Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

04/19 Links Pt2: Dershowitz: Sanders Is Not Pro-Israel; Cruz backs Israel's right to Golan, Obama doesn't

From Ian:

Watchdog: UN Operating in Own ‘Distorted Reality’ With Virtual Reality Film Demonizing Israel, Ignoring Hamas Terror

The United Nations is continuing the demonization of Israel with a new film distorting the facts of the 2014 Gaza war, the head of a Geneva-based organization that monitors the international body told The Algemeiner on Monday.
Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, was reacting to a UN initiative featuring a trio of virtual reality films highlighting the stories of a young Syrian refugee, a Liberian woman’s attempt to help others recover from the Ebola virus and a Palestinian mother whose two sons were killed during Operation Protective Edge, the war Israel waged against Hamas in Gaza in the summer of 2014. The goal of the films, according to the UN, is to raise awareness and money.
The film about the Palestinian, titled “My Mother’s Wings,” places the blame for the death of the woman’s two sons — killed during the shelling of a UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school — on Israel. But, as Neuer has pointed out, during the war, Hamas terrorists used UNRWA schools and other civilian locations as bases from which to launch rockets into Israel. And the eight-minute documentary, Neuer said, fails to delve into the other side of the story, namely how terrorists used civilians as human shields and the attacks against Israel, which led to and continued throughout, the war.
“Sadly, through distorted portrayals like these, the UN has itself become a form of virtual reality. In the real world, Hamas targets Israeli civilians with deadly rockets, firing them from densely populated areas to maximize civilian casualties, as part of its military strategy to demonize Israel in the eyes of international opinion, and thereby to weaken Israel’s capability for self-defense,” said Neuer. “In the UN’s virtual reality, however, Israel is condemned, even though it is Hamas which — by law, logic, and morality — bears the full responsibility for any and all civilian casualties that ensue from the cynical manipulation of their own people.”

Shame on the US for Its Treatment of Israel at the UN

At an open debate on the Middle East at the United Nations Security Council in New York on Monday — as a bus was being blown up in Jerusalem — Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon told his Palestinian counterpart, Riyad Mansour, that he ought to be ashamed for not denouncing terrorism and incitement.
Danon had brought Natan and Renana Meir to the session to personify the devastation that Palestinian Authority incitement to violence against Jews continues to wreak. Natan is the widower of Dafna Meir, a 38-year-old nurse who was murdered three months ago by a Palestinian teenager at the entrance to her home in Otniel, a settlement south of Hebron. Renana is Natan’s 17-year-old daughter, who not only witnessed her mother being stabbed to death, but tried to help fend off the assailant.
The 15-year-old terrorist later told Israeli interrogators that he had been inspired to commit his heinous act from broadcasts on PA television and social media.
Mansour did not condemn any of it, of course. Instead, he berated Israel for imprisoning and killing Palestinian children. No surprise there, which is why Danon — who should be lauded for standing alone in the hornets’ nest of hypocrisy and deceit that the Security Council occupies — was wasting his breath. As Natan Meir said later in a small press conference after the event, it hurt him to hear a diplomat referring to jailed Palestinian kids as victims, when one of those “kids” had slaughtered his wife in cold blood.

The Metaphysics of Article 49

In January 2012, rising opposition to Israeli construction in the West Bank compelled Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to establish a committee tasked with assessing the construction’s legality. Judge Edmond Levy headed that commission, which produced the Levy Commission Report (“LCR”). The LCR concluded that Israel is not in violation of Article 49 and, as such, Israeli construction in the West Bank and other areas captured in 1967 are legal.
First, the LCR posited that Israel does not qualify as an “occupying power” because Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip were never part of an independent Arab state. At the time, Egypt did not claim sovereignty over the Gaza Strip and Jordan was not a lawful sovereign over Judea and Samaria. Therefore, according to the LCR, Article 49 is not applicable to Israeli settlements because Israel is not an “occupying power.”
In a strict legal context, this argument might be specious. In 1947, the U.N. passed resolution 181, which identified borders for a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish population of Palestine accepted the notion while the Arab population rejected it. In its Declaration of Independence, Israel cited that U.N. resolution by “calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel … This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.” By relying on the resolution, Israel recognized an Arab sovereign in 1947. In response to an all-out attack twenty years later, Israel took control of the area. Subsequently, Israelis settlers created a new frontier for Jewish settlement. Based on its declaration of independence, Israel recognized Arab sovereignty of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza and then had a population move into that area.
On the other hand, the reference to resolution 181 in the Declaration of Independence may not be the equivalent of Arab sovereignty recognition. The U.N. recognized the right to a Jewish state. Israel referenced that recognition, but not a state that the Arabs themselves rejected. As such, there was never Arab sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.
Second, the LCR pointed to the language in Article 49 that states “deport or transfer,” which is not the reality of those who settled in the disputed areas. Settlers willingly chose to live in these areas, for ideological or other reasons, not because the Israeli government deported or transferred them there.

Simona Sharoni is a professor, Israel-hater, BDSer and was one of those who gave Rachel Corrie college credit to go to Israel with the ISM.

Her niche in the loony Left world is to say that (because of "intersectionality") there is a link between Israel's existence and rape on college campuses.

