Borg of the Middle East
ISIS has conquered Syria’s spectacular Roman Empire city of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage site long known affectionately as the “bride of the desert,” and in all likelihood is gearing up to demolish it. We know this because they’ve done it before. ISIS used hammers, bulldozers, and explosives to destroy the ancient Iraqi cities of Hatra and Nimrud near Mosul, and they did it on video.
“These ruins that are behind me,” said an ISIS vandal on YouTube, “they are idols and statues that people in the past used to worship instead of Allah. The Prophet Muhammad took down idols with his bare hands when he went into Mecca. We were ordered by our prophet to take down idols and destroy them, and the companions of the prophet did this after this time, when they conquered countries.”
Muslims have ruled this part of the world for more than 1,000 years. All this time, they’ve been unbothered by the fact that Palmyra, Hatra, and Nimrud include pagan monuments, temples, statues, and inscriptions that predate Islam. Only now are these places doomed to annihilation. ISIS is more belligerently Philistine than any group that has inhabited the region for a millennium. The only modern analogue is the Taliban’s destruction of the ancient Buddhist statues at Bamiyan with anti-aircraft guns, artillery shells and dynamite in March 2001, mere months before their al-Qaida pals attacked New York City and Washington.
This attitude toward history harks back less to the seventh century than to the twentieth, when Pol Pot reset the calendar to Year Zero after the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, and when Mao Zedong’s Chinese Cultural Revolution murdered millions in the war against everything “old.”
JPost Editorial: Unhealthy resolution
WHO’s annual assembly last week condemned Israel for “violating the health rights of Syrians in the Golan.”
This is a travesty in every conceivable aspect. While the bloodbath in the region continues unabated, the international forum has found nothing else worth focusing upon but Israel. Only Israel was singled out by the WHO assembly.
This comes despite the fact that Israeli medics and hospitals provide indisputably altruistic treatment to spiraling numbers of civilians and enemy combatants from Syria, fleeing that country’s killing fields. The most cutting- edge medical care is given critically wounded victims who reach the Golan border.
But most disheartening of all is the fact that this disgraceful resolution was adopted in Geneva by a whopping majority of 104 to 4, with 6 abstentions and 65 no-shows. Israel, unjustly accused and unjustly convicted in another UN kangaroo court, was condemned even by European delegations, which purport to occupy the high moral ground – although they ought to know all about blood libel.
Gallingly, the Syrian government – which has been mass-murdering its own citizens – submitted a document that urged WHO to “intervene immediately and take effective measures to end inhuman Israeli practices that target the health of Syrian citizens.”
Elliott Abrams: IMF Realism About the West Bank and Gaza
The report then usefully compares the Palestinian situation to that in other countries that were dependent on aid—but made real progress.
Several countries with similarly high aid flows have successfully reduced aid dependency. Examples include Ghana, Mozambique, Rwanda and Botswana. Ghana, Mozambique and Rwanda still receive very high aid flows today, but aid ratios to government spending have fallen in all three countries in recent years. Botswana was one of the poorest countries in the world at the time of its independence in 1966, when it relied on grants from Britain for development and most of its recurrent spending. Although aid provided critical resources in the early years of independence, its role declined over time, and by 2006/7 it accounted for less than 2 percent of GDP.
Why recount all of this?
In the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations the United States has sought a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the PLO, and failed to achieve this time after time. There has been a real opportunity cost from this search for a final status agreement complete with handshakes on the White House lawn and Nobel prizes. The cost has been that we focused solely on the diplomatic process and largely ignored real life as it is lived by Palestinians, and might be improved. The IMF report shows that much could be done, even within current constraints, to improve the Palestinian economy. It’s undramatic, the details are boring, and some of the analyses are technical. No prizes, no time on the evening news. But that is how Palestinian institutions will be built, and how the institutions of a state must come into existence—not at the State Department and not at the United Nations.
The IMF report is a reminder that speeches, great conferences, and dramatic donor pledges (that are never met) do not benefit the Palestinians. And of course efforts to hurt the Israeli economy through boycotts will not help but will actually harm the Palestinians as well. It is long past time to take a more serious approach, and the IMF’s report shows some ways this could be done if the genuine goal is progress rather than taking credit and casting blame.

