Tuesday, August 02, 2016





Dvora Marcia, my grandmother, was a Palestinian. I have the documents to prove it.
She went to school in Palestine. She grew up in Palestine. Got married, had two boys and worked with her (first) husband in Irgun Hashomer to protect Jewish land from being stolen by Bedouin. My grandmother worked as head secretary in the Israel Diamond Exchange and served as a liaison between members of Israel’s different underground resistance units, helping them pass messages between each other – all for one purpose… to free Palestine.
From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free!
Free from the British. Free to return to her natural state. To return to being what she always was – Israel, Zion.
My grandmother went to America to lobby for the foundation of the State of Israel. She distributed pamphlets and spoke on the radio. She spoke passionately in front of a number of different audiences, raising money and awareness for the plight of the people of Palestine.
My grandmother was a freedom fighter. Not a terrorist, she was a real freedom fighter, fighting for the right of her people, the Jewish people, to live freely in their homeland.
It was hearing my grandmother speak on the radio that compelled my grandfather to seek her out. He felt he had to meet her. Once I asked him why he, born in to a non-practicing Christian family, was interested and so moved by my grandmother’s plea to free Palestine and help the Jewish people rebuild their homeland.
He is answer was: “Because I thought that Jewish blood was worth more than Arab oil.”
He then went on to tell me that, when he finally found her, it took him a total of 3 seconds to realize that he had to marry her. It wasn’t long before he did, becoming her second husband.
My grandparents danced in the streets of New York celebrating their joy over the end of the British Mandate and the official establishment of the State of Israel. Shortly afterwards, they left America and moved to Israel. My mother was born in Jaffa.
My grandmother, the Palestinian, had an Israeli daughter.
In a time when the world seems to have gone insane, everything is topsy turvy. Black is white, up is down and facts that were once understood by all have now become extremely confusing and too complicated to comprehend.
Palestine.
Palestine is a name given to the Land of Israel for the sole purpose of disconnecting the Jewish people from Judea, from Israel, from Zion. This was done in the 2nd century CE, when the Romans crushed the revolt of Shimon Bar Kokhba (132 CE), and gained control of Jerusalem and Judea which was renamed Palaestina in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. After World War I, the name “Palestine” was applied to the territory that was placed under British Mandate; this area included not only present-day Israel but also present-day Jordan. Leading up to Israel’s independence in 1948, it was common for the international press to label Jews, not Arabs, living in the mandate as Palestinians.
Words give meaning and form to reality, thus names are of vast importance. It is obvious that Jews belong in Judea, but who belongs in Palestine?
Palestine is and always was, a politically motivated name. It is a name that is meant to denigrate and destroy the Jewish connection to her homeland.
If you will – calling Israel, “Palestine” is the original hate speech.
And today, out of nowhere, there suddenly is a new people called “Palestinians” and they are demanding “Palestine” for themselves. And most people in the world go along with this story, furthering a narrative that is a perversion of history and one that steals and makes a mockery of the efforts my Palestinian grandmother and thousands of others like her to reinstate Palestine to her rightful status of being recognized for who she really is and always was – Israel.
It’s probably the biggest media stunt in the history of the world. And everyone has accepted it. The world has recognized that there is a “Palestinian people” and they no longer mean what this term always meant – Jews.
Any people, the world agrees, has the right to self-determination (unless they are Kurds or Tibetan). Suddenly it becomes reasonable to give “Palestine” to the “Palestinians.”
When Palestine, Texas was named, its founders were not thinking about an Arab nation. Neither were the people of Palestine, Illinois. They were thinking of Zion, the country who America’s founders modeled her after.
The “Palestinian narrative” is one big commercial that the world has swallowed, hook, line and sinker. This is based on the premises that if you repeat a lie enough times people begin to believe it. If enough believe it becomes fact.
But the facts are that there are Jews and there are Arabs. There are Israeli Arabs, Jordanian Arabs, Syrian, Lebanese and Egyptian Arabs. There are Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs.
Arab “Palestinians” are a nationality invented to facilitate and justify cleansing Jews from Israel.
The “Palestinians” are stealing my history in order to steal my land. Stealing my land is one step before my annihilation. Without Israel there is no Jewish people. The “Palestinians” are claiming my history as their own. Denying my roots, to deny my future.
Words are powerful. Every single person who uses the terminology as defined by the Arabs who wish to establish the State of Palestine is complicit.
Every time you say “Palestinian” and don’t mean the Jews who were striving to free their land from occupiers you are complicit. Every time you utter the word “Palestine” you are denying my past, my roots and worse, you are denying my future.
You are literally, wiping Israel off the map.
We have all been complicit. It is time to change our language and return to the factual, historical definitions. Before it is too late (if it is not already too late).
It’s really not that complicated. Palestine was always Israel. Palestinians were Jews.

For the love of Zion, my grandmother was a Palestinian.


