Thursday, December 31, 2015

  • Thursday, December 31, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
AFP reports:
Islamist group Hamas has banned public New Year's Eve parties in the Gaza Strip because they offend the territory's "values and religious traditions", police said on Wednesday.

"The interior ministry and police department did not give permits to any restaurants, hotels or halls for end-of-year parties" after several venues requested permission, police spokesman Ayman al-Batinji told AFP.

He said New Year's Eve celebrations were "incompatible with our customs, traditions, values and the teachings of our religion".
They have two others reasons as well:
Parties had also been curtailed in "solidarity with the families of the martyrs of the Jerusalem intifada," Batinji said, referring to violence that has swept the city and parts of the West Bank in recent months.

He also highlighted the "pains and sacrifices" that come with living in Gaza due to Israel's "imposed siege" on the Strip.

RT notes that Hamas has allowed New Year's Eve parties in the past, so this is not a religiously motivated ban.

And reasoning is shared by the PA:
In Bethlehem, Christmas celebrations were toned-down significantly out of respect for the more than 120 Palestinian families who have lost loved ones since the start this year's upheaval in October.

Since the start of October, municipalities across the occupied West Bank have also asked bars and restaurants to refrain from having large parties or celebrations out of respect for the seriousness of the current political situation.
Hamas has as little theological problem with New Year's Eve celebrations as the PA has with Christmas parties. The real reason for the bans is that Hamas and Fatah want to ensure that they maintain a perpetual victimhood status, and happy people belie that idea.

Most observers do not fully grasp the implications of an honor/shame society. The fundamental difference between honor/shame culture and Western-style guilt culture is that, in shame cultures, appearances are far more important than reality. There is a carefully crafted narrative of Palestinian Arabs as the ultimate victims, and this is the narrative that they teach their children from birth. Any other issues must not be discussed outside their own circles because it is shameful to admit any shortcomings but not shameful to blame Israel.

This is why we have seen so many "eyewitnesses" to events reflexively make up stories to blame Israel - because not to do so is to admit there are other internal problems in their society, and they will rarely say that to reporters or Western NGOs. Instead, the party line must be adhered to, and the only people who say the truth ask to remain anonymous.

Their leadership is particularly attuned to this dynamic. One photo or video of happy partygoers in the territories, they believe, can undo months of carefully plotted anti-Israel propaganda, of "solidarity with the families of the martyrs" and "pains and sacrifices" that is the one message that they hammer away at to any outsiders. To show otherwise is to admit that they have some responsibility for their own lives, and they don't want that responsibility - since their entire identity is based on being perpetual victims of an event nearly seven decades ago that they started.

In an honor/shame culture, the message given to the outside world must be carefully calibrated and plotted. People who act against that message are ostracized, so they become willing (or unwilling) characters in an ongoing piece of fiction, a dramatic play where the entire world is the audience and one bad actor can ruin the performance.  No one will publicly protest the Palestinian Grinch that stole the holidays, because the playwrights have guns to enforce only one possible ending to the drama - the destruction of another state.


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  • Thursday, December 31, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics came out with their year-end population figures.

According to them, the total number of Palestinians in the world is now up to 12.37 million, with 2.9 million in the West Bank, 1.85 million in Gaza, 1.47 million Arabs in Israel, 5.46 million in Arab countries and around 685,000 in foreign countries.

Last year they counted 12.1 million, meaning that despite Israel's supposed attempts at genocide, somehow some 270,000 more Palestinians managed to appear in just one year.

Some genocide!

However, the Bureau's methods of counting people seem to be less than scientific. 

For example, every year, they release the percentage of the population in the territories that are "refugees."

This year they said that 42.8% of all Palestinian Arabs in the territories are "refugees," 27.1% in the West Bank and 67.3% in Gaza.

Yet last year the numbers came out as 43.1% total, 38.8% in the West Bank and 61.2% in Gaza. And in 2012, the numbers were 44.2%, 41.4% in WB and 58.6% in Gaza.

A 14% difference in percentage of "refugees" in the West Bank, and 9% difference in Gaza, in only three years?

But the trend was completely different in 2006, when they claimed 28.8% in the West Bank and 69.2% in Gaza were "refugees."

Does this make any sense?



There is no rational way to explain such wildly divergent numbers among a statistic that should be largely static if you assume reasonably consistent population growth between refugee and non-refugee populations.

So all of the PCBS' population figures must be considered equally unreliable.



