Monday, November 07, 2016

  • Monday, November 07, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
This week is the Marrakech Climate Conference - COP 22, the followup to the Paris Climate Agreement last year.

The Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection is heavily involved in the conference, and it released a very impressive book-length document that describes well over 200 Israeli companies that have technologies to help the world's environment, in the categories of Climate, Solid Waste Management, Water Resources, Building and Construction, Agriculture and Extreme Events and Disasters. Any way you look at it, Israel is a leader in environmental protection, and as such must be a key player in any conference on the topic.

But...it is in Marrakech, Morocco.

So the local Arabs are very, very upset not only that Israelis are in their country, but that Israel's flag is fluttering among the flags of the other attendees.


Reports say that the flag is a "provocative step against the feelings of Moroccans and honorable people of the nation."

It's microaggression! The entire country of Morocco must be a safe space where people cannot be subjected to this horrible sight that one needs to go out of their way to even find!

Air pollution, clean water shortages, poisonous chemicals in food - all of that pales in importance to the feelings of Arabs who know that their country is hosting the Jewish state. And if there is something more important to the world than Arab feelings, I'd like to know what it is.



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  • Monday, November 07, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch tweeted this:


This is richly ironic - because there is one group of people that HRW believes should not have the automatic right of citizenship after a much longer period of time i a country.

HRW and Amnesty have never advocated for the rights of Arabs of Palestinian descent to become citizens of the countries that they - and their parents and grandparents - have been born in.

Palestinians in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Syria, Egypt and especially Lebanon (as well as thousands in Jordan) are supposed to be stateless, according to these "human rights" groups. Instead of citing international conventions that demand that people born in a nation become citizens, HRW and Amnesty lie about international law to demand that they become automatic citizens of Israel - even for the huge number who would happily accept citizenship in the countries they live in!

For only one group of people does HRW insist on a fictional right to "return" as superseding the right to nationality - the people who identify as Palestinians. Not to mention that the rights of Palestinians to become citizens in their host countries far exceed the right of the Mexican-born woman in the NYT article he cites to be considered an American citizen.




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Sunday, November 06, 2016

  • Sunday, November 06, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
The Jerusalem News was the first English-language daily newspaper to be published in Jerusalem, started in 1919.  It was founded by Elizabeth Lippincott McQueen who later became a pioneer in women's aviation. 



It only lasted six months, but I saw an edition for sale on eBay, with many stories in the aftermath of a major blizzard - about 29 inches of snow fell in Jerusalem on February 10, 1920.

It included this story of how the Zionist Jews tried to get food to the Yemenite Jews, called "Gadites," who lived in Kfar HaShiloach - known today as Silwan.


We have discussed previously the Yemenite Jews who moved to the area, now regarded as purely Arab, in the 19th century, moving into these houses on an otherwise empty hill..


I found one other edition of the newspaper online, with this otherwise forgotten story from 1920:






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  • Sunday, November 06, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon


A group of Christian ministry leaders in the UK, under the name Balfour100.org,  are planning events to celebrate the centennial of the Balfour Declaration next year.

Here is their take on the history of the document:

Five hundred years ago the Reformation led to the Bible being translated into English and read by the common man. This led to a greater interest, particularly among Puritans, in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. They were able to read for themselves the prophetic passages speaking of the eventual return of Israel to her biblical promised land. By the 17th Century there was a growing awareness among British evangelicals generally that the Bible prophesied the return of the people of Israel to their historic Promised Land.

Later, in the 19th Century, many well-known preachers like Bishop J.C.Ryle and Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon taught on the restoration of the Jews to their land. Bible-believing Christians (such as William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury who were also enthusiastic restorationaists) had a huge influence on the governments of the time. A belief in the restoration of the Jewish people to Israel has been described as the “default position” for evangelicals in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Sadly, that is not the case today.

Ryle, Spurgeon and others were influential in presenting the case for the return of the Jews. As Bible students they longed to see the return of Jesus Christ. Before that could happen, the Jews had to be back in their own Land (Israel). They understood this from prophetic passages in the Old Testament foretelling the appearance of Messiah in Jerusalem to a restored Jewish people. This then became the central focus of their prayer and political action but seemed impossible while the ancient Land of Israel was under Muslim Turkish control and the Jewish people scattered for 1,900 years.