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From Ian:

PMW: PA TV falsifies video and lies to its viewers
A Palestinian father pushed his 4-year-old son toward armed Israeli soldiers on Friday, encouraging his son to throw stones at the soldiers. At the same time, he taunted the Israeli soldiers to shoot at his son, calling out to them: "Shoot this little boy, after all you always do that to small children."
However, when the little boy reached one of the Israeli soldiers, the soldier stretched out his hand to the boy who immediately "high fived" and shook the soldier's hand. Finally, when the boy fulfilled his father's instructions to throw stones, he threw the stones at the empty field and not at the soldiers.
Palestinian Media Watch has viewed two video versions of this incident. The unedited version appears as described above and was published on the Facebook page of Israeli Army Spokesperson and Head of the Foreign Press Branch Lt. Col. Peter Lerner. However, official PA TV did not want its viewers to see a friendly handshake between a young Palestinian child and an Israeli soldier, so they distorted the footage. In slow motion, PA TV showed the Israeli soldier reaching out his hand to the Palestinian boy, but then jumped a few seconds ahead so it seems as if the boy never shook the soldier's hand. The PA TV reporter completed the deception by lying to the viewers, claiming the boy refused to shake hands with the soldier:
PA TV falsifies video to hide handshake between Israeli soldier and boy


Palestinian Child Terrorists: Children Who Kill and Their Adult Enablers
The most recent wave of Palestinian terrorism that began in September 2015 – a wave of stabbings and knifings now being emulated in European cities – has a particularly grotesque feature: child terrorists.
Palestinian children who directly perpetrate acts of terrorism, including murder, violate the most fundamental of human rights: the right to life. The Palestinian adults who encourage Palestinian child terrorism violate one of the most fundamental rights of the child: the right not to take part in armed conflict or hostilities.
The Palestinian Authority has supported its claim that "Palestine" is ready for statehood, and responded to the UN General Assembly's formal recognition of "non-member observer state" status of the "State of Palestine," by formally acceding to international legal prohibitions on children in armed conflict.
In violation of those legal obligations there have been at least 36 separate terrorist attacks by Palestinian children...
The Secretary-General's report is due to be taken up by the Security Council on Tuesday, August 2, 2016.
Abbas and the strategy of falsehood
The State of Israel would have been established with or without the Balfour Declaration. As David Ben-Gurion, then-chairman of the Jewish Agency, testified before a royal British committee in 1937, "Our right to Eretz Israel does not derive from the [British] mandate and the Balfour Declaration. It predates those. ... The Bible, which was written by us, in our own Hebrew language and in this very country, is our mandate."
Abbas certainly knows that the founding of the State of Israel was not the result of the Balfour Declaration, but raising these claims about the declaration, within the legal and historical spectrums, is meant to give weight to the claim that the founding of the State of Israel supposedly robbed the Palestinian "nation" of its land, its sovereignty and its historical purpose.
Nonetheless, this is not just about rewriting history, but practical tactics, because if the validity of the Balfour Declaration is undermined, the logical conclusion is that the Jews do not have a right to a state in any part of "Palestine," not even within the framework of "two states for two peoples."
This, by the way, is also the intention of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, which is raging in different parts of the world, including in the U.S., and is not a struggle against the "occupation," but rather meant to undermine the right of the State of Israel to exist. This sentiment is the only reason Abbas refuses to hold true peace negotiations with Israel and various Arab leaders throughout recent decades rejected all the agreements and compromises offered by the State of Israel, the Zionist entities that preceded her or other international bodies. One of the lessons we should learn from all this is that the Palestinians' disregard for international agreements puts the value of any agreements with them into question.

  • Tuesday, August 02, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
My fascinating interview with Harold Rhode continues, as he discusses the difference between how Muslims and Westerners think using some basic examples from vocabulary.

And, no, Salaam does not mean what Shalom means.






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  • Tuesday, August 02, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry issued a statement condemning Israel adding some sort of electronic gate to the entrance of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

But this is an excuse for the PA to rail against the idea that Jews have any rights whatsoever in their holiest shrines.

The statement says, "Since the occupation of the city in 1967, the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron has suffered daily provocations and attacks by the ultra-radicals, with the backing of the occupation authorities and its political and military institutions, without any regard for the feelings of Muslims...The ministry believes that these provocative racist actions inflame sentiments and creates more tension, and therefore the Ministry of Foreign Affairs holds the occupying power and the government's right-wing responsible for the repercussions of its violations against the Islamic and Christian holy sites, especially targeted to the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron."

In short, Jews can do anything they want - except things that might offend any Muslim for any reason. Praying, peacefully strolling, wearing a hat, singing a song, pushing a baby carriage, breathing - anything that any Jew does that offends any Muslim for any reason should be forbidden. And any violent action that Muslims do in response is clearly the fault of Jews for having the temerity to provoke the Muslim to violence by his or her existence.

If Jews assert any rights that Muslims find offensive, then the Muslim desire not to be offended is far more important than Jews having basic human rights. Every Muslim should have veto power over any action done by a Jew on the grounds of the inviolate Muslim right  to go through life without being offended.