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Wednesday, December 30, 2015

  • Wednesday, December 30, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
Here are the most popular posts of the year (not counting posts from previous years that did well):

10. Hamas accuses Israel of being behind Paris attacks, threatens to kill all French immigrants to Israel

Par for the course.
9. Former Cambridge researcher refuses to answer 13 year old Israeli girl's question about horses 


Making Marsha Levine a household name!

8. Introducing the First International Ayatollah Khamenei Cartoon and Poster Contest

I confess I never chose a winner. Sorry.





7. Gaza's Shujaiyeh will not be rebuilt anytime soon - because of its propaganda value

And it is still in ruins.

6. How to manipulate photos to tell an anti-Israel story 

Making it look like IDF is attacking a little kid. Video shows how photos lie.

5. Some Charlie Hebdo cartoons that are offensive to Jews
Because if you support free speech, you must include speech you disagree with. A fundamental point that many have never learned.

4. Hebrew language charter school in Washington DC serves diverse student body

A feel-good story and video.

3. Outstanding speech by Matti Friedman (UPDATE: Video)
Someone needs to nominate this for a Hasby!

2. Reporters in Malmo, Sweden put on a kipah, Stars of David and get threatened by residents

Scary.

1. The collection of Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoons

What the media didn't want you to see.

These may be the most popular, but they are not the best. That list is coming up, based on comments. (Hint - they are on the sidebar.)


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From Ian:

Journalist: I realized the left's positions were childish
Israeli journalist Avri Gilad on Tuesday credited the late Minister Uri Orbach for changing his worldview from the left to the right.
Gilad and Orbach were, for many years, co-hosts of a show on Army Radio called “Hamila Ha’acharona” (lit. “The Last Word”) which pits a leftist and a rightist journalist against one another for one hour daily.
Speaking at a meeting with students and faculty at the School of Communications at the University of Ariel, Gilad was asked what influenced him and helped change his views, and he replied: "A lot of it was a result of the weekly meeting with Uri Orbach and Jacky Levy when we hosted ‘Hamila Ha’acharona’ together. We would talk for two hours a week, and [Orbach] would embarrass me time and time again, and that caused me disappointment."
Gilad continued, "It made me feel that I was reciting the left’s positions like a puppet reciting empty messages. I learned that if I cannot truly defend my position, I guess I'm not really standing behind it."
Asked about his position today, he said, "I'm not a rightist, but what I took from Uri Orbach is the understanding that the positions of the left are childish. A little boy facing a problem wants a solution here and now, but there comes a time when a reasonable person must say ‘I tried, there is no solution at this time, and we have to live with that’. So even though we are paying a price for the continued occupation in the form of our society becoming more violent and so on, if I have to choose between dying and being violent, I choose violence. However, I certainly hope there will be a change in the future."
Go figure: Israel’s standing in the world is both fantastic and awful
It is no secret that Israel and some Arab countries cooperate clandestinely and have done so for years. Netanyahu has long been saying that many moderate Sunni states no longer see Israel as an enemy and are willing to cooperate with the Jewish state in fending off their common foe, Iran.
“There are Arab states that our sought our assistance. If I mentioned their names you’d fall off your chair,” Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold said last week.
Israel's incoming Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold and former Saudi government adviser Anwar Eshki shake hands in Washington DC, June 4, 2015 (Debby Communications Group)
The expansion of secret contacts with Sunni states is certainly a welcome development, but so far have not paid off, a senior diplomatic official argued. As long as Israeli athletes cannot obtain visas for certain Arab countries or are not allowed to display their flag there, the much-hailed rapprochement is nothing to brag about, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Israel always had behind-the-scenes contacts with Arab countries, but they also need to be translated into concrete achievements. “In diplomacy many people talk to many other people behind the closed doors. That in itself means very little,” he said.
“How does it help Israel if Dore Gold meets someone from Dubai to talk about the mutual threat emanating from Iran and agree to meet some time in the future to chat about Syria, when publicly the same person is still trashing us, telling everyone we’re murderers and genocidal maniacs?”
 Isi Leibler: Cauterize the cancer of Jewish terrorism
In the Palestinian arena, the terror is preceded by vile campaigns inciting Muslims to kill Jews ‎and become martyrs. Every murder is sanctified and glorified at the national level from PA ‎head Mahmoud Abbas and extended by the mullahs in the mosques, through to the schools ‎and the media. Every murder results in joyful street celebrations with scenes of the proud ‎parents of the "martyrs." Soon thereafter, streets, city squares and even football clubs will be ‎named after the murderers.‎
Compare that with Israel, where the entire nation, including every party in the Knesset, is ‎horrified and shocked that even isolated barbaric behavior of this nature could occur in this ‎country and where draconian steps are taken to identify and indict the Jewish terrorists.‎
We should give full backing to the government to act with uncompromising discipline and ‎eradicate these home-grown aberrations who reject the sanctity of human life as well as ‎investigating the behavior of a handful of fringe extremist rabbis. ‎
These are early days and the situation can be rectified but there must be a recognition that, ‎like cancer in a body, these elements must be completely cauterized or they could revive and ‎cause us immeasurable damage, shaking the very moral foundations of the nation.‎

