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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

From Ian:

14 Ways Hamas Weaponizes Women, Children, Animals, Against Israel
Although in 2005 Israel gave up Gaza to the Palestinians in a naive "land for peace" unilateral withdrawal, the result was not peace but rather over 10,000 rockets fired from Gaza at Israeli civilian communities. Here we show how Hamas and other groups weaponize Palestinian civilians and institutions to attack Israel.
The Hamas Charter of 1988 - Defines the Hamas Mission Against Israel and Jews
Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it. (h/t Canadian Otter)
Andrew Bolt: Hatred of Jews is fuelling protests across the Western world
Yes, these pictures of dead Palestinian children are horrifying. They are meant to be, which is why Hamas shoots from among its civilians and orders them to ignore Israeli warnings to move clear of targets.
That is also why the United Nations has found missiles hidden in at least three schools it runs in Gaza and why Hamas so pointlessly launches them at Israeli cities — to provoke Israel into exactly this self-defence against an enemy whose stated aim is to destroy it.
Then when Israel does shoot back, cue protests and riots around the world to exhaust the West’s willingness to defend not just Israel but Jews generally.
Don’t tell me these protests are about Israel’s “blockade” of Gaza, which actually has a border with Egypt porous enough to let Hamas smuggle in thousands of rockets.
Don’t tell me they’re about Israel’s “occupation” when Israel does not occupy an inch of Gaza.
And especially don’t tell me these protests are about Israel’s “war crimes” or “murders”.
No, if these protests are really against killing Muslims — and not against Jews — then where are the protests over the 2000 Syrians killed by other Muslims in the past two weeks?
Or is killing a Muslim only an international outrage when a Jew does it in self-defence?
Is the only good Jew one who let himself be killed?
JPost Editorial: Europe’s moral failure
In any case, European leaders have a moral obligation to fight anti-Semitism. Mass immigration cannot be the only answer.
Unfortunately, in a United Nations Human Rights Council vote last week, leaders of the EU failed their moral duty. The council’s member countries were asked to support a one-sided resolution condemning “in the strongest terms the widespread, systematic and gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms arising from the Israeli military operations.”
Nothing was said of Hamas’s strategy of using Gaza’s civilians as human shields, placing its rocket launchers in the midst of civilian populations, firing at IDF troops from hospitals and schools and denying Gazans access to bomb shelters to maximize civilian deaths.
Instead of taking a decisive and principled stand against Hamas’s aggression and supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, every EU country on the council chose to abstain.
The US was the only member state that voted against the resolution.
By abstaining, EU leaders remained silent in the face of the Human Rights Council drawing a moral equivalence between a terrorist organization motivated by a violent, reactionary interpretation of Islam and a liberal, democratic state. If European leaders are unable to make this distinction, why should we expect more of Europe’s masses?
Richard Millet: Channel 4 News Is Doing Hamas' Propaganda Work for Them
It would be comforting to think Snow was reporting out of real concern for Palestinian children. If that was true then why didn't he report that up to 160 Palestinian children may have died while being forced to dig Hamas's attack tunnels?
Jon Snow is an ever present on the anti-Israel circuit when not reading the news. At LSE last April he chaired a panel of the anti-Israel polemicists Ilan Pappe, Karma Nabulsi, Rosemary Hollis and The Promise writer Peter Kosminsky. During the event Snow referred to America's "Jewish lobby" and afterwards became very aggressive while I pressed him over his use of this phrase.
The news is too important left to those who express a strong ideological bent. It can be deadly also. Witness Mohammed Merah who murdered Jews outside a Jewish school in Toulouse after reportedly being spurred on by footage similar to Snow's.
Maybe Snow sees this this war as his final chance to get across his message that the Israeli army are a bunch of child killers before following Jeremy Paxman into a well-earned retirement.
Let's hope so, for all our sakes.

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Israel, Hamas and Obama’s foreign policy
When US President Barack Obama phoned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday night, in the middle of a security cabinet meeting, he ended any remaining doubt regarding his policy toward Israel and Hamas.
Obama called Netanyahu while the premier was conferring with his senior ministers about how to proceed in Gaza. Some ministers counseled that Israel should continue to limit our forces to specific pinpoint operations aimed at destroying the tunnels of death that Hamas has dug throughout Gaza and into Israeli territory.
Others argued that the only way to truly destroy the tunnels, and keep them destroyed, is for Israel to retake control over the Gaza Strip.
No ministers were recommending that Israel end its operations in Gaza completely. The longer our soldiers fight, the more we learn about the vast dimensions of the Hamas’s terror arsenal, and about the Muslim Brotherhood group’s plans and strategy for using it to destabilize, demoralize and ultimately destroy Israeli society.
Alan Dershowitz: The 'occupation of Gaza' canard
Enemies of Israel, who are seeking to justify Hamas rocket and tunnel attacks against Israeli civilians, are mendaciously claiming that Israel has continued to occupy the Gaza Strip, even after its soldiers and settlers left the Strip in 2005. They claim that because Gaza was unlawfully still occupied, despite the absence of Israeli soldiers, resistance to the occupation - including the murder of Israeli civilians - is justified as a matter of international law. This claim is wrong for several independent reasons.
First, it is never justified to target and murder enemy civilians. Even if Israel did have a military occupation, as it does on the West Bank, it would still be a double war crime to fire rockets at Israeli civilians, using Palestinian civilians as human shields. It would also be a war crime to use terrorist tunnels to murder or kidnap Israeli civilians. The only legitimate resistance to occupation is to target the soldiers who enforce the occupation.
Second, a military occupation of Gaza - as distinguished from civilian settlements - would be entirely justified, both as a matter of law and common sense, because Hamas, which controls Gaza, is at war with Israel and has repeatedly refused to make peace with the nation-state of the Jewish people. A military occupation is proper as long as a state of war exists.
Third, and even more important for any future peace, is the indisputable fact that Israel, in fact, ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005.
ToI Live Blog: Hamas rejects humanitarian lull; UN condemns shelling of school
Timeout to last four hours; UN calls for accountability after UNRWA school hit, killing at least 15; army says it was returning fire; rockets shot at Israel after quiet night; cabinet ministers debates next step in war
Tunnel found in UNRWA health clinic:

An Israeli elite squad searching for tunnels near Khan Younis uncovers a booby-trapped opening in a small UNRWA health clinic.
The troops send in sniffing dogs and a small robot to minimize damage to the structure, but despite the precautionary measures, the explosives rigged to the tunnel are detonated, demolishing the building on top of the soldiers.
Earlier reports indicated that a number of soldiers were injured.Brig. Gen. Micky Edelstein says militants have used more than a thousand IEDs so far, destroying thousands of buildings in the Gaza Strip.
For instance, he says, in sweeps of a single street of 28 buildings last night, 19 were found to be booby-trapped.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

From Ian:

Why Anti-Zionism Is Modern Anti-Semitism
Israel’s defensive Operation Protective Edge against Hamas rocket fire revealed that it took a military conflict to show that anti-Zionism cannot be decoupled from anti-Semitism.
As veteran observers of contemporary anti-Semitism are aware, the rejection of Jewish state sovereignty in Israel (i.e., anti-Zionism) has always been an inherent part of Jew-hatred.
In the late 1960s, the Austrian Jewish writer and Auschwitz survivor Jean Amery wrote, “Anti-Zionism contains anti-Semitism like a cloud contains a storm.” To put it mildly, Amery’s definition of modern anti-Semitism wasn’t accepted by post-Holocaust Europe as a force to be combated. Anti-Zionism was deemed by many Europeans to be a politically and socially correct world view. In short, they viewed it as a form of legitimate “Israel criticism.”
Pro-Israel Hackers Overtake Hamas Sites
On Sunday, a number of Hamas-friendly websites were hacked by a Pro-Israel cyber team.
Users who viewed the various web sites expecting to see radical jihadi Islamist content were caught off guard and instead shown a split-screen display of videos taken from Israel and Gaza.
On one of the hacked jihadi sites, the user was treated to “Ramadan in Gaza,” where viewers are pointed to videos of chaos and destruction in the Gaza Strip during the now three-week long Operation Protective Edge. On the other side of the screen, viewers saw “Ramadan in Israel,” which showed Muslims casually enjoying their holiday without interruption.