This is hardly the only press release of its type by the Palestinian Authority. This as almost a daily event. But the underlying thought, that Muslims simply cannot tolerate Jews in their midst acting like anything other than meek little mice bowing to their Muslim overlords, is a major theme in the supposedly secular and moderate Palestinian Authority.

It is official antisemitism. And it is accepted by the world.



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  • Tuesday, August 02, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon

The banner that was used in the streets of Nouakchott, Mauritania during last week's Arab Summit there included a logo where the member countries of the League were represented by their respective flags overlaid on the outline of their maps.


Almost immediately, delegates from Morocco heatedly complained that the map of their nation did not include Western Sahara, the occupied territory that they insist is a part of their nation.

Dozens of articles were written about this, as Morocco threatened to boycott, or to refuse to host, future Arab League events.

However, there was very little protest over the map of "Palestine" that only included the West Bank and Gaza, with nothing in between. I only found one article about this in a Palestinian website.


This is usually the sort of thing that would bring a great deal of loud protest from the ever-thin skinned Palestinians. It is highly doubtful that they didn't notice this map, especially after there was a small bit of online chatter about it besides the louder Morocco protest bringing the banner to the attention of the Arab world.

Apparently the Palestinian delegation was already feeling like they are on thin ice with the rest of the Arab League, especially since the support for their cause has been dropping both financially and rhetorically.

The Arab League wants the Palestinian issue to go away, and it could be that the Palestinian delegation calculated that if they would make a fuss over this, it would only take one fed-up Arab League member to say "well, why don't you accept a peace plan already and stop pretending you will destroy Israel?" to have their protest blow up in their faces.

I'm fairly certain I know how the logo happened, though,and it wasn't a direct insult to Morocco and the Palestinian Arabs.

The designer of the banner simply went online to look for a cool Arab League graphic, and found one at a stock photo site:

Mauritanian graphics designers are not likely to be as aware of border issues to double-check the graphics from a Western stock photo house. And Western graphics artists would naturally try to create accurate maps.

(h/t Bob Knot)


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Monday, August 01, 2016

From Reuters:
Palestinian swimmer Mary al-Atrash can't wait to make a splash at the Rio Olympics in August...

The 22-year-old university graduate's preparations have been hampered because she does not have an Olympic-sized pool to train in. There are none in the Palestinian territories and she has to settle for a 25-meter pool.

Use of superior Israeli facilities and training partners in nearby Jerusalem where there are several Olympic-sized pools and many swimmers, has not been possible due to the long-standing conflict with Israel.

Unfortunately, Reuters did not bother to do any fact checks.

Israel's COGAT showed that the story was a lie on July 20, using a Mondoweiss version of the story.

FACT CHECK: Mary al-Atrash CAN train for the Olympics in Jerusalem, if she ever applied for a permit.

The Olympic candidate, Mary al-Atrash, claimed she cannot train for the Rio Olympics due to “Israeli Restrictions”. However, we found Mary never applied for a permit to train in Jerusalem in the first place.

Rather than investigate the truth, it's a shame that media outlets such as Mondoweiss use these stories to paint Israel in a negative light.

We wish Mary the best of luck at the 2016 Rio Olympics and hope she will come train in Jerusalem upon her return.
Reuters wrote its story without asking Israel whether it was true, and it  didn't correct it. Which pretty much tells you all you need to know about Reuters' lack of objectivity.

(CORRECTION: I originally wrote this thinking that Mondoweiss story was written first and Reuters had copied it, but it was the other way around; the Reuters story was June 28, not July 28 as I had mistakenly thought. H/T Simon.)


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From Ian:

David Collier: Facebook. A pipeline for funding Hamas terrorism?
As a target audience, foreign activists are perfect. They are concentrated in a small space. Many are obsessive and almost none check the veracity of the message they are being given. The term ‘like shooting ducks in a barrel’ comes to mind.
Additionally, because Facebook is ‘merely’ a social media platform, anyone can open an account in any name they choose. Beyond an email account which can be set up freely in minutes, you need no documentation whatsoever. Double and triple accounts, deliberate misspelling of names, completely false identities. There are also tell-tale signs in what I did not see. I did not see a single message sent from anyone in the West Bank. None sent by anyone seeking assistance for the Syrian refugees. 100% of the private requests came from Gaza.
As Ami Horovitz found in Portland State University, people are willing to donate directly to Hamas. I cannot be sure of the scale of what is occurring, but I saw dozens in a single Facebook account. Each of them were connected to dozens if not hundreds of other activists. Each activist would have others connected to him. This in every community where BDS operates. Crossing nations, crossing continents. This is a massive industry, and we are potentially talking about millions of dollars.
As the foreign activists are truly duped by the propaganda, how many of them are giving their money online, directly to someone in Gaza? Someone who could well be sitting in a room with other Hamas operatives, all doing the same thing. And remember too, that for every visible project, for each of the crowdfunding pages, there are scores, hundreds, if not thousands of requests, taking place behind closed doors. An entire industry that lives in the shadows.