While the idea of intersectionality had some merit when it was first defined, nowadays it is a catch-all buzzword to mean that the Jewish state is the very definition of evil.

From the far left Alternet site:

Why Feminists Should Care About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Dr. Simona Sharoni is a feminist scholar, researcher, and activist who has focused her career on the gendered nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Currently a Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Plattsburgh, Dr. Sharoni champions the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement...

In her recent academic work, Dr. Sharoni has been exploring the relevancy of the BDS campaign to a praxis of transnational feminist solidarity.

A few weeks ago, Dr. Sharoni spoke at an event at Columbia University, co-hosted by both Palestine student activist groups and No Red Tape, the anti-sexual assault group launched in January 2014.

Dr. Sharoni asks questions like, “What do Israeli Apartheid and the campus sexual assault crisis have in common? How can a feminist intersectional analysis help us understand violence at the heart of both cases? How can we use this comparative analysis to advocate for survivors of violence and to demand accountability for perpetrators?”

Aviva Stahl: Let’s start at the beginning. Why is BDS or what’s happening with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a feminist issue?

Dr. Simona Sharoni: Firstly, there is the fact that there is a direct connection between the violence of the occupation and sexual and gender based violence against Palestinian and Israeli Jewish women. The highly militarized conflict has gender dimensions.

For example, during my military service, we started raising the issue of the connection between the violence of the occupation and violence against women, because in Israel, men who serve, even after their mandatory military service, have their weapons in their home until they’re 55. There were many murders of women—intimate partner violence, which they used to call in Israel crimes of passion—that were actually done with weapons provided by the state.

By this logic, cookbook publishers are linked to women who stab their husbands with kitchen knives.

...BDS is a movement that emerged in response to a call for solidarity. Palestinian women’s groups were part of that broad civil society group that called for solidarity.

So feminists should be Zionist because of women-run Zionist organizations that have been around for over a hundred years.

Aviva: Can you talk a little bit about some of the parallels between Israeli Apartheid and the campus sexual assault crisis?

Dr. Sharoni: Power is made invisible in the narration of both the Palestinian-Israel conflict and campus sexual assault. Focus is placed on the relationship, not on the system.

In other words, it’s not a conflict between two parties on an equal playing field, even when it’s a healthy relationship. For example when we talk about what’s happening on college campuses—sexism and rape culture, interfere with [that possibility for equality.]

As for Israelis and Palestinians—the discourse is that there’s a “cycle of violence.” And of course it’s not a cycle of violence. There’s a history of colonization, and a settler-colonial movement—that sowed the seeds for this conflict. So the violence stems from that, it doesn’t stem from, “this side did this to the other side.”

We have to highlight these structural power inequalities and the way that violence is embedded in them.

I guess police, corporate executives, government officials and teachers are inherently prone to violence because they do not have an equal relationship with the people that they have power over.

Intellectual-sounding arguments fall apart very easily when the same arguments cannot work in other contexts. What is the common denominator? The fact that a lot of people hate Israel and need to justify their hate ex-post facto!

It’s a feminist idea, based on intersectional feminist analysis that views gender oppression as systemic and intertwined with other forms of systemic oppression. Postcolonial feminism addresses specifically feminist critiques of settler colonialism. The problem is that for many liberal Jewish feminists, the idea of treating Zionism as a settler colonial project is new and challenges how they were brought up to view Israel.

If we re-conceptualize the injustice of Palestine, and reframe it by taking an intersectional look at multiple oppressions and multiple struggles, then it makes sense. If you build a movement that moves away from narrow identity politics to coalition politics, you’re going to have people who are not comfortable, because they still have this single issue, one-identity understanding of the struggle.

But Jews who are the victims of antisemitic violence - like yesterday's bus bombing - cannot claim to be intersectionalized with feminism, even though there are plenty of women victims.

Why not? Because, (handwaving, yadda-yadda), Israel!

Here Sharoni almost admits that the real reason to link the issues is a strategy to delegitimize Israel, not because there is any merit in her laughable arguments.

Aviva: What is the importance of broad-based solidarity movements?

Dr. Sharoni: I think strategically, making the connection between the two struggles [Israeli Apartheid and campus sexual assault] makes sense. We do need to move from this narrowly defined strategies of identity politics—the idea that the group that is most hurt, and most targeted, has the burden of organizing…

The problem with how "intersectionality" is used nowadays is that it can be used as a bludgeon against anything. It is a fraudulent idea because the same logic can be used to come to opposite conclusions - in fact, opposite conclusions that make far more sense. So for example, the widespread and well-known cases of sexual abuse against female anti-Israel activists by Palestinians would indicate a far more direct relationship between Palestinians and rape.

An anti-Zionist professor at UCLA is accused of sexual assault - yet using the "logic" of people like Sharoni, this should indicate a much stronger link between anti-Zionism and rape than she claims Israel has.

Here's one more "intersectional" relationship that is stronger than any of the absurd theories that Sharoni espouses:

She is one of the mentors who awarded Rachel Corrie college credit to go to "Palestine" to protest Israel. If it wasn't for her, Corrie would be alive today. She is linked to Rachel Corrie's death!