Pictures Don’t Justify Anti-Israel Media Bias
The problem is the willingness of much of the international media to buy into Palestinian propaganda while ignoring the plain facts about the culpability of Hamas for the fomenting of the current conflict and the casualties that have resulted from its launching of the latest round of fighting. A media that isn’t willing to place the video of Palestinian suffering in a context of Hamas decisions to build shelters in the form of a vast tunnel network for their fighters and rocket arsenal while staking out civilians as human shields to be killed when Israel responds to rocket and tunnel attacks is one that can’t then turn around and advise Netanyahu that his country’s public-relations problems are its own fault. To the contrary, the willingness of much of the international media to whitewash Hamas and vilify Israel has only convinced Israelis that this is not the moment to hazard their lives on promises from the Palestinians or the Obama administration.
Asymmetrical warfare between a nation state and a terror movement that operates for all intents and purposes as an independent state in Gaza does generate problems for Israel. But if the goal is peace, then the only answer for Israel and the United States is to crush Hamas, not allow the pictures of the suffering that the terror group has orchestrated to force–as Kerry’s proposals have indicated–the West to grant them concessions. If both the administration and journalists like Fournier don’t understand this, the fault lies with them, not Netanyahu.

Monday, July 28, 2014

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Kerry’s mediation
On Saturday, he flew from Cairo to Paris to meet with his Qatari and Turkish counterparts. Also present were the foreign ministers of Germany, France, Britain and Italy.
Conspicuously absent were representatives from Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and Israel.
Why would Kerry agree to engage in talks with Turkey and Qatar – two countries openly hostile to Israel and supportive of Hamas’s terrorist agenda that calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and its replacement with a caliphate run in accordance with a reactionary version of Islamic law? Isn’t the US supposed to be on the side of nations, such as Israel, that support freedom, democracy and equality and are enemies of terrorist organizations such as Hamas and its patrons?
What does this incident say about Kerry’s ability to confront other challenges to world security such as Iran’s nuclear weapon program? Since Kerry took over as secretary of state a year-and-ahalf ago, there have been a number of disputes between the US and Israel. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu openly criticized Kerry’s support for the interim deal with Iran. During Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon derided Kerry’s security proposals along the Jordan border, calling the secretary “messianic” and “obsessive” about the prospects for peace.
Kerry’s mistakes strengthen Hamas’s resolve
Kerry and his staff made an outrageous decision to turn their backs on the Egyptian framework for a ceasefire in a manner that encouraged Hamas to continue shooting rockets.
This first mistake was exposed by none other than the political leader of the organization, Khaled Mashaal, who said in a press conference in Doha, the Qatari capital, that Kerry had turned to al-Attiyah and Davutoglu two days after the Israeli operation in Gaza began and asked them to push for a ceasefire. At the time, Kerry knew full well that a major Egyptian effort was underway to persuade Hamas to stop firing immediately. By turning to Doha and Ankara behind the backs of Cairo and Jerusalem, Washington — no doubt unintentionally — strengthened Hamas’s resolve against Egypt and Israel.
But the mistakes didn’t stop there. The farce continued with the amateurish draft that was immediately rejected by Israel’s security cabinet; it then reached new heights on Saturday in Paris, when Kerry decided to participate in an international summit on Gaza, attended by his new friends al-Attiyah and Davutoglu as well as the foreign ministers of the European Union, but not by a few players that Kerry apparently perceives as marginal – representatives of Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and, of course, Israel.
When numbers in Gaza masquerade as fact
The Meir Amit Intelligence and Information Center found, on July 23, that 775 people had been killed in Gaza, of whom 229 were militants or terrorists (135 Hamas, 60 Islamic Jihad, 34 from other terror organizations); 267 were civilians; and 279 could not yet be classified.
Many of the Palestinian figures subsequently quoted, by the UN and other international organizations, “are not worth the paper they’re written on,” Reuven Erlich, the director of the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, told The Times of Israel. “They’re based mostly on Palestinian sources in Gaza, who have a vested interest in showing that we’re killing many civilians.”
His center, he said, thoroughly researches the casualties. In order to ascertain an accurate identity of the dead, the center’s staff researches the person’s background on Palestinian websites and searches for information about their funerals and for other hints that could shed light on the person’s true occupation.
The authorities in Gaza generally count every young man who did not wear a uniform as a civilian — even if he was involved in terrorist activity and was therefore considered by the IDF a legitimate target, military sources said.
Latest Al Jazeera Data Shows Gaza Casualties Still Mostly Combat-Aged Males
On Sunday, blogger Elder of Ziyon posted new charts, updating the data released by Al Jazeera last week and the week before, and confirming the same trend.
The first chart shows the male-female split and then graphed by age group, with most of the men being 20 to 24 or 25 to 29. The second chart compares the results to Gaza’s actual age distribution, casting further doubt on Hamas’s claims, as the majority of the dead fit the profiles of fighters, men in their 20s, rather than the broader population.
The blogger also published a link to a Google Document created by Guy Bechor based on the official list of Gazan dead from the International Middle East Media Center, for others to examine the raw data.
IDF Soldier in Al Jazeera Interview on Hamas Human Shields: They Throw Civilians at Us ‘Like Cannon Fire’ (VIDEO)
An Israel Defense Forces reservist addressed Hamas’ use of human shields in a recent interview on Al Jazeera America, saying the terror group uses Gaza’s civilians like cannon fodder as weapons against IDF troops.
When confronted by the Al Jazeera correspondent about child casualties in Gaza during Israel’s current Operation Protective Edge, Ezagui said the world “isn’t getting a clear picture of what’s going on.”
“Yes there’s a death toll, but it’s not something that’s on Israel’s hands. It’s not on the young soldiers. The brave men who are going in there to protect their people. It’s Hamas that are throwing Palestinians at us like cannon fire and it’s devastating,” said Ezagui, who lost his left arm while on duty in 2008.
The lone soldier asserted that the terrorist organization should be held responsible for putting Gaza civilians “in such a terrible situation.” Gazan children “don’t deserve to be used as human shields, to be indoctrinated at such a young age,” he said
IDF Soldier Izzy Ezagui on Al Jazeera


Sunday, July 27, 2014

From Ian:

Hamas will restart tunneling as soon as we leave, IDF officer says
Israel will not find all of the cross-border tunnels in Gaza during this operation. And if Hamas is able to secure ceasefire terms that give it sufficient room to do so, it will commence digging anew after this conflict is over, a former senior commander in the IDF’s Combat Engineering Corps said Sunday.
“We won’t find all of them,” said Col. (res) Atai Shelach, former commander of the elite Yahalom unit that tackles the tunnels, “and the moment we leave. they will start digging again.”
The Israeli army has found more than 30 tunnels that cross underground from Gaza to Israel. The channels are often wider than a man’s shoulders and close to six feet high; they are supported with hundreds of tons of concrete arches and frequently reach a maximum depth of 20 meters below ground level. Most of the tunnels are well lit and properly ventilated. Soldiers on the ground in Gaza have reported finding explosives and arms stashed within the tunnels and, on several occasions after thwarting underground infiltration attempts, have found Hamas operatives armed with zip ties and narcotic drugs meant to facilitate a kidnapping. (h/t Canadian Otter)
Progressive Jews, Wake Up
For those progressive Jews who have found solace in the myth that anti-Zionism has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, the events across the globe of the last few weeks have been a rude and discomforting awakening. And so they turned to their final recourse, the belief that America was different.
Sure, there was a pogrom at a synagogue in Paris, but, well, that’s Paris. Muslims and their neo-fascist and leftist allies might walk through the streets of Germany shouting anti-Jewish slogans reminiscent of the Hitler Youth, but, well, that’s Germany.
In San Francisco, if not for the police, some 30 pro-Israel protesters would have been brutalized by over 300 people demonstrating on behalf of the genocidal Hamas terrorists.
Danny Ayalon: Operation "Protective Edge"


From Ian:

Don’t Cry for Us Israelis
I prefer that you – writers of these lies and libels - hate me and my country, if it means that you can save your tears for other peoples’ dead. We aren’t greedy for sympathy. After all, we got so much after the Holocaust, we prefer other people to have their share now. These days, we prefer to live, rather than have people cry over us and the injustices done to us.
So by all means, cry for the Palestinian people – men women and children – whose duly elected leadership has callously left them without protection from just retribution for their terrorist crimes. The leaders who took their people’s aid money and are living in Qatar in five star hotels building shopping centers for themselves. Who built terrorist tunnels under their homes, mosques, hospitals and schools, and recruited their sons to die for Allah, while they sit in bunkers waiting for the U.N. to rescue them.
Don’t cry for us, or our families, or our children, or grandchildren. Not this time. Not ever. Not if we can help it. Because this time, thank God, we have a country. We are armed. This time, with God’s help, we know how to protect ourselves from Nazis and their high-minded media cheerleaders.
I would like to end this with an expletive and a hand gesture towards the people I’m addressing. Please choose one you think would be fitting. I can think of many.
Times of Israel Live Blog: PM: Hamas has breached the truce it claims to be asking for, PA slams Kerry for attending ‘friends of Hamas’ ceasefire talks
Israel rejects Gaza offer for 24-hour timeout as rocket fire persists; IDF death toll rises to 43; Israel, PA fume at Kerry for his ceasefire terms; Gaza death toll said to climb above 1,000, including hundreds of gunmen
Isi Leibler: Obama abandons Israel
The Netanyahu government is fully aware that Israel cannot accept a long-term cease-fire that ‎would enable Hamas to again attack Israel with missiles or renew their building of terrorist ‎tunnels into Israel.‎
The U.S. will also be committing another blunder if it seeks to recycle Palestinian Authority ‎President Mahmoud Abbas to resolve the impasse. While initially he had backed the Egyptian ‎cease-fire and was happy to see his "partner" Hamas under pressure, he has now decided to ‎throw his lot with Hamas and the radical jihadists. Israel can no longer contemplate ‎negotiations with the PA so long as it remains associated with Hamas. ‎
Defensible borders are now an absolute must. With the collapse of the artificial Arab nation ‎states created by the Sykes-Picot treaty in the aftermath of World War I, no borders are ‎sacrosanct, certainly not armistice lines that have never been formally recognized as ‎international borders. Under no circumstances can we contemplate returning to the ‎indefensible 1949 armistice lines. It is now also clear that should a Palestinian state emerge, it ‎must be totally demilitarized, with the IDF retaining security control. ‎
We should also cautiously seek to engage with Egypt and other pragmatic Arab countries that ‎are opposed to the jihadists and Muslim Brotherhood.‎
David Horovitz: John Kerry: The betrayal
When The Times of Israel’s Avi Issacharoff first reported the content of John Kerry’s ceasefire proposal on Friday afternoon, I wondered if something had gotten lost in translation. It seemed inconceivable that the American secretary of state would have drafted an initiative that, as a priority, did not require the dismantling of Hamas’s rocket arsenal and network of tunnels dug under the Israeli border. Yet the reported text did not address these issues at all, nor call for the demilitarization of Gaza.
It seemed inconceivable that the secretary’s initiative would specify the need to address Hamas’s demands for a lifting of the siege of Gaza, as though Hamas were a legitimate injured party acting in the interests of the people of Gaza — rather than the terror group that violently seized control of the Strip in 2007, diverted Gaza’s resources to its war effort against Israel, and could be relied upon to exploit any lifting of the “siege” in order to import yet more devastating weaponry with which to kill Israelis.
Israel and the US are meant to be allies; the US is meant to be committed to the protection of Israel in this most ruthless of neighborhoods; together, the US and Israel are meant to be trying to marginalize the murderous Islamic extremism that threatens the free world. Yet here was the top US diplomat appearing to accommodate a vicious terrorist organization bent on Israel’s destruction, with a formula that would leave Hamas better equipped to achieve that goal.

Saturday, July 26, 2014

From Ian:

Paris's Kristallnacht
This was the first time since World War II that an anti-Semitic pogrom took place in France.
Almost all French politicians adopt an attitude of appeasement toward the enemies of Israel and Jews. They act as if they did not see that the hate speech that France finances in the Middle East is now spreading throughout France itself.
No major French television report speaks of Hamas's genocidal Jew-hatred or of the use of Arab women and children as human shields. Criticizing radical Islam on public television is now almost impossible. Members of the Israeli government are never interviewed on French television.
French politicians know that 70% of all the inmates in French prisons are Muslims, and that these prisons have been transformed into recruiting centers for jihadists.
Hamas Killed 160 Palestinian Children to Build Terror Tunnels
As the death toll of Operation Protective Edge rises, the deaths of children are firmly in the spotlight—and rightly so. It pains all reasonable people to hear of children dying as the consequence of war. Hamas and its supporters display gruesome pictures of dead and wounded children in order to gain sympathy for their portrait of Israel as the villain intent on killing Palestinians. In response, Israel cites the need to stop Hamas from firing thousands of rockets at its own children, who are being forced to live in bomb shelters, as well as the need to eliminate the tunnels that Hamas dug into Israel in order to carry out terror attacks against Israelis. One tunnel opening was found underneath an Israeli kindergarten.
But who built those tunnels? The answer is Hamas, of course—using some of the same children who are now trapped under fire in Gaza.
The Institute for Palestine Studies published a detailed report on Gaza’s Tunnel Phenomenon in the summer of 2012. It reported that tunnel construction in Gaza has resulted in a large number of child deaths.
“At least 160 children have been killed in the tunnels, according to Hamas officials”
The author, Nicolas Pelham, explains that Hamas uses child laborers to build their terror tunnels because, “much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies”. (h/t Yenta Press)
"Among the Palestinians, they tell you straight out, 'I want to get rich.'"
Another source of wealth for Hamas leaders was taking over land. "They took over land mainly near the sea in good areas, such as the former Gush Katif, then sold it. In effect, they are the cat guarding the cream - the land - so they were able to take over land and loot it for themselves," Elad explains.
In addition, there is a system in the Gaza Strip of fictitious recruitment of workers for Hamas for the purpose of obtaining pay slips from people overseas paying for it. "They get the payments from overseas according to the workers' names. It has recently been discovered that there are hundreds of fictitious names of soldiers and officials supposedly in Hamas. Actually, the leaders and officials put the money in their own pockets," Elad asserts.
According to various sources, some of Mashaal's money came from the "Syrian fund." Elad explains: "According to these accusations, following an investigation by the US federal authorities, Mashaal was accused of embezzling the entire Syrian fund. There was a separate fund in Syria for Hamas; Mashaal controlled all the movements in the fund when he lived there. As soon as he left Damascus, he took the Syrian fund, which was worth several billion dollars, and distributed it to himself and others. It is believed that Hamas had $1.5-2.5 billion in assets in Syria, which Mashaal took." (h/t Yenta Press)
Times of Israel Live Blog: IDF toll rises to 42 with 2 more deaths; Hamas breaches truce, resumes rocket fire
Kerry meets int’l counterparts in Paris to push for long-term ceasefire after Jerusalem rejects his previous proposal; Gaza death toll said to climb to 1,000 — including Hamas gunmen — as Gazans stock up, recover bodies during lull