Israeli sovereignty and Arab responses
A current of political change for Israel is in the air. The moribund "two-state solution," that Prime Minister Netanyahu solemnly and routinely voices, and which the Republican Party has now ignored, can be transcended now by considering new thought and discourse.
Israeli Sovereignty
The justification for Israel formally annexing Judea and Samaria – as was done for East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights – is compelling: the right of an ancient people to the territorial core of its homeland; defending a narrow coastal plain from attack; and denying the emergence of an irredentist Islamic entity from threatening the very existence of Israel.
The imposition of Israeli sovereignty throughout Judea and Samaria, perhaps in stages, would however be a political game-changer evoking deleterious ramifications: domestically, grave dissension between Jewish segments of the population; internally, violent Palestinian resistance; regionally, Arab threats to actively oppose the decision; and internationally, condemnation of Israel and threatened sanctions for violating its legal obligation to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The inconclusive nature of the existing situation could yet prod Israel, while battered with interminable demands to implement a 'two state solution', to initiate a bold new political démarche.

Haaretz keeps digging to new lows.

It published an essay by two anti-Zionist historians why they decided to become anti-Zionist.

The first few paragraphs from Hasia Diner, professor of American Jewish history at NYU, is nothing short of astonishing.

When I was asked to run as a delegate on the progressive Hatikva platform to the 2010 World Zionist Congress, I encountered my personal rubicon, the line I could not cross. I was required to sign the "Jerusalem Program." This statement of principles asked me to affirm that I believed in “the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem as capital” for the Jewish people. It encouraged “Aliyah to Israel,” that is, the classic negation of the diaspora and as such the ending of Jewish life outside a homeland in Israel.

Maybe I'm not as smart as an NYU professor, but I don't read "encouraging Aliyah" as "ending Jewish life everywhere outside Israel." I don't think Israel is placing a gun to the head of Jews in Long Island to move to Tel Aviv, or else.

So the entire argument is a straw-man. But that's the least of the problems with Professor Diner's essay.
The death of vast numbers of Jewish communities as a result of Zionist activity has impoverished the Jewish people, robbing us of these many cultures that have fallen into the maw of Israeli homogenization. The ideal of a religiously neutral state worked amazingly well for the millions of Jews who came to America. 
I wonder what vibrant Jewish communities Israel is responsible for destroying.

Could it be the Jewish communities of Egypt? Iraq? Syria? Yemen? Morocco? Maybe Sweden? Or perhaps she is blaming Zionism for the destruction of Polish and Hungarian Jewry? What happened to them, anyway?

The answers, which every schoolchild knows, call into question the credentials of a history professor who has seemingly no clue why all those Jewish communities don't exist or are nearly extinct, and who blames Israel for their disappearance. In fact, practically the only place that they are preserved is in Israel. (And if she blames Israel for the antisemitism that drove the Jews out of Arab countries, then she is truly hateful - and shallow.)

Diner doesn't give a crap about the survival of the Jewish people or about the "homogenization" of Jews into an Israeli melting pot. These remnants of these communities are here today largely because of Israel. Those Jews no longer have to suffer with massacres, with dhimmitude, with being humiliated daily. What a terrible loss.

On the other hand, gefilte fish  may have never existed if there was no Diaspora. Yay, pogroms!

In fact, Diner herself, in one of  her books, exploded the myth of the Lower East Side as a romantic incubator of the American Jewish experience. "Though largely populated by Jews from Eastern Europe, it was not ethnically or even religiously homogenous. The tenements, grinding poverty, sweatshops, and packs of roaming children were considered the stuff of social work, not nostalgia and romance," say a blurb from her book "Lower East Side Memories: A Jewish Place in America." Yet she apparently holds on to her own personal myths of a flourishing, romantic Diaspora in Europe and the Arab world - but only when she can blame Israel for its disappearance.

I was struck in Israel last month by synagogues that now mix customs of Ashkenazic Jews and those from Arab countries. On Shabbat, I went to a shul that prayed according to the Eastern European custom but used a Torah from Edot Hamizrach which affected how that part of the service was done. Another one I went to took on the custom of whoever happened to be the prayer leader for that particular service - Ashkenaz for mincha, Nusach Sefard for maariv, and some people saying kaddish in the Mizrahi Jewish manner. All at the same minyan.

This "homogenization" is not something to be scorned but to be celebrated - unless you are a clueless NYU professor for whom the Diaspora is the ultimate symbolism of what it means to be Jewish.

The entire reason Jews have different customs is because they were in an unnatural disapora state for so long.  While some customs are quaint and beautiful, the diaspora itself was not. The good customs will remain, others will start, some will disappear. That's what happens in a dynamic, living society. But Professor Diner does not want a dynamic Judaism that has returned to its historic homeland. She wants the museum, fictional Judaism of Fiddler on the Roof.