  • Wednesday, December 30, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
Iran's Abna news agency is belittling Saudi Arabia for being too ridiculously anti-Israel.

Of course, the reason is because Iran hates Saudi Arabia, not because Iran likes Israel. The last two paragraphs reveal all.

Ahlul Bayt News Agency - Saudi “Grand Mufti” Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh who is dependent upon Al-Saud Royal Family has called ISIS part of the Zionist regime, while many believe that Al-Saud is the first and the major source of support and ideology behind ISIS terrorist group.

The 72-year old Mufti said that ISIS terrorists are part of Israeli army.

"Actually ISIS is part of the Israeli soldiers," he stated, asserting an alliance between the Israeli army and ISIS militants.

Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Asheikh, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, issued a whopper of a conspiracy theory on Monday, said that ISIS militants are actually "Israeli soldiers."

Speaking to the Saudi Gazette, Asheikh said ISIS members are "harming" Islam and Muslims.

"They cannot be considered as followers of Islam. Rather, they are an extension of Kharijites, who rose in revolt against the Islamic caliphate for the first time by labeling Muslims as infidels and permitting their bloodletting," said Asheikh.

The Grand Mufti then spoke about ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's threat against Israel made in an audio recording on Saturday, in which al-Baghdadi said, "Palestine will not be your land or your home, but it will be a graveyard for you."

"This threat against Israel is simply a big lair. Actually, Daesh (ISIS) is part of the Israeli soldiers," said Asheikh.

Saudi Arabia has been the main financial and logistical supporter of ISIS and Al-Saud family have made a lot of investment on ISIS to use this terrorist group to overthrow the legitimate and elected government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

This remark by Saudi grand Mufti has astonished experts while many experts and intellectuals strongly believe that ISIS has been derived from Wahhabi Ideology.
(h/t Yohanan)




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  • Wednesday, December 30, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory

Check out their Facebook page.



I said my piece today in court about my innocence, and about how I will respect the High Court's rulings on my impending prison sentences. My legal team is examining what further options we have, but it comes down to this: whom do I have to bribe to get my conviction for accepting bribes overturned?

There's always a way. My decades in politics have taught me nothing if not that. It just takes finding the right people, and the right inducements. Then it's merely a matter of persuasion, timing, and execution. So who's it gonna be? I can still call in favors to make it worth somebody's while. All I have to do is come up with a plan, and find the people willing to be handsomely rewarded for facilitating that plan.

Of course some setbacks are to be expected. That's the nature of the game. I can't seriously expect to resolve this problem before my incarceration begins as scheduled in February. These things do take time. Even if my legal team can't prevent the eighteen-month sentence from starting, I can still work things from behind bars. It might even take as long as the whole sentence, but I've got my sights set on cleansing myself of the "moral turpitude" this conviction attached to the sentence. Unless I can arrange to have that reversed, I won't be allowed to re-enter politics for seven years after my release. That would be a shame, because I'm not so young anymore, and I wouldn't be able to serve the electorate with the same arrogance and incompetence that they came to expect from me. So I need to know who the fixer is who can get this done for me. I pay well.

I need to find the right people or person in the right position to make my case to them, in whatever denominations they prefer. Someone who understands, as I do, and as so many leftist Israelis do, that sometimes the rigid rules of the system have to give way to a higher value. In my case, it was the development of Jerusalem. In the case of the Left, it's a peace agreement, and who cares about a few bribes before I was even prime minister? To the fixer I'm looking for, it's a little of both: grease the right palms, make the right threats, all in the interest of clearing my name so I can get back into politics, make a triumphant return to the premiership, and give away huge swaths of the Jewish homeland to a bunch of unreconstructed terrorists in suits.