Friday, July 25, 2014

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: UN probe of Israel will only encourage Hamas war crimes
There you go again," as Ronald Reagan said to Jimmy Carter. Once again the United Nations Human Rights Council has voted – with the United States dissenting – to conduct a so-called "investigation" of Israel's military responses to Hamas's double war crimes. Once again Israel will have to decide whether to feed the kangaroos that make up this court by cooperating with yet another phony investigation whose outcome is predetermined. Yet again Israel is presented with a Hobson's choice: If it refuses to cooperate, it will blamed for denying the investigatory commission relevant information; if it cooperates it will lend credibility to a conclusion that has already been reached.
This Hamas-inspired investigation is an important part of Hamas's double war crime strategy: By firing its rockets from civilian areas and buildings – even Ban Ki-moon acknowledges that it does – Hamas seeks to have Israel kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible. This Hamas-designed body count, and the accompanying photographs, inevitably leads to the kind of one-sided investigation in which the UNHRC specializes. The resulting one-sided condemnation, which Hamas can always count on, then helps it win support in Europe, South America and other parts of the world, as well as in the media and universities.
By joining in this Hamas strategy, indeed becoming a central part of it, the UNHRC encourages Hamas to repeat its rocket fire against Israeli civilians, its tunneling into Israel to kill and kidnap Israelis and its placement of rockets and tunnel entrances in civilian areas. The countries voting for this investigation are fully aware of what they are encouraging. They have the blood of future innocent Palestinians and Israelis on their hands.
Anne Bayefsky: Depravity at the UN Human Rights Council
The UN Human Rights Council held a special session in Geneva on July 23, 2014 to declare effectively that Israelis do not have human rights.
The session ended with a resolution that launched an "investigation" into what the Council decided in advance were Israel's violations of Palestinian rights. The vote was 29 in favor, 1 against and 17 abstentions.
The Obama administration voted against – after joining and legitimizing the virulently anti-Jewish Council for the past five years, and now feigning disappointment for American cameras.
The Europeans abstained because they did not want to upset their violent Muslim minorities, and with their sordid past, the resolution's message wasn't too foreign in any case. A few cowardly countries that Israelis have magnanimously befriended over the years also abstained.
Israel and the Burden of Being Right
Generally when someone says they “hate to say I told you so,” it’s fair to doubt they really hate saying it. But in Israel’s case it’s believable. The current conflict with Gaza is proving Israel correct about its various claims with regard to Hamas, and the result is the treacherous urban warfare the world is currently witnessing.
As Evelyn Gordon wrote earlier, the vast tunnel networks prove Israel was right about letting in dual-use items that Hamas would only appropriate for its terror war against Israeli civilians. The West should, in fact, be embarrassed by its enabling of those tunnels: pressuring Israel to let in those materials was the international community’s way of using Israeli civilians as guinea pigs in a grand experiment. They didn’t believe Israeli predictions, and wanted the premises tested. Now they have been, and innocents are paying the price.
Hamas Mega-Attack Planned through Gaza Terror Tunnels
Hamas had apparently been preparing a murderous assault on Israeli civilian targets for the coming Jewish New Year Holiday, Rosh Hashanah, which begins on September 24, according anonymous sources in the Israeli security services, as reported today by the Israeli daily Maariv.
The Hamas plan consisted of what was to be a surprise attack in which 200 fighters would be dispatched through each of dozens of tunnels dug by Hamas under the border from Gaza to Israel, and seize kibbutzim and other communities while killing and kidnapping Israeli civilians.
Israeli soldiers already frustrated a surprise assault by Hamas through one tunnel from Gaza into the Eshkol district of Israel on July 19. The Hamas fighters escaped back into the tunnel, but the clash cost the lives of two Israel Defense Force [IDF] troops.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Abbas Endorsed Hamas Demands
Evidently, Abbas has reached the conclusion that unless he hurries up and declares his support for the Palestinian "resistance" groups in the Gaza Strip, his people will march on his office and force him to quit.
That prospect is probably why Abbas decided this week to send his wife and grandchildren to stay at the family's residence in Amman, Jordan. According to various reports, members of Abbas's families left Ramallah "secretly" and headed for Jordan amid increased criticism of the Palestinian Authority president.
Witnesses said that security has been intensified around the home and office of Abbas in Ramallah out of concern for his safety.
Abbas's fear of a Palestinian revolt against his regime has driven him into the open arms of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Another reason for the unexpected change in Abbas's policy could be related to a promise he received from Qatar to provide the Palestinian Authority with financial aid. If true, this would strain relations between Abbas and al-Sisi, who is despised by Qatar -- the largest funder of Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
Alan Dershowitz: How selective body counts incite more violence
During a two day period this past week while dozens of Palestinians and several Israelis were killed, the media failed to report that in neighboring Syria, 700 Arabs and Muslims were killed in just two days of fighting. This constitutes only a tiny fraction of the 160,000 people killed in Syria during the ongoing civil war. According to the Britain-Based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 53,978 civilians have been killed including 8,607 children and 5,586 women. Many if not most of these deaths were deliberate—part of calculated efforts on both sides of the conflict to maximize civilian casualties.
Yet this body count has received little notice compared to the far smaller body count in Israel and Gaza. Why is this? Is it because when Arabs and Muslims deliberately kill other Arabs and Muslims, that deserves less attention than when Israelis kill Arabs and Muslims, even in self-defense and in an effort to prevent the murder of their own civilians? If so, this is racism pure and simple, and the application of a noxious double standard. The lives of all human beings have worth, and the death of Arabs and Muslims at the hands of other Arabs and Muslims deserve as much media coverage as the deaths of Arabs and Muslims that are caused by Israel's efforts to protect its own civilians.
The media's exclusive focus on the death toll in Gaza—without explaining that it is largely Hamas' fault and part of its media strategy—incites hatred and anti-Semitism around the world. It has incited violence against Jews and Jewish institutions in many cities. Much of this violence comes from radicals on the hard left and from radical Islamists. But a recent incident in Italy shows that bigoted hate can come from the mouths of intellectuals as well as the fists of rabble rousers. Gianni Vattimo, who has been called Italy's most famous philosopher, recently announced that he would personally, "like to shoot those bastard Zionists," calling them "a bit worse than the Nazis". He said he was planning to launch a fundraising campaign to buy better rockets for Hamas so that this Jew-hating group can kill more Zionists, by which he means Jewish Israelis. He urged European volunteers to join Hamas and fight alongside of them against Israel, as volunteers fought against Franco during the Spanish Civil War.
The U.S.-Israel Alliance: No Apologies Necessary
First, there is no change in U.S. policy toward Israel that will win any true allies in the Muslim world, no matter what its leaders claim. They often assert that only if we would solve the Palestinian-Israeli problem first, relations would improve. This is a tactic. These leaders employ it simply to divert Western officials from making demands on them instead of on Israel. The reality is that most Arabs view the U.S., its European allies, and Israel with ineradicable contempt.
No Arab state has recognized the legitimacy of a Jewish -- or often even a pluralistic -- state in Palestine. Egypt and Iraq have been persecuting their Christians, only because the Jews were all forced out already; and many Muslim countries cannot even abide each other, as seen every day in the Shia-Sunni conflict, still under way after centuries.
This struggle between Israel and the Palestinians is not about land. If it were, there would have been a two-state solution long ago. Former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would have said yes to the Camp David Plan offered by President Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Barak. The current strife between the Hamas terrorist movement and Israel is just another stage in the permanent state of Arab hostility towards the existence of a Jewish state in the region.
Stand with US: Who is responsible for the suffering in Gaza?


