Saturday, March 19, 2016

03/19 Links: 3 Israelis said killed, at least 11 others hurt in Istanbul bombing; Tuvia does Germany

From Ian:

3 Israelis said killed, at least 11 others hurt in Istanbul bombing

Turkish officials said three Israelis were among the five people killed in a suicide bombing that rocked a main pedestrian thoroughfare in the heart of Istanbul on Saturday. At least 11 Israelis were among the 36 injured in the explosion.
Turkish authorities identified another of the people killed as an Iranian national.
Turkish Deputy Health Minister Ahmet Baha Ogutken confirmed in a statement to the Daily Sabah newspaper that an Israeli woman was killed in the explosion.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that two Israelis had been killed and said it was possible there was a third Israeli fatality.

Turkish official fired after wishing death on Israelis hurt in bombing

An official from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party was reportedly fired Saturday after saying she hoped Israeli tourists injured in Saturday’s deadly suicide bombing in downtown Istanbul had died.
Irem Atkas sent her ill-wishes over Twitter shortly after a bomb was detonated in central Istanbul, killing three Israelis and wounding 11 others, according to Turkish officials.
“I wish that the wounded Israeli tourists were dead,” Irem Aktas, a board member in the women’s branch of the party in the Istanbul neighborhood of Eyup tweeted shortly after the attack. Her account was removed from social media site not long thereafter.
Aktas was reportedly dismissed from her duties immediately afterwards.

Tuvia does Germany

When he talked to Germans, “I found out that eight out of 10 Germans hold anti-Semitic views,” he said. “By anti-Semitic, I mean that most of them, if you ask them if they are, would scream ‘Not me!’ but if you ask them they tell you that Jews control world politics, all the money, and the stock exchanges and the banks. I ask them stupid questions.
“I go to Wannsee, where they decided to kill the Jews.” Tuvia’s talking about the Berlin suburb where Nazi officials, meeting in January 1942, decided to commit genocide. “Right cross the street from it there is a hotel and restaurant. It is packed. They do weddings there, and you have to reserve well ahead of time. I ask the owner stupid but honest questions about how it works, how do young German girls say to their young German lovers, ‘Honey, let’s get married right next to where they decided to gas the Jews’?
“I ask childlike questions like that. That’s how you get people to talk.”
Germans are “obsessed with the Jews,” Tuvia continued. “Why do they know the names of Israel’s prime minster, defense minister, foreign minister? When you ask about German ministers they have no idea. Why do they know about everything that’s going on in Israel? When I ask them what about Chechnya” — which after all is far closer to them than Israel — “they can’t answer.”
Germany is building “a beautiful Jewish center,” he continued. “But when you go to the synagogues, there is nobody there, except maybe tourists. Germany is rebranding themselves as being Jewish. Germany is actively engaged in covering up its soul. But are Germans nice to the Jews? F••• no.”

03/18 Links Pt2: Collier: Lies and more lies. Raw hate on campus; Jews can’t trust [UK] Labour Party

From Ian:

Fighting Jew Hatred Isn’t Optional

In response to this, some on the left urge us to speak softly and, above all, not seek to engage with the BDS haters and their economic war on Israel and to label what they do as anti-Semitism. Rocking the boat in that manner will, they say, hurt more than help. As that anonymous Hillel director seemed to think, it will also turn off Jewish students and cause them to abandon the Jewish community rather than allow themselves to be recruited in a fight they want no part of.
But standing up to this movement isn’t optional. It is nothing less than of the key moral issues of our time, and it demands that we demonstrate the moral courage to respond it. If support for Israel is not fashionable, then Jews and non-Jews of conscience must fight fashion.
It is true that Jews who are raised without a strong sense of their own identity are ill equipped to fight this battle. But that does not excuse us, or them from having to engage in this struggle.
It might be more pleasant to opt out of this battle and to ignore the “Israel Apartheid” smears or accept BDS advocates as misguided but well-intentioned activists. But the ultimate cost of such acquiescence will be far higher than the inconvenience associated with fighting back. When Israel is delegitimized, so, too, will be Judaism eventually. American exceptionalism means that the rising tide of global anti-Semitism hasn’t taken hold on these shores the way it has in Europe or elsewhere. Yet if BDS movements are not labeled for what they are — expressions of anti-Semitic hate — then Americans will be taking a fearful step towards acceptance of the European disease that is making Jewish life increasingly untenable in Europe.

