Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Hamas paid parents 8000 shekels to claim baby died from Israeli tear gas

Israel Hayom (Hebrew) reports that Hamas paid 8000 shekels to the parents of Leila al-Ghandour, the baby who died during the Gaza protests, to tell the media that she dies of tear gas inhalation and not of a blood disease.

A 20 year old cousin of Ghandour, Mohammad Omar, who is a member of Hamas, was captured by the IDF. In the course of his interrogation he admitted that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar gave the baby's family 8000 shekels specifically to make it appear that Israel was involved in war crimes.

Omar had cut through the Gaza fence and attempted to set an IDF guard post on fire, which is when he was presumably captured.

Omar knew that Leila's older brother Salim had died in 2016 or 2017, at a similar age, from a similar or identical blood disease. The family falsely told the media that Salim had died by choking on breast milk.

8000 shekels is a bargain for the anti-Israel publicity Hamas received, as media worldwide blared headlines of Israel murdering a baby for several hours before a brave Gaza doctor disputed the claim.

(h/t Yenta Press)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

06/20 Links Pt2: How Did ‘Syria Palaestina’ Come Back to Life 1,800 Years Later?; Israel creates Hate Net map of BDS groups, linking activists to terrorists

From Ian:

How Did ‘Syria Palaestina’ Come Back to Life 1,800 Years Later?

In reporting on the trial in Berlin of a man who attacked an individual wearing a yarmulke, where the accused confessed to the court that he had committed the assault and then apologized to his victim, JTA also reported that the assailant was “identified as a 19-year-old Syrian Palestinian living in Germany since 2015,” reviving a term that hasn’t been in use for close to two millennia.

But JTA probably did not suggest that the world’s geopolitical order has been changed overnight, even in the turbulent Middle East, and so they probably referred to a Palestinian who was born in Syria. Which is testimony to a serious problem in geopolitical thinking over at the last news providers still using the telegraph.

Most Arab refugees fled to Syria in 1948 from Safad, Haifa, Acre, Tiberias, and Nazareth. By the summer of 1948, there were about 85,000 refugees in Syria, the majority concentrated along the border area with Israel. Now, since the Berlin assailant is 19, it is safe to assume that he was born in Syria and that his parents were likewise born in Syria. Regardless of whether or not his grandparents, who probably came from south of the border, are alive, our 19-year-old assailant is Syrian for all intents and purposes.

But he’s not. Because of the Casablanca Protocol.

The September 11, 1965 Protocol for the Treatment of Palestinians in Arab States, a.k.a the Casablanca Protocol, determines, “on the basis of the Charter of the League of Arab States and its special annex pertaining to Palestine,” a set of rights accorded these refugees who would otherwise are prevented from attaining the nationality of the countries where they reside and were born!

Syria, despite the promises to the contrary of the Casablanca Protocol, keeps a separate set of rules for its “Palestinians” – who were born and raised in Syria – who, for instance, unlike Syrian nationals, may not own more than one home or purchase arable land.

It's offensive and inaccurate to compare the current US border tragedy to the Holocaust

Michael Hayden, who previously served as director of both the CIA and the National Security Agency, waded into this issue when he tweeted a picture of Auschwitz and wrote, “Other governments have separated mothers and children.”

The CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer discussed the reactions to the tweet with Hayden, who had explained that he “felt a warning flare was necessary” and was trying to describe “what is happening to us as a people.”

It’s easy to understand why Hayden was disturbed and concerned about the ways American officials are acting. The images of children in cages, the act of separating children from parents, the detention centres with their cramped quarters and barrack-like interiors.

But comparisons to Auschwitz are ludicrous and offensive. Blitzer explained to Hayden why so many people were outraged by his tweet.

“I speak with some authority on this,” Blitzer said. “My grandparents were murdered at Auschwitz. My dad survived, but two of his brothers and two of his sisters were killed at Auschwitz. They weren’t separated to go to some other facility. They were separated to die.”

What’s going on at the border is a tragedy. But critics of the administration’s actions should be honest, articulate, and accurate. They should refrain from comparisons that will only serve to highlight how Trump and his policies are not quite as bad as they could be.