In 1896 Austrian Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl, incensed at the anti-semitism he saw around him (especially the notorious Dreyfus affair), wrote 'Der Judenstaat' on the need to re-establish the Jewish State as the only viable long-term solution for the survival of the Jewish people.

As Herzl began the movement that became known as “Zionism” he became friends with an evangelical Christian minister, Rev William Hechler. Hechler’s high level contacts as a diplomatic chaplain in Vienna enabled Herzl to gain valuable patronage for Zionsim and helped to envision influential leaders, including the Kaiser of Germany.

Historians have noted that if Herzl had not had Hechler’s support and encouragement to continue his work, Zionism might never have been birthed as a political movement. Hechler, a spiritual heir of the likes of Ryle and Spurgeon, was one of the first “Christian Zionists”.

As the 19th Century became the 20th, another partnership between Jew and gentile was developing that was key to the furtherance of the dream of a revived Jewish homeland.
Chaim Weizmann, born in 1874, was one of fifteen children born to a Jewish couple in Belarus. He studied biochemistry in Germany and moved to Manchester in 1904. Becoming a leading bio-chemist in the years that followed, Weizmann also became a leader in the Zionist movement in Britain.

During World War 1 he developed an important chemical ingredient for gunpowder, which brought him to the attention of the British Government and particularly Lord Balfour, with whom he had already become friends.

Born in Scotland, Arthur Balfour became MP for Manchester East (where he first met Weizmann) in 1885, and was Prime Minister from 1902-05. In 1917, when the Balfour Declaration was made, he was Foreign Secretary

This was the partnership that eventually led to the letter known to this day as the 'Balfour Declaration' (Balfour was the signatory). A friendship developed, during which Weizmann, the ardent Zionist, persuaded Balfour, an evangelical Christian in favour of Jewish restoration, of the case for a homeland for the Jewish people in what was then “Palestine.”

Britain’s strategic needs, burgeoning alliances with Arab leaders and the clear justice of the zionists’ dreams coalesced on 31st October 1917, when Britain’s war cabinet (most of whom were also evangelical Christians) agreed the final wording of a letter to Lord Rothschild and the Zionist Federation; a letter which became known as “The Balfour Declaration”.

Another event took place on 31st October 1917, which was key to the intentions expressed in the Declaration. General Allenby won a key battle against the Turks and Germans for the desert town of Beersheva. Without a plan for the future, the victory at Beersheva would have been just another battle in a long and bloody war, a footnote in history. The two events, occurring at the same time yet thousands of miles apart, was a sure sign that this was God bringing His plan for the Jewish people's restoration to their land closer to its fulfilment.

Bye itself, the Balfour Declaration carried little legal weight. It was simply an expression of intent by the British government of the day. Five years later however, in the aftermath of World War One, its intent and most of its very wording were incorporated into international law in the San Remo Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine.

Christians and biblical teaching were instrumental in the events leading to the Declaration, going right back to the Reformation. This gives Christians who love the Jewish people and the state of Israel a desire to celebrate the centenary of this short but vital document along with the Jewish community in November 2017.




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From Ian:

Col. Richard Kemp: Balfour Declaration, November 2016
Flying in the face of the long-standing US bipartisan policy of rejecting the so-called 1967 borders, there is increasing concern that President Obama's parting shot at Israel might be to either endorse such a resolution or fail to veto it. Such actions would have incalculable consequences -- not least a flare-up in violence and the prospect of global sanctions against Israel.
Depending on his audience, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas claims to desire a two-state solution. But his actions speak louder. How can it be possible to bring about peace with a country or a people that you constantly vilify and attack? Hatred of Jews and denial of their rights permeate PA speeches, TV shows, school-books, newspapers and magazines.
Arab Jew-hatred has caused Britain up to the present day to sometimes fail to condemn Arab aggression against Israelis, and to find excuses for their violence. All in the name of appeasing the Arabs and their supporters in the Muslim world and even at home.
Britain can be intensely proud that it alone embraced Zionism in 1917. And it was the blood of many thousands of British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers that created the conditions that made the modern-day State of Israel a possibility.
Even 99 years after the world-changing Balfour Declaration, we still have our work cut out for us in supporting the Zionist project, which owes so much to the unequalled historic backing in Great Britain.
Haaretz: The Politics Behind the Drafting of the Balfour Declaration
Ninety-nine years after it was written, the British document supporting the formation of a 'national home for the Jewish people' is back in the news. But it caused unrest among some British Jews at the time, too.

