Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 20, 2014

10/20 Links Pt1: Hamas Chief's Daughter Treated in Israeli Hospital; Gaza aid conference was a charade

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: What The "Two State Solution" Has to Do with the Rise of Islamic Extremism: Zero

The "Arab Spring" did not erupt as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather, it was the outcome of decades of tyranny and corruption in the Arab world. The Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans and Yemenis who removed their dictators from power did not do so because of the lack of a "two-state solution." This is the last thing they had in mind.
The thousands of Muslims who are volunteering to join the Islamic State [IS] are not doing so because they are frustrated with the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
The only solution the Islamic State believes in is a Sunni Islamic Caliphate where the surviving non-Muslims who are not massacred would be subject to sharia law.
What Kerry perhaps does not know is that the Islamic State is not interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at all. Unlike Kerry, Sunni scholars fully understand that the Islamic State has more to do with Islam and terrorism than with any other conflict.

Will Mahmoud Abbas Reject Israeli Protection?

Palestinian officials have generally been silent about security cooperation with Israel. They are loath to acknowledge how important it is for the survival of the Palestinian Authority [PA], and fear that critics, especially Hamas, will consider it "collaboration with the enemy."
"You smuggle weapons, explosives and cash to the West Bank, not for the fight with Israel, but for a coup against the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli intelligence chief visited me two weeks ago and told me about the [Hamas] group they arrested that was planning for a coup... We have a national unity government and you are thinking about a coup against me." — Mahmoud Abbas, PA President, to Khaled Mashaal, Hamas leader.
According to Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, if the IDF leaves the West Bank, Hamas will take over, and other terrorists groups such as the Islamic Jihad, Al-Qaeda and Islamic State would operate there.
In recent months, Abbas has been making a series of threats against Israel. If Abbas becomes another Arafat, it could be the Israeli side that loses interest in security cooperation.

Israeli Hospital Confirms: We Treated Hamas Chief Haniyeh’s Daughter

In one of several such known cases, an Israeli hospital on Sunday acknowledged that it had recently provided medical treatment to a family member of Hamas, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction, Israel’s NRG News reported.
The daughter of Gaza Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was transferred to Israel for several days of medical treatment in Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, after suffering complications from routine treatment in a Gaza hospital, Israeli officials confirmed.
Haniyeh’s daughter is one of 13 children. Hospital officials declined to offer details of her status or medical condition, saying only that “She is only one of more than a thousand patients from the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian territories, hospitalized each year for treatment here.” (h/t Bob Knot)

The Gaza aid conference was kind of a charade. Here’s why

The Palestinian government had asked for $4 billion (despite having earlier estimated the total cost of reconstruction to be over $8 billion), so it was with great fanfare that the higher figure was announced. Foreign cabinet secretaries wrung one another’s hands — and of course, that of the host of the event, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi — and profusely thanked each other for their generosity.
But headline figures are deceiving. This conference, like others of its kind, was largely a charade. Take a closer look at the numbers and it’s clear that some creative accounting is giving the impression of a job well done.
For starters, much of the $5.4 billion was not actually earmarked for Gaza reconstruction. Many countries included in their contributions money they had already allotted to Palestine, including the West Bank, since the beginning of the year under normal aid programming.
In other words, a good amount of the aid is not new money intended for Gaza. Much of Sunday’s conference represented a re-announcement of money that’s already been given. Of the $5.4 billion announced by Brende, only $2.4 billion-$2.7 billion is going to Gaza reconstruction. It remains unclear how much of that is new and how much is money already spent.

Aw, I didn't know Iran cared so much about Israel!

I had missed this story from last week:

Iran’s deputy foreign minister reportedly said on Saturday that his country has exchanged messages with the US about the fight against Islamic State (Isis) militants in Syria and Iraq.

Hossein Amir Abdollahian was quoted by Iranian media, in what would be a rare confirmation of Iran-US discussions over Isis, as saying Iran had warned Washington that Israel would be at risk should the US and its allies seek to topple the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, while fighting the extremist group.

How hilarious is that? The regime that dedicates a huge amount of media bandwidth to calling for Israel's destruction - and that arms terror groups in Lebanon and Gaza with rockets aimed at Israeli civilians - is suddenly concerned about Israel's security!