David Collier: Lies and more lies. Raw hate on campus

At what point does a university assist in inciting and supporting violence? How about charities and NGOs that are supposed to be on a mission of peace? These are questions I was left asking myself after recent events at both the University of Kent and UCL.
The latest event in Kent, involved a speaker from the charity ‘War on Want’, Ryvka Bernard. Ryvka is listed as the ‘Senior Campaigner on Militarism and Security’. Forming part of the university based ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’, Ryvka’s talk was titled “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: Responding to the ‘Palestinian Call for Justice”.
Ryvka’s presentation was devoid of historical fact and context. I was accompanied to this event by an ex-student from Kent, Natacha Woodcock, and together we raised several issues about BDS that exposed much of the hypocrisy. When questioned, Ryvka only appeared comfortable sticking to the script prepared by the slick PR of the BDS campaign. At one point I brought up the 1947 partition, only to find out that Ryvka wasn’t even aware the Arabs rejected it. Worse still, when someone in the crowd displayed their own ignorance by suggesting the rejection was a ‘mutual affair’, Ryvka pushed the point that ‘yes, this is the way it happened’.
A personal note to Ryvka: you do not know what you are talking about. Whether you did it through ignorance or not is irrelevant. You spread disinformation amongst impressionable students about one of the defining moments in the conflict. Your ignorance not only helps to create and spread irrational hatred, it tears up your own argument that your cause is one of ‘justice’. How can you deliver justice without knowing the facts?
When discussing ‘Palestine’, Ryvka Bernard, like ‘War on Want’, uses the word ‘justice’ a lot. It is entirely misplaced. A movement that uses a false narrative to inflict a punishment on another side without stopping to check the accuracy of the events is not a movement of justice. A force that only pushes one side’s argument whilst deliberately ignoring justified grievances from the other party has nothing to do with fairness. BDS isn’t about justice at all. BDS is a movement of hate and revenge.

VICE News: Flight to the Holy Land: Europe's Jewish Exodus (Part 1)

In the wake of recent terror attacks in Europe — several of which targeted Jewish institutions — some politicians and religious leaders have predicted an exodus of Jewish people from the continent. In some ways, the numbers stack up. Last year, a record 8,000 Jews arrived in Israel from France — with another 15,000 coming from Eastern Europe.
But some critics argue that reports of Jewish flight are overblown; they accuse Israel of taking advantage of fears in Europe to attract new immigrants and serve the interests of the Israeli state. "We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in February 2015. "I would like to tell all European Jews and all Jews wherever they are: Israel is the home of every Jew."
VICE News investigates these predictions of a mass Jewish migration — and the forces behind them.
In the first of a three-part series, VICE News heads to Paris to accompany 200 French people on a one-way flight to Tel Aviv. Once in Israel, we meet up with the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, an organization with a $400 million annual budget, which coordinates immigration programs with the Israeli government. We learn about what is pushing Jewish people out of France, and what is pulling them to the Middle East.

Europe's Jewish Exodus (Full Length)

Old Jewish jokes, part 7

Another one from the early 20th century, from the Joke Book Note Book:

The illustrations in the book don't seem to have any connection to the jokes.

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Morocco's occupation of Western Sahara is, by any measure, far more oppressive than anything Israel is doing in the territories.

A brief recap:

In 1975, in violation of a World Court judgement, Morocco invaded the former Spanish colony and effectively annexed it. The people who lived in the territory, the Sahrawi, fled in their thousands as their villages were burned and livestock slaughtered.

Tens of thousands were driven into refugee camps across the border with Algeria where they remain to this day, surviving as best they can on pitiful levels of humanitarian aid. Those who stayed in their homes face severe repression in a police state which maintains an armed force over 100,000 strong for a population of just 500,000.

Also, Morocco moved hundreds of thousands of Moroccans to Western Sahara to change its demographics and ensure that it would not be separated again.

Morocco is also far more aggressive than Israel when it comes to how people treat it. The latest example comes from how Morocco reacted when Ban Ki Moon referred to the Western Sahara as occupied:

Escalating an angry dispute with the leader of the United Nations, Morocco gave the organization a 72-hour deadline on Thursday to evacuate 84 members of its mission in the disputed Western Sahara territory.

The Moroccan order threatened to paralyze the work of the mission, which has played a peacekeeping role for 25 years.

The United Nations Security Council held urgent private consultations on Thursday afternoon over the Moroccan order, which came a day after Morocco announced a big cut in civilian support for the mission; withdrawal of its $3 million in financial support; and other unspecified steps.

The president of the Security Council for March, Ambassador Ismael Abraão Gaspar Martins of Angola, emerged later to tell reporters that members were continuing to talk and that they wanted to ensure the mission’s stability. He offered no specifics but said, “every problem has a solution.”

The moves suddenly transformed Western Sahara, a former Spanish protectorate riven by a war for independence after it was seized by Morocco in 1975, from a sensitive, percolating issue into something more pressing.

It complicated the Security Council’s agenda in the midst of crises in Syria, Yemen, Libya and other hot spots.

The Moroccan foreign minister, Salaheddine Mezouar, who held a tense meeting with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday at Mr. Ban’s office at the United Nations, said his country’s actions were a response to what he called Mr. Ban’s “unacceptable statements and condemnable actions” in describing Western Sahara as an occupied region.

Mr. Ban used that terminology during a trip this month to neighboring Algeria, where he visited a camp for Western Sahara refugees.

In an unusually blunt response, Mr. Ban reiterated to the foreign minister that Western Sahara’s status had yet to be decided. Mr. Ban also said he had been personally offended by protests directed at him and the United Nations in Morocco last Sunday over his perceived bias on the Western Sahara dispute.

Morocco routinely arrests journalists who report on protests by the Sahrawi. It acts with an impunity and aggression far beyond what Israel has ever done.

And it is rewarded. The UN and EU refuse to call the Western Sahara "occupied," but "disputed," as this NYT article does. There is very little press coverage about the repression and thuggery practiced by Moroccan troops. Even HRW and Amnesty, whose members have been expelled from Morocco, refuse to call Western Sahara "occupied."