“His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a centre of Jewish culture.” Had it been up to British-Jewish lawmaker Sir Philip Magnus, that would have been the formulation of the Balfour Declaration, which was published 99 years ago this week and paved the way for the establishment of the State of Israel.
Magnus was among the Jewish leaders canvassed by the British government regarding the suggested declaration, a few weeks before it was eventually published on November 2, 1917. But unlike some of his fellow peers in Britain’s Jewish community, Magnus was not an enthusiastic Zionist. He saw Britain – and not the Land of Israel – as his national home.
The fascinating correspondence between Magnus and the British government concerning the declaration is stored at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem. Until now, no one showed much interest in it. Recently, though, ahead of the declaration’s upcoming centenary, Dr. Hezi Amiur discovered the letters anew. The curator of the Israel Collection at the National Library regards his find as like unearthing a great treasure: “It’s just one of the millions of items preserved here, but I rubbed my eyes when I read it,” he said.
As Amiur discovered, the letter was part of a chain of correspondence and talks conducted at the time between the British and leading Jews – some of whom were Zionists and some not – concerning the final version of the declaration.
Some may consider this to be irrelevant and outdated, while for others renewed discussion of the Balfour Declaration – mainly because of the Palestinian Authority’s threat to sue Britain over it – has stimulated new interest in the original process, even 99 years after the fact. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
Hillel Neuer Testifies to US Congress
Ten Years Later: The Status of the United Nations Human Rights Council
Hearing of the U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, Tuesday, May 17, 2016 – 2:00pm




photo clean-your-room.jpgOne of the most pathetic and hypocritical aspects of contemporary western campus politics is the Crybully / Snowflake phenomenon.

University administrations throughout the West have brought back en loco parentis in a manner that would have absolutely disgusted - in its treacly infantilization of young adults in "safe spaces" - college students from the 1960s and 1970s.

Young radicals from that period would not have demanded common spaces where they could suck their collective thumbs, while instigating hatred toward white people and Jews who stand with Israel.

Whatever they may have thought about allegedly insidious white-anglos, radical students from the 1960s - who were mainly middle-class white-anglos, themselves - emphatically did not want the university administration's parental embrace. What they wanted, frankly, was for the administrations to get the hell out of their faces and to stop enabling the "war machine."

The late 1960s, and the early 1970s, saw the emergence of a hodge-podge of radical types ranging from the Panthers to the psychedelic-counterculture people to the variety of hard political types, blending criticisms of race and gender with economic class, to those like the Weathermen who wanted to burn the "system" down entirely.

But whether these young people wanted social and economic justice for non-white people or women or Gay people, or whether they wanted to end the Vietnam War or to float away into a haze of smoke and acid, the very last thing on this planet that they wanted was to be treated like small children by parental university help-mates.

What they wanted, more than anything else, actually, was the freedom to be who they are.

And it is this that makes the Crybully / Snowflake phenomenon on today's university campuses pathetic. It is not merely that the university infantalizes these students, but that the students infantalize themselves when they go into such rooms, sometimes containing coloring books and stuffed animals.

At Brown University, or so Judith Shulevitz tells us in the New York Times, the "safe spaces" are:
intended to give people who might find comments “troubling” or “triggering,” a place to recuperate. The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma. Emma Hall, a junior, rape survivor and “sexual assault peer educator” who helped set up the room and worked in it during the debate, estimates that a couple of dozen people used it. At one point she went to the lecture hall — it was packed — but after a while, she had to return to the safe space. “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said.
When did the university experience become kindergarten?

Why do university administrators insist upon treating young adults, who are old enough to fight and die in war, as 8 year olds? And why are so many students seem eager to avail themselves of their own dimunition?

But this is just why the Crybully / Snowflake Phenomenon is pathetic.

If it were merely pathetic I would not bother writing about it because, so what? If students who think of themselves as on the cultural cutting-edge wish to be pathetic, who am I to say "no"?