If Assad falls, no matter who takes over, Iran's influence in the region plummets. Hezbollah's grip on Lebanon would be also loosen. No matter how bad ISIS is, Iran is a much more dangerous long term threat (and its de facto takeover of Yemen through the Shiite Houthis in recent weeks shows its expansionist desires.)

This little episode also reveals that Iran believes its own propaganda, that Israel drives US policy.

It's happened again.

For the second time, after I exposed that UNRWA's Gaza school curricula include many examples of promoting hateful ideas that directly contradict those of the UN and UNRWA themselves, the organization has stealthily removed the evidence without any acknowledgment or apology.

My 2012 exposé of how UNRWA schools were teaching hate, martyrdom and jihad to students, with many examples of essays and poems, resulted in UNRWA removing many individual school sites and specific pages and domains from the Internet without any public notice.

Now, my latest exposés showing explicit antisemitism and hateful historical lies in the UNRWA site dedicated to its "human rights" curriculum has resulted in UNRWA pulling that entire site down as well. (The Google cached version of the site is here, for now. The document that included the explicit antisemitism is cached here. I uploaded it here.)

We have once again proven not only that UNRWA teaches hate and lies, but that this UN organization has no transparency whatsoever in its teaching methods. It teaches hundreds of thousands of students the worst kinds of hate. Instead of admitting it when these examples are exposed, it engages in cover-ups.

UNRWA spokespeople did not respond to my request for comment.

This is how you would expect a criminal organization to act.This is not how an NGO that gets its funds from the world's nations is supposed to do its business.

This is scandalous. Every nation that funds UNRWA, no matter their feelings towards Israel, should be outraged that their money - nearly $1 billion annually - is being used in secret and illicit ways. Without UNRWA publicly admitting that it has taught hate for generations and without an explicit apology and concrete, published plans on how they plan to ensure that their curricula will be transparent and public, we must assume that UNRWA is continuing its practices of teaching a new generation of children antisemitic lies.

It is way past time that UNRWA's funders and the mainstream media take notice of how UNRWA is misusing its resources towards goals that are contrary to its own stated principles.

U of Jordan students chant "Khaybar, Khaybar O Jews"

Students at the University of Jordan held a rally Sunday afternoon to protest "the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque by herds of settlers." The message was that "the Haram is the responsibility of every Muslim and every Arab and every person of conscience and not exclusive to any specific political faction."

The protesters demand that Jordan take a greater role in "defending" the Temple Mount from being "desecrated" by Jews.

The protests included a flash mob event, an explanation of how Muslims try to stop Jews from ascending to the Mount, and a chant of "Khaybar, Khaybar O Jews, The Army of Mohammed Will Return."

This Hebrew sign is difficult to decipher but I think it means to say "We are here and you will be overturned, the Temple Mount is ours and our right."

Who wants to start a religious war again?

Haaretz more biased against Jews than Arab media

Al Arabiya:

Al Bawaba:

Ma'an:

Haaretz:

While Arab media at least put scare quotes around "attacks" or changes the word to the less inflammatory "provocations," Haaretz not only kept that phrase but also the absurd accusation that the only Jews who ascend to the Temple Mount are "settlers." The third outrage, of course, is that Haaretz calls it "Al Aqsa" instead of "Har HaBayit" or "Temple Mount."

The article itself is just as biased:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said his administration would take legal action "at the international level" to stop Jewish settlers from attacking the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, which Jews refer to as the Temple Mount.

Al Aqsa is the real name, the Temple Mount (which predates Islam by quite a few centuries) is only what the Jews call it.

The area -- the third-holiest site to Muslims and the holiest site in Judaism – routinely sees fighting between the two sides, with the Israel Police in the middle.

An absolute lie. The Jews who visit never fight anyone, the only aggression - literally 100% of the aggression - comes from the Muslims.

Ha'aretz is thoroughly biased - against Jews.

(h/t EBoZ)

A handful of Moroccans protest "normalization" with Israel

Palestine Today reports that some Moroccans stood in front of their parliament on Friday to demand that the country criminalize any contact with Israelis.

As far as I can tell, here are all the protesters:

The protesters also condemned Israel's "attacks on Al Aqsa"

The leader said that normalization with Israel is a threat to Moroccan national security, apparently referring to a video of a prominent Moroccan Amazigh poet who praised Israel and slammed Arab nations recently.

