Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, April 15, 2016

04/15 Links Pt2: The BDS Movement: On The Inside; Pals Lost Credibility in Arab World By Staying Silent on Syria

From Ian:

Lebanese Journalist: Palestinians Lost Credibility in Arab World By Staying Silent on Syria

By failing to take a stand against the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, Palestinian leaders have “lost the Arab depth, their credibility and their narrative,” Hanin Ghaddar, the editor of the Lebanese news site NOW, wrote in a commentary Thursday.
Ghaddar observed that Assad and Hezbollah, both of which are backed by Iran, have”relentlessly using ‘Palestine’ to justify their massacres and interference in Syria.” But Ghaddar noted that “we have rarely heard a word of sympathy toward the Syrian people from Palestinian political and public figures.” Even when the Palestinian refugee camp in Yarmouk came under siege, “no Palestinian figure came out to denounce the siege and destruction of the camp.”
She added:
Hezbollah has woven the cause of Palestine so assiduously into its propaganda, and because of that, the “Resistance” and “Palestine” have lost credibility among the people in the region. In addition to the severe internal divisions among the Palestinian leadership and factions, the Palestinians’ silence in the face of human rights violations and crimes in Syria has drastically changed the way people see Palestine.
When Hezbollah used the slogan “Road to Jerusalem” to justify its actions in Syria, Ghaddar wrote, “many expected a statement or a ‘Not in Our Name’ campaign by some Palestinian political or human rights group. Instead, silence ensued.”

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Taking Sides in the War Within Islam

We must also aid, encourage, and ideologically arm Muslims who reject the Islam of hate in favor of an Islam respectful of women, their faces, and their rights, as well as of human rights in general. Is that not what we did in the not-so-distant past with regard to the brave people we called dissidents in the Soviet world? And were we not right, at the time, to ignore those who told us that the dissidents were a minority who would never, ever, prevail against the granite ideology of communism?
That means protecting and defending Daoud (to take just one current example), a French-language writer of Muslim origin who suggested that those seeking sanctuary in Europe would do well to learn to appreciate European values. For that, Daoud has been saddled with a double fatwa: one from his “assassin brothers,” to borrow the Algerian-French journalist Mohamed Sifaoui’s phrase, and another from a handful of supposedly progressive and anti-racist French intellectuals who accused him of “recycling the most hackneyed clichés of Orientalism” when he urged Arab men to respect the dignity of women.
Genuine anti-racists, anti-imperialists, and believers in republican democracy must take the side of the Islam of moderation and peace in its war against the criminal Islam of the Salafists. It is a war that is ideological, theological, and political, a war that cuts across worlds, cultures, and what we are right to call civilizations, from the lost city neighborhoods of France to those areas – for example, Kurdistan, Morocco, Bosnia, and Bangladesh – where enlightened Islam remains alive and well. That, in broad strokes, is our urgent task. This is our war.

Inculcating Hatred and Violence for Israel in the Palestinian Educational System: The Rudolf Walther School in Deir al-Balah, as a Case Study*

Overview
1. At the end of March 2016 the Hamas-affiliated Shihab News Agency issued a video showing a Palestinian teacher indoctrinating school children with hatred for Israel and support for an armed struggle against it. The teacher used the letters of the Arabic alphabet as a didactic tool to teach them "the fundamental Palestinian national principles" even before they learn to read.
2. The name of the school is not mentioned in the video, but an ITIC examination (including a comparison between existing pictures and the picture in the video) indicated the video was apparently filmed in the Rudolf Walther School in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, which was constructed with money from a German donor. The school is a complex of three governmental schools under the jurisdiction of the ministry of education in the Gaza Strip, which is a branch of the Palestinian Authority (PA) ministry of education. The complex has an elementary school for boys, an elementary school for girls, and a high school for boys. According to the boys' elementary school Facebook page, its objectives are to educate for"correct values and to inculcate the awareness and concept of a flourishing Islamic homeland" (Facebook page of the Rudolf Walther Boys' Elementary School, March 31, 2016). Full Document in PDF Format

Technion's Breakdance High-Tech Video Haggadah

Technion comes out with an interesting high-tech Passover-themed video each year. Here's the atest:

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The triennial Organization of the Islamic Cooperation conference just ended in Turkey.