So who's it gonna be? Name your price.


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From Ian:

US spied on Netanyahu during Iran deal talks, WSJ reports
The U.S. administration continued to spy on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even after U.S. President Barack Obama announced two years ago he would curtail the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program on friendly heads of state, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
The NSA's foreign eavesdropping included phone conversations between top Israeli officials and U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing current and former U.S. officials.
White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Netanyahu's campaign against the nuclear deal with Iran, according to the unnamed officials cited by the Journal.
According to the report, NSA eavesdropping suggested to the White House that Netanyahu and his advisers had leaked details of the U.S.-Iran negotiations, which they learned through Israeli spying operations.
The Journal reported that the NSA's "targeting of Israeli leaders and officials also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups."
Asked for comment on the Journal report, a White House National Security Council spokesman said: "We do not conduct any foreign intelligence surveillance activities unless there is a specific and validated national security purpose. This applies to ordinary citizens and world leaders alike."
Israel: We don’t spy on US, and expect US not to spy on us
Intelligence and Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz on Wednesday maintained that Israel does not spy on the US and said it expects Washington to uphold the same standards.
The Likud minister was responding to a report in The Wall Street Journal that said the White House instructed US spies to eavesdrop on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials earlier this year in an effort to counter campaigning against the Iran nuclear deal, despite having promised to curtail listening in on foreign leaders.
The National Security Agency’s spying dragnet was cast so wide it caught conversations Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders had with US officials and Jewish American leaders. This led to what one source called an “oh shit moment,” because of fears that “the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress,” according to the report.
“Israel does not spy on the US, and we expect that our great friend, the US, will treat us in a similar fashion,” Katz told the Ynet news website. “If the information on the subject turns out to be true, Israel must file a formal protest with the American government and demand it stop all activities of this kind.”
Nonetheless, Israel’s former ambassador the US Michael Oren said Wednesday that Israel assumes that the US, and others, attempt to spy on it. “It’s not very nice, but that is the assumption,” Oren, now a Kulanu MK, said on Channel 2.
If he had something absolutely confidential that he had to convey to the prime minister, Oren added, “I got on a plane.”
LISTENING IN: Congress reportedly caught up in NSA spying on Israelis
According to the paper, the enhanced monitoring of Netanyahu began, with the assent of lawmakers from both parties, late in Obama's first term out of concerns that the Israeli leader would pursue a preemptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.
The sweeping up of conversations between Israeli officials and U.S. lawmakers began in earnest earlier this year, ahead of a March visit to Capitol Hill by Netanyahu to speak out against the developing Iran nuclear deal, and continued through this past September, when the deadline for Congress to block the deal passed.
The Journal, citing U.S. officials, reported that Netanyahu's office repeatedly attempted to learn details about changes in U.S. positions during the sensitive nuclear talks. Israel's ambassador to the U.S., Ron Derner, was described as coaching unnamed Jewish- American groups to press members of Congress, especially Democrats, to oppose the deal.

  • Wednesday, December 30, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
A very insightful post at OpenDemocracy from a dovish Israeli, Efraim Perlmutter, who is now a teacher at a Bedouin high school:

About twelve years ago I participated in a conference in Cyprus that was co-sponsored by an American and Spanish NGO. The conference brought together Israeli and Palestinian educators to discuss introducing peace-oriented study in their respective school curricula.

We were all asked to bring material relating to peace already in use, which would be reviewed and from which either side could borrow creative ideas. Palestinian educators had no such material so the time at the conference was spent reviewing Israeli material.

During a discussion about, if I remember correctly, problems of teaching peace in the classroom, one of the Palestinian teachers raised an issue that was quite unexpected by the conference sponsors, and by me for that matter. She, being a Christian Arab from Jerusalem, expressed discouragement at the increasing gap between Christians and Muslims within the Palestinian community. As a lifelong Palestinian nationalist she was disturbed by the fact that her teenage son had more in common with Israeli teenagers that he met on the beach in Tel Aviv than he did with Muslim Palestinian teenagers who were his lifelong neighbors.

After she had expressed her concerns the room went dead silent. It seemed to me that we all recognized that the discussion had taken a sudden turn in a direction that could easily lead the entire conference into an orgy of mutual recrimination, which was definitely not the intention of the organizers nor the participants.