Murderer!

See how easy it is to come up with linkages when you don't have to worry about things like logic, causality or consistency?

This all shows that the anti-Israel academic crowd are frauds.

It is no surprise that Sharoni is one of the frauds who signed a letter to McGraw Hill asking them to reinstate the Map that Lies in a textbook that had no reason to refer to it to begin with.

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Here’s the curious case of one of them.

Born to non-Jewish parents in 1929, Lynne Reid Banks is a prominent British novelist, best-known for The L-Shaped Room (1960) which was made into a movie. Among her works are children’s novels set in Israel, where she worked on a kibbutz, and where she married an Anglo-Jewish sculptor, Chaim Stephenson, and had three sons. She became an Israeli citizen after the Six Day War, but in 1971, after nine years in Israel, she resettled in Britain with her family. There, she stoutly defended Israel from obloquy; few more passionate expositors of the Israeli cause existed than she. I well remember the stirring speech that she made at a pro-Israel rally one brisk and overcast Sunday in Trafalgar Square to express solidarity with the valiant little Jewish State during the Yom Kippur War and to protest the Heath government’s odious refusal to supply Israel with spare parts for its British-made tanks.

Around that time, The Times (18 October 1973) published a letter by the eminent writer Dame Freya Stark, noted as an explorer and traveller, and then living in Italy; the letter observed that during the 1940, when Britain fought against Nazi Germany,

“The Egyptians did not then stand by us for territory nor for oil, but for an idea of freedom which we shared. They are fighting now not only for their Arab civilization, but for honour and respect and to prove that they can die. We too have fought against the odds, and may, in the memory of our old friendship, salute them.”

This letter drew an immediate riposte from Lynne Reid Banks, bristling with emotion and indignation, published in The Times on 20 October:

‘…. I cannot any longer tolerate the tone of letters like Freya Stark’s …

How can she sit there fanning herself on some Italian balcony … talking incomprehensibly about the fight for Arab civilization … what civilization? The one in which adulterers are to be whipped in the streets, in which there are public hangings, in some parts of which slaves are to be kept? Is this to be mentioned while the sons of Jews, who have contributed more to true civilization in every field than any other single group on earth, are being blown to pieces fighting against fantastic odds for a tiny corner of the world to call their own?

Let me remind Freya Stark and her ilk that the debt we owe to the Arabs for their invaluable contribution to our side in the last war – the Grand Mufti’s and the Syrian’s [sic] well-known Nazi sympathies take the edge off this, of course – is nothing to the debt that we owe to the Jews, not only for their ubiquitous contribution to the war effort, but for what we stood by and allowed them to suffer in Europe. Nor are the Arabs now fighting for their civilization, such as it is, but for their “honour”, currently represented by a large area of desert which, when they had it, they only used to site missiles in, and one war-torn strip of moonlike high ground which for 20 years was used solely to lob shells onto farm settlements below.

…. They are hundreds of millions of people. Israel is three million. They are rolling in admittedly unequally distributed money: Israel survives back-breaking taxes, sweat and charity. They possess thousands upon thousands of square miles of territory, not a fraction of which they know what to do with; Israel has, and is holding on to with her teeth, a sliver of land the size of Wales, which even the Foreign Office’s most rabid Arabist cannot claim the Jews have not earned, deserved and done well by. Apart from that sliver, there are “buffer areas”, bravely fought for and as we now see, absolutely essential for Israel’s survival. It is these two God-forsaken lumps of land that the Arabs are now saving their faces by fighting for. Could really civilized people think this worth what it is costing?

I won’t deny that one can see some right and justification on the Arab side, if one is able to preserve a total detachment. But in the present desperate situation, it is beyond me how any person, or any government, can do this. Young Jewish men, raised up in a country that I so deeply love, with such expectations, such shining promise, such an inbuilt probability of contributing to progress and sound thinking and enlightenment, are dying at this moment. I have lived with them, loved them, and taught them [English], and their deaths in this wicked, senseless struggle tear me apart. Let Freya Stark and [anti-Israel Labour MP Christopher] Mayhew and all of them weep for the Arab equivalent, if they can find them. Meanwhile, how can any outsider with any grasp of essentials fail to support Israel? How can the [Heath] Government fail to support it?’

On 23 November 1974 – ten days after the villainous Arafat’s “gun or olive branch” speech to the UN General Assembly, The Times carried a letter from Ms Reid Banks in which she fumed:

“I have been watching your correspondence columns closely, but have not seen a single letter objecting to the appearance before the Assembly of the United Nations of an avowed and flagrant terrorist without a country to represent. I find it very hard to believe you received no such letters, easier to wonder if The Times elected not to publish them.

By the same token I waited until today (November 21) for some mention of the news about UNESCO’s cultural committee calling for sanctions against Israel (for archaeological excavations in her own capital on which completely satisfactory reports have been submitted to the committee by independent experts), or for the reaction this instantly called forth from a group of French intellectuals. Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Paul Sartre and others publicly said they would dissociate themselves from all UNESCO activities unless Israel were reinstated. Was this not hard news? Yet it did not appear, not in your paper and not in others either.