PreOccupiedTerritory: Treblinka Inmates Slap Foreheads, Realize Mistake: Not Being Mexican Children To Get Liberal Sympathy (satire)

Members of this death camp’s Sonderkommando, tasked with disposing of the corpses of fellow Jews from the gas chamber and cleaning it out for its next use, expressed embarrassment today at understanding where they erred in trying to attract the attention of left-wing activists in the US. Instead of being Jews condemned to starvation, beatings, disease, and death, they now realize, in order to generate the proper sentiments they should instead have been children of Mexicans who illegally crossed the border into the US and are being held in facilities separately from their parents, where they do receive sufficient food, clothing, and medical care.

Inmates at this facility in the forest northeast of Warsaw slapped their foreheads in sudden recognition of their mistake.

“God damn it, I should have known,” grumbled Szlama Grubinski, 20, as he moved a corpse onto a litter for removal to a mass grave. “If our suffering isn’t enough to engender political action by those people, we should have realized much sooner it was stupid to be here instead of in a detention facility at the Texas border.”

Josef Kohn, 22, agreed. “It’s an unpleasant feeling, suddenly becoming aware of this truth,” he remarked as he scrubbed down a railroad cattle car from the bodily fluids and other debris of the hundreds of Jews who had been crammed inside for days without food, water, or toilet facilities on their way to extermination at the camp. “All of this could have been different if we’d only known. And I can’t shake the sense that I actually knew it all along.”

Roseanne Barr called George Soros a Nazi and then apologized. Some of us wish she hadn’t. It was one of those times when Roseanne shot her mouth off and we actually agreed with her; reveled in the bluntness of one of her politically incorrect pronouncements.

We understood why she apologized, of course. She’s already under fire, what with the tweet about Valerie Jarrett, and losing her show. (Talk about a bad day for freedom of speech.)

@therealroseanne OMG! You said something the thought police didn't like and they canceled your show???? Unfricking real!! :-(
— (((Varda Epstein))) (@epavard) May 30, 2018

But once Roseanne referred to George Soros as a Nazi, things went from really bad to worse.

Sorry to have tweeted incorrect info about you!I Please forgive me! By the way, George Soros is a nazi who turned in his fellow Jews 2 be murdered in German concentration camps & stole their wealth-were you aware of that? But, we all make mistakes, right Chelsea?
— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) May 29, 2018

The media rushed to excoriate Roseanne and “correct” the record on Soros. They bent over backward to whitewash the relevant history. But the thing is, there’s a clip—a 60 Minutes clip from 1998, to be exact—in which George Soros outright admits what he did during the Holocaust to his fellow Jews.

In the clip, moreover, Soros says he feels not a shred of remorse for what he did.

Here’s a transcript of the relevant part of the interview:

60 Minutes: [You] went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.

Soros: Yes. That’s right. Yes.

60 Minutes: I mean, that’s—that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?

Soros: Not—not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don’t—you don’t see the connection. But it was—it created no—no problem at all.

60 Minutes: No feeling of guilt?

Soros: No.

But don’t take my word for it. Watch the clip.

Seems pretty cut and dried, right? He helped confiscate Jewish property. He doesn’t feel remorse.

But the media must try to spin it, because Soros is their guy.

Vox, for instance, tells you that Soros seems confused by the questions:

Even in that 60 Minutes interview that is pasted across the internet as conclusive evidence of Soros’s Nazi ties, Soros says that he was “only a spectator” to the confiscation of property (though he does say initially that he did help but seems confused by the question).

He didn’t look confused to me. Not in the least. There was no hesitation, no stumbling over words, and no pause. He understood the questions. He answered them. Period.

As to the claim that he was “only” 13, this is utterly meaningless. Think back to when you were 13. Were you that clueless? Would you have helped someone confiscate the property of your neighbors, your people?

There are some things you just don’t do. Even on pain of death. Even at 13.

It is, after all, the age that a Jew becomes a man: becomes bar mitzvah. Old enough to know right from wrong. Old enough to be responsible.