Saturday, July 19, 2014

From Ian:

Two soldiers killed by Hamas infiltrators Saturday morning
Two IDF officers were killed Saturday morning when Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israeli territory via a tunnel under the border fence from the central Gaza Strip and ambushed a military vehicle patrolling on the Israeli side of the border, the IDF said Saturday evening.
The two were named as Amotz Greenberg, 45, a major in the reserves from Hod Hasharon, and Sgt. Adar Barsano, 20, from Nahariya. The information was cleared for publication after the families were informed.
The deaths were the first of soldiers killed by Hamas since Operation Protective Edge began on July 8.
The terrorist cell infiltrated Israeli territory through a tunnel, in an apparent attempt to carry out a major attack on one of the nearby communities, the army said.
Douglas MurrayThe Greatest Possible Problem for Europe
Israel, one can probably say with some confidence, can very well look after itself. Like everyone else who has spent time in the country, and admires and even loves it, I worry for it, but I can think of no nation on earth that is better equipped or better motivated to look after itself and its people. So when I see these young protestors in London, protesting against Israel, I do not worry for the country they are shouting against. They cannot touch her. But I worry for my country -- Britain. It is a country that is finding it so difficult to integrate the millions of Muslims who have come here that (in a figure that ought to be better known) there are now at least twice as many young British Muslims who have gone to Syria to fight alongside ISIS and other such groups, than there are Muslims fighting for Queen and country here in the British armed forces.
By any standards, this is a symptom of a disastrous immigration and integration problem. The people shouting outside the Israeli embassy -- the knackered and foolish old minority of Trots aside -- can do Israel no harm. But they can do great harm to the country they are in. Europe's Israel-haters are no real problem for Israel, but they are the greatest possible problem for Europe.
Charles Krauthammer: Moral clarity in Gaza
Israel accepts an Egyptian-proposed Gaza cease-fire; Hamas keeps firing. Hamas deliberately aims rockets at civilians; Israel painstakingly tries to avoid them, actually telephoning civilians in the area and dropping warning charges, so-called roof knocking.
“Here’s the difference between us,” explains the Israeli prime minister. “We’re using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles.”
Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity. Yet we routinely hear this Israel-Gaza fighting described as a morally equivalent “cycle of violence.” This is absurd. What possible interest can Israel have in cross-border fighting? Everyone knows Hamas set off this mini-war. And everyone knows the proudly self-declared raison d’etre of Hamas: the eradication of Israel and its Jews.
Hamas: We Place Civilians in the Line of Fire
While the IDF does everything that it can to avoid civilian casualties, Hamas deliberately puts Palestinian civilian lives in danger.
Hamas hides weapons and missile launchers in densely populated areas. Instead of keeping its citizens out of harm’s way, Hamas encourages and even forces Gazans to join its violent resistance against Israel. It sends men, women and children directly into the line of fire to be used as human shields for terrorists. (h/t Bob Knot)
Hamas: We Place Civilians in the Line of Fire


Jon Stewart is completely clueless about Gaza


Friday, July 18, 2014

From Ian:

Charles Schumer: No Moral Equivalency Between Israel and Hamas
Hamas, which has won elections with the support of the population of Gaza, is a terrorist group that remains bent on the destruction of Israel and its citizens. Without provocation, the Hamas governing authority flings rockets over the border, all over Israel, without regard to civilian lives or public safety. In fact, the terrorists frequently target civilians. Their intent is to terrorize and inflict as much pain as possible.
When Israel reacts, it does so defensively, to prevent rockets from hurting its people. It targets military capabilities or terrorist leaders. What other society gives advanced warnings to those shelling it, by dropping leaflets and making cellphone calls to warn the inhabitants of impending defensive strikes, to minimize the loss of innocent lives?
These proportional steps clearly make it harder to eliminate the terrorists and rockets, and Israel is almost unique in taking them.
Again, to say that both sides are equally to blame in this recent round of violence simply lets Hamas and its leaders off the hook and naturally encourages them to continue the violence, because the condemnation of the world falls equally on Israel’s and Hamas’ shoulders – a condition they seek as effectively giving permission for future violence.
Melanie Phillips: Under fire in Israel
Every western supporter of the Palestinian war against Israel is also tacitly supporting such anti-Jewish derangement. This psychotic bigotry is the true driver of that war, as well as the Islamist war against the West. Yet astoundingly it is never, ever mentioned. The intractable problem of Gaza has been exacerbated by the meddling incomprehension of a western world that just doesn’t grasp how Islamist fanatics play by entirely different rules.
The West insists on moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians, as if the century-old conflict between the Arabs and the Jews were simply a squabble over the equitable division of land. It is not. It is a war to destroy the Jewish national homeland by people driven into frenzy by forces immune to reason.
Israeli parents are now steeling themselves for the nightmare of their sons in the Israel Defence Force being deployed in a Gazan land war to stop the rockets. Some of those boys will be killed. But it will be the Palestinian casualties, the Hamas war crime, which will be used once again to blame the Jews for their own destruction.
Sarah Honig: Hypocrisy most foul
The bamboozlers who gave us Oslo and its deformed derivative disengagement have never expressed the slightest contrition and never begged the nation’s forgiveness – not even now when Gazan rockets threaten Israel’s heartland.
The same goes for their craven accomplices, who ran with the pack and derided nonconformist compatriots who dared protest.
But while the promoters of folly bask in self-proclaimed infallibility, they’re uncannily quick to blame others for their sins.
This is hypocrisy most foul and it’s not limited to territorial surrenders and the chimera of attaining peace and acceptance by rewarding belligerence.
Caroline Glick: How to win in Gaza
While the ground operations continue, Israeli negotiators should be avidly agreeing to every ceasefire offer that denies Hamas any achievements. The IDF must continue to exercise an abundance of caution to prevent Hamas from luring our forces into a situation where we will be accused of massacring Palestinians.
None of this is easy or simple. No result is guaranteed. But in fighting Hamas today, Israel finds itself in a better position than it has faced in past fights with Hamas. For the first time, we face an enemy with a limited shelf life. Without supply lines from Egypt, Hamas cannot fight forever. Its allies at the UN can feed its forces and protect Hamas from an insurrection from a starving population. But the UN cannot rearm Hamas. It cannot reopen the smuggling tunnels from Egypt to enable materiel, money and trainers to enter Gaza.
Hamas is desperate for anything it can call a victory. By denying it one on the one hand, while taking action to force its leaders to prefer organizational humiliation to personal destruction on the other, Israel can win a decisive victory.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

From Ian:

Reflections on Gaza From an Israeli Mother
This crisis, like others that preceded it, has united the Israeli people. In normal times we tend to be a contentious lot, neighbors arguing against neighbors, political parties bickering bitterly in the Knesset and in the media. But all of that has disappeared, ideological and personal differences blurred or suspended. Israelis know that they are all in this together.
It is precisely as a mother that my heart goes out to the innocent Palestinians in Gaza. A cruel and inhumane Hamas regime has deprived them of freedom and dignity, and endangers their lives in the name of radical jihad. It commandeers their homes for military posts, and to store and fire rockets, using them and their children as human shields to die for propaganda purposes.
I am proud to live in a country that makes phone calls to the residents of buildings that have been targeted, warning civilians so they can get out in time; a country that even now, in the midst of battle, continues its ongoing practice of providing medical care for sick and injured Gazans, just as it does for Syrians fleeing the bloody civil war there.
The average Israeli would like nothing more than peace and quiet. But that will have to wait. I just learned that another barrage of rockets was fired moments ago toward Beersheva.
'Human rights activists' at Hamas' service
Most of them have good intentions. They want peace and reconciliation and want us all to make love and not war. Hamas loves them.
In October 2013, Ismail Haniyeh delivered a thanksgiving address: "We put our trust in the support of the liberals in the world… Greetings to all the civil society organizations and human rights organizations."
In that exact speech, he presented the "Palestinian national strategy," which will include "an armed struggle and a PR struggle in all regional and international arenas."
The strategy works. Hamas has launched another round in order to play its role in the "armed struggle" front. Only several hours passed before "writers and intellectuals" began filling their own role in the "PR struggle" front. The first petition has already hit the road. No to violence. Not to war. All they want is to "probe the incitement," Israel's of course. And they are demanding "an end to the fighting in Gaza."
NGO Monitor: The Gaza numbers game
Five days into Operation Protective Edge, the out-going UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, issued a statement that the number of casualties in Gaza raises “serious doubt about whether the Israeli strikes have been in accordance with international humanitarian law and international human rights law.”
In a similar vein, UNWRA Spokesperson Chris Gunness has a running commentary of casualties on his Twitter feed, including the plea to “Imagine being a 5 year old in #Gaza This is the 3rd terrifying bombardment in your short life. Where else have 5 year olds suffered thus?” These numbers and emotional appeals, however, are seriously misplaced.
If many civilians are being killed in Gaza, it is because Hamas is storing and launching deadly missiles from within populated areas and exploiting the population there as a human shield. Conversely, if even one civilian were to be illegitimately targeted, that single killing would be illegal.
Thus, the UN officials’ emotive statements are entirely disconnected from the legal and moral implications of Israel’s actions.

Saturday, July 12, 2014

From Ian:

Netanyahu: Gaza conflict proves Israel can’t relinquish control of West Bank
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday vowed to fight Hamas and other Gaza terror groups until Israel was safe from the threat of missile attack, and then launched a highly unusual and extremely bitter verbal assault on would-be peace-brokers, including US Secretary of State John Kerry, who have been urging Israel to relinquish security control of the West Bank to a Palestinian state.
Speaking to the Israeli public on the fourth day of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, which he said has seen Israel attack “over 1,000″ terror targets while sustaining hundreds of rocket attacks from Gaza, Netanyahu vowed that the IDF campaign “will continue until we are sure that Israel’s residents have quiet.” He said that no terrorist target was off-limits, and accused Hamas’s leaders and gunmen of “hiding behind Gaza’s residents” — using them as human shields — and thus being responsible “for any harm that comes to them.”
While Israel did everything to protect its citizens, he said, and had “spent billions to protect the homefront” in recent years, Gaza’s terror groups deliberately put Gazans “in harm’s way.” Israel does its utmost not to harm Gaza’s civilians while targeting the terrorists, whereas Hamas targets Israel’s civilians, he said.
Israel acting disproportionately? Think again
The fact that Israeli fatalities are low in this conflict does not reduce the military necessity of attacking Hamas. As famed jurist Alan Dershowitz points out: “Proportion must be defined by reference to the threat posed by the enemy and not by the harm it has produced”.
The accusation of targeting civilians, a violation of the rule of distinction, is equally baseless. At the moment, the Israeli Air Force is carrying out precision raids on Hamas' terrorist infrastructure, including arms dumps, rocket launchers, command and control centres and the homes of terrorist figures.
Where houses have been turned into military targets, the IDF has provided advance warnings to Palestinian residents (so called roof knocking) to leave their houses prior to an attack. This is designed to minimise civilian casualties, rather than maximise them. In any case, targeting civilians would be futile. It would achieve nothing in military terms and hand a massive propaganda victory to Hamas.
Israel activist Chloe Valdary assaulted in Boston
This is the face of hate
A Palestinian "peace " activist has physically assaulted Israel activist Chloe Valdary at a Boston solidarity rally for Israel. Shrieking that the Jews would go to hell while the Christians and the Muslims took over Jerusalem, she knocked Chloe's phone out of her hand.
The unidentified woman was not arrested..
For those of you attending Israel solidarity rallies this weekend, be careful out there. Its never been about peace for the anti-Israel crowd. In the unforgettable words of International ANSWER organizer Dick Becker, this isn't about peace. Its about the "victory of the resistance"
Anti Israel Woman attacks me at Hate Fest


Israel Air Force Aborts Gaza Airstrike After Spotting Children Near Target (VIDEO)
The Israel Air Force called of an airstrike on a “terror activity site” on Thursday after spotting children in the vicinity of the target, a recently released video shows.
“There are people close to our target,” the pilot carrying out the mission is heard saying in the clip. “It looks like there are people, possibly children in our targeted area.”
An operator responds: “We are not going to strike this target now, let’s move on.”
IDF Pilot Calls Off Airstrike After Children Spotted Near Target


Thursday, July 10, 2014

From Ian:

Phyllis Chesler: Why This Operation is Different
Operation Protective Edge may look like its predecessors--Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9 and Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012--in that it is a response to Palestinian terrorism launched from Gaza against Israeli civilians. The previous two rounds of the conflict ended with Hamas still in power in the Gaza Strip, weakened but able to re-arm over time and to project a strategic threat. There are five reasons, however, this time may be different.
1. By Attacking Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Hamas Has Invited Its Own Destruction. By launching its Iranian-and Syrian-made missiles against Israel's two major cities--especially Tel Aviv, normally a safe distance from conflict--Hamas has broken the unwritten rules of the game. It has long been known that Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north had the ability to reach those cities. But those groups had not exercised it.
Now that Hamas has shown it is willing to attack Israel's commercial, spiritual, and political centers, the terror group has left Israel no choice but to destroy it completely. There is no way Israel can accept life under an active threat of rockets, enjoying safety only at Hamas's whim. Attacking border towns like Sderot--or even, as in 2006, a northern city like Haifa--is one thing. Attacking Tel Aviv is a provocation Israel cannot ignore.
Times of Israel Live Blog: IDF urges Gazans near border to clear out; West Bank attack foiled
IDF urges Gazans near border to clear out; West Bank attack foiled; missiles downed in Beersheba; shrapnel falls in south Tel Aviv; group linked to Fatah claims to shoot rocket; Dimona targeted
Israeli Forces Halt Terror Bombing Suspects En Route to Attack (VIDEO)
Israeli army forces at a checkpoint in the northern West Bank foiled a planned terror bombing, on Thursday afternoon.
Alert soldiers manning the permanent station, not far from the Israeli city of Ariel, were inspecting a Palestinian vehicle when they noticed a liquid propane gas tank wired up as an explosive device.
The bomb was hidden between the legs of the front seat passenger, according to Israel’s Walla News.
Israeli Muslim: We Must Destroy Hamas
An Israeli Muslim Arab has written to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressing that if the Jewish state truly wants peace, it must remove from power the terror groups that current hold sway over the Palestinian population, and instead deal directly with average Arabs who just want to live quietly.
In a post on his Facebook page, Ali Shaban, who volunteered for combat service in the IDF and continues to do reserve duty to this day, urged Netanyahu to “act now, do not waver or fear. The Palestinians understand only force, and if you do not attack now, then you and me and all Israelis will pay a dear price.”
Like many Israelis, Shaban wondered, “Why are you [Netanyahu] waiting? Are you waiting for more deaths? Are you waiting until the missiles hit Tel Aviv? Are you waiting for approval from Obama?”