The only difference I have found is that Israel didn't annex the West Bank, and says that its status is disputed. Yet Jerusalem, which Israel does claim, is never referred to as "disputed" by the media or the UN and EU.

In other words, Morocco plays hardball, and it is rewarded by the people it treats with contempt. Israel tries to act like a good citizen and accommodate those who are hostile to its very existence and who use any excuse they can to damn the Jewish state - and it results in more negative coverage and contempt by the world community for its actions.

There is a lesson or two here.

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03/18 Links Pt1: Glick: The Obama doctrine, unplugged; Phillips: The EU’s illegal settlements

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The Obama doctrine, unplugged

As an intelligent man, as the consequences of these four policy lines began smacking him in the face, Obama could have been expected to change course. George W. Bush for instance changed his foreign policy stance from one of sparing internationalism before September 11 to democratic interventionism in its aftermath. And when his democratic interventionism failed in Iraq, he abandoned it in favor of a more traditional realist approach.
Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter were also quick to change their policies when they were faced with evidence they had failed. Ronald Reagan changed his policy for bringing down the Soviet Union from one of confrontation to one based on cooperation when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power.
In other words, unlike his recent predecessors Obama has never shifted gears. He has never found fault with his judgment. He has never revisited a decision.
It is easy to chalk this up to arrogance. Obama is certainly one of the most arrogant leaders the US has ever had – if not the most arrogant president in US history. But given his intelligence, it is hard to escape the impression that Obama’s epic arrogance, which makes it impossible for him to admit failure, is just as much of a style preference as a character trait. That is, arrogance, like coolness and “Spockian” rationalism, is an attitude that he has adopted on purpose.
What that purpose may be is indicated by the consistent strands of his foreign policy. Obama’s belief in America’s moral turpitude, his eagerness to trample US credibility, reject traditional US policy goals; his refusal to see the dangers inherent in his radical policies or acknowledge their failures let alone accept responsibility for their failures, and his trampling of US allies while appeasing its enemies all point to Obama’s true doctrine. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Melanie Phillips: The EU’s illegal settlements

This is creating, in effect, one contiguous illegal Beduin territory on indisputable Israeli sovereign land.
To give some idea of the scale of what is happening. Regavim estimates that while 205,000 residents in Beersheba inhabit only 3,500 hectares (8,650 acres) of land, 211,000 Beduin now lay claim to about 60,000 hectares (148,260 acres).
“Aid to the Beduin” is Palestinian Authority policy intended to expand its control over Area C and undermine Israel. It is quite obvious that the EU is not only assisting it in that aim but is also seeking to create a Beduin state within a state inside Israel itself.
Both the UN and the US condemn Israeli settlements as illegal and accuse Israel of expropriating Palestinian land. Yet they fail to condemn the EU for its illegal and colonialist activities.
Such outrageous and manipulative meddling in the affairs of a sovereign state incontestably illustrates the EU’s true agenda.
Through its illegal settlements policy, the EU is conducting a stealth war against Israel.

Col. Richard Kemp: Israel Cannot Withdraw from West Bank and Golan, insists British General

JCPA: At a Jerusalem Center briefing on Feb. 17, Col. (ret.) Richard Kemp, former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, slammed the international community for advising Israel to do things they would never suggest to their own governments. Kemp said, "Israel has to have strategic depth with which to defend itself. Israel cannot possibly, at any stage, withdraw from the West Bank or the Golan Heights."
"Gen. Allan, America's military envoy in relation to the recent negotiations on peace with the Palestinians, came up with a solution as to how Israel could withdraw from the West Bank and perhaps replace its presence with international forces including American forces and technology. But I know for sure that if he had been asked to advise America, his own country, on how to deal with a similar problem on their borders, he would never have advocated what he is advocating here. Never. And if he had, he would have been fired by the President. So I think it was completely unrealistic."
"So many members of the international community, including the U.S. and the EU, are desperately keen to tell Israel what it must do, but they certainly would not consider taking the same action with respect to themselves. When you look at rocket fire from Gaza, for example, and how Israel mustn't retaliate in the way it does to defend itself, no country in the world would restrain itself when faced with that situation. Britain was faced with that situation back in 1943-44. We didn't just sit back and watch it. We pummeled the hell out of the Nazis who were developing rockets."

Here's another part of the DW interview I excerpted earlier. In this section, the interviewer asks PA prime minister Rami Hamdallah repeatedly whether he condemns terror attacks against Jews, and Hamdallah refuses to answer him.

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Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah held a long interview with DW where he came across as smug and completely insincere.

When he was pressed to address Palestinian incitement to kill Jews, he first tried the old tactic of saying "Occupation!" Then he deflected with his claim that the PA only supports non-violent resistance. He then tried to justify the terror attacks. Finally, when pressed, he denied the charges altogether, calling those who make those charges liars.

Here is the music video that the interviewer was referring to. In this case, the video was shown on a Fatah TV station, not the official PA TV, but there have been similar videos shown there as well.

Here is just one recent example of direct incitement, by and to children, on official PA TV:

Hamdallah is supposed to be the moderate face of the PA, but he comes across as a condescending jerk.