To Diner, Zionism must be fought because it wants to create a world where Jews are united again and Jews have a nation again.

When one looks at it with a real historical perspective, one sees that Diner's whining has nothing to do with reality. She simply hates Israel and proud Jews. Diner is so bigoted, in fact, that she rails against Haredi Jews, whom she despises so much that she literally "abhors" visiting Israel because she doesn't want to see those damned Jews in their black hats and coats.

If Diner was honest, which of course she isn't, she would admit that her hate for Israel is irrational, and she is justifying it after the fact. There is no real difference between Diner and classic antisemites who also justify their hate with pseudo-moral arguments.

She is a bigot pretending to embrace liberal principals. But hate is what animates her, not a true liberal love for all peoples. What little mask she still has falls off when she reveals:
I feel a sense of repulsion when I enter a synagogue in front of which the congregation has planted a sign reading, “We Stand With Israel.”

Irish flags don't bother her on St. Patrick's day. Italians don't bother her when they march down Fifth Avenue on Columbus Day. West Indians and their costumes don't bother her when they dance down Brooklyn streets on their annual festival.

Only the Israeli flag repulses her.

This is not a rational person, This is a bigoted, despicable person who uses her academic standing as a mask to hide her true, ugly face of hatred.

Of course, she is perfect to write for Haaretz.



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A recent MEMRI report establishes beyond all doubt that the Arab media are infested with rampant Islamophobia – at least by western standards of political correctness… But, speaking seriously, the lengthy report is absolutely worth reading in full. It consists of an introductory summary followed by excerpts (with commentary) of relevant articles authored by three Palestinian writers (two of them living in Britain), three Saudis, two Moroccans, one Jordanian and one Egyptian. 

Much of what these columnists write would not be considered fit to print by highbrow western media outlets. Consider this quote from an article in the London daily Al-Hayat, published on July 17, 2016 in the wake of the devastating terror attack in Nice a few days earlier. The Palestinian writer and academic Khaled Al-Hroub writes:

“Is terrorism attributed to religion related to the religion itself? The answer is yes, because the religion – any religion – is nothing but [a sum of all] explanations and interpretations of sacred texts by clerics... Religious interpretations that can easily be understood to mean that martyrdom means a cheap suicide [inside] a café or club frequented by ‘infidels’ are very common in our religious, educational, and mosque culture, and must be dealt with... What view [can] we develop regarding non-Muslims if every week we hear thousands of preachers call on Allah to ‘not leave a trace of them’? Every day, our sons [and presumably daughters, too? PMB] read texts and books in schools that establish nothing but a patronizing and disrespectful view regarding non-Muslims.”

What I find most remarkable in this passage is that Hroub doesn’t try to diminish the problem, but emphasizes that there are “every week … thousands of preachers” who promote bigotry and hatred as piety. To be sure, relevant material documented by MEMRI would seem to indicate that “thousands of preachers” may still be a somewhat conservative estimate for the entire Muslim world. Reading this MEMRI report I was reminded that about a year ago that, I discovered that even though the Al-Aqsa mosque is usually considered as Islam’s “third-holiest” place, nobody (i.e. no Muslim) seems to be offended that there are apparently fairly regular rants by “preachers” – including perhaps self-appointed ones – who spout the vilest bigotry and hatred imaginable. As I noted in a related post, there seems to be something like a Muslim version of Speakers’ Corner inside the Al-Aqsa mosque, where anyone – meaning, of course, any man – who feels like delivering a hate-filled rant against the Jews and the West can do so freely at Islam’s “third holiest” site. Men and young boys mull around, some stop to listen; but the reaction of the audience shows clearly that no one considers it unusual to come to this supposedly very sacred place of worship and hear sermons demonizing non-Muslims and exalting Islam as destined for the bloody – and divinely ordained – subjugation of the non-Muslim world. And of course, western media have no interest whatsoever in covering any of this, even though such coverage could arguably contribute greatly to a better understanding of one of the media’s favorite topics: Israel and the hostility the Jewish state faces from the Palestinians and the wider Arab and Muslim world.



But in a sense, none of this is really news: whatever a low-ranking or self-appointed preacher at the Al-Aqsa mosque’s Speakers’ Corner may say, similarly hate-filled sermons and teachings have also been given by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the most influential Muslim clerics with an audience of many millions of Muslims worldwide. As Jeffrey Goldberg pointed out in a 2011 Atlantic article with the fitting title “Sheikh Qaradawi Seeks Total War,” an analysis of Qaradawi’s “Fatwas on Palestine” by Mark Gardner and Dave Rich shows “that this putatively moderate Islamic cleric argues clearly and consistently that hatred of Israel and Jews is Islamically sanctioned, and that the destruction of Israel is mandated by God.”  