These and other strange omissions have caused me to make some high level inquiries. We all know Fleet Street is in a bad way economically. Could it be that Arab government press offices might not be so willing to pay hugely for supplements and full-page advertisements if editorial matter appeared which was unfavourable to Israel? This is strongly bruited.”

Almost a year later, in a letter to The Times (14 October 1976) Ms Reid Banks joined Oxford scholar Dr Harry [Harold] Shukman and pro-Israel writer Alan Sillitoe in condemning the UN’s “present victimization of one member nation”.

And yet, nowadays, Ms Reid Banks is herself participating in that victimisation. She has lurched from the pro-Israel to the anti-Israel camp, in the most inexplicable and regrettable way.

Perhaps the writing on the wall could be read between the lines in her letter of 20 October 1973 quoted above, in her reference to “some right and justification on the Arab side, if one is able to preserve total detachment”. Yet, Israel is as heroic as ever it was, a beacon of enlightenment in a region of darkness, and its imperilment as dire as ever it was, given Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

When did Lynne Reid Banks’s lurch begin? When did she start to cross the Rubicon? “Parallel Lines,” her article in The Times of 26 February 1994 concerning her decision to visit to Jordan provides a clue:

‘…. There was one special thing I wanted to do, and as my trip proceeded, this goal came to seem not just the quixotic whim it had appeared, even to me, at first, but an important part in the peace process. I always said and believed that nothing will come good until we can make the imaginative leap into our opponent’s point of view.

Brian Keenan, early on in An Evil Cradling, his account of his four years as a hostage in Lebanon, wrote the words that had set me off on this quest: “There are those who ‘cross the Jordan’ and seek out truth through a different experience from the one they are born to, and theirs is the greatest struggle…. Unless we know how to embrace ‘the other’, we are not men, and our nationhood is wilful and adolescent. Those who struggle through the turbulent Jordan waters have gone beyond the glib definitions of politics or religion. The rest remain standing on either bank, firing guns at one another.”

Now, with peace at last seriously on the Middle East agenda, this need of mine, to put myself into the enemy’s eye-sockets, if not into his heart and passions, seemed no less compelling but more….’

And so these days Lynne Reid Bank’s name can be found appended to full-page advertisements in London newspapers denouncing Israel.

Note this. in an interview she gave to The Times (published 13 August 1984) she explained that she had not become a Jew. “I regard the idea of converting to Judaism as a complete nonsense,” she stated. “You can sympathize with, be part of and learn about, but you cannot ever be Jewish – it is just not possible.” She added: “I think I’m more use to them as an unrepentant Gentile.”

Yet what does this “unrepentant Gentile” do now that she’s joined the ranks of the Israel-bashers? Why, she signs full page ads containing such statements as

“We, the undersigned Jews in Britain, affirm our opposition to the continuing occupation, call upon the British Government to use its influence in Washington and the Middle East to bring the occupation to a rapid end” (Independent Jewish Voices, “A Time to Speak Out – Now!”, The Times, 19 November 2008);

“We, Jews who insist on the humanity of all, regardless of race and creed …” (Jews for Justice for Palestinians, “Stop the Slaughter!” full page ad., The Times, 14 January 2009)

And, in The Times of 1 December 2009, her name appeared beneath a full-page “Open Letter to [then Prime Minister] Gordon Brown” (by members of Independent Jewish Voices, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Jewish Writers Against the Occupation, Jewish Socialist Group, and Jewish Writers Against the Occupation ) excoriating Israel and supporting the Goldstone Report.

The woman who once railed so justifiably against UNESCO’s victimisation of the Jewish State also signed the noxious statement headed “Our cultural boycott of Israel starts now” that appeared in The Guardian on 13 February 2015: [https://artistsforpalestine.org.uk/2015/02/13/guardian-our-cultural-boycott-of-israel-starts-now/] and which announced so egotistically:

‘Along with more than 600 other fellow artists, we are announcing today that we will not engage in business-as-usual cultural relations with Israel. We will accept neither professional invitations to Israel, nor funding, from any institutions linked to its government. Since the summer war on Gaza, Palestinians have enjoyed no respite from Israel’s unrelenting attack on their land, their livelihood, their right to political existence. “2014,” says the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, was “one of the cruellest and deadliest in the history of the occupation.” The Palestinian catastrophe goes on. Israel’s wars are fought on the cultural front too. Its army targets Palestinian cultural institutions for attack, and prevents the free movement of cultural workers. Its own theatre companies perform to settler audiences on the West Bank – and those same companies tour the globe as cultural diplomats, in support of “Brand Israel”. During South African apartheid, musicians announced they weren’t going to “play Sun City”. Now we are saying, in Tel Aviv, Netanya, Ashkelon or Ariel, we won’t play music, accept awards, attend exhibitions, festivals or conferences, run masterclasses or workshops, until Israel respects international law and ends its colonial oppression of the Palestinians.’