The silence was broken when one of the other Arab participants announced that the problem was obviously caused by “the occupation”. No one, including me, contradicted him. We were all just relieved that the comment gave us an avenue of escape back to the subject of educating for peace.
I recalled this incident when reading a recent opinion piece in the Jerusalem Post about “honor” killings in Israeli Arab society. The author made some valid points but couldn’t help writing, “The government is also responsible for the fact that the unnecessary occupation has caused bloodshed to become a routine and everyday occurrence for Israel’s Arab community.”

One again, the “occupation” allows problems in Arab society, like an unwanted foundling, to be placed at Israel’s doorstep. To the author’s credit, after genuflecting to “the occupation” a pretty good analysis of the phenomenon of the murder of women in the Israeli Arab community followed.

When I first began commenting on articles here at openDemocracy, I was motivated to answer a writer who contended that the State of Israel had intentionally opened the flood gates on one of its dams in order to flood some villages in Gaza.

The article was simply one of many examples where Palestinian leadership misfeasance brought tribulations to Palestinians that were blamed on the Israelis. I have come to refer to such observers as “Israel Firsters”.

The first time I saw the term “Israel Firster” it was used as an anti-Semitic canard by a writer in reference to the alleged dual loyalty of all Jews to their countries of residence and to the State of Israel, with the latter taking precedence.

I have also seen “Israel Firster” used to describe American neo-cons and others of the Jewish faith or Jewish ethnicity. Despite its unfortunate prejudicial origins it seems to me that the term quite accurately describes Jews, Christians, Muslims, Arabs, Europeans and all others who blame the problems and misfortunes of Palestinians (and others) on Israel first. This has had a detrimental effect mostly on Palestinians because it has retarded valid criticism of Palestinian leadership which might have motivated them to do a better job for the Palestinian people. Instead “Israel Firsters” have had the effect of letting Palestinian leadership off the hook, allowing them to go on their way extracting what they can from the situation for their own personal benefit.

For the past few months we (Israelis and Palestinians) have experienced a wave of terrorist attacks mainly on civilian targets. These have mostly been knifings but have also included using vehicles and guns as weapons. For the most part the attackers have been young people, including a few pre-teens, who are inspired to express their nationalism by killing random passersby on the streets. Most of the attackers have been killed in the act, glorified as “shaheed” (martyr) and have become part of the pantheon of Palestinian heroes.

“Israel Firsters” reflexively blame the actions of these young terrorists on “the occupation”. I would suggest that the absence of peace education in most Palestinian Authority schools may have something to do with the motivation of these young people to kill and be killed. A recent article on openDemocracy about reforming education in Egypt, in my opinion, has a great deal of relevance for the Palestinian educational system.

Until Palestinian schools seriously engage in educating for peace rather than glorifying conflict, waves of youthful suicidal terrorism should not be unexpected whether or not “the occupation” continues.
This is similar to the point I have made in the past that many people have "occupation glasses" where everything Israel does, good or bad,  is filtered through those lenses.


It isn't just the "absence of peace education in most Palestinian Authority schools" that causes the problem, it is the open incitement to murder in Palestinian schools and on TV and in music videos.

An exchange between exactly one of the people Perlmutter describes and himself is instructive as well:

Michael Hess: Obviously this place has little to do with "democracy" and quite a bit to do with defending Apartheid Israel. It's ironic how you don't even realize that you are carrying on the Israel Firster tradition. The one that says no matter what Israel does, it's the victim's fault, the Palestinians.

Efraim: Every political leader, whether dealing at the international or domestic level, is dealt a set of cards which are almost never equal to the cards dealt his opponent. The success or failure of political leaders usually depends on the value of the cards they are dealt and the skill with which they play their hand. It is my opinion that the Palestinian leadership have mostly overplayed their hand and have, as a consequence, done poorly. In part because observers like you cannot bring yourselves to criticize the Palestinian leadership which remains unaccountable for their failures. Instead you contend that everything is Israel's fault and therefore the Palestinians are never to blame.

Do you think that the Palestinian leadership have played their cards well or poorly?
(h/t JW)


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It is the end of the year and I am seeing lots of emails from professional pro-Israel sites listing their accomplishments for the year (and, of course, asking for money.)

So I thought I'd look back and see how my reporting has made a difference this year (including things that some others take credit for!)