Roseanne was right the first time. Soros was a Nazi collaborator who stole property from his own people. And he doesn’t even feel bad about it.

He was a bad person then and he’s a bad person now and none of us should be afraid to say so.

Here’s to better times, when someone like Roseanne Barr is free to speak her mind without awful consequences and the media doesn’t spin the truth to protect a very wealthy, very bad man who climbed and continues to climb up the ladder on the backs of his own people.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Israeli Supreme Court to rule in landmark children's bedtime case (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Jerusalem, June 20 - Continued absence of a law defining the role of Israel's most senior judicial body has resulted in the court assuming jurisdiction over an increasing swath of the society's conflicts, with the most recent instance occurring when it agreed to conduct deliberations on whether a Ramat Gan child has the right to a bedtime no earlier than the latest he can discover among his friends.

The court agreed in a unanimous vote to hear arguments in Silber v Silber, dismissing the contention of the senior Silbers' attorneys that such a determination must remain the province of authority figures within a household or family, and not be subject to outside bodies such as the courts or law enforcement. A justice's note to the decision to accept explained that once the court had arrogated to itself the review of any legislation or government action, along with the power to annul such government actions, there exists no reasonable limit on the extent to which the court may assert that authority.

Ten-year-old Tal Silber's attorneys petitioned the High Court to rule on the legality of a 9 PM lights-out policy in the Silber household for children, of whom Tal is the oldest. The fifth-grader contends that "all of his friends" enjoy a bedtime of 9:30 on school nights and no curfew at all on weekends, in addition to being allowed to eat all the junk food they want.

In the petition to hear the case, lawyers for the plaintiff argue that the court, having assigned itself supreme authority to gauge the legality of any action, even those ostensibly in the purview of a different branch of government, must step in to decide on the proper bedtime for their client. That extension of authority includes all organs of administration, such as the household. Tal's parents, Shir and Tomer Silber, countered through their attorneys that barring threats to a child's health, safety, or welfare, or to others as a result, constitute the limits of authorities outside the home to override the decisions of a legal guardian. The court sided with the plaintiff, and will hear arguments as to the extent of parental capacity to impose a bedtime, beginning September.

"We are gratified at the Court's acceptance of our petition," stated the younger Silber's lead counsel, Pearl Clutching. "The tyranny of parents has seldom been given proper attention, and we look forward to striking a blow for the autonomy of ten-year-olds all over the country who bristle under unjust restrictions on their freedom."

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

06/20 Links Pt1: US quits the UN’s Human Rights Council, citing its ‘chronic bias against Israel’; 45 rockets, mortars fired toward Israel; IDF retaliates with 25 airstrikes

From Ian:

Pompeo, Haley Announces United States Leaving UN Human Rights Council

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced on Tuesday that U.S. would leave the UN Human Rights Council.

Citing the organization as being broken and filled with hypocrisy, Pompeo and Haley mentioned how they tried to work with other council members in order to reform the body, however, they were met with resistance.

"The Trump administration is committed to protecting and promoting the God-given dignity and freedom of every human being. Every individual has rights that are inherent and enviable," Pompeo said. "They are given by God and not by government. Because of that, no government must take them away."

"For decades, the United States has led global efforts to promote human rights, often through multilateral institutions. While we have seen improvements in certain human rights situations, for far too long we have waited while that progress comes too slowly or in some cases, never comes," Pompeo said. "Too many commitments have gone unfulfilled. President Trump wants to move the ball forward. From Day One he has called out institutions or countries who say one thing and do another, and that's precisely the problem at the Human Rights Council. As President Trump said at the UN General Assembly, it is a massive source of embarrassment to the United Nations that some governments with egregious human rights records sit on the Human Rights Council."

Pompeo mentioned the organization's bias against Israel as being an example of the council's misplaced priorities.

"Today we need to be honest. The Human Rights Council is a poor defender of human rights. Worse than that, the Human Rights Council has become an exercise in shameless hypocrisy with many of the world's worst human rights abuses going ignored and some of the world's most serious offenders sitting on the Council itself," Pompeo said. "The only thing worse than a council that does almost nothing to protect human rights is a council that covers for human rights abuses and is therefore an obstacle to progress and an impediment to change. The Human Rights Council enables abuses by absolving wrongdoers through silence and falsely condemning those who have committed no offense."