The final communique for the two day conference has 218 paragraphs and weighs in on tons of topics, including most of the first 15 condemning Israel.

There's a lot to unpack there, with resolutions on terrorism and Iran and other topics, but these two paragraphs were interesting to me:

163. The Conference stressed that culture must be used as a leverage for a sustainable and inclusive development, along with the Islamic values, and the most important action is to mainstream culture as a strategic tool for achieving OIC goals; Therefore, it commended the efforts of the OIC Secretary General for his initiatives aiming at promotion and defending unified position on issues of common interest, including the dialogue among civilizations and religions; promoting interfaith harmony, tolerance and non-discrimination; to safeguard historic and Islamic character of the holy places as well as Islamic cultural and civilizational heritages.

169. The Conference encouraged all Member States to promote inter-faith and inter-religious dialogues within the OIC Member States to raise awareness about religious interpretations and beliefs, and open space for further discussion about Islam and faith and to initiate relevant projects at the level of United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. In this regard, the Conference welcomed and commended the Government of the State of Qatar and its partners for regularly organizing an international interfaith dialogue conference which aims to promote and defend the image of Islam and the Muslim Ummah.

Culture and "inter-religious dialogue" are means to achieve political goals, and there is no interest in "dialogue" - just to use the Western concept of a free exchange of ideas to promote political Islam in the rest of the world.

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04/15 Links Pt1: Glick: Obama’s political legacy; Who Respects Israeli Democracy?

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: We Will Not Accept a Jewish Israel

The obsession with settlements is certain to divert attention from core issues, such as Palestinian recognition of a Jewish Israel. Many Palestinians continue to regard Israel as one big settlement that needs to be removed from the Middle East.
Even those who say they have accepted the two-state solution are not prepared to recognize any Jewish link to or history in the land.
In the view of Al-Husseini, Palestinians refuse to acknowledge a Jewish state because they believe this would grant legitimacy to "Jews' rights to the land of Palestine" and undermine the Palestinian demand for the "right of return" for millions of refugees into Israel.
Israeli Arab leaders are betraying their constituencies by privileging the perceived interests of Palestinian Arabs, while Palestinian Arab leaders are betraying their constituencies by denying any link between Jews and the land. This stance makes peace a non-starter.

'The world doesn't care about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict'

Deputy Minister of Regional Cooperation Ayoub Kara (Likud) told Arutz Sheva on Thursday that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no longer the central focus of the international community.
Speaking from Paris, where he is currently visiting, Kara said that the war against radical Islam is an opportunity for cooperation between Israel and Arab countries.
“We are promoting an economic conference in France with all the anti-Iranian countries in an attempt to bring new tidings to the region,” he said, before noting that at the present time, no one seems to be interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“There is a split in the Arab countries between the Iranian camp, which controls Lebanon and Syria, and the Saudi coalition which sees Iran and ISIS as the enemy. So countries such as Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia now have common interests with Israel,” explained Kara.
“The Palestinian issue is no longer relevant in the world. I saw fit to involve the French in holding an economic conference in their country. We will deal in it with many joint projects, such as gas supply and technological cooperation. This opens up new hopes for Israel to get new allies,” he added.