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Ma'an Arabic has a story about how Israel is closing off some streets in Jerusalem, including Arab sections, for today's annual Jerusalem Marathon.

The newspaper, which is held up as being unbiased compared to other Palestinian Arab newspapers, refers to the event as the "Judaization Marathon." It refers to literature on the event that emphasizes that the marathon routes "combine scenic and cultural heritage sites in the capital of Israel."

Hamas news sites use similar language referring to the marathon.

Yesterday, streets in Manhattan were closed for the six-hour long St. Patrick's Day Parade. So far, I haven't heard from Amnesty about this massive violation of human rights.

The winner of the marathon was a Kenyan, 25-year-old Kipkogey Shadrack. Over 2,500 foreigners ran among the 25,000 participants, and over 1,000 police secured the routes and ensured that the runners would be safe from people with knives who are never referred to as violators of human rights.

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How will left-wing "Zionists" respond to the BTS bombshell? (update)

Arutz-7 reports:

Channel 2 news broadcast highly incriminating video evidence Thursday evening filmed with hidden cameras by nationalist group Ad Kan, which shows ultra-leftist group Breaking the Silence engaged in what appears like espionage activity against the IDF.

‘Breaking the Silence has crossed another red line,” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said after the report was aired. “The investigative security forces are looking into the matter.”

The videos were gathered by Ad Kan’s undercover agents who infiltrated Breaking the Silence over a three-year period.

They show Breaking the Silence activists questioning ex-IDF soldiers – who are, in fact, Ad Kan agents – about details of the IDF’s security operations and equipment along the border with Gaza. The questions relate to how Hamas tunnels were discovered, what special forces were deployed and when, what kind of gun is deployed atop an IDF robot vehicle and more.

None of these questions have anything to do with allegedly immoral activities by the military in Judea and Samaria, which Breaking the Silence claims to be interested in exposing. Instead, they appear to be aimed at gathering intelligence about sensitive IDF operations along the border with Hamas.

In addition, a female Breaking the Silence activist revealed to an agent that she enlisted into the IDF’s Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria with the express purpose of gathering information about it, since she had been in touch with Breaking the Silence before she enlisted.

Breaking the Silence is acting like the victim:

Breaking the Silence CEO Yuli Novak denied that she was collecting classified information, adding: "there are several organizations, together with members of the Knesset from the Likud and Habayit Hayehudi, who are working to silence whoever tries to criticize the government and the occupation."

It sure sounds like a mostly European-funded organization has been spying on the IDF. How much of the information it gathered ended up with its European funders?

To me, the more important question is how will supposedly pro-Israel leftist groups like J-Street, the New Israel Fund, Yachad-UK, Hillel and others choose to respond to this report.

If they support BTS and choose to ignore the report, they will look like they are covering for a group that has proven that it is not pro-Israel but actively against Israel.

If they accept the report, then they should loudly denounce what the organization did and distance themselves from it, never hosting them on campus any more.

Even before this report it was obvious that BtS was not a pro-Israel organization in any sense. Natan Sharansky ridiculed the idea that it is a human rights organization and even called it a BDS organization. .

Specifically, Hillel International recently invited BtS to speak at Brown and Columbia Hillel despite all evidence that it is anti-Israel.

If it goes through with this after the Channel 2 report, then any pretense that Hillel is still pro-Israel goes out the window.

So how these supposedly "pro-Israel" organizations respond to this damning report will prove whether they have any claim to be truly pro-Israel.

UPDATE: The report:

שוברים שתיקה שותלים מרגלים בתוך צה"ל***מיוחד: שוברים שתיקה בתחקיר שכולם מדברים עליו***וידאו התחקיר המלא שפורסם הערב בחדשות 2 על החשיפה של ארגון עד כאן. לפיו התחקיר הזה, ארגון שוברים שתיקה מנסה לשתול בתוך הצבא מרגלים שלהם לצורכי מודיעין! זה פשוט מטורף לחשוב שארגון הזה מסובסד ע"י מדינות אירופה ומידע רגיש שכזה עלול להגיע אליהם. צפו ולא תאמינו! שתפו.
Posted by ‎מכאן - סדנאות הסברה ישראלית‎ on Thursday, March 17, 2016

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Jewish jokes from before 1905, part 6

OK, this joke book was from slightly after 1900. Sue me.

These jokes come from New Jokes and Monologues by the Best Jokers, Stage Conundrums, No. 4: The Brightest Stories and Best Jokes Told on the Vaudeville Stage, Issue 4, 1904.

A CHARITABLE HEBREW.
It doesn't hurt a men sumstimes he shall do some charity. I'll tell you vy so. I vas valking down the street de udder day, ven I seen a poor voman wid a baby in her arms. De voman vas crying. I never heard a voman cry so much in all my life. I vent by the voman and ask her for vy she cries. She told me she vas by de minister vit de baby, and de minister vould'nt christen de baby, because she didn't have de two dollars to pay him, I felt sorry for de voman, so I told her de baby shall have a name. I put my hands in my pocket, and all I could find vas a five dollar bill, so I says to her, here lady, here is a fife dollar bill, go by de minister, have the baby christened and I vill vait for me by de corner and you shall bring me tree dollars change back.