From Globes:

The partners in the Israeli Tamar gas field report this morning that they have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Egyptian company Dolphinus Holdings for the export of up to 2.5 BCM of surplus natural gas from Israel to private Egyptian industrial customers, over a period of seven years. The supply of gas will be on an interruptible basis, and will be of gas that the Tamar partners have available after meeting the needs of Israeli customers, but the partners undertake to supply a minimum of five BCM over three years. The gas will be transported via the Israel Natural Gas Lines system to Ashkelon, and from there to Egypt via the EMG (East Mediterranean Gas) pipeline.

... The current agreement is for the export of a fairly small quantity of gas, but it follows on the contract with the Palestinian Authority and MOUs for the sale of Israeli gas to the liquefaction plants of Union Fenosa and British Gas in Egypt, and an MOU with the Jordanian National Electric Power Company.

Delek Driling chairman and Avner CEO Gideon Tadmor said, "The Tamar and Leviathan partnerships have so far signed a series of agreements designed to enable the supply of natural gas to the Palestinian Authority, to Jordan, and for export as liquid natural gas via the existing installations in Egypt. The MOU with Dolphinus is a further, important link in the series of agreements, allowing the supply of gas to the Egyptian domestic market as well. I have no doubt that these agreements will lead to a strengthening of Israel's relations with its neighbors."

Well, it depends on what you mean by "strengthening." But it certainly reduces the risk of being attacked from those who depend on Israel for basic energy needs.

10/19 Links: Why Europe Is Irrational About Israel; ASA pretends to partially drop Israel boycott

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: New York Times post – There should be no Palestinian state

The New York Times online debating forum Room For Debate asked me to participate in an online forum regarding the rationale for recognizing the non-existent state of Palestine.
Here’s what I wrote:
When Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven announced his decision to recognize the non-existent state of “Palestine” earlier this month, he inadvertently gave the game away.
Lofven said, “A two-state solution requires mutual recognition and a will to peaceful coexistence. Sweden will therefore recognize the State of Palestine.”
The Palestinians refuse to recognize or peacefully coexist with the State of Israel.
Like his coalition partner Hamas terror master Khaled Mashaal, and despite his sweet talk to Western audiences, PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas has pledged, repeatedly, over decades that he will never, ever recognize Israel. During his speech to the UN General Assembly last month he reverted to PLO language from the 1970s, referring to Israel repeatedly as “the occupying Power,” and “the racist occupying State.”
So when Lofven recognized “Palestine,” he joined the Palestinian campaign to destroy Israel. He used the language of the “two-state solution,” to reject the Jewish state.

Eugene Kontorovich: ASA pretends to partially drop Israel boycott

Stephens tried to mislead me about the ASA’s policy, and is likely trying to mislead the Westin. The clear policy is to restrict participation by Israeli scholars in a way that no other nationality is subject to.
Even the belated claim to waive the boycott for the annual conference would not preempt legal liability. Academic conferences are organized, scheduled and registered months in advance. The discriminatory effects of their policy have already been realized. The fact that the policy was selectively not enforced for one Israeli academic (Mohammed Wattad of Zefat College School of Law) on the program does not mean it was not otherwise enforced.
However, the ASA’s attempts to deny their policy, and then belatedly modify it on an ad hoc basis says little for their integrity. Having adopted their boycott to much public fanfare, they want to be able to quietly deny it – when it suits them.
Their reaction also suggests they understand the weakness of their legal position.

Why Europe Is Irrational About Israel

Coming soon after Sweden’s recognition of a non-existent state of Palestine, the British Parliament’s 274-to-12 resolution to recognize “Palestine” flags a sea-change in European sentiment towards Israel. France is thinking of following suit. The European Community bureaucracy, meanwhile, has readied sanctions against Israel. One remonstrates in vain. The Gaza War should have taught the world that Israel cannot cede territory to Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 10th year of a 4-year term. Hamas has the support of 55% of West Bank Palestinians vs. just 38% for Abbas, and Hamas openly brags that it could destroy Israel more easily from firing positions in the West Bank. Only the Israeli military keeps Abbas in power; without the Israelis Hamas would displace Abbas in the West Bank as easily as it did in Gaza; and a Hamas government in the West Bank would make war on Israel, with horrifying consequences.
To propose immediate Palestinian statehood under these circumstances is psychotic, to call the matter by its right name. The Europeans, along with the United Nations and the Obama administration on most working days, refuse to take reality into account. When someone tells you that Martians are transmitting radio waves into his brain, or that Elvis Presley really is the pope rather than an Argentine Jesuit, one doesn’t enquire into the merits of the argument. Rather, one considers the cause of the insanity.
The Europeans hate Israel with the passion of derangement. Why? Well, one might argue that the Europeans always have hated Jews; they were sorry they hated Jews for a while after the Holocaust, but they have gotten over that and hate us again. Some analysts used to cite Arab commercial influence in European capitals, but today Egypt and implicitly Saudi Arabia are closer to Jerusalem’s point of view than Ramallah’s. Large Muslim populations in Europe constitute a pressure group for anti-Israel policies, but that does not explain the utter incapacity of the European elite to absorb the most elementary facts of the situation.