Caroline Glick: Obama’s political legacy

The US presidential race is President Barack Obama’s political legacy. Depending on who succeeds him, that legacy will either fade or become the new normal.
To understand what he has wrought, a good place to start is with the man running to Obama’s left: Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The socialist from Vermont knows how to play to the crowd. Sanders knows that the people captivated by his tales of avaricious bankers aren’t too keen on Jews either.
And as a Jew, he’s cool with that.
Sanders’s courtship of Jew-haters in a staple of his campaign. The depth of his efforts was made clear at the end of a campaign event at the Apollo Theater in Harlem last Saturday when an audience member got up and began spewing anti-Jewish slanders.
In the event, the questioner rose and said, “As you know, the Zionist Jews – and I don’t mean to offend anybody – they run the Federal Reserve, they run Wall Street, they run every campaign.”
Weathering a chorus of boos from his fellow audience members, the questioner then asked Sanders, “What is your affiliation to your Jewish community?” Sanders could have told the questioner to take a long walk off a short pier. He could have told him he’d rather win without the support of bigots.
He could have used it as a teaching moment and told his audience that millions of Jews have been murdered because of the lies the questioner just repeated.
Instead, he called him “Brother” and told he needed to hide his hatred better.

In 2014, researchers started warning that there were tsunamis that hit the Israeli coast every couple hundred years and that Israel should be prepared.

In March, Israel started preparing emergency tsunami routes for safety should such an event occur. Earlier this month there was a national tsunami drill.

At first, Palestinian media almost relished the idea of a tsunami devastating Tel Aviv and Ashkelon. But then they realized that such a tsunami would also hit Gaza, and it would not be pretty.

Images such as these started being published in Palestinian media, fueling panic:

NB: Tsunamis do not look like this.

And then came the inevitable conspiracy theories, saying that Israel was planning a secret nuclear weapons test in the Mediterranean just to destroy Gaza with a tsunami. As evidence, they cited a previous rumor that France had once tested a bomb in the Mediterranean causing flooding in Algeria.

The tsunami rumors and fear spread quickly.

So over the past couple of days the Hamas government has been trying to calm down residents along the coast. The interior ministry on Friday called for calm and asked Gazans not to take rumors of a tsunami seriously, whether it be natural or "artificial."

I don't think that these reassurances will have the intended effect.

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As soon as the Sanders campaign announced that Simone Zimmerman would be his national Jewish outreach coordinator, controversy erupted over her previous articles and Facebook posts, including profane ones, that stridently criticized Israel.

But a Jewish Sanders supporter not associated with the campaign, tweeting as "JewsforBernie," posted this:

Don’t believe the smears against Bernie’s Jewish outreach director. pic.twitter.com/oTnodJOr2H
— Jews for Bernie (@jewsforbernie) April 14, 2016

So I asked:

Could @simonerzim show documentation or photos of her anti-BDS work on campus that @jewsforbernie says she led? https://t.co/AxwU80pqd7
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) April 14, 2016

I was answered:

@elderofziyon https://t.co/QkTI8Cv9zu
— Jews for Bernie (@jewsforbernie) April 14, 2016

So I looked at that source (and one other provided.)

But it didn't show opposition to boycotting Israel at all. Her speech at the 2011 J-Street Conference showed opposition to how BDS activists at Berkeley acted, as well as how their Zionist opponents acted.

Good afternoon. You’ve heard the other panelists discuss the merits of BDS and whether it’s effective. I recognize that BDS seeks to address serious human rights issues in Israel and the Territories. However, at UC Berkeley, rather than creating discussion, it was my experience that our BDS campaign created a polarizing atmosphere where both sides sank further into the extremes of their positions. I felt that it fostered animosity, squashed nuance, and alienated the rational voices most essential to addressing these complex issues.

Zimmerman firmly places her self in between the extremes of the strident anti-Israel voices of BDS and the Zionists:

In the back of the room was a group of students with powerful voices unable to make them heard. They were Jewish social justice activists, moved by humanist and progressive values, some anti-war, some anti-occupation, all socially conscious, concerned with the problems in Gaza as well as the emotion and fear tied to the anti-divestment movement on campus. They didn’t identify fully with either side. No green stickers, no blue stickers. Some goals of the bill spoke to their progressive values. However, their commitment to Israel made some of them mistrustful of the movement before them. The polarity created by both sides was alienating not just for these students, with whom I have quickly come to identify, but also for students who lacked a serious connection to the issues.