When I told a friend that I was writing this Elder post on the subject of Ms Reid Banks’s lurch from an arch-champion of Israel into a foe, my friend, noting her advanced aged, suggested “Perhaps she’s gone senile”. I am not so sure. Still, I find that that explanation for her volte-face has also occurred to others, such as this exchange by commenters regarding the above announcement [https://disqus.com/home/discussion/harrysplace/british_artists_respond/]:

Commenter One:

“I have to admit I was quite shocked and upset to see Lynne Reid Banks on the list. I read "The L-Shaped Room" in 1978 while travelling in Europe and Israel and enjoyed it immensely. She was very familiar with Israel, lived there on kibbutz for 8 years and it showed in her work. She's quite old now so perhaps senility has set in. It's one thing for an artist who clearly identified with Israel's left to be critical of a right-wing government, but quite another to sign on to a cultural boycott. I am sad and disgusted, and find myself hoping it's dementia, which is sad in itself.”

Commenter Two:

“Without being able to go into specifics, I know something of Lynne Reid Banks' behaviour in respect of obligations to her Jewish family connections which show her in a less than wonderful and egocentric light. I'm not in the least surprised by her being on this list. She severed her connections with Israel long ago. The Israel she was interested in is a fantasy of kibbutz life that might have been credible in 1962 but is long past.

Commenter One (again)

‘By her action signing this petition, I wouldn't question anything you've written. What a dreadful "journey" (god how I hate that word) she's been on since then.’

Commenter Three

“That was my reaction too. Hers was the only name that took me aback.”

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04/19 Links Pt1: 11 still hospitalized, 1 critical, after Jerusalem bombing; Biden blasts Israel at JStreet hours after bus bombing

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Celebrating Terrorism, Palestinian Style

The public statements of the Palestinian leaders and groups after the Jerusalem terror attack are yet another sign of how they continue to incite their people against Israel. These are the type of statements that prompt Palestinian men and women to grab a knife (or in this case an explosive device) and set out to kill the first Jew they run into.
The major obstacle to peace with Israel remains the absence of education for peace with Israel. In fact, it is safe to say that there never was a real attempt on the part of Palestinian leaders and factions to prepare their people for peace with Israel. On the contrary, the message they send to their people remains extremely anti-Israel.
The incitement, threats and fiery rhetoric will only lead to more violence. For now, all indications are that the Palestinians are headed towards upgrading the "Knife Intifada" to a wave of bombings against civilian targets inside Israel. Judging from the reactions of the various Palestinian factions and activists, support for terror attacks against Israel is so widespread among Palestinians that they are prepared to celebrate the bombing of a bus carrying civilians. This casts doubt on the Palestinian leadership's and people's willingness to move toward peace and coexistence with Israel.

PMW: Fatah praise for bus bombing in Jerusalem

Yesterday, a terror attack took place in Jerusalem when a bomb exploded on a bus, injuring 21 people. The attack follows 6 months of Palestinian attacks that have included stabbings, shootings, and car rammings, in which 34 Israelis have been murdered and nearly 400 injured. No one has yet claimed responsibility for yesterday’s attack.
Fatah chose to respond to the news of the attack with words of praise and celebration. Fatah posted on its official Facebook page an announcement from a division of its military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, in the Gaza Strip. In the announcement, the Brigades “bless” the attack, referring to it as “good news of victory,” and praising the fact that “dozens of Zionists were injured”:
“The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades bless the self-sacrificing operation (i.e., bombing of a bus on April 18, 2016) in Jerusalem. For our Jerusalem and our Al-Aqsa Mosque, the good news of victory keeps arriving today, in a display we have not seen in a long time - a bus bombing operation in the occupied city of Jerusalem, in which dozens of Zionists were injured.”
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Donia Al-Watan, and Ma’an (independent Palestinian news agencies), April 18, 2016]

Magda Haroun is the almost psychotically anti-Zionist leader of the remaining tiny Jewish community of Egypt, which now has only eight members, all of whom besides her are women over 80 years old.

This was the woman whose father sacrificed the life of her sister rather than leave a country that hated him.

In a new interview she confirms again that she considers Israel her enemy. But when asked if she has any contact with the hated Jewish state, she admits a tiny amount:

Israel regards me one of its biggest enemies and there is no communication with them, we are Egyptians and are adamant in support for our country and our position on Israel, which as the position of any Egyptian, is that there is no contact with Israel, except bring the kind of bread without yeast that was made in the Arab Republic of Egypt in the past that we eat at the festival of Passover; there is a Jewish organization to help the Jewish poor people sends this to us at the Israeli embassy in Cairo, and we fully insist on paying for it.

I'm honestly surprised that she doesn't try to get her matzah from the US or England.

Haroun, when asked if her family had any objections to marrying a Muslim, said "of course not."

She also says that she is against taking any of the Egyptian Judaic texts and objects out of Egypt, saying that it is all part of Egyptian heritage.

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Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades has ridiculed the IDF's discovery of a terror tunnel that reached perhaps 150 meters into Israel.

In a statement released yesterday, they said that the tunnel discovery represents only a "drop in the ocean" of what Hamas has prepared against Israel "n order to defend its people, the liberation of holy places and the land and its captives."

The Hamas statement said that it took Israel months, thousands of soldiers, lots of money and top engineering talent to discover this single tunnel and even so it was too afraid to say all the details of what it found, which would make Israel look foolish. "The Qassam Brigades reserves the right to publish, in good time, all the details that the enemy hid."