This is based on an earlier piece Mike wrote.

I should also mention that the Metallica-type graphic below was done by Daughter of Ziyon a few years back.

In the discussion around the ongoing Arab-Israel conflict there are, depending on one's perspective, good people and bad people. If one is an anti-Semitic anti-Zionist the bad people are called "Zionists." These Zionists are thought to be an unusually horrid breed of people who hold nefarious intent toward Arabs and bolster a particularly extreme, if not fascistic, form of ethnic nationalism.

The funny thing is, and what no one ever says, is that Zionism, as a political movement, is over with. It's done. What Zionism really was, of course, was the movement for Jewish national liberation and it fulfilled itself in May of 1948 when Israel was recognized by the UN as a state. It should be noted, by the way, that the UN did not create Israel. People often say this, but it is not true. Israel was not created by well-meaning pencil pushers in the UN, but by Jewish people (and some non-Jewish people) on the ground.

Between the end of the 19th century and 1948, hundreds of thousands of Jews built that country from nothing. It was swampland and desert, but they worked that land. They grew the crops and developed the farms and created the infrastructure, political and material, necessary for a state. All that the UN did was recognize a condition that already existed, the condition of Jewish statehood.

Those people were Zionists. That is, those people, those Jewish farmers and Jewish laborers and Jewish politicians, those people were Zionists. They dreamed of creating a national homeland for the Jewish people on historically Jewish land and went about doing precisely that.

I am not a Zionist because I was born too late to have anything to do with the Zionist project of building a state. By the time that I came around the state was already built. The truth of the matter is that most Jews who care about Israel do not necessarily think of themselves as Zionists. When I was growing up, in an American middle class home wherein we supported Israel, we almost never even used that word.

I do not recall my folks, or their friends, ever referring to themselves as Zionists. We were just American Jews who supported Israel. We did not require a separate name for ourselves any more than American Italians who support Italy get some specific name or Chinese Americans who care about China have some separate and specific name for themselves.

More and more the word "Zionist" is little more than an epithet spit at Jews who happen to be supportive of Israel. That's what Zionism really is today. It is the word that our enemies use to isolate us and separate us out from other people. It is an identifying mark at this point. It is the yellow star and in the mouths of hate-filled anti-Zionist progressives, a stigma.

Zionists are the category of people whom it is OK to hate on the progressive-left. Where it was, once upon a time, socially acceptable to hate Jews that is no longer the case among people who consider themselves contemporary-left anti-racists.

Progressives do not hate Jews because that would be racist.

Instead the socially acceptable category of people to hate is not Jews, but Zionists. You cannot openly hate on Jews in polite society. (Is that still the case?) But you can hate on Zionists. And just because the vast majority of Jews happen to be Zionists represents no reason not to despise Zionists because these insidious people are promoting... or so we are often told... a truly virulent form of racist imperialism and colonialism resulting in the ethnic cleansing and oppression of those icons of pure victim-hood, the "Palestinian" people.

That is what Zionism means in the mouths of the anti-Zionist progressive-left.

The oppressor.

The Jew as oppressor.

That is what they mean when they call us Zionists.

Nobody ever talks about it but anyone who follows the never-ending conflict cannot possibly miss this. It is a fundamental, central, yet unspoken within the discussion. They have conjured up an entire class of evil people, Zionists, and anyone who defends Israel from their never-ending defamation becomes one of these insidious beings.

And this is why anti-Zionism represents the new anti-Semitism.

And what a shame that this time around it is coming at us from the Left.

Shame. Shame. Shame.

{Sad, really.}

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

Today's fake PCHR "civilian"

I have not been actively looking for these lately, but today Islamic Jihad put out an obituary on one of its members killed during Operation Protective Edge, Abdul Majeed Abdullah Abdul Majeed Aidi.