Israel welcomes ‘courageous’ US pullout from UN Human Rights Council

Israel on Tuesday night welcomed an announcement that the United States will withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council, praising the move as a “courageous decision against the hypocrisy and the lies” of the international body that UN ambassador Nikki Haley said harbors bias against the Jewish state.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the US move, branding the council “a biased, hostile, anti-Israel organization that has betrayed its mission of protecting human rights.”

“For years, the UNHRC has proven to be a biased, hostile, anti-Israel organization that has betrayed its mission of protecting human rights. Instead of dealing with regimes that systematically violate human rights, the UNHRC obsessively focuses on Israel, the one genuine democracy in the Middle East,” a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office also read. “The US decision to leave this prejudiced body is an unequivocal statement that enough is enough.”

The PMO said that “Israel thanks President Trump, Secretary Pompeo and Ambassador Haley for their courageous decision against the hypocrisy and the lies of the so-called UN Human Rights Council.”

The statement followed Haley’s announcement that the US will leave the UNHRC, condemning the “hypocrisy” of its members and its alleged “unrelenting bias” against Israel.

Haley announced the decision alongside President Donald Trump’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Both insisted the United States would remain a leading champion of human rights.

Trump Happiness Montage

At Elaph, a major pan-Arab news site, Mustafa El Sarraf writes a new bizarre variant on the discredited Khazar theory of the origins of most Jews.

According to El Saffar, most Jews who were in Persia under Cyrus the Great didn't emigrate back to Israel, but to the Balkans. The few who did go to Israel ended up converting to Christianity.

The Balkan Jews stayed there where they then convinced the Khazar king to convert the kingdom to Judaism. (Yes, the legend was over a thousand years later, but that's a distraction from the story El Saffar wants to tell.)

The article goes on to say that 92% of all Jews are Ashkenaz and therefore Khazars. Apparently the real Jews in the Balkans disappeared while the newly minted Jews took over. (This statistic would be a surprise to the roughly half of Israeli Jews who come from Arab lands.)

The writer is especially upset at anyone who says that Jews and Arabs are cousins. No, he says, Jews are "a bunch of criminals were and are still behind the ignition of wars to this day and who have has cursed God."

With all the NGOs around the Arab world, one would think that perhaps one or two would consider teaching basic journalism and fact checking instead of having major news sources allowing blatant lies and propaganda to brainwash readers.

Oh, sorry - when Jews are the victims of the propaganda, then anything goes.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Neturei Karta nutcase claims Jews are safer in Syria, Yemen than in Israel (video)

Here's a cute interview from the Al Quds Day rally in London on June 10, where the obligatory crazy anti-Zionist Neturei Karta member hilariously claims that Jews in Israel are less safe than those in Muslim countries like Yemen and Syria.

More fun from that rally, where speakers claimed that Jews put typhus in the water and called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the planet (to applause.)

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

On Sunday, Hamas issued a press release praising Human Rights Watch's latest report blaming Israel for responding to violent Gaza riots:

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) received great satisfaction and high appreciation of Human Rights Watch's report regarding the violations of the occupation against the residents of the Gaza Strip and the demand for the protection of the Palestinians, which revealed the facts that confirm the involvement of the Israeli occupation in what appeared to be war crimes against Palestinian demonstrators As well as the use by the occupation of policies, laws, arguments and pretexts to justify and cover their deliberate killing and harm to Palestinians by using live and lethal bullets.

The findings of the report reflect a part of the reality of the suffering and injustice inflicted on the Palestinians by the unjust siege imposed on Gaza and its inhabitants twelve years ago. The suffering continues and escalates. As a flagrant form of Israeli violence threatening Palestinian life and rights through a long series of killings, sniping, starvation and siege, which constitute a flagrant and serious violation of international law and international humanitarian law that amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Today, it issued another statement, supporting the barrage of rockets into Israel last night:

All praise for the valiant resistance that responded to the Israeli shelling of its positions in Gaza. This is a legitimate right. The message of shelling is to confirm that the resistance is the one who determines the rules of engagement in its own way and will not allow the enemy to unite our people or impose any new equations .