Vell I vaited nearly an hour de voman came back, and she handed me tree dollars, and said, miester you made me heppy. You see by dat little charity I made tree people heppy. De voman vas heppy because, she got a name for de baby. De minister vas heppy because he got de two dollars and I, I vas heppy because de five dollar bill was “counterfeit."

---

MRS. COHEN :—I don’t like this flat.

MR. COHEN Vat’s de matter, ain’t it a fine flat? Vy it has all do latest improvements, station house, vash stands, indecent lights, semetery, pluming and two kinds of cold water—“dirty and clean.”

MRS. COHEN :I know dat, but dere are no curtains in de bath room; every time I take a bath de neighbors can see me. _ '

MR. COHEN :Dat's all right, Rachel, if de neighbors see you, dey will buy de curtains.

---

Two Hebrews were walking up Broadway, in New York, one day, one says: "Abie, I vish I owned dat big building." His friend says: “If you did would you gif me half?" Abie says: “ No, I vouldn't, you make your own vishes." ‘

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03/17 Links Pt2: BDS from within; The Power of Words: There Never was a Palestine, sic

From Ian:

Alex Chalmers: Antisemitic anti-Zionism and the scandal of Oxford University Labour Club

Alex Chalmers was co-Chair of Oxford University Labour Club until he resigned in February, alleging that a ‘large proportion’ of club members had ‘some kind of problem with Jews’, while many used the slur ‘Zio’ and voiced support for Hamas. A controversy erupted and the Labour Party is now conducting an enquiry into antisemitism at the club. Chalmers argues here that the root problem is the poisonous ideology of antisemitic anti-Zionism which is bad for Diaspora Jews, bad for the Left, bad for Israelis and bad for Palestinians.
At the Labour Party Conference back in September 2015, the Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn addressed receptions held by Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East (LFPME) and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI). At both events he delivered relatively similar speeches in which he talked about the psychological toll that the conflict takes on both Israeli and Palestinian children and the need for both sides to compromise and negotiate. LFI received the speech enthusiastically, but at the LFPME event there was outrage. One attendee shouted ‘this isn’t about peace; this is about justice’, to enthusiastic applause from a large proportion of the room. When Benn tried to respond, he was heckled by people calling him a ‘disgrace’ and saying that he should not be Shadow Foreign Secretary.
This attitude of ‘justice’ over ‘peace’ is a damaging trend that has come to characterise much pro-Palestinian activism. That is to say, the demands of Western activists living in relative comfort have become progressively more detached from the aspirations of the actual people whom they claim to be defending. Whilst support for a two-state solution amongst Palestinians is lower than it has been historically, in the last 12 months, polling conducted by the Palestine Survey and Research Group has found that it is still the preferred outcome of between 45 and 51 per cent of Palestinians. Contrast this with the logo of the UK’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign which features the entirety of ‘historic’ Palestine with no mention of Israel.

Hotovely schools Harvard law students on Judea-Samaria

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) spoke on Wednesday afternoon with 50 law students from Harvard University's honors program.
As part of her ongoing efforts to campaign for Israel's rights in its Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria, Hotovely took the opportunity to speak to the students about the criticism against Israel over it's presence in the region.
"The time has come to return to the legal truth according to international law - the 'occupation' is a lie from the Palestinian libel factory, together with the claims of apartheid, this is slander disconnected from the legal reality," she said.
Hotovely continued, explaining, "the State of Israel did not occupy Judea and Samaria in 1967 from the state of Palestine, because there never was such a state. Jordan was illegally in possession of the territory, and we liberated Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria in a defensive war."
"After they were unable to defeat us in war throughout the years, the stage of delegitimization began; the BDS movement negates the state of Israel's right to exist, and the way to fight it is by revealing the lies and letting the truth be heard throughout the world."

Open thread

Discuss amongst yourselves. Play nice.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Anyone who has ever tried to babysit a group of Israeli kids knows the expression translated as “this will end in crying.” Sometimes you just know that there will not be a good ending for certain kinds of behavior.  Maybe a boy can pinch his big sister and run away once or twice, but ultimately she is going to catch him…and it will end in crying.

I am beginning to think that the Iranian campaign against Israel is in this category. There will come a time when the Iranian regime’s assistance to Hamas, its massive military presence in the form of Hezbollah on our northern border, its development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, its sponsorship of worldwide terrorism against Israeli and Jewish targets, and its continuing trumpeting that our nation will be destroyed, can no longer be ignored.

What is a real existential threat? It’s when someone says that he is going to kill you, you believe him, and you know that he has a weapon capable of doing it. Iran has met two out of three of these conditions. The only part we’re unsure about is whether it has the ability to carry out its threats.

The only reasonable response to an existential threat is to strike the enemy hard enough to eliminate the threat. That could mean bringing down a regime, destroying its military capabilities, or both. If there is no other option, it could mean a massive strategic attack that would also cause a large number of civilian casualties and damage.

Such a threat means your back is against the wall. It means you fight or die. It means that you do whatever is necessary to win because if you lose you are finished. It means that what the EU or Barack Obama think are irrelevant (unless you think they will intervene militarily).

No, Iran is not at that point yet. We don’t think the regime has deliverable nuclear weapons yet and we think we can handle whatever Hezbollah and Hamas can throw at us.