So I pointed out that this hardly showed her position to be anti-BDS, and an almost surreal discussion came about between me at "JewsforBernie"

Denim Dave ‏@DTenenbaum 15 hours ago

@jewsforbernie @elderofziyon "I know nuanced views are really hard for you to accept but UNPROVEN ASSERTION SANS EVIDENCE. PERIOD."
Jews for Bernie ‏@jewsforbernie 15 hours ago

@DTenenbaum @elderofziyon You could have video of her saying BDS is antisemitic and you'd insist it wasn't evidence of anything.
ElderOfZiyon ‏@elderofziyon 15 hours ago

.@jewsforbernie No, I would welcome such a video, Or article. Or tweet. Your links showed ambivalence, not opposition. But let's ask her!
ElderOfZiyon ‏@elderofziyon 14 hours ago

So, @simonerzim, will you say unambiguously that you oppose the idea of boycott or divestment or sanctions against Israel? @jewsforbernie
Jews for Bernie ‏@jewsforbernie 14 hours ago

@elderofziyon She already did. You’re replying to our screen cap of her doing so!
ElderOfZiyon ‏@elderofziyon 14 hours ago

.@jewsforbernie So no harm in me asking her to make it explicit, right? Are you afraid she won't?
Jews for Bernie ‏@jewsforbernie 14 hours ago

@elderofziyon She’s been on the job 3 working days and hasn’t been greenlighted for press.
ElderOfZiyon ‏@elderofziyon 14 hours ago

.@jewsforbernie @simonerzim has tweeted in the past 24 hours. You seem to have a problem with accuracy. I'm asking for one word from her.
ElderOfZiyon ‏@elderofziyon 14 hours ago

This Twitter thread should make a good post. But I'll give @simonerzim a few hours to answer my question. @jewsforbernie is not truthful.
Jews for Bernie ‏@jewsforbernie 14 hours ago

@elderofziyon Coming from one of the kings of dishonest right-wing smears of liberal Jewry, that's rich.

Of course Zimmerman never answered my question.

Three interesting things happened since this exchange.

One is that the Sanders campaign suspended Zimmerman:

On Thursday, Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign suspended Ms. Zimmerman, 25, after revelations that she had used vulgarities in Facebook posts about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Hillary Clinton. The suspension, hours before a Democratic presidential debate in Brooklyn, made for an embarrassing misstep for Mr. Sanders, a secular Jew who, despite having lived briefly in Israel and being the most successful candidate of his faith in American history, is being pummeled by Mrs. Clinton among Jewish voters.

But the suspension was also an important moment in the small but deeply felt universe of Democratic Jewish politics, which has been torn apart on generational and ideological lines over the acceptable level of criticism of Israel’s right-wing government.

With Ms. Zimmerman’s history of opposition to Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza, her hiring drew concerted and ultimately overwhelming pressure from American Jewish leaders. Her suspension showed that when it came to the high stakes and intense scrutiny of presidential politics, the establishment’s view of Ms. Zimmerman and her brethren as dangerous radicals still held sway even with Mr. Sanders, a candidate promising a revolution.

Two is that Peter Beinart came out in support of Zimmerman:

“This is the American Jewish community eating its own,” said Peter Beinart, a mentor to Ms. Zimmerman and a leading voice in liberal Zionism. “Simone is the best of the best. Most of the other kids have given up on the community. She cares deeply and wants to make it live up to its own stated ideals.”

And the third is that the JewsforBernie tweeter was outed:

FYI: This is the obnoxious guy behind @jewsforbernie: https://t.co/ajhV7h0f81 #EnoughSaid
— Jacob Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) April 15, 2016

Daniel Sieradski is a very iconoclastic far left yeshiva-educated Jew. His Jewschool site has been around forever and while I hadn't visited it for many years my impression was that he had some intellectual honesty.

This exchange proved that wrong.

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