On the one hand, Hamas pretends to care about humanitarian issues and to be against violence that targets civilians. On the other, Hamas praises shooting rockets at civilians.

And there is no contradiction. Because Human Rights Watch, like Hamas, doesn't really care about human rights of Jews. Its report mentioned, but didn't comment on, the incendiary kites and balloons that have devastated Israeli forests and fields and threatened lives. HRW didn't even pretend to be even-handed by saying a negative word about Hamas or the rioters.

The Gaza riots are primarily a public relations war; their main purpose is to force Israel to shoot and kill people so Gazans can cry in front of Western cameras. If they would be peaceful demonstrations, Israel wouldn't shoot anyone, so the riots are calibrated to appear like they are simply protests and meanwhile Hamas sends people, sometimes children, to try to breach the Gaza fence as well as to send incendiary objects into Israel. Hamas uses the trappings of non-violence to cover violence, and western "human rights" organizations buy into it.

The rare times that HRW and Amnesty issue reports against Hamas, those reports are "balanced" and include as much blaming of Israel as of the terrorists. But their reports against Israel don't mention any responsibility by Hamas. That's why a terrorist organization is so effusive in praising a supposed human rights NGO.

HRW's report proved to Hamas that Israel's arguments about the purposes of the riots and its defensive measures are being ignored by the West. It proved to Hamas that the West completely buys the lies about peaceful protests and that Israel's response is cruel and wanton.

HRW proved to Hamas that it has little to lose by escalating things, because major western "human rights" organizations will support Arab violence against Jews but not Israelis defending themselves.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Nikki Haley explains why the US is quitting the UNHRC (WSJ)

From the Wall Street Journal, by US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley:

------------------------
There is an international organization whose members include the repressive regimes of Cuba, Venezuela and China.

This organization recently added the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is obstructing an investigation into the murder within its borders of two United Nations human-rights experts.

In the past decade, this organization has passed more resolutions to condemn Israel specifically than to condemn Syria, Iran and North Korea combined.

Most people would not imagine that such an organization would be dedicated to protecting human rights. Yet all of these details describe the misnamed U.N. Human Rights Council. In truth, the council provides cover for governments with awful human-rights records, and it refuses to eliminate its Agenda Item 7, which targets Israel unfairly by mandating that each session include a discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

After more than a year of unsuccessful efforts to fix these fundamental defects, the U.S. delegation announced Tuesday our withdrawal from the council. Our country will no longer be party to this deeply flawed institution, which harms the cause of human rights more than it helps it.

There are two major reasons that so many countries have resisted U.S.-led reform efforts. The first is baked into the council’s composition. One look at this rogue’s gallery explains why the organization has such appalling disrespect for the rights Americans take for granted. A credible human-rights council would pose a threat to these countries, so they oppose the steps needed to create one. Instead they obstruct investigations and reports, while interfering with the council’s ability to name and shame the perpetrators of the world’s worst atrocities.

The second reason for resistance to reform is even more frustrating. Many countries agree with the U.S. about shunning human-rights violators and supporting Israel—but only behind closed doors. Despite numerous overtures, these countries were unwilling to join the U.S. in a public stand. Some even told us they were fine with the council’s flaws, as long as it let them address their pet issues. This is not a moral compromise we are willing to make. The U.K. has promised to oppose any resolution targeting Israel under Agenda Item 7, and we support that stance. We wish other countries would do the same.

In the end, our allies’ case for the U.S. to stay on the council was actually the most compelling argument to leave. They said American participation was the last shred of credibility left in the organization. But a stamp of legitimacy on the current Human Rights Council is precisely what the U.S. should not provide.

Our withdrawal from the council will not end America’s own steadfast commitment to human rights. The U.S. delegation remains proud of American leadership in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Our country has always championed freedom, individual dignity, human rights and the rule of law, and that will never change. The U.S. will continue to lead on human rights outside the council, even as we push for institutional reform with like-minded partners.