Even a coordinated attack including missile barrages from Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran, along with incursions in both the North and South via attack tunnels, plus numerous terror attacks from the PA and local ‘sleepers’ could be repulsed. We would suffer painfully, but we would prevail. Probably southern Lebanon and Gaza would end up looking like the surface of the Moon when it was over. Iran would lose its developing nuclear capability, too. That’s why it isn’t attacking us today.

But some things could change the equation. One would be Iran’s acquisition of deliverable nuclear weapons. This could happen tomorrow, and is almost certain to happen within a  few years unless the regime is overthrown, which seems unlikely.

Another would be the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. That would mean that in addition to Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, we would be fighting an American-trained and equipped PLO army on our eastern border, and that border would be right next to our most critical infrastructure.

A takeover of Egypt by Islamic extremists could also upset the balance. Although it might take a while before Egypt became a danger itself, an open Egyptian border to Gaza could multiply the threat from Hamas. There is also the possibility of the king of Jordan being overthrown, either by IS or Iran-backed radicals. There are probably other scenarios that would have the same effect.

What I am trying to say is that the situation is unstable. Any balance of power is temporary. And if – more likely, when – it tips against us, we will have no choice but to act to neutralize the threats. Once that happens, the usual constraints on action will be gone.  It won’t be a limited ‘mowing the grass’ operation and it may not be possible to employ the kind of tactics to minimize collateral damage that we have used in the past.

The greatest challenge will be to our leadership, which will have to overcome habits developed during decades of deterring or managing conflict.  If you doubt the importance of this, consider the 2006 Second Lebanon War, in which Israel was in a far better position vs. Hezbollah than today, and even had a tacit green light from the Bush Administration and the Sunni Arabs to finish off Hezbollah. But the team of Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, Amir Peretz and Dan Halutz were not up to the job – and their military failure was followed by a diplomatic one, as the toothless UN Security Council resolution 1701 that they negotiated did not disarm Hezbollah or prevent the massive buildup that threatens war today.

Until recently, many Israelis felt that their leaders were too concerned about security, and wanted their government to place more emphasis on social and economic issues. As Olmert unfortunately put it at a speech to the Israel Policy Forum in 2005, “We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies…” Before the last election, PM Netanyahu was accused of making too much of a fuss about the weaknesses of the Iran deal.

But the lack of day-to-day personal security as well as revelations about how damaging the Iran deal has actually been have focused attention on security issues in general, including the broader strategic ones. If there were an election next week, it’s not likely that the candidates would base their campaigns on who would do a better job reducing the price of apartments.

No politician wants to be in the position of Golda Meir, who made the wrong decision in 1973 and did not preempt (or even prepare for) the Yom Kippur war, or Olmert, who bumbled his way to blowing an opportunity that, in hindsight, might have made the  picture look very different today. So these issues are very much at the forefront of our leaders’ minds.

I don’t think the folks sitting in Tehran understand us, and I think they are listening to their own braggadocio a little too much, because they don’t seem to grasp how dangerous it is for them to continue on their aggressive path. Sooner or later it will reach the point that we see them as a true existential threat. Then we will have no options except to preempt that threat.

It will end in crying.

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03/17 Links Pt1: Six hours in Gaza; Five years since the Fogel family massacre; The world Obama made

From Ian:

Six hours in Gaza: a first-person account by Jackson School Professor Joel Migdal

I was flooded with impressions as we drove into the old city of Gaza. The first was, unexpectedly, that it looked nothing like India. Given the severe poverty, even humanitarian crisis, that Gaza as a whole is experiencing, I had expected the obvious and wrenching poverty that I had seen in some Indian cities or many other Third World countries, for that matter—collapsing infrastructure, rickety shacks, a surfeit of beggars, children in rags, adults sleeping on the sidewalks. At least in this part of the city and others that I saw later in the day, none of that was visible. Instead, I saw hordes of children going to school, university students walking in and out of the gates of the two universities—both the children and the university students reasonably dressed. I observed morning shoppers buying vegetables and fruits from stands, shopkeepers opening their shops, and people walking purposefully to wherever they were going for the start of the day. There were cranes and construction workers everywhere, with lots of uncompleted buildings being worked on. A garbage truck, with a UN sign on it, was making its rounds.
I saw almost no signs of authority on the streets. No police. No guns. No moral police. One person commented to me that in 2009 Hamas was omnipresent, with lots of moral policing on the streets. Since then, such surveillance has fallen off, but people have learned to be self-policing in their behavior in public, he said, just to be safe and not harassed.
There was the occasional bombed out building, from the 2014 War. One had the entire top of the building, several stories, simply blown off. But other than those, most buildings were in decent shape, and some apartment buildings were downright nice. There were definitely some junkers on the road, but most of the cars looked like late-model varieties. Some of the side streets were pocked and broken up; the main thoroughfares, though, were in good shape. There were almost no traffic lights, and traffic was a bit chaotic. I must add again that I was in Gaza City (both the old and new parts of the city) only and did not go to some of the outer areas and refugee camps where the bombing in the 2014 war was the heaviest and where, I understand, destruction was massive.