Qaradawi has described the notorious hadith quoted in the Hamas Charter (i.e. “The last day will not come unless you fight Jews. A Jew will hide himself behind stones and trees and stones and trees will say, ‘O servant of Allah – or O Muslim - there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him’”) as “one of the miracles of our Prophet,” and he has calmly explained:

“[W]e believe that the battle between us and the Jews is coming ... Such a battle is not driven by nationalistic causes or patriotic belonging; it is rather driven by religious incentives. This battle is not going to happen between Arabs and Zionists, or between Jews and Palestinians, or between Jews or anybody else. It is between Muslims and Jews as is clearly stated in the hadith. This battle will occur between the collective body of Muslims and the collective body of Jews i.e. all Muslims and all Jews.”

In the meantime, it has apparently dawned on some Arab-Muslim commentators that Qaradawi’s widely  accepted militancy on all things to do with Jews is backfiring:

“Sheikh Al Qaradawi permitted the use of suicide bombing as a defensive tactic against Israel […] Practically speaking, though, the fatwa has had far wider consequences. It has been used by extension to justify suicide bombing against fellow Muslims. Of course, Al Qaeda and other extremists have no shortage of fatwas to vindicate their practices. But the danger of fatwas issued by otherwise moderate clerics is that they normalise suicide bombings, regardless of the circumstances.”

So even for Muslims it seems to be true that “[the] hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews.”
Which brings me back to the MEMRI report that cites a Saudi (!) writer who thinks that terror groups like the Islamic State (ISIS) do have quite a bit to do with Islam:

“Today, it is more urgent than ever to renew the [Islamic] religious discourse in form, content, and goals... since Muslims have become confused, as many issues that were once considered uncontroversial principles are now banned in accordance to the norms set by the modern world, such as slavery for prisoners of war, offensive jihad, and so on.”

Among the “many issues that were once considered uncontroversial principles” is arguably also the Jew-hatred reflected in the notorious hadith that is quoted in the Hamas Charter, and that Qaradawi wants to uphold so faithfully. The problem is that this is a saying attributed to Muhammad himself, and given that Islam’s founder fought local Jewish tribes, it is perhaps all too easy to imagine that he projected his own troubles with the Jews to the end of history. This touches on what is arguably the fundamental problem of Islam: that it is a religion founded by a person whom Muslims revere as the most perfect man who ever lived – giving Muhammad in fact a Jesus-like status (minus the idea that he was God’s son) – but who was also a warlord who founded a rapidly expanding and immensely successful empire.


I expect that some of the related problems are addressed in Shadi Hamid’s new book on “Islamic Exceptionalism” – a book I’ve bought but not yet read; though on the basis of what I’ve read about it, I’m doubtful that I will agree with Hamid that “‘Islamic exceptionalism’is neither good nor bad. It just is.” I’m afraid that at least for our time, I can see plenty of evidence to support the conclusion that “Islamic exceptionalism” is pretty bad.



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From Ian:

Abbas Sues History. Not a Parody.
But there is more to this than just a diplomatic evasion. By focusing on Balfour and treating it as illegal, what the Palestinians are doing is rejecting the very legitimacy of the Jewish presence anywhere in the country. It is not for nothing that Abbas has often referred to pre-1967 Israel as being occupied territory rather than just the West Bank.
For years, those intent on pressuring Israel into making more territorial concessions to the Palestinians have tried to claim that “moderates” like Abbas truly want peace. But every peace negotiation or Israeli gesture such as Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal of every soldier, settler, and settlement from Gaza in 2005 hasn’t budged the Palestinians from the same intransigent position they’ve held since they rejected Balfour, the Mandate, and the 1947 UN partition plan.
So rather than merely a nonsensical diversion into fantasy, the Palestinian lawsuit illustrates the plain fact that their goal remains reversing the verdict of history altogether; not merely a demand for an Israeli pullout from the West Bank and Jerusalem. This reflects the state of Palestinian public opinion and the fact that their national identity has remained intrinsically tied to the century-old war against Zionism. Not until they give up this futile quest will peace be possible–something that the majority of Israelis already understand but which has eluded the U.S. government and many liberal American Jews.
As the Obama administration and the Europeans plot their next move to pressure Israel into making the same mistake in the West Bank that Sharon made in Gaza, they ought to be paying attention to the signals Abbas is sending to the world. So long as the Palestinians are still trying to erase Balfour, the idea that they are prepared to accept the state of Israel is the real joke.