The thing is, of course, they aren't children and many of them carry anti-white and anti-Zionist hatred which they wield with abandon. That is, many of the the same people who require safe spaces are also the same people who spit hatred at whiteness, defame those Jews who refuse to toe their political line, and encourage violence toward cops.

Here, for example, are a bunch of student racists, just days ago, refusing to allow white kids through the main gate of UCAL, Berkeley:



And this is what makes this creepy campus political trend hypocritical and entirely toxic.

A student activist cannot, after all, be racist and anti-racist, both, at the same time.

A student activist cannot call for the blood of random Jews in Jerusalem (in calls for intifada) while simultaneously requiring that the university provide a special place to rest their head from trauma if the mayor of that town drops in for a chit-chat.

If today's crop of college radicals wish to spit fire at white people, and Jewish supporters of Israel, for our decadent and evil ways, that is their right, but one cannot inspire hatred toward others while also demanding child-like coddling from public universities.

And why would any self-respecting young political activist want such coddling, anyway?

Coddling, after all, is not the stuff that young rebels are made from... or is it?



Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.







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From JPost: 
The Palestinian Authority is preparing to lay a claim to the Dead Sea Scrolls at the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Israel Radio reported on Saturday night.

The scrolls – a large cache of mostly Hebrew writings from the Second Temple period and its immediate aftermath – were discovered in Qumran between 1947 and 1956. They include many biblical texts and are believed to have been penned by members of a Jewish sect known as the Essenes.

Qumran, which is near the Dead Sea, was under British, and later Jordanian, rule at the time of the discoveries.

It is now located in Area C of the West Bank, which is under Israeli civil and military control.

The PA considers Area C to be part of its future state.

Qumran is on the list of preservation areas which the PA wants to see registered under the “state of Palestine” on the World Heritage List.
This isn't the first time that they have made this claim. In 2009, when an exhibit of some of the scrolls was to be opened in Canada, they tried to shut it down:

Last April, the Palestinian Authority appealed to Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, to cancel the show, citing international conventions that make it illegal for a government agency to take archaeological artifacts from a territory that its country occupies.
The P.A. and Muslim activists claimed that the scrolls were “stolen” from Palestinian territory and illegally obtained when Israel annexed East Jerusalem — where the scrolls were stored — in 1967. “The exhibition would entail exhibiting or displaying artifacts removed from the Palestinian territories” by Israel, wrote Hamdan Taha, head of the archaeological department in the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities, in a widely publicized letter, calling the show a violation of international law.
Echoing those sentiments on the day of the press preview, Canadian Arab Federation executive director Mohamed Boudjenane called the scrolls “stolen property… seized from an occupied territory,” and repeated the call to close the show on a national newscast.
Interestingly - Jordan also claims ownership:
 The Jordanian government has asked Canada not to release the Dead Sea Scrolls that have been on exhibit in Toronto for six months, claiming their ownership is "disputed."
Jordan alleges that Israel took illegal possession of the 2,000-year-old Isaiah scrolls from the Rockefeller Museum in east Jerusalem during the Six Day War.
The Jordanian government claims that the scrolls fall under the auspices of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which allows "cultural property" from "any occupied territory" to be seized by countries that signed the ruling.
 Does anyone think for a minute that the Arabs care about the Dead Sea Scrolls as a hugely important historic artifact?

The desire is to erase Jewish history from the region, not to protect any "Palestinian" heritage of the area.

And as was evident from the beginning, the entire purpose of "Palestine" joining UNESCO was that same desire to erase Jewish history.

This is the real politicization of archaeology - and it is not being addressed.



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  • Sunday, November 06, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon

In 1947, Eleanor Roosevent asked Harry Truman to look into the situation of Jewish stowaways who were stuck on Ellis Island, unable to enter the US.

Here is their correspondence.



_________________

January 7, 1947
Dear Mr. President:

I have enclosed an appeal I recently received from a group of interned illegal Jewish homeless immigrants on Ellis Island and wonder if anything can be done to prevent their deportation?

With every good wish, I am,

Yours very sincerely,
 _________________

January 16, 1947
My dear Mrs. Roosevelt:

This is in reply to your letter of January seventh in which you enclosed a letter of appeal sent to you by a group of Jewish stowaways who are now detained on Ellis Island.