Monday, May 25, 2015

From Ian:

PMW: Abbas’ Fatah wants to destroy Israel
On the occasion of Palestinian Nakba day - the day Palestinians commemorate "the catastrophe" of the establishment of the State of Israel - Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement posted a drawing on Facebook that encouraged the use of violence to destroy Israel.
"What was taken by force can only be regained by force, the 67th anniversary of the Nakba"
[Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page," May 14, 2015]

This statement appeared on an image showing the number 67 in Arabic numerals with the digit 7 made of a key, a rifle, and a map that includes the PA areas as well as all of Israel.
Fatah often reiterates its support for the use of violence and arms to gain statehood as Palestinian Media Watch has documented.
Another post by Fatah warned "the world's dwarfs" to "remain in their burrows" when "the storm" - the name of Fatah's military wing - "roars." This warning appeared on a photo of an armed member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades beside the Fatah logo, which also encourages the use of arms against Israel. The Fatah logo shows two rifles crossed over a map that includes the PA areas and all of Israel: (h/t Bob Knot)
'World encourages violence by condemning Israel constantly'
In an exclusive interview, Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, speaks about the conflict with Hamas, the ethics of war, the battle for public opinion, and the prospects for peace • Peace is far from breaking out, he says.
Col. Richard Kemp, CBE, has been spending time in Israel, where he spoke at Shurat Hadin's "Towards a ‎New Laws of War" Conference, and at Bar-Ilan University, which bestowed him with an honorary ‎doctorate in recognition of his stalwart battle against terrorism and terrorist organizations. Kemp, now ‎retired from the British Army, was commander of the British forces in Afghanistan in 2003 and served in ‎Iraq, the Balkans and Northern Ireland. For the last five years of his 30-year military career, Kemp ‎served as top adviser to the British prime minister on questions of intelligence and counterterrorism.‎
Moroccan authorities take down Israeli judo team
The Moroccan authorities blamed the delay on the Israeli team’s lack of visas but changed their story later on, saying that a gun had been found in one team member’s luggage, Ynet reported. Israel Judo Association chairman Moshe Ponti contacted Marius Vizer, the president of the International Judo Federation’s executive committee, and asked for his assistance. At Vizer’s intervention, which included a threat to cancel the entire competition unless the Israeli team was released, the Moroccan authorities permitted the Israelis to proceed to their hotel, under the protection of a unit of the king’s security guards.
Things went from bad to worse as the weekend progressed. The Israeli flag was absent from the venue where the event took place, prompting a representative from the International Judo Federation to demand that all the flags of the participating countries be taken down. The Israeli team was also not mentioned on the tournament’s website. The spectators waved Palestinian flags, shouted “We’re going to kill you,” and booed each time a member of the Israeli team appeared.
“What happened in Morocco is a shame,” judoka Yarden Gerbi wrote on her Facebook page. “As an Israeli I feel ashamed to wait 8 hours at the airport, I feel ashamed to hear the crowed [sic] boo me and my teammates and want us to lose — and why? Because we are Israelis. We came for sports, pure sport, not politics. It’s an embarrassment for Morocco and the organization. I hope us Israelis, and no one else, for that matter, ever has to experience such behavior again. It’s against sport in general, and judo in particular.”
The Israeli team won no medals in the competition. “I’m very disappointed — not with the results, but with the spectators’ behavior,” Ponti said.
Could Israel Get Booted Out of Soccer?
George Orwell was a brilliant man and a historically important writer, but the one thing he never truly understood was soccer.
In December 1945, Orwell wrote an essay called “The Sporting Spirit” for the London newspaper Tribune. The Soviet soccer club Dynamo Moscow had just completed a tour of the UK, playing matches against top British clubs like Arsenal and Rangers—matches that degenerated into rough play on the pitch and jingoism in the stands. Orwell, a fervent opponent of nationalism, was appalled. “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play,” he wrote. “It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.”
It is true that soccer can bring out the worst in, and of, humanity. It can enable racism, sexism, homophobia, corruption, and mob violence. It can enflame nationalist tensions and give legitimacy to authoritarian regimes. But soccer can also bring out the best in us. It can unify war-torn nations and lift the spirits of impoverished communities. It can impose 90 minutes of order on a world that has seemingly never been so chaotic.
It’s never wise—and perhaps not possible—to underestimate FIFA’s ability to hit a new moral low. But if FIFA votes against Israel, it will be its most shameful decision yet, because it will prove Orwell right—that the Beautiful Game is nothing more than a front in a decades-long battle, and its fans are merely its conscripts. (h/t Bob Knot)