Here are some ways that stories I broke ended up changing things for the better 2015:
None of these could have happened without you. I find the information, but I need my readers to act on it - to tweet and email and shame the offenders. And many of these stories came from reader tips.

So we did make a difference in 2015.

Thanks for your support!

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From My Truth:


Breaking the Silence's double standards Last week, Nadav Bigelman of Breaking the Silence lectured at the Hebrew University. A former IDF officer surprised him with a question. We couldn't help but notice a certain irony in Bigelman's response...
Posted by My Truth on Monday, December 28, 2015




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Tuesday, December 29, 2015

  • Tuesday, December 29, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
From someone named "Immortal Che Guevera" on Facebook:


Palestinian child is bitten by a dog, which is incited, between laughter, by Israeli terrorist. Where's the humanity better yet where is God
Posted by Immortal Che Guevara on Tuesday, December 22, 2015



It was shared over a thousand times.



Reality: it happened in Algeria in April.






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From Ian:

Wiesenthal Center ranks top 10 worst outbreaks of anti-Semitism in 2015
The Simon Wiesenthal Center ranked the European Union’s labeling of settlement products higher than incidents of Palestinian and Iranian incitement and threats against Israel in its annual 10 worst outbreaks of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism around the world in 2015.
Presented to The Jerusalem Post on Monday, the list enumerates what the organization believes are the worst occurrences of hate against Jews and their state over the course of the past year, which it characterized as of one of “unprecedented explosions of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hatred.”
“Our Top Ten this year shows how pervasive anti-Semitism has become around the world. The 10 examples selected by the Simon Wiesenthal Center are tragically indicative of burgeoning threats and challenges to the Jewish people not encountered since the end of World War II,” the organization said.
Leading the list at No. 1 was the hatred that inspired Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife to murder 14 people in a shooting rampage in San Bernardino, California, earlier this month.
Caroline Glick: Dani Dayan and the challenge to Israeli democracy
Given Brazil’s importance as a market and as a defense partner, Israel needs a serious ambassador posted to Brasilia capable of advancing relations. In Dani Dayan, Israel has such a representative.
Dayan is a native of Argentina. He knows Latin America better than career diplomats.
Dayan was an early hi-tech entrepreneur. He led his company, Elad Systems for 23 years, building it from a small information technology firm into a 500-employee company with an annual revenue stream of NIS100 million. Given his business background, Dayan’s ability to promote Israeli-Brazilian trade is self-evident.
Dayan is a political pragmatist. When he served as the leader of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, he made it his goal to demonstrate to the wider public that the communities are an integral part of Israel. As the council’s representative to the international community, Dayan worked tirelessly to combat the delegitimization of Israel as a whole and of the Israeli communities in the areas. In a sphere where Israel has precious little to show for its efforts, Dayan’s public diplomacy efforts stood out.
In light of this, when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appointed Dayan to serve as Israel’s ambassador to Brazil in August, the appointment was not seen as controversial. Rather it was widely viewed as a sign that Netanyahu is keen to expand Israel’s bilateral ties with Brazil and more generally, that Israel is interested in seriously advancing its ties to Latin America.
This apparently was bad news for the EU- and US-financed radical Left. For many years radical leftists have made no effort to hide their interest in maintaining and expanding Israel’s international and economic weakness. As they see it, the stronger Israel is, the less vulnerable it will be to foreign pressure to make further concessions to the PLO.
And so, after the government approved Dayan’s appointment, fringe leftists associated with EU- and US-funded political NGOs set out to scuttle the appointment.
Free Beacon: 2015 Man of the Year: Cpl. T
In the Israeli media, the anonymous IDF soldier was identified simply as “Cpl. T.” Other outlets dubbed him “The Terminator.” Whatever his name, the 19-year-old IDF rookie proved himself to be an international hero after he slayed three knife-wielding Palestinian terrorists in a nine-day span last fall.
On Oct. 17, two Palestinian fanatics with knives attacked an Israeli in Gush Etzion when they were put down by bullets from Cpl. T.’s gun. Nine days later, Cpl. T. smoked another terrorist who tried to stab a fellow soldier at a nearby bus stop.
The IDF released few details about Cpl. T., but said he had only been in the military for eight months and was in the “Kfir”—or “Lion’s Club”—brigade. The group is “the youngest and largest brigade in the Israel Defense Forces,” according to the military.
While the young soldier has been lauded for his quick instincts and good aim, Cpl. T. says he was just doing his job.

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 14 years and 30,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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