I have taken this matter up with the Attorney General and he has carefully gone into the problem with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. These boys are a part of a large group of stowaways who
arrived in this country during 1946. Under the immigration law, of course, they are required to be returned, at the expense of the steamship company, to the ports of their embarkation.

The Attorney General advised me that because of the increase in the number of stowaways since the end of the war he initiated a survey to ascertain if there was any basis for relief. I am also advised that a Special Committee of the 79th Congress appointed from the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization conducted an investigation of this situation at the Port of New York where the problem is most acute, and thereafter submitted a bill to the Committee for strengthening the existing immigration law pertaining to the exclusion of stowaways. In view of  this it is the Attorney General's opinion that since lawful immigration is so urgently needed by so many displaced persons, the greatest good for the greatest number can only be accommodated by lending all the facilities of our Government to lawful immigration and following a policy of strict exclusion of the illegal or stowaway immigrants.

As you know, in my recent message to the Congress I emphasized the duty of the United States to accept its portion of the world’s burden as to displaced persons and urged the Congress to consider appropriate legislation to enable a greater number of displaced persons to lawfully immigrate to the United States. I believe such a measure is of paramount importance and, as much as I am sympathetic with the plight of these particular stowaways, I am, nevertheless, of the opinion that their individual cases must give way to the larger problem of the many thousands of homeless people in Europe who seek to come to the United States as legal immigrants.

I am always grateful to you for your vigilant interest in matters of this kind. I am returning herewith the enclosure with your letter.

Very sincerely yours,

_______________________

January 20, 1947
Dear Mr. President:

I appreciate your answering my letter about the Jewish stowaways and I can fully understand the situation.

With many thanks and best wishes,

Very sincerely,




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Saturday, November 05, 2016

  • Saturday, November 05, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
Here is every mention of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Arabic news sites for the past month, according to Google, that indicate whether the authors think that they are real or that they are not.

Hamrin News - a book review that discusses how individuals and groups act in history, and the Protocols are referred to as a must-read to understand the point.

Watanserb has an article about Israel-Egypt relations that quotes the Wiesenthal Center about how there are Egyptian books and TV shows that rely on the Protocols.

Baladna El Youm has a completely insane antisemitic article that has lots of classic themes of which the Protocols are merely one.


Shabiba has an op-ed that says that the Protocols is merely one indication of how the US does not dare to oppose Israeli policies.

7adramout.net has an op-ed opposing sports and fans' obsessions with their teams, saying that the 12th protocol for how the Jews control the world is by getting people involved in sports. The author says that he does not accept that all woes can be blamed on the Jews, but he does believe that "it is true that the Jews are the origin of evil in the world."

Al Basrah says that the US is fomenting divisions in the arab world, which is similar to what is called for in the Protocols.

That's six articles that assume the legitimacy of the book, and zero that do not. (Two others quoted Western sources about the Protocols but did not give an indication of whether they believed in them or not.)



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From Ian:

African-American Christian Zionist: ‘Israel gives expression to human condition’
Chloe Valdary is a committed Zionist. She launched pro-Israel groups at her alma mater, the University of New Orleans; has written articles for national publications defending Israel; and toured the U.S., advocating for the Jewish state.
Considering her resume, it’s somewhat surprising to learn that Valdary, in fact, isn’t Jewish.
An African-American and a Christian, Valdary said she believes her placement in what she terms “Jewish/pro-Israel space” was inevitable growing up as she did. She is a Seventh Day Adventist, the Protestant denomination that celebrates the Sabbath on Saturdays and advocates adhering to kosher dietary laws.
“I grew up with Jewish values and what would be referred to as ‘Jewish time’ informing and shaping my own identity,” wrote Valdary in an-email interview from Israel. “Though not Jewish, I grew up observing Shabbat, kosher style, and the holy days. So the frame of reference through which I view the world was shaped by Judaism. So to engage with Israel, the Israeli people, etc., is to engage with myself and my own sense of belonging and culture.”
Valdary will bring her message to New Brunswick on Tuesday, Nov. 15, in an event sponsored by JerusalemU, an organization dedicated to strengthening the emotional and intellectual connection of young Jews to Judaism and Israel.