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

From Ian:

Daughters of Brussels shooting victims: 'They'll always be with us'
Shira and Ayelet Riva, daughters of the Israeli couple killed in the Brussels Jewish Museum shooting, write final letter to parents as their bodies land in Israel: 'We know that they'll always be in our hearts and souls.'
"We couldn't ask for better parents. Loving, caring and good-hearted, who most of all wanted the best for us," wrote Shira and Ayelet Riva in a letter in memory of their parents Emanuel and Miriam Riva, who were killed in the shooting at the Brussels Jewish Museum Saturday, just hours after their bodies arrived in Israel.
In the final letter to their parents, the daughters (16 and 15 years old) wrote that "they went abroad to celebrate their 18th anniversary. Before the trip they promised us we would do a lot of things together after they return, but they won't come back to us.
Tel Aviv couple to be laid to rest; Brussels shooter still at large
The bodies of Emanuel and Mira Riva, the Israeli couple killed in Saturday's shooting at the Brussels Jewish Museum, will be laid to rest at Tel Aviv’s Kiryat Shaul cemetery at 5 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, as investigators continue searching for the perpetrator still at large.
A lone gunman entered the museum with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and opened fire, killing the Rivas and one other, injuring a fourth person. The fourth victim died on Monday.
Belgium sends museum murder file to terrorism prosecutor
Deputy public prosecutor Ine Van Wymersch told a news conference that “the file is transferred to the federal” level, but she refused to say whether or not it was being reclassified as a terrorist act.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack on Saturday, Joel Rubinfeld, who heads Belgium’s league against anti-Semitism, told AFP it clearly “is a terrorist act” as a man had been seen driving up and entering the museum before opening fire inside and running off. He added that the act was the result of a “climate of hate.”
Brussels gunman was wearing video camera, sources say
Belgian media reported Monday morning that the gunman who killed four people in an attack Saturday at the Brussels Jewish Museum carried out the act while wearing a portable video camera on his chest.
If true, the behavior would be reminiscent of that of Mohammed Merah, who filmed himself killing four people at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse, March 2012.
“Sources involved in the investigation” informed several news sites that while reviewing one of the museum’s security videos, it was observed that the suspect was bearing a GoPro brand camera that may have documented the event.

Monday, May 12, 2014

From Ian:

Revisiting Jewish and Islamic Oppression during the Spanish Inquisition
The Spanish Inquisition was a time when considerable horror was visited upon the Jewish people of Spain, which subsequently spread to Portugal, one for which the authorities of both nations wish to make amends, even if in a belatedly tokenistic fashion.
Commentators, such as Robert Fisk, have taken issue with this offer of citizenship. Rather than welcoming the development, and using it to recommend that this legislation be extended to Muslims, it is framed as a pretext to suggest that lack of inclusion for Muslims is in some respect Islamophobic.
Likewise, when word of the plan spread a decade ago, Islamic groups began to demand Spanish citizenship for millions of the Muslim descendants, of the 325,000 expelled by the Spanish authorities in the early 17th Century, despite the fact that expulsion played a central role in the rapid expansion of the Islamic world itself.
"Fisking" history
Notably, Fisk white-washes the Moorish “Golden Age”, in which Jews, Muslims and Christians supposedly lived in a tolerant environment.
The Extremist Allegiances of Joel Beinin
Joel Beinin – Professor of History and of Middle East History at Stanford University – once threatened legal action after being named as a supporter of terrorism. That should have surprised even the most jaded observers of American academic “activism.” Ever since his days as a young Maoist on the campuses of Princeton, Harvard, and then Michigan, Beinin has competed in militancy with the most brutal terrorist foes of the Jewish state.
As a former student recalled, Beinin “had nothing but contempt for Israel, was well to the ‘left’ of the PLO, and was perfectly representative of the extremism of his milieu. One day, at a particular forum, he gave what I can only describe as a kind of beer-hall speech. Shouting and pumping his fist, he admonished the Arabs to forget any negotiating with Israel and to stay true to pure radicalism.”
Mick Jagger’s False Quote Spreads Through Social Media
As the owner of tickets for next month’s Rolling Stones concert in Tel Aviv, I’m very much looking forward to seeing Mick Jagger and the rest of the legendary rock band defying both their age and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
It’s not surprising that Israel advocates are trumpeting the Stones concert as an epic BDS fail, leading to this quote and related images spreading like wildfire through the pro-Israel community on social media.
Unfortunately the quote isn’t true.


Thursday, May 08, 2014

From Ian:

Palestinian Magical Thinking
The Palestinian elite and their children live comfortable and privileged lives in Ramallah and elsewhere in the region and beyond it. Combining this with diplomatic and political activity can be pleasant and rewarding. Combining it with military activity, by contrast, could be harmful and has already been proven not to work.
So expect more furious and pathos-filled denunciations of Israeli crimes from various UN committees largely staffed by the representatives of sundry dictatorships.
Expect Saeb Erekat and the others to come up with yet more inventive reasons as to why Islam and Arabic are “indigenous” to Jerusalem while Judaism and Hebrew represent foreign implants. And so on, and so forth.
And at the end of all this, expect more failure, more bewilderment and a pause until the next alternative to a negotiated peace is stumbled upon. This is the nature of the magical thinking that lies at the core of Palestinian Arab politics.
This politics, in its various manifestations, exists to reverse the verdict of the war of 1948. It has no other purpose.
Ex-ICC prosecutor warns Palestinians on anti-Israel war crimes effort
The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, on a visit to Israel, urged the Palestinians to proceed with caution as they consider pursuing war crimes charges against Israel. He said it would be preferable for the two sides to work out their differences directly.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo said the Palestinians should not rush ahead with a case against Israel, saying they could expose themselves to the same accusations.
White House Escalates Secret Media War Against Israel
Indyk, a longtime Middle East hand and peace negotiator, has for years personally disliked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to these sources.
“It’s been going on for many years,” said one former Israeli diplomat, referring to Indyk’s leaks to the press. “He was defending the Palestinians. That is a long time story. His antipathy to Netanyahu is also a very long story. It’s not recent. It goes back years.”
Indyk has enjoyed a long relationship with reporter Barnea and has used those ties to leak stories critical of Israel and Netanyahu, the source said.