Much of this is bravado, of course. It takes far more effort to build tunnels that are 30 meters (100 feet) underground than it takes to destroy them, and if Israel has found the means to reliably discover them then Hamas has wasted a lot of time and money.

And Gaza residents are unhappy with Hamas' spending all these resources on tunnels. Maariv reports that Gazans are glad that Israel discovered this tunnel because their hatred of Hamas is rising, but they don't dare speak out publicly. People interviewed for the story are complaining that they have children with advanced degrees who cannot find jobs and families who cannot afford to eat chicken while Hamas spends millions on tunnels that wouldn't help them win any wars. But they cannot speak out in public because they would be arrested.

People are even saying that they preferred living under Israeli rule because at least then they had food and jobs. And while the article doesn't mention it, it is obvious that the cement that is meant for ordinary Gazans is going to build these tunnels.

The divergence between Hamas' bravado and Gazan reality keeps widening.

(h/t Yoel)

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The Temple Mount camera fiasco will hurt the Palestinians

Last month, the Jordan Times wrote:

The Israeli occupation authorities and right wing cannot prevent Jordan from installing surveillance cameras in Al Aqsa Mosque/Al Haram Al Sharif compound, Government Spokesperson Mohammad Momani said on Monday.

The goal of installing the cameras is to preserve the identity of Al Aqsa and record any violations by Israeli extremists and the Israeli occupation forces, Momani said.

The Jerusalem Awqaf Department, which is affiliated with the Awqaf Ministry, will be in charge of the cameras through a control room, he noted, stressing the legal, moral and religious importance of this step, aimed at safeguarding holy sites against Israeli acts of aggression.

By installing the cameras, Jordan seeks to document these violations and enable 1.7 billion Muslims to follow what is happening in the courtyards of Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest shrine, on the Internet, Momani said.

Palestinians should love that, right? After all, they said that Jews violating the sanctity of the Al Aqsa Mosque was the entire reason they started stabbing random Jews to begin with - why wouldn't they want documentation of these rampaging Jews?

As Khaled Abu Toameh wrote last November, here's why:

Shortly after Israel accepted the idea, the Palestinian Authority rushed to denounce it as a "new trap." PA Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki and other officials in Ramallah expressed concern that Israel would use the cameras to "arrest Palestinians under the pretext of incitement."

During the past two years, the Palestinian Authority and other parties, including Hamas and the Islamic Movement (Northern Branch) in Israel, have been waging a campaign of incitement against Jewish visits to the Haram al-Sharif. The campaign claimed that Jews were planning to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque.

In an attempt to prevent Jews from entering the approximately 37-acre (150,000 m2) site, the Palestinian Authority and the Islamic Movement in Israel hired scores of Muslim men and women to harass the Jewish visitors and the police officers escorting them. The men are referred to as Murabitoun, while the women are called Murabitat (defenders or guardians of the faith).

These men and women have since been filmed shouting and trying to assault Jews and policemen at the Haram al-Sharif. This type of video evidence is something that the Palestinian Authority is trying to avoid. The PA, together with the Islamic Movement, wants the men and women to continue harassing the Jews under the pretext of "defending" the Al-Aqsa Mosque from "destruction" and "contamination."

The installation of surveillance cameras at the site will expose the aggressive behavior of the Murabitoun and Murabitat, and show the world who is really "desecrating" the Islamic holy sites and turning them into a base for assaulting and abusing Jewish visitors and policemen.

The cameras are also likely to refute the claim that Jews are "violently invading" Al-Aqsa Mosque and holding prayers at the Temple Mount. The Palestinian Authority, Hamas and the Islamic Movement have long been describing the Jewish visits as a "provocative and violent incursion" into Al-Aqsa Mosque. But now the cameras will show that Jews do not enter Al-Aqsa Mosque, as the Palestinians have been claiming.

Another reason the Palestinians are opposed to King Abdullah's idea is their fear that the cameras would expose that Palestinians have been smuggling stones, firebombs and pipe bombs into Al-Aqsa Mosque for the past two years. These are scenes at the PA, Hamas and the Islamic Movement do not want the world to see: they show who is really "contaminating" the Haram al-Sharif. Needless to say, no Jewish visitors have thus far been caught trying to smuggle such weapons into the holy site.

And he has been proven to be 100% right. Al Monitor reported three weeks ago:

Kamal al-Khatib, deputy head of the Islamic Movement in the 1948 occupied territories, told Al-Monitor, “We do not doubt the Jordanian intentions, but we think that these cameras will help Israel watch believers who deter the settlers’ incursions into Al-Aqsa mosque [compound].”

He added, “Internet networks in Jerusalem are connected to the Israeli communication networks, and Israel’s security system is capable of unlocking the cameras and watching what is on them, thanks to Israel’s advanced techniques. This would allow the latter to observe the defenders and believers at Al-Aqsa.”

Hassan Khater, head of the Jerusalem International Center and former director of the Islamic-Christian Commission For the Support of Jerusalem and Holy Sites, told Al-Monitor that Jerusalem’s Palestinian citizens reject the camera installation because of their bad experiences in the past. “Although the cameras [can be] beneficial, their disadvantages outweigh their advantages, especially in terms of security and pursuit of believers,” he said. The camera installation will have serious repercussions, as it will facilitate Israeli settlers' raids and lead to the pursuit of Al-Aqsa frequenters who try to deter them, he said.