At the UN, ISIS and Israel are equal

The UN envoy for Children and Armed Conflict, Leila Zerrougui, suggested including the Israeli army in the black list of countries and organizations that regularly cause harm to children along with Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the Taliban, and countries such as the Congo and the Central African Republic, infamous for their armies of children.
The culture of human rights, created by Jewish jurists after the Holocaust, is now being used by anti-Semites to foment a war against the State of Israel. Mr. Alfred de Zayas, the United Nations’ Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, blamed last year’s Paris attacks on the U.S., Western colonialism, capitalism, and “Israeli settlers”, implicitly justifying them as “a response to grave injustices and ongoing abuses perpetrated by the dominant, primarily developed countries, against populations of less developed countries”.
Instead of equating Hamas with ISIS and ISIS with Iran, the UN officials ponder whether to include the IDF on the same lepers’ list as Islamic State. Whether they succeed or not doesn’t matter: they very presence pollutes the political atmosphere and destroys the reputation of the Jewish State.
Israel’s biggest enemy today is not Jihadism, but the UN which entrusted the defense of human rights to China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia, among other liberal bastions, and to paranoid “experts” whose anti-Semitism resembles that of Doktor Joseph Goebbels.

UN "Human Rights" Council, From bad to worse, Sarah Willig, Touro Institute, March 15, 2016

PA’s collapse now seems a matter of when, not if

Highly placed Israeli politicians have been saying for months that the Palestinian Authority’s threat to stop security coordination was an empty one. The statement was made, time and again, including by senior ministers, that such a move would be “a suicidal act” for the PA and its president, Mahmoud Abbas.
But the proposal that Israel’s defense establishment recently made to the PA — that security responsibility for Ramallah and Jericho return exclusively to the PA, and that the Israeli army stop making arrests in those areas — shows just how seriously it is taking the threat.
The Israeli proposal was no mere whim. Representatives of all the relevant agencies — the army, the coordinator of government activities in the territories, and the Shin Bet security service — were at the meeting with PA officials at which the idea was presented.
The proposal itself, which was first reported by Haaretz, was also approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon — even though their own previous statements had indicated, any number of times, that they did not believe continued security coordination was in danger.

Recent mentions of The Protocols in Arab media

Writing in Al Wafd, Dr. Mustafa Mahmoud says that the US, guided by the principles of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is encouraging Sunni-Shiite conflict.

Fahd Amir Ahmadi in Al Riyadh says that Switzerland is the creation of the Elders, who wanted to create a neutral territory in the center of Europe so money could be freely laundered through it for their nefarious schemes.

Bashir Kurdi in Gulf-24 writes of a friend of his who stopped watching the news because to him everything is a result of the First Protocol to create chaos and revolutions and wars, all a legacy of Sykes-Picot and the Americans and Russians allowing "Zionist cancer proliferation" from the Nile to the Euphrates and from the Arabian Sea to the Black Sea.

Al-Ankabout has an article on how the Mossad nefariously uses women to accomplish their evil goals. This is also a commandment in the Protocols, as well as from a secret Masonic text from 1920. It included this great graphic graphic.

Laha Online has an article about "digital drugs," reporting on a conference on the topic "Digital Drugs and their impact on Arab Youth" at Prince Nayef Arab University for Security Sciences. it says that the phenomenon of digital drugs was introduced by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which supposedly says "We have to occupy others with stunning colors of amusement and gaming in public forums, art and sex and drugs to distract from the exposure to our plans."

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From Ammon News:

Installing cameras at the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram al-Sharif will enable 1.7 billion Muslims across the globe to remain in touch with the holy shrine and those taking care of it, State Minister of Media Affairs, Muhammad Momani, said on Wednesday.

The minister, who is also government spokesman, said the cameras will put an end to violations by extremist Israeli settlers, explaining that the cameras will not be installed at praying places at the holy shrine and this is a clear evidence that the cameras are meant to monitor moves by extremist Jews and not to monitor Muslim worshippers.

Momani added that the installation of the cameras will refute Israeli claims that "Palestinian rioting" is to blame for their provocations and violations against the holy shrine by Israeli police and extremists. The minister emphasized that the cameras and the footage they will provide will help Jordan document Israeli violations and pursue legal action at international arenas.

He noted that Israeli right-wing groups oppose the installation of cameras at the holy shrine because this measure will strengthen the Jordanian presence at the holy site.

From the articles I've seen, the footage from the cameras will not be public, but will be monitored by both Israeli and Jordanian security.

I have not seen any Israeli object to the cameras. On the contrary, Israelis want to have more cameras, including in the Al Aqsa mosque itself, because that is where rioters often stockpile rocks and fireworks, as their own videos have shown. Their backing down on that demand is seen as a great victory for Jordan.

In other words, Momani is doing pure spin. There is no danger of the cameras catching Jews doing anything provocative because there have been people videoing the Jews visiting for years and they never found any unprovoked actions (unless you consider silent prayer to be an obscene provocation.)

I would love for high resolution footage to be live-streamed from multiple angles 24/7. And archived.

The cameras are to be installed before Passover.

Here is the latest video of those stormin' "settlers" from yesterday:

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Egyptians double down on idea that the niqab came from Jews

I reported last month that an Egyptian "scholar" who is against women veiling themselves blames the custom on Jews.