Monday, May 18, 2015

From Ian:

The UNRWA farce: Nothing more than a blatant travesty of human integrity based on a political agenda
Why is it that the Palestinian method of inciting hatred and killing people over what they term as the “Naqba’ that occurred 67 years ago, is still considered a valid cause? Why is it that we never hear about the millions of other people around the world who were displaced from the lands of their forefathers owing to war or political unrest? The list of people who were forcibly exiled or who fled their war ravaged homelands for safety zones in recent history is so long that it makes the mind boggle, it represents far greater numbers of refugees than the Arabs of Palestine, whose status of ‘refugee’ has been maintained by a special United Nations Agency (UNRWA) that functions with a different set of criteria than any other UN refugee agency. Hence the facts that nearly all of Europe’s forty million refugees were settled in under two years following the end of WW11, whilst nearly seven decades later the Palestinians have been left to stagnate as ‘pawns’ to be used in their immoral struggle against Israel. It is flabbergasting that according to the ‘special criteria’ set out by UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee count stands at around 6.5 million worldwide…one in three refugees worldwide being Palestinian! Currently 3.8 million of those ‘Palestinian refugees’ and their descendants are registered with UNRWA; a staggeringly big number considering that there remains only a mere 30,000 to 50,000 of the originally displaced people created by the Arab Israeli war in 1948.
All other refugees have learned to cope and move on. But the United Nations is maintaining and prolonging this farce of millions of people known as ‘Palestinian refugees’ which is nothing more than a blatant travesty of human integrity based on a political agenda.
There has never been much interest or horn-blowing shown to any of the world’s far worse refugee problems.
Abbas to Syria's Palestinian Refugees: Go to Israel or 'Die in Syria'
Faced with the suffering of their own people, the Palestinians' leadership recently decided not to help. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas rejected a deal with Israel brokered by the United Nations that would allow Palestinian refugees living in Syria to resettle in the West Bank and Gaza. Abbas stated unequivocally that "we rejected that and said it's better they die in Syria than give up their right of return." The Palestine Liberation Organization has also ruled out any military action to help the 18,000 or more refugees who are trapped in the Yarmouk camp near Damascus.
Abbas's cold-blooded response reveals something fundamental about Palestinian society and identity. Far more than territory, the key Israeli-Palestinian issue is the idea of a Palestinian "right of return"—the belief in a legal and moral right of Palestinian refugees, and more importantly their descendants from around the world, to return to ancestral homes in [Israel's part of] what was once Mandatory Palestine. This belief is so vital to Palestinian national identity that their leaders would rather they die than give it up and have a chance to live.
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) of December 1948 supposedly codifies this "right." However, a closer look reveals it to be conditional: "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and … compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return." The resolution also calls for the United Nations "to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation."
Interestingly, all the Arab States in the UN at the time (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen) voted against the resolution, since it implicitly accepted the partition of Mandatory Palestine that recognized the Jewish right to a state. But the actual text of the resolution has been irrelevant since the beginning; Palestinian identity has crystallized around the dream of an unconditional "right of return," as has Palestinian propaganda to the world.
IDF official: If our war crimes probes no good, all of the West's are no good
With a veiled threat to the International Criminal Court, a top IDF legal division official said on Monday that “if others say that our investigations” into war crimes allegations are insufficient, then “the entire Western world” must realize that their investigations will be declared insufficient.
IDF Deputy Magistrate Advocate General Col. Eli Baron’s statement, at the Israel Bar Association Conference in Eilat, was the first major statement by a high ranking IDF official since ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda last week issued what was interpreted as a warning to Israel to cooperate with her office more quickly on her preliminary examination of war crimes allegations in the 2014 Gaza War.
Bensouda implied she might be stuck deciding whether to open a full criminal investigation against Israeli soldiers solely based on evidence from Israel’s human rights critics, if Israel did not provide her with its own evidence on the Gaza war soon.
Israel’s response was to attack the ICC Prosecutor’s move and her preliminary probe in which she recognized a State of Palestine.
Jerusalem still vehemently rejects the idea of a State of Palestine, especially regarding any issues relating to the ICC.