SJP brings extremism to campus
Palestinian poet, writer, and activist Remi Kanazi, Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) latest guest, compares Jews to the KKK. He poses in support of terrorists and advocates violence. His presence is part of a focus-grouped and incubated hatred, which is intellectualized, digitized and repeated ad nauseum. SJP targets you as the consumer for that hatred. They’ve weaponized discrimination in the form of victimhood. This is my fourth year of witnessing and addressing it. I’m tired.
SJP is part of a well-financed campaign to bring this hatred to our campus. Every year it comes and goes, and students are bombarded with distorted images, oversimplifications and lies.
Just consider the bias in the narrative SJP force-feeds us. Fanatic after fanatic, zealot after zealot, SJP poisons our well by bringing radicals to Kenyon. Two years ago the group brought a professor who justified the killing of teenage Israeli Jews (he called them ‘settlers’) who live in the West Bank while also claiming that, in some demented way, antisemitism could be seen as “honorable.” SJP brought an artist, Amer Shomali, who glorified convicted terrorist and plane-hijacker Leila Khaled. One student member of the group compares Zionism (the belief in the right to self-determination of the Jewish People) to Nazism, a comparison the U.S. State Department deems anti-semitic. One can be a just activist for the Palestinian cause without supporting radicals and without condoning codified Jew-hatred.
Bringing Remi Kanazi to campus is SJP’s latest move in their twisted game of delegitimizing and demonizing Israel. Kanazi, however, doesn’t just reserve his contempt for Israel; he saves some for the U.S. too. Kanazi writes that “Hillary Clinton is a racist, violent, corporate shill,” and “Obama is a butcher.” Clearly, Kanazi is a radical who preaches hate. In reference to Israeli Jews, he says, “they were hooded in the South,” comparing Israeli Jews to the KKK. He lauds and poses for photos with convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh, whose family even admitted to her role in the killing of two innocent Jews in a supermarket bombing in Israel.
Leading Jewish Group: UNESCO Chief Must Condemn Antisemitism on Display at UAE Book Fair at Which Her Organization is Guest of Honor
The head of UNESCO must condemn the antisemitism on display at a major international book fair currently taking place in the United Arab Emirates, a leading US-based Jewish human rights organization said on Friday.
The ten-day Sharjah Interantional Book Fair — at which the global cultural body is the official guest of honor — features an “unprecedented number of antisemitic titles,” Dr. Shimon Samuels — the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s director for international relations — said in a letter to UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova.
“This massive ‘low-tech’ injection of Jew-hatred at Arab government-sponsored fairs creates a vicious circle of incitement to violence, targeting Jews and Jewish institutions,” Samuels wrote. “The circle continues with Arab governments — now captive to the hate they have instigated — relentlessly pressing UNESCO resolutions to delete Jewish heritage in the Holy Land… the circle ends with the cajoling and even the intimidating of member-states to support these outrageous resolutions.”
Samuels praised Bokova — who criticized the recent UNESCO resolutions that ignored Jewish and Christian history in Jerusalem — for her “firm stand against hate, especially antisemitism.”
“We thus urge you to condemn these dangerous displays at Arab book fairs and remove UNESCO from the current Sharjah fair,” Samuels concluded.

Friday, November 04, 2016

From Ian:

Even Islam admits it
Israel could counter Muslim lies about the Jewish history of Jerusalem by pointing out 10 centuries of Islamic sources that confirm Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, or the Ottoman decrees that guaranteed the Jews the right to worship at the Western Wall.
The earliest Muslim tradition that identified the "place al-Buraq was tethered" with the Jewish prayer site at the Western Wall is from the mid-19th century, when Jewish began bringing ritual object to the Wall and even trying to purchase the Western Wall and the courtyards that surround it from the Waqf.
In Berkowitz's opinion, it's almost certain that the Muslims moved the place where Muhammad supposedly entered the Temple Mount compound and the place he tied al-Buraq to the Western Wall as a response to the activity of the Jews. They even started calling it "al-Buraq." They also built Al-Buraq mosque on the eastern side of the Western Wall, on top of the Berkley Gate, where they display an underground room as the spot where the prophet tied up his horse.
And here is one more important historical tidbit: In the Ottoman Period, the Muslims themselves are the ones who granted Jews fermans that recognized their right to the Western Wall and their right to pray there. The first ruler to do so was Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in the second half of the 16th century, and after him the Turkish Sultan Abdulmecid [Abdul Majid] I in 1841. Itamar Ben-Avi, son of the reviver of the Hebrew language, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, tells of a ferman that was granted to the Jews in 1868 and transferred to the Council of Jewish Bequests in London, only to disappear mysteriously. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
J Street’s Questionable Actions Surrounding Ari Shavit
It’s important to understand Shavit’s status on the Jewish Left. He is the scion of a founding Israeli family, served with distinction as a paratrooper commander in the Israeli army and has been an ardent and erudite Zionist. Unlike with regard to some other leftist figures, very few on the Israeli Right questioned Shavit’s patriotism. But he is also a self-described “anti-occupation peacenik,” and is well-known for his leftist writings and criticisms of Israel’s right-wing politicians. When his book, My Promised Land, came out in late 2013, it was a huge, immediate hit among the international political/press/NGO crowd, whose approval the American-Jewish Left craves. Shavit became a rock star.
He was, apparently, also a predator. J Street knew it back in 2014. Here was a great opportunity to “tell hard truths.” Here was a chance to “speak truth to power.” J Street could have refused “to remain silent” and declare that unwanted sexual advances would not be tolerated on the Jewish Left, which would only mean sacrificing Shavit. Instead, it remained silent. In doing so, the group gave Shavit nearly three more years of access to potential victims.
When presented with the option to sacrificially speak truth to power, J Street passed. It could have stopped him. But that would have deprived its cause of a particularly effective mouthpiece. And to those deeply convinced of the moral necessity of J Street’s work, the cause is always more important than the pawns occupying the world it aims to heal. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
The BDS Movement Maintains Close Contact with Terrorists
Not itself a formal organization, the movement to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel (BDS) consists of a loose network of groups that support its cause. A number of these, write Jonathan Schanzer and Kate Havard, have close ties with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), officially considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department since 1997:
Rasmea Odeh, a now-infamous PFLP terrorist who was involved in the bombing of an Israeli supermarket in 1969 . . . is now a cause célèbre for BDS activists in the United States. Boycott advocates have rallied to her defense, raising funds for her while she faces prosecution in the U.S. for immigration fraud (for lying about her time in prison). Odeh’s boosters include BDS-supporting groups like Palestine Legal, Jewish Voice for Peace, and American Muslims for Palestine. . . .
The BDS campaign in the United States broadly identifies itself as a nonviolent social-justice movement. But, its connections to the PFLP, a decidedly violent group, are troubling. Founded in 1967 as a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary organization by George Habash, the PFLP was known for a series of plane hijackings in the late 1960s and 70s. [Its members also] gunned down civilians and hired assassins to massacre passengers at Israel’s Lod airport in 1970. . . .
In 2011, two PFLP members carried out the murder of a family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar (including a three-month-old infant). They were responsible for a 2014 shooting in west Jerusalem that killed five and wounded eight. . . .
Recently, the PFLP sent its most famous member, the first woman hijacker in history, Leila Khaled, on speaking tours worldwide. In April 2016, she visited the German organization Falestin Beytona, the offices of the Communist party of Sweden in Gothenburg, and the Austrian-Arab Cultural Center in Vienna—all organizations that support BDS. Khaled was also the guest of the BDS movement of South Africa in 2015.


Haters like to charge that Israel purposefully ignores non-Jewish archaeological work and inflates the importance of Jewish findings in order to politicize archaeology in the region.

But they are silent for stories like this one:
Students in an Upper Galilee military preparatory academy found a gold coin dating to the early Islamic period from the years 776-777 CE which bears an Arabic inscription declaring belief in one god and the name of the prophet Mohammad.

In recent weeks, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), together with students of military preparatory academies, have begun digging at a site that is going to be turned into a parking area for heavy vehicles near Kfar Kama.

 Further excavations that were conducted in and around Kfar Kama in the last 50 years indicate the existence of ancient settlements already in place during the Middle Bronze Age (2,000 BC) and during the Roman and Byzantine periods (2nd-6th century CE), including the remains of a church.
The Israel Antiquities Authority routinely discovers and publicizes non-Jewish findings.

The last time I visited the Israel Museum I was struck with how hard it tries to give exactly equal space to Muslim, Christian and Jewish archaeological findings.

It's just another anti-Israel libel that is easy enough to disprove to those who aren't hopelessly biased to begin with.

(h/t Yoel)




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