Aminat Naseer, a professor of religion and philosophy at Al-Azhar University, has been an outspoken opponent of allowing female students to wear the niqab that covers their faces. So to discourage the practice she makes up fake quotes from Maimonides saying that Jewish women are not allowed to show their faces. her motivation, of course, is to associate a practice she hates with Jews.

Apparently the Arabic version of Times of Israel has reported on her recent comments about the supposed Jewish origins of the veil, and debunked it by quoting some actual exports in Judaism. She insists she is right, of course, but didn't bring any new proof.

However, another Egyptian "expert" has.

Dr. Mohammed Abu Ghadeer, former head of Israeli Studies at Al-Azhar University, says that the Hebrew Bible proves it so Jews cannot possibly deny it. He quotes Daniel, "verses 30-36," without citing any chapter number about a woman named Susanna who unveiled herself: "Susanna, very delicate and beautiful, was veiled; but those transgressors of the law ordered that she be exposed so as to sate themselves with her beauty."

There is no such mention in the Hebrew Bible. He is quoting the Protestant Apocrypha book of Susanna which was never part of the Hebrew Bible and was not discussed in any early Jewish sources. Some Catholic Bibles incorporate this story as a 13th chapter of Daniel. It is an interesting story but it misrepresents the Jewish concept of "eidim zomemim" (collusive witnesses) and under what circumstances they would be put to death. (Briefly, witnesses who falsely accuse others of a crime get the same punishment that the victim would have gotten, but the way that they are disproven is not the way young "Daniel" did it, even though it is a great story.)

The story takes place in Babylon and there were certainly Arabian tribes that veiled women at various times in history, but it was never a Jewish custom.

It is really funny that Egyptians must resort to associating any hated practice with Jews in order to delegitimize it among Muslims.

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Jewish jokes from before 1900, part 5

Continuing my Adar-themed series of Jewish jokes from old books.

This is from an 1786 work called "The Treasury of Wit; Being a Methodical Selection of about Twelve Hundred, the Best, Apophthegms and Jests; from Books in Several Languages. In Two Volumes. ..." By H. Bennet, M.A.

I found two relevant jokes. The first one is mildly antisemitic:

And...so is the second.

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03/16 Links Pt2: Israel World’s 11th Happiest Country; When Saudi Arabia Was a Jewish Kingdom

From Ian:

Israel World’s 11th Happiest Country Ahead of US, UK, France, Germany

The 2016 happiness index shows that there is a wide variation among countries and regions in their inequality of well-being, and in the extent to which these inequalities changed from 2005-2011 to 2012-2015. In the world as a whole, in eight of the 10 global regions, and in more than half of the countries surveyed there was a significant increase in the inequality of happiness. By contrast, no global region, and fewer than one in 10 countries, showed significant reductions in happiness inequality over that period.
But, according to the index, “people do care about the happiness of others, and how it is distributed. New research suggests that people are significantly happier living in societies where there is less inequality of happiness.”
Israel in 11th place is followed by Austria in 12th and the US in 13th. Germany is in 16th place, the UK in 23rd, and France is in 32nd, trailing the United Arab Emirate in 26th place. Surprisingly, Japan is in 53rd place.
The unhappiest country on the planet is Burundi, in 157th place, Syria is 156th, Afghanistan 154th and Yemen 147th. (h/t Yenta Press)

Before Islam: When Saudi Arabia Was a Jewish Kingdom

The discovery of the oldest-known pre-Islamic Arabic writing in Saudi Arabia, from ca. 470 CE, evidently caused some consternation, given its Christian and Jewish context.
In 2014, researchers from a French-Saudi expedition studying rock inscriptions in southern Saudi Arabia announced they had discovered what could be the oldest texts written in the Arabic alphabet. But they did so very quietly, perhaps because the context of the texts is something of an embarrassment to some.
The dozen or so engravings had been carved into the soft sandstone of the mountain passes around Bir Hima – a site about 100 kilometers north of the city of Najran, which over millennia has been plastered with thousands of inscriptions by passing travelers and officials. Conveniently, at least two of the early Arabic petroglyphs that were discovered cited dates in an ancient calendar, and expert epigraphists quickly calculated that the oldest one corresponded to the year 469 or 470 CE.
The discovery was sensational: the earliest ancient inscriptions using this pre-Islamic stage of Arabic script had been dated at least half a century later, and had all been found in Syria, which had suggested that the alphabet used to write the Koran had been developed far from the birthplace of Islam and its prophet.

High School Censors Swastikas, Missing Entire Point of Satirical Anti-Nazi Play, The Producers

Administrators have ordered the removal of swastikas from a high school production of The Producers, the famous Mel Brooks film that makes fun of Nazism.
The New York school district that oversees Tappan Zee High School considers the inclusion of a swastika to be offensive and, possibly, a hate crime—regardless of the context.
“There is no context in a public high school where a swastika is appropriate,” South Orangetown Superintendent Bob Pritchard told the local CBS station.
The kids in the play had a different reaction.
"It's satire, not supposed to be taken seriously," said Tyler Lowe, a student performer. CBS notes that Lowe is himself Jewish.

New video made from my "Apartheid?" posters

From Israel in Europe:

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