Thursday, May 07, 2015

From Ian:


Douglas Murray: The Cartoon Wars
Of course, this idea goes to one of the false presumptions of our time: ­that people on the political left are motivated by good intentions even when they do bad things, while people on the political right are motivated by bad intentions even when they do good things. So a cartoon promoted by Charlie Hebdo may be thought to be provocative in a constructive way, whereas one promoted by AFDI can only be thought if as being provocative in an unconstructive way. Whether people are willing to admit it or not, this is one of the main problems that underlies the reaction to the Texas attack.
Such a distinction is, needless to say, a colossal mistake. When people prefer to focus on the motives of the victims rather than on the motives of the attackers, they will ignore the single most important matter: that an art exhibition, or free speech, has been targeted. The rest is narcissism and slow-learning.
It does not matter if you are right wing or left wing. It does not matter if you are American, Danish, Dutch, Belgian or French, or whether you are from Texas or Copenhagen. These particularities may matter greatly and be endlessly interesting to people in the countries in question. But they matter not a jot to ISIS or their fellow-travellers. What these people are trying to do is to enforce Islamic blasphemy laws across the entire world.
That is all that matters. If we forget this or lose sight of it, not only will we lose free speech, we will lose, period.
Michael Lumish: Say Hello to the Devil
If Pamela Geller is a racist I have yet to see the evidence. What I see is a much maligned woman standing up to the enemies of the Jewish people and to the enemies of the infidel west. What I also see are a whole bunch of moral cowards who defame this woman even as they turn a blind eye to the rise of political Islam throughout the Muslim Middle East.
The rise of political Islam during the Obama administration may be the single most significant geo-political event in world history since the demise of the Soviet Union. The Muslim Middle East is moving from a period of secular-authoritarian nationalism, as exemplified by people such as Gamal Abdel Nasser, to a period of rising theocratic-authoritarianism in the name of Islam. This, it should be emphasized, is not an improvement. On the contrary. While Hosni Mubarack may have been a dictator he, at least, did not believe in some Allah-given right to slaughter Jews and he did not set himself up as an enemy of the United States and the west.
This is what the Muslim Brotherhood has done and it is precisely what Geller opposes.
Of course, it should be something that anyone who believes in secular democracy should oppose, but they don’t. Mainstream media throughout the United States and Europe largely pussy-foot around political Islam despite the fact that it represents everything that the secular west allegedly opposes. Devotees of political Islam (or “radical Islam” or “Islamism”) oppress women, hang Gay people from cranes, and promises the slaughter of the Jewish people and they do so in the name of Allah.
What’s not to like?
Ask Pamela Geller, she’ll have some words.
‘Draw Muhammad’ Winner on Growing Up in Islam and Defeating the Jihad
Breitbart News spoke with Bosch Fawstin, an accomplished artist, cartoonist, and anti-Jihad activist who won first prize at Sunday’s “Draw Muhammad” free speech event in Garland, Texas.
The event came under attack by AK47-weilding jihadists, who were neutralized by a police officer before they could commit mass murder against the free speech art display’s attendees.
Fawstin talked about his unique experience growing up in the Bronx as a Muslim, how his life changed after the 9/11 attacks, and he shared strategies to defeat the global jihadist movement. His artwork is featured throughout the interview.
Breitbart News: You won first prize at the Muhammad Cartoon Contest? What inspired your first-place artwork?
Bosch Fawstin: Quite simply, I wanted to do something different because I’ve been drawing Muhammad for a long time. Ever since the Danish cartoons, and after the Charlie Hebdo attack. Every time something horrific happens. If free speech was under assault, under siege, I drew Muhammad.
This drawing of Muhammad showed him threatening me. He says, angrily, ‘You Can’t Draw Me,” with a sword in his hand. I respond, ‘That’s Why I Draw You.’”