Khaled Abu Toameh: A Guide to the Palestinian Lexicon
Many Palestinians refer to cities inside Israel proper as "occupied." Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Tiberias, Ramle and Lod, for example, are often described in the Palestinian media as "Palestinian Cities" or "Occupied Cities." Jews living in these cities, as well as other parts of Israel, are sometimes referred to as "Settlers."
Many Palestinians have still not come to terms with Israel's right to exist. For them, this not only about the "occupation" of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. The real "occupation", for them, began with the creation of Israel in 1948.
Non-Arabic speakers may find this assertion baseless, because what they hear and read from Palestinian representatives in English does not reflect the messages being relayed to Palestinians in Arabic.
It is no secret that Palestinian leaders have failed to prepare their people for peace with Israel, and deny its right to exist.
What the Arab League Meeting Reveals
The Arab League's precipitous decline in political clout was symbolically exposed by the failure of many key national leaders to attend the conference. The leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Tunisia did not attend. Only eight national leaders from the 22-member organization attended the conference.
However, the most significant aspect of this year's conference was the downgrading in significance of Palestinian issues on the agenda. Perhaps aware of this development, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas also decided not to attend. However, PA Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad al-Maliki explained that Abbas could not attend due to the recent death of his brother. Later, Maliki, somewhat quixotically, called upon the Arab League to help sponsor a UN Resolution to initiate a lawsuit against the United Kingdom for having embraced the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which made it official London policy to support the creation of a national home for the Jewish People.
Nevertheless, when the representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hectored delegates that they no longer seem to treat the depressed state of the Palestinian people as the overriding issue that should unite all Arabs, his pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears. The PFLP gave public evidence of the Palestinian issue's fall from priority, stating on their website that "this year's resolutions are no more than a carbon copy of the resolutions of the Arab Summits made in previous years. It reflects the situation too of the Arab League which long ago lost the Arab peoples' confidence."
Hamas also ruefully expressed similar frustration with the Arab League delegates, saying the summit "reflects the status of decline which the Arabs are suffering, even at the official level."

  • Monday, August 01, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
While we were in Israel, Mrs. Elder and I took a fascinating tour with the pro-Israel NGO Regavim to show where the EU was building "settlements" in Area C without Israel's permission.

Yes, illegal settlements in the West Bank.

They are illegal because Area C is legally fully under Israel's control. Indeed, even if you consider it "occupied territory," the occupier has the right to administer zoning laws and stop people from throwing up buildings anywhere they please, often stealing water and other services from neighboring, legal towns.

To build these structures without permission is illegal both under national and international law.

Here is a set of haphazard-looking buildings that were built in a valley near the Jewish town of Keidar. I stitched together three video screenshots. Click on it to see it full size; you should be able to discern about five separate clusters of buildings roughly in a straight line.



They are built this way in order to block any Jewish communities from being built. It is almost like a giant game of Go. These communities aren't viable on their own; their entire purpose is to create facts on the ground.

Afterwards, I looked on Google Earth to find how these buildings have sprung up over time. Here is an animated GIF showing how these illegal structures are being continuously built over the past several years, without the Israeli government doing anything about it.


This area was originally a training zone for the IDF, which is now unavailable because of the people who live there illegally.

Most or all of these structures are being built by the EU, which proudly  puts its logos on the buildings, as this photo from another "settlement" shows (circled, click to enlarge):


Zooming in, under the EU flag is says "Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection."



These illegal villages are popping up all over:


This one had EU logos on a number of structures.



Regavim told me that these are not areas that Bedouin have been traditionally found. Many of the residents are not natives of Area C either; Europe is bringing in Arabs from Areas A and B in order to perform a land grab. Schools that they are building are busing in Arabs from Areas A and B as well.

The EU is not doing anything humanitarian, rather it is cynically using Palestinians. The residents of these communities are pawns.

And "international law" suddenly is not important to people who love to cite it when attacking Israel.



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  • Monday, August 01, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
Human Rights Watch has released a new anti-Israel report:
“The Israeli government is unlawfully incarcerating prisoners from Gaza inside Israel and then making it very hard for their families to visit them,” said Sari Bashi, Israel and Palestine director. “The government’s security concerns over having these families enter Israel for visits with their loved ones are of its own making.”

Israel holds most Palestinian prisoners who were apprehended in occupied territory inside Israel, in violation of international humanitarian law prohibitions against transferring residents from occupied territory. It then requires family members to obtain permits from the military to enter Israel to visit them. This means that family members must pass an Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) security screening to visit their imprisoned relatives.
The main point of the report is that Israel has placed too many restrictions on Gaza family visits to prisons in Israel, such as not allowing siblings of terrorists to visit if they are above 15. There are obvious security concerns with older siblings who are very often the first to become terrorists themselves, and Israel is quite within its rights under international law to prioritize security over family visits.

But a secondary theme of the report is that Israel is violating international law by incarcerating Gazans in prisons within Israel rather than within the "occupied territories." They get this from the Fourth Geneva Convention article 76, which states "Protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein."

HRW, however, admits that part of the Geneva rules cannot apply to Gaza:
While holding these prisoners in Gaza is not practicable, because Israel ended its permanent ground troop presence in Gaza in 2005, Israel can and should transfer them to the West Bank, the other part of the occupied Palestinian territory, Human Rights Watch said. The prohibition against removing prisoners from the occupied territory is designed, in part, to allow them to maintain family ties, and the Israeli government should facilitate visits for family members from Gaza to the maximum extent possible.
Why is it not possible for Israel to hold the prisoners in Gaza? After all, isn't it occupied territory according to HRW? Geneva doesn't make a distinction between "occupied territory where the occupying army has actual control" and "occupied territory where the army has no possibility of maintaining the obligations of the Convention." HRW is making such a distinction, which has no basis.