Thursday, May 01, 2014

From Ian:

Chloe Valdary: The J Street Paradigm:Methods, Means, & Modes of Suicide
Post Zionism and the rise of J Street
It is within these two historical contexts–‘Enlightened’ evil and Stockholm Syndrome– that the conundrum of the so-called post-Zionist movement can perhaps be better comprehended. Post-Zionism posits that the Zionist era has passed and is at best a historical era which had its run but is no longer in session. Generally Jews who belong to this camp are of the left-wing progressive persuasion who also fail to understand what Zionism is. They usually understand Zionism to be merely a response to anti-Semitism and thus no longer necessary. They are largely ignorant of the emancipatory nature of Zionism, which, must like the civil rights movement in America, was rooted in ethnic and cultural pride. Zionism, while it was indeed reactionary, was also proactive in its advancement of an indigenous people’s rights. The Jewish right to settle in its ancient homeland is not simply due to the spread of anti-Semitism; It is a matter of fact, regardless of whatever political climate Jews find themselves in, in the Diaspora. Post-Zionists also do not grasp the scope of anti-Semitism, not in the Middle East nor its growth in Europe. Indeed, they often, through Stockholm Syndrome, contribute to it.
I realize that this is a very hard pill to swallow. Nevertheless the symptom must be properly diagnosed if the patient is to heal. Perhaps no greater example of such a festering sore on the heart of the Jewish people can be found then in that of the political organization, J Street. Claiming to be pro-Israel and pro-peace, J Street is neither and advances no such policies. Founded in 2008, its major pronouncement is that a two-state solution to the Arab-Jewish conflict is what must be advanced both for the sake of Israeli security and American stability in the region. This of course precludes a detailed analysis of the situation, and a study into all possible prognosis to the problem. This premature announcement of an end, rather then examining the complexity of the situation and then coming to an educated conclusion reflective of those same complex factors, epitomizes J Street’s creed: The end justifies the means.
Indy publishes letter (whose signatures include Desmond Tutu) with lie about ‘maimed’ Palestinian ‘footballers’
However, the charges about the alleged attack on the ‘talented teenage Palestinian footballers’, which was first published in the Arab media and then by Dave Zirin at The Nation, were proven to be a lie in a superb fisking at Elder of Ziyon.
First, the two Palestinians were not ‘targeted’ because they were “football players”, but because they were allegedly seen throwing bombs.
The incident, which occurred in late January near Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem, reportedly began when a group of Palestinians (including the two “footballers”) threw bombs at Israeli security forces. The security forces evidently only opened fire when the group attempted to run away and tried again to toss explosives at them.
Additionally, both of the Palestinian ‘victims’, Joher Naser and Adam Johar, are evidently supporters of the terror group, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. (h/t Bob Knot)
A Case of Selective Holocaust Memory
Grand Mufti: Founder of Palestinian Liberation, Nazi Collaborator
As disturbing as Abbas’s statements are, it’s what he does not say that is morally repugnant. Let’s not forget that the annihilation of Hungary’s Jews was aided by the founder of the Palestinian national liberation movement, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.
Having fled to Berlin in 1941, the Mufti got busy, actively assisting the Nazis by recruiting Bosnian Muslim soldiers into the Wafen-SS. It was these Mufti recruits who guarded the bridges across which passed the trains that carried over half a million Hungarian Jewish men, women and children to Auschwitz for extermination.
The Muslim soldiers were tasked with thwarting partisan efforts to slow the killing machine by blowing up vital arteries such as bridges.
The Mufti also helped establish the “Free Arab Legion” that operated as an adjunct to the Wehrmacht, the German army. The Nazis were most appreciative, paying al-Husseini a monthly salary that was twice the amount of a Reich Field Marshall’s.
Al-Husseini’s activities on behalf of Nazi Germany are explored in a documentary titled “The Turban and the Swastika”. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Monday, March 31, 2014

From Ian:

Different Standards For Different Rocket Attacks
Terror supporting, genocidal regime launches rockets at the territory of a liberal democracy. Sound familiar?
In this case, however, South Korea “returns fire” when attacked by its neighbor according to the above headline in The Guardian. It is clear that South Korea is responding to an act of aggression.
But what happens when Israel returns fire in response to Palestinian rockets from Gaza?
Why is it that even when Israel is fired upon, the headlines still manage to portray Israel as the aggressor? Or at a minimum the moral equivalent of the terrorists who fired the rockets in a so-called “cycle of violence”:
But then Israel couldn’t possibly be judged by different standards to other democracies under fire. Could it?
All part of the phenomenon we call “it all started when Israel fired back.”
Amb. Alan Baker: The straw that broke the camel’s back (or Kerry’s latest blunder)
To seriously presume that the 1947 UN General Assembly partition resolution – rejected by the Arab states because it had the gall to refer to a Jewish state – together with an ambiguous, unwilling and artificial reference by Arafat to “Israel in brackets”, given in an utterly different context which itself was deemed insufficient by the then US administration, could, in any way or form constitute an acceptable alternative to a clear, unequivocal acknowledgement by the present Palestinian leadership of its acceptance of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish People, is incomprehensible to say the least, and openly deceptive at the most.
It belies any understanding on your part as to the importance and centrality of Israel’s requirement in the present negotiating context.
Israel’s leaders have repeatedly stressed this centrality since Israel’s April 2003 official response to the Quartet-sponsored “Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”, according to which: “....declared references must be made to Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and to the waiver of any right of return for Palestinian refugees to the State of Israel.”
Mr. Secretary, one might have expected, in light your position and function as convenor and mediator in the present Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, that you would refrain from making more public value judgments as to whether Israel’s position is, or is not “a mistake.”
David Singer: Kerry’s Credibility Crashes As Abbas’s Intransigence Increases
On 19 March Associate Professor of Journalism and Political Science at The City University of New York – Peter Beinart – provided this advice to Abbas: “I have a suggestion for Mahmoud Abbas. The next time Benjamin Netanyahu demands that you recognize Israel as a “Jewish state,” tell him that you’ll agree on one condition. The Israeli cabinet must first agree on what “Jewish state” means. That should get you off the hook for a good long while. Israel has never been able to define the term “Jewish state.”
The good Professor was obviously unaware that the term “Jewish State” had been defined for the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine in evidence given by David Ben-Gurion on 7 July 1947:
“What is the meaning of a Jewish State? As I told you before, a Jewish State does not mean one has to be a Jew.
It means merely a State-where the Jews are in the majority, otherwise all the citizens have the same status.
If the State were called by the name “Palestine,” – I said if – then all would be Palestinian citizens If the State would be given, another name – I think it would be given another name – because Palestine is neither a Jewish nor an Arab name. As far as the Arabs are concerned, and we have the evidence of the Arab historian, Hitti, that there was no such a thing as “Palestine” at all: Palestine is not an Arab name. Palestine is also not a Jewish name. When the Greeks were our enemies, in order not to annoy the Jews, they gave different names to the streets. So, maybe the name of Palestine will be changed. But whatever the name of the country, every citizen of the country will be a citizen. This is what we mean. This is what we have to mean. We cannot conceive that in a State where we are not in a minority, where we have the main responsibilities as the majority of the country, there should be the slightest discrimination between a Jew and a non-Jew.”

Sunday, March 16, 2014

From Ian:

Johansson hails SodaStream as a ‘model,’ slams politicized Oxfam
Johansson was vigorous in her response, however. “I stand behind that decision. I was aware of that particular factory before I signed it.”
“Really?” the interviewer interjected, apparently surprised or disbelieving.
“Yes, and… it still doesn’t seem like a problem,” Johansson said. “Until someone has a solution to the closing of that factory to leaving all those people destitute, that doesn’t seem like the solution to the problem.”
When the interviewer then put it to her that “the international community says that the settlements are illegal and shouldn’t be there,” Johansson said: “I think that’s something that’s very easily debatable. In that case, I was literally plunged into a conversation that’s way grander and larger than this one particular issue. And there’s no right side or wrong side leaning on this issue.”
Eight Crucial Questions for Abbas (and One for President Obama)
There seems to be a double-standard when it comes to how Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Palestinian Authority's erstwhile President, Mahmoud Abbas -- now in the tenth year of his four-year term -- are treated by the Obama White House, as well as by many journalists. While Netanyahu is humiliated, insulted, threatened, and told that he must make "painful concessions" for peace, such as releasing more than 100 terrorists merely to get the Palestinians to come to a negotiating table, Abbas – a facilitator and supporter of these terrorists – is treated with kid gloves, and with Obama virtually begging him to visit.
Eugene Kontorovich; "Israel's Borders in International Law"


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