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

From Ian:

Isi Leibler: Independence Day: We have reason to rejoice
Alas, the dream of peace with our neighbors remains just a dream. But we should exult in the realization that we are stronger today than in the past when we overcame far greater challenges and genuinely faced annihilation.
Opinion polls indicate that we rank among the happiest and most contented people in the world.
However, many young Israelis now take Jewish statehood for granted, never having undergone the chilling experience of European Jews in the 1930s as they desperately sought entry visas to countries to avoid the impending Shoah. Nor can they appreciate the devastating impact of living in an anti-Semitic environment where Jews are considered pariahs.
Today, on our 67th anniversary, we should give thanks to the Almighty for enabling us to be the blessed Jewish generation, privileged to live in freedom in our resurrected ancient homeland. We should continually remind ourselves that our success defies rationality and by any benchmark must be deemed miraculous.
Chag Sameach.
Col. Richard Kemp: Killing Americans and their Allies: Iran’s Continuing War against the U.S. and the West
Introduction
It appears that the recent framework agreement between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the P5+1, led by the U.S. Administration, will result in a deal that would allow Iran to become a nuclear-armed state. In this context, it is worth recalling the true nature of the Islamic Republic, in particular its recent track-record of violence against the United States and its allies. Both authors of this study had responsibilities for UK national intelligence assessment and crisis management during the period when this violence reached its peak in Iraq.
Many have forgotten, or perhaps never realized, that Iranian military action, often working through proxies, usually using terrorist tactics, has led to the deaths of well over a thousand American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade and a half. Does it make sense to risk allowing a regime that, since its inception, has been conducting a war against the United States and its allies to become a nuclear power?
Anti-Americanism helped fuel the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. A violent anti-American doctrine that challenges any role for America in the Middle East, has been and remains the central focus of Iranian foreign policy. Since the revolution, Iran has waged and continues to wage war against the United States and its allies.
Amb. Prosor reads Israel's National Anthem at the UN Security Council
"Tomorrow, Israel will commemorate Yom Hazikaron and honor the 23,320 individuals who lost their lives to war and terror. We will remember the brave soldiers who died so that we can have our freedom and mourn the thousands of men, women, and children who were robbed of their lives simply because they were Israeli.
War has never been the choice of the State of Israel. Our choice is and always has been the path of peace. But when war and terror are forced upon us, we will not surrender and we will not back down. For nearly 2,000 years, the Jewish people were stateless and powerless in the face of hatred and indifference. Those days are no more.
On Thursday, Israel will celebrate Yom Haatzmaut, our 67th anniversary as a free and independent Jewish state. With great joy and with heads held high, we will celebrate the realization of the words in our national anthem, Hatikvah


Friday, April 17, 2015

From Ian:

The bombing that wasn't
Seventy years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the question of why the Allies did not bomb the death facilities remains • The tremendous frustration felt by prisoners, who watched helplessly as bombers flew over them again and again, remains unabated.
Alongside military and tactical considerations, there were also very deep political and moral trends that precluded the bombing of the camps. The failure to intervene was the result of a tragic confluence of factors ranging from a lack of understanding, bureaucratic opposition, problematic timing and tense political circumstances. There was also the fear of sacrificing "precious" lives (those of the pilots) in order to save Jewish victims, who were thought of as less important by war planners.
Had Allied POWs been among those imprisoned in Auschwitz, "I think that they would have devoted much more thought to bombing the camps," Werrell said.
The tremendous frustration felt by the camp inmates -- who watched helplessly as the bombers flew over them time and again without dropping any explosives on the factories of death -- remains unabated. That frustration was compounded by the knowledge that even after Allied commanders refused to allocate forces for rescue mission, pilots did fly sorties to provide supplies to the combatants of the Warsaw Uprising (even while taking casualties). There was also the bombing of a French prison, a direct hit that was ordered in the hope of preventing the execution of 13 partisan fighters.
When it came to Auschwitz, there were no pilots available.
Haaretz's Gideon Levy Spreads His Anti-Israel Poison Abroad
The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz has a minimal following in Israel. According to a recent Target Group Index (TGI) survey, Haaretz‘s readership amounted to only 5.8% of the news market. And even this minimal share is higher than it was last summer during the IDF's Operation Protective Edge to stop Hamas rocket fire. At that time, numbers were even lower due to a slew of cancellations that were prompted by columnist Gideon Levy's Op-Ed demonizing Israeli pilots for carrying out their military orders. Most Israelis recognize Haaretz for what it is, an ideological newspaper with a far-left editorial policy that appears more interested in advocacy than in objective news gathering.
Gideon Levy serves on Haaretz's editorial board, penning a weekly column, "Twilight Zone," as well as political editorials for the newspaper. He is known in Israel as an acrimonious, anti-Israel ideologue and activist, recently arrested for spitting and cursing at IDF soldiers, who often invents his own facts to support his radical agenda. His fan base consists primarily of fellow Israel haters and activists, while mainstream Israelis and journalists dismiss him as a dishonest propagandist.
Discredited by the mainstream in his own country, Levy has taken to spewing his vitriol and promoting boycotts against the Jewish state in foreign countries where he can try to influence uninitiated audiences with dishonest calumnies against Israel. He sells himself as a heroic truth-teller who has "made it his mission," as one recent Canadian interviewer described him, "to bear witness to Palestinian life in the occupied territories." Levy acknowledges his countrymen's disdain for him, but does not attribute this to his libelous fabrications. Rather, he tries to cultivate an image of himself as a whistle blower who has incurred the hatred of his countrymen for allegedly exposing the nasty truth about them. He is aided and abetted in this task by anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic organizations and foreign journalists all too ready to believe the worst about Israel and grant this dishonest ideologue the platform from which to disgorge propaganda against his country.
Verdict on judicial review of Southampton conference cancellation: The anti-Semites lose.
The conference organisers own barrister suggested that terrorists would not strike at the conference because it would be an ‘own goal’ ( at least it shows they are aware whose side they are on).
The conference organisers attempted to discredit Sussex Friends of Israel. Firstly by stating they are not a Jewish group (and therefore imply they could not be a target for a terror attack) and secondly by continually connecting them with the EDL as two groups ‘working together’. SFoI were the only referenced element of the Jewish protests. It was a dirty tactic they repeated several times
The conference organisers astonishingly commented that the attacks in Paris and Copenhagen were in no way related to Israel or Palestine. Whilst anti-Semitism predates Israel and exists away from it, I do not know of any sane person that does not believe there is a correlation between events in Israel and the amount of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe.
The conference organisers argument was known to be weak. They had been warned there was little chance of success. They were therefore ordered to pay partial defence costs.
The conference organisers were battered; there was no a single point they attempted to put across that was accepted.
In the end it was so one-sided I almost began to feel sorry for them (okay, not quite).