The "defenders and believers" are the Mourabitoun who violently try to prevent Jews from peacefully visiting their holiest site. And cameras would expose what we've known all along.

After all, there are many hours of footage of Jews quietly visiting the Temple Mount taken by Muslims on YouTube. And there are many hours of footage from the same sources showing the Muslims acting aggressively and violently towards the Jews.

Jordan and the other Arab countries heard all the Palestinian propaganda about how Jews are "storming Al Aqsa" and they thought that it was a slam dunk to place cameras on the site to catch the Jews in the act. What they didn't quite realize was that their Palestinian brethren have been lying about this for years, and that they are the ones whose violent actions would have been caught by the cameras.

The entire "knife intifada" was built on a lie and the cameras would have proven that.

Now the Palestinians have convinced the Jordanians to drop the camera plan, and you just know that the Jordanians are a little less sympathetic towards the Palestinians who have been lying to them so egregiously for so long about one of their central claims.

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Hypocrites: Mahmoud Abbas' "moderate" Fatah lavishly praises the bus bombing

The official Fatah Facebook page had two posts about the bus bombing in Jerusalem today.

The first one was an official statement from Fatah, saying that the bombing was a "natural reaction to Israeli practices against the Palestinian people from killing and arrests and the siege and frequent incursions to the Al-Aqsa Mosque."

The statement went on to contradict itself in the next sentence, saying "we do not look for nor do we want violence, but at the same time we want to live in dignity and safety; yet the occupation government's policy is to want to drag the region into a spiral of violence and we warned repeatedly of the Israeli right-wing government saying that their escalating policy will not bring safety and security to the Israelis."

So they pretend to be against violence yet they say that violence is exactly what they expect their people to perform.

Even that pretense of not supporting terror was destroyed by the subsequent post. The official Fatah page chose to publish the statement issued by the Abu Nidal Brigades of Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which praised the bombing without any reservations.

The Fatah terror group called the bombing "a victory" that "led to the injury of dozens of Zionists."

The statement went on to say that this was a "natural response to the crimes of the occupation" and it said that "martyrdom operations are the perfect way to respond to the crimes of the occupation in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem."

The "moderate" terror group went on to call for all its fighters in the West Bank and Jerusalem to "fight the battles with all available means" and expressed joy at the prospect of a resumption of "armed struggle" against Israel.

"It is a revolution until victory," the statement concluded.

The Fatah members behind the Facebook page know very well that by publishing these statements praising suicide bombings, Fatah is condoning it. The audience that follows them understands this as well, and Fatah will never publish anything against terror attacks.

Mahmoud Abbas must be held responsible for the incitement that is seen and heard daily in these groups that he leads. He has never been called to account for his two-faced lies by world leaders or the media, where he claims to want peace to the West but his organization explicitly praises and supports terrorism when talking to his people.

The buck stops with Abbas, the leader of Fatah. Any other national leader would be mercilessly criticized by politicians and media if they tried to play the games that Abbas plays. He should be held to the same standard as any other leader.

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04/18 Links Pt2: Jordan abandons Temple Mount camera plan;

From Ian:

After attack, Netanyahu vows to ‘settle score’ with bus bomber

Gaza Strip-based Palestinian terror group Hamas praised the attack but did not claim responsibility in a statement on its website.
“Hamas welcomes the Jerusalem operation, and considers it a natural reaction to Israeli crimes, especially field executions and the desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
Other Palestinian groups similarly applauded the bomb attack without claiming any hand in it. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad “welcomed” the bombing as did the Popular Resistance Committees, which also called for more attacks.
The bombing was a stark reminder of an attack method commonly used during last decade’s Second Intifada, but which has since become rare as so-called lone-wolf attackers have assaulted Israelis using simpler weapons, such as knives, guns and cars.
Police did not say if they had any leads on who was responsible for the bombing of the number 12 bus, which wounded 21 people, and no terror group took responsibility for the attack in the immediate aftermath.
But Netanyahu said Israeli forces would locate and punish those responsible.
“We will find out who placed the bomb, we will reach those who dispatched them and we will also get to those who stand behind them, and settle the account with these terrorists,” he said.
The prime minister also sent wishes for a speedy recovery to those injured in the bombing.

Jordan abandons plan to install cameras on Temple Mount

Following fierce Palestinian protests and threats, Jordan said on Monday that it has abandoned its plan to install security cameras at the Temple Mount.
The decision to drop the plan was announced by Jordanian Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour.
The security cameras were supposed to be installed at the Temple Mount in accordance with an agreement reached late last year between Israel and Jordan under the auspices of US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Ensure said that Jordan would “always remain at the forefront of those defending Palestine, its cause, people and holy sites.”
Last week, Palestinian activists distributed leaflets at the Temple Mount warning Jordan against the installation of the security cameras. The leaflets urged Palestinians to break the cameras when and if they are installed.
The Islamic Movement - Northern Branch in Israel, headed by Sheikh Raed Salah, has also voiced strong opposition to the installment of the security cameras at the Temple Mount.
The Palestinians argue that the cameras would be used by Israel to identify and arrest Muslim worshipers and activists opposed to visits by Jews to the Temple Mount. In recent months, scores of male and female activists calling themselves murabitoun and murabitat have been harassing non-Muslims touring the Temple Mount under police protection.