Because Gaza isn't occupied by any reasonable definition of international law, and HRW knows it. The state of occupation in international law is binary, either it is or it isn't, based on whether the occupying army has "effective control." If the army cannot set up a prison within the territory, then by definition the territory isn't occupied.

Also, HRW's legal arguments end up supporting the fact that not only is Gaza not occupied  - neither is Area A, another place where it would be "not practicable" to build new prisons. It is not under "effective control" of the IDF.



There is much more that is notable in HRW's attempts to force Israel to adhere to its interpretations of international law.

HRW suggests a convoluted solution where Israel should build prisons in the West Bank to help Gaza prisoners be more accessible by their families, under the idea that the West Bank and Gaza are pretty much the same. But the same security issues that they are complaining about for Gazans to visit Israeli prisons would apply for Gaza families to visit prisons in the West Bank, because they would be traversing Israeli territory anyway! It would not make an iota of difference - and, as we will see, it would probably be worse for the prisoners.

Moreover, even this HRW report admits that only 7% of Gaza prisoners have families in the West Bank, so very few of them would be able to see their families more often under this convoluted solution.

What about the bigger question of whether Israel should be building more prisons in the West Bank under HRW's interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, rather than place them in Israeli prisons? Is Israel violating international law?

This question has come up before the Israeli Supreme Court, most notably in its 2010 decision on Yesh Din vs. Minister of Defense.  The Supreme Court ruled that the main driver for the Conventions is proper respect for the rights of the detainees, and that Israeli prisons are superior in that respect to any military detention facilities that Geneva seems to require:

We reiterate and reemphasize that in everything connected with conditions of detention and the relevant provisions of the Geneva Convention and even of additional international laws regarding the holding of detainees, this Court determined clearly and unequivocally that Israel must respect the provisions of international law, and that every detainee is entitled to conditions of detention appropriate to his human self respect. This Court did not withhold criticism as to the determination of physical conditions and personal welfare needed by the detainee, and in this matter, as aforesaid, there has been considerable improvement, precisely because the detainees are held in Israel. As we noted, the provisions of the Convention must be interpreted as bearing on the special conditions of holding of the area in the hands of Israel, and in consideration of its principled initial point, as laid down in Article 27 of the Convention, which instructs as follows:

 “Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity...
However, the Parties to the conflict may take such measures of control and security in regard to protected persons as may be necessary as a result of the war.” 

In this the respondents are observing the relevant provisions of the Geneva Convention regarding conditions of of holding of detainees, In this matter, with adaptation, the words of Justice Bach in the Sajidia Case are good in that he felt that the Convention must be observed according to the proper interpretation, and he said: “It cannot be understood from these words that all the provisions included in the Convention, and relating to the detention of administrative detainees must be observed blindly; each provision must be examined according to its importance, vitality and appropriateness to the special circumstances of the detainees camp that is the subject of our discussion” (ibid, p.832)
The Court also notes that if Israel would build new prisons in the territories, that could cause other problems in international law, both for prisoners and for Palestinian Arabs.
 In the circumstances created thought must be given to the practical implication of erecting new prison facilities in the area in the required scope after withdrawal of IDF forces from the cities in which were facilities in the past, erection in the course of which there may be harm to detainees from the viewpoint of conditions of holding and to the local residents on whose land the facilities will be built. In application of the provisions of the Geneva Convention they must be implemented in adaptation to the reality that was not foreseen by the drafters of the Convention; the geographic proximity of the area to Israel must also be taken into account and the fact that there is nothing in the holding of detainees in Israel to necessarily deprive them of family visits or legal aid. There must, therefore, be separation between the obligation to observe the humanitarian provisions of the Convention and the maintenance of conditions of detention of detainees and between the argumentation as to the location of detention; in consideration that the question of location of the detention was arranged years ago in enactments of the Knesset, and its legality was approved in verdict of this Court, and in consideration that the conditions of Israel’s holding of the area and the reality prevailing between Israel and the area, the holding in prison facilities in Israel does not strike at the essential provisions of international law. 

A previous court ruling is what caused the Palestinian prisoners to go to prisons that are maintained by Israel's Prisons Authority rather than the army, because prisoner rights are maintained better by the IPA. In fact, the one prison in the territories, Ofer, is now run by the IPA because of the Supreme Court. The human rights of prisoners are a prime consideration in its rulings, unlike how HRW tries to characterize the Israeli justice system.

There are two sides to every story and HRW chooses the anti-Israel side, without discussing the context. This Yesh Din ruling shows that Israel indeed respects Geneva, and goes beyond Geneva to maintain its spirit when its actual words would be more detrimental to prisoners.





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