Sunday, April 12, 2015

  • Sunday, April 12, 2015
From Ian:

Why the Left Wants Iran to Get the Bomb
The left does not believe that nuclear weapons are evil. It did not believe that Soviet nuclear weapons were evil. It does not believe that Iran’s nuclear program is evil. It believes that American power is evil.
Iranian nuclear weapons are good because they weaken America. Like Soviet nuclear weapons, they undermine American power. They force the United States to “negotiate” and submit to international law. The more nuclear weapons spread, the more the “hawks” will have to realize that they have no option but to disarm the United States and put their faith in some international order to achieve peace.
That has always been the endgame.
The Council on Foreign Relations’ Foreign Affairs magazine had already run a piece promising that an Iranian nuclear bomb would bring stability to the region. As usual the word does not mean what you think it might. Stability is yet another euphemism for weakening the American coalition to create a new balance of power through Iranian power.
The same arguments now being deployed in favor of the Iran deal will later be redeployed to argue that Iran’s nuclear weapons will actually create stability. And as a bonus, Iran will be able to drive up the price of oil which means more Green Energy subsidies. For the left, that’s a win-win scenario.
The spy-scientists claimed to be concerned with the “safety of mankind” rather than such petty trifles as the security and freedom of the United States and its allies. Today men and women who think like them run the United States. And they are not concerned with the United States, but with “mankind”.
Obama intends to cut a nuclear deal with Iran on any terms and even on no terms at all. He intends to do it for the same old reasons. It’s not just about Israel, though as with regime change in Egypt, undermining the Jewish State is a nice bonus because it further weakens America.
A stronger Iran means a weaker America. And the left believes that a weaker America means a better world.
Netanyahu calls for Iran deal to keep sanctions in place
In a video statement, Netanyahu criticized Iran for insisting in the wake of the framework agreement on maintaining its nuclear capabilities, refusing to allow nuclear inspections, and continuing its aggression in the region.
“Let me reiterate again the two main components of the alternative to this bad deal: First, instead of allowing Iran to preserve and develop its nuclear capabilities, a better deal would significantly roll back these capabilities – for example, by shutting down the illicit underground facilities that Iran concealed for years from the international community. Second, instead of lifting the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear facilities and program at a fixed date, a better deal would link the lifting of these restrictions to an end of Iran’s aggression in the region, its worldwide terrorism and its threats to annihilate Israel,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu’s statement came a day after US President Barack Obama told reporters that the prime minister has not provided any alternatives to the framework agreement signed earlier this month.
“The prime minister of Israel is deeply opposed to it, I think he’s made that very clear,” Obama said Saturday at a news conference at the Americas summit in Panama City. “I have repeatedly asked — what is the alternative that you present that you think makes it less likely for Iran to get a nuclear weapon? And I have yet to obtain a good answer on that.”
Netanyahu: West Must Reassert Original Demands on Iran


Zionist Union: Israel should seek green light to strike Iran if nuclear deal violated
Zionist Union co-leaders Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni on Sunday presented their "alternative plan of action" on how Israel should deal with the P5+1 group of world powers framework nuclear deal with Iran signed earlier this month.
The party suggested that Israel should seek an understanding from the US that, should Iran violate the nuclear deal and threaten Israel's existence, the Jewish state would be authorized to take military action to protect itself.
The party said that some of the parameters presented by the West and the Iranians are "problematic," and they hold within them "real potential dangers for the long term" that must be fixed in the comprehensive agreement to be signed by June 30.
Despite saying in the document that "there is no coalition or opposition" when it comes to Iran, the Zionist Union took a dig at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's handling of the Iranian nuclear issue, saying, "Instead of a policy that leaves Israel without a meaningful influence on the world powers' decision-making process, Israel must immediately hold a comprehensive, intimate and deep strategic discussion with the US about all of the relevant issues and to complete the discussion before the completion of the final agreement."

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