False Moral Equivalence as a Tool to Demonize Israel

False moral equivalence is one of a series of major fallacies. False moral equivalence comparing Israel's actions to those of the Nazis was used by several prominent social-democratic politicians, including French President François Mitterrand, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme and Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou.
Another example of false moral equivalence is calling Israel an Apartheid State. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter made this comparison in his 2006 book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid -- which incorporates the false moral equivalence in its title.
The false comparison between Zionism and racism has been repeated countless times through United Nations and UN-sponsored declarations and conferences.
Another category of moral equivalence pretends that the intended murder of innocent civilians is equal to the accidental deaths of civilians in targeted assassinations.

From the official Palestinian WAFA news agency:

Presidential Spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh Sunday stated that the Israeli government is plunging the whole region into endless violence and chaos.

Speaking to Palestine TV from Moscow, Abu Rudenieh stated that uncommon and clear political positions would be taken within the next few days or weeks with regards to the Question of Palestine, which stands at a serious crossroads.

Describing President Mahmoud Abbas’ visit to Moscow as “highly significant,” he explained that moves and decisions would be soon taken by the Palestinian leadership in coordination with key European states and Moscow in order not to allow the current status quo continue.

He noted that the Israeli government should halt all of its measures and abandon its positions that had been detrimental to the peace process and stressed that Israeli government’s policies, coupled with the United States’ incapacity and international withdrawal from solving the Question of Palestine, could no longer be tolerated.

“We warn that the lack of a solution to the Question of Palestine would serve to fuel more violence, chaos and terrorism worldwide,” he stated.

He urged major world powers to reconsider their total bias in favor of the Israeli government which is plunging the whole region into endless violence, devastation and problems.

Abbas arrived to Moscow on Sunday afternoon for a two-day diplomatic visit, where he is scheduled to meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Monday, to address Arab League’s efforts to obtain a UN Security Council resolution against Israeli settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian Territories.

Abbas and Putin are set to discuss the organization of an international peace conference to address the Question of Palestine.

Apart from Abu Rudeineh, Abbas is accompanied by Secretary-General of PLO Executive Committee Saed Erekat, Foreign Minister Riyad al-Mlaiki, Presidential Advisor on Diplomatic Affairs Majdi al-Khalidi and Palestinian Ambassador to Russia Abd al-Hafith Nofal.

Once again, the message being given from Mahmoud Abbas is that without pressuring Israel to give him everything he demands, there will continue to be terrorism and war throughout the world.

So far no Western leader hasn't answered with any of the obvious responses:

1. How exactly will Israel's caving to demands stop fighting in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, for starters?
2. If the lack of peace is causing war, then your adamant refusal to meet with Israeli leaders should mean that you are partially responsible for wars in the region too, aren't you?
3. You are making it sound a lot like you are going to ensure that terrorism will be around unless you are satisfied with Israeli concessions. How is this different from a mob-style threat?
4. If you declare that you are satisfied with Israeli peace moves, does that mean that everything will be peaceful? What about your more hawkish opponents like Hamas?
5. If you have so much influence over your own people and the Arab world to be the one who decides what concessions are enough, then why aren't you using that influence to create an environment of peace today?

This is a blackmail playing to the world's fears of irrational Muslim terror, and Abbas is happy to exploit those fears to extract concessions from frightened world leaders grasping at straws to hope that by some magic, an Israel-Palestinian peace agreement would take the wind out of the sails of the Islamic State and Boko Haram.

And Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have veto power over any peace agreement Abbas comes up with.

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A new major survey of youth in Arab countries found that the Palestinian issue didn't even make the top five concerns they had about their region.

In answering the question "What do you believe is the greatest obstacle facing the Middle East?' the youths cited the rise of ISIS, the threat of terrorism, unemployment, civil unrest and the rising cost of living as their top concerns.

Number six is the lack of a strong political leadership, and only after that comes the Palestinian Israel conflict, in a statistical tie with lack of Arab unity and lack of Arab democracy.

Last year the Palestinian conflict was in fourth place but also with only 23% choosing it as one of their top concerns.

This has been the truth that I've noticed as well. The Palestinians have been trying to raise their profile in the West because they have been losing ground steadily with their own Arab people. But in international forums, Arab states will pay lip service to the Palestinian cause because of pride. In reality,

They don't really care much.

For their part, Palestinian youths - together with those in Iraq and Lebanon - were far more likely to describe the US as their enemy and Iran as their ally, compared to other Arabs. That disconnect between Palestinian attitudes and those of Gulf and Maghreb states could also account for some of the apathy towards the Palestinians that the majority of Arab countries show.

The survey prominently trumpets that an overwhelming majority of Arab youth reject the Islamic State's ideas. That's great, but 13% said that they could be sympathetic to ISIS under some circumstances. That is still over 20 million people!

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