Look how devout he is!

Aidi was described as a civilian by the PCHR on July 26: (they say 13 out of 18 killed in Gaza City that day were civilians and he is not listed as one of the five militants.)

At approximately 20:30, a number of Israeli artillery shells hit a house belonging to ‘Abdullah Ibrahim Abu Leila, 51, in al-Zaytoun neighborhood. As a result, Avu Leila was killed together with 3 other persons who were in the house: Abdul Majid ‘Abdullah al-‘Aaidi, 36; Mohammed ‘Abdul Nasser Abu Zaina, 22; and Yousef Kamal Mohammed al-Wassifi, 23.

Swastikas have been found spray-painted on the Temple Mount.

Police opened an investigation Sunday after graffiti was found in the Temple Mount compound depicting a swastika as the equivalent of a Star of David.

The incident came on the heels of a call by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for Palestinians to defend the Temple Mount, the location of the al-Aqsa mosque and the site of heated clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces over the past several weeks.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said authorities had opened a probe into the incident after finding at least three instances of the graffiti daubed on the floor inside the holy site.

Pictures posted online by the Israeli news portal 0404 showed two different places where the symbols had been painted in blue, one on stairs leading to the Temple Mount and another in an unidentified location.

On Friday, Abbas called for Jews to be barred from the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism and home to a mosque and shrine revered by Muslims as well, and said Palestinians should defend the site.

“It is our sacred place, al-Aqsa [mosque] is ours, this Noble Sanctuary is ours. They have no right to go there and desecrate it,” Abbas said.

"That's our job!"

The 0404 site says that at least five swastikas were found.

On Friday, "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech telling Palestinian Arabs to do everything necessary to physically prevent Jews from visiting their holiest site:

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas yesterday called on his people to prevent Israeli settlers from entering Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al Aqsa mosque and use “all means” to protect the site.

“It is not enough to say the settlers came, but they must be barred from entering the compound by any means. This is our Aqsa... and they have no right to enter it and desecrate it,” Abbas said.

On Saturday, Abbas said he wants international law to enforce a ban on Jews from visiting the Temple Mount:

We must refer to basic principles, namely Jerusalem, which is exposed to attacks by settlers intent to partition the Haram al-Sharif temporally and spatially, and we know the meaning of this; there were many attacks on Al Aqsa repulsed by religious leaders who are in the compound, but I say to our people in Jerusalem and the West Bank: We are all stationed in the Al Aqsa and will not allow settlers to trample on the Haram and we will take international legal action in this direction.

Last year I wrote a brief survey of international law and the Temple Mount:

Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says:

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.

In addition, Article 20 seems to prohibit the insults and incitement that Muslims engage in towards Jews on the Temple Mount:

1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.

2. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.

Moreover, the UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief is filled with articles that would prohibit banning Jews from the Temple Mount:

No one shall be subject to discrimination by any State, institution, group of persons, or person on grounds of religion or other beliefs.

For the purposes of the present Declaration, the expression "intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief" means any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on religion or belief and having as its purpose or as its effect nullification or impairment of the recognition, enjoyment or exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms on an equal basis.

Discrimination between human beings on grounds of religion or belief constitutes an affront to human dignity and a disavowal of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and shall be condemned as a violation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and enunciated in detail in the International Covenants on Human Rights, and as an obstacle to friendly and peaceful relations between nations.

All States shall take effective measures to prevent and eliminate discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief in the recognition, exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms in all fields of civil, economic, political, social and cultural life.

All States shall make all efforts to enact or rescind legislation where necessary to prohibit any such discrimination, and to take all appropriate measures to combat intolerance on the grounds of religion or other beliefs in this matter.

From these articles it appears that Israel is obligated to allow Jews to visit and pray there, and to protect them from those who want to take away their rights.

It is true that this same declaration says:

Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.

But this clause is referring to cases where the practitioners of the religion are the ones who are a danger to others, not when the others are so intolerant that they threaten violence. To invoke this paragraph to deny Jews' rights to the Temple Mount (which I suspect human rights organizations would do if pressed) would make the rest of that declaration a mockery.

Of course, we will never hear Human Rights Watch or Amnesty or the UN dare to defend the Jewish right to worship on the Temple Mount. Because according to those "human rights" bodies, Jews who want to do so are not considered to be worthy of protection by international law.