Last year when the U.S. presided over the U.N. Security Council, we initiated the first-ever Security Council session dedicated to the connection between human rights and peace and security. The same year, when the Venezuelan regime blocked a Human Rights Council discussion of the massive violations it had committed, the U.S. organized an event outside the council’s chambers with Venezuelan human-rights leaders. When several countries objected to holding a Security Council session on the Iranian people’s human-rights struggles, the U.S. succeeded in initiating one anyway.

I have traveled to U.N. camps for refugees and internally displaced persons in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Turkey and Jordan, and met with the victims of atrocities in those troubled regions.

America uses its voice and vote every day at the U.N. to defend human rights. We will continue to be a champion for the abused peoples of Burma, China, Russia, Syria, Iran, South Sudan, Cuba, Venezuela and countless other places. We will continue to push the Human Rights Council for reforms that would make it worthy of our involvement. Any country willing to work with us to reshape the council need only ask.

We believe in the sovereignty of all U.N. member states, but no country should use that sovereignty as a shield when it proliferates weapons of mass destruction, promotes terrorism or commits mass atrocities. The U.S. does not seek to impose its system on anyone else. But we do support the universal values of freedom and human rights. And we will speak out for those values at every opportunity.

That is why we are withdrawing from the U.N. Human Rights Council, an organization that is unworthy of its name. But even as we depart, our commitment to human rights will remain steady as ever, and our voice will only get louder.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

06/19 Links Pt2: How Campus Bullies Pulled Off the Anti-Israel BDS Movement; Sohrab Amari: The SPLC Has Its Nose Rubbed in the Dirt; Norwegian rapper curses Jews at concert celebrating diversity

From Ian:

How Campus Bullies Pulled Off the Anti-Israel BDS Movement

A recently published collection of essays, Anti-Zionism on Campus, examines the clout of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement at American institutions of higher learning, and its successful bullying of its opponents. Both of the volume’s editors, Doron Ben-Atar and Andrew Pessin, are professors whom BDS supporters tried to hound from their respective universities. In his review, Jonathan Marks writes:
Anti-Zionism on Campus consists of 32 essays, 25 by scholars and seven by students, which together make the case that those who speak up for Israel on campus, or merely deny that Zionism is racism, risk “verbal attack, social and professional ostracization,” and “setbacks to their careers.” As an undisguised Zionist [and college professor] who has so far avoided such consequences, I read Anti-Zionism on Campus as a skeptic. By the time I finished the book, I was convinced. . . .

At Northern Michigan State University, in 2011, Gabriel Noah Brahm complained of the lopsidedly anti-Israel character of a university-sponsored visit to Israel. He was soon “up on some kind of charges.” He was cleared, but the cloud that hung over him almost certainly contributed to his English Department colleagues’ hostility to his tenure bid. The resulting tenure denial was overturned by a unanimous vote, but Brahm had been put through the wringer. . . .

Faculty are not guiltless in these transactions. . . . When Shlomo Dubnov, a professor of music at the University of San Diego, opposed, in 2012, an anti-Israel divestment resolution, false and serious charges against him were retailed on the website of the San Diego Faculty Association with the active support of that body’s head. . . .

Sohrab Amari: The SPLC Has Its Nose Rubbed in the Dirt

The SPLC in 2016 included Nawaz, who has spent years peacefully combatting both Islamism and anti-Muslim bigotry in Britain, in its Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists, alongside a litany of genuine haters. As evidence, the SPLC cited the fact that Mr. Nawaz had once tweeted a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad “despite the fact that many Muslims see it as blasphemous.” Dissidents across the Muslim world and in too many Muslim communities in the West risk beatings, torture, and worse for daring to criticize their religion and its founder. The SPLC in effect lent its liberal, “civil-rights” imprimatur to their mistreatment at the hands of their coreligionists.

“Given our understanding of the views of Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam,” SPLC President Richard Cohen said in a statement, “it was our opinion at the time that the Field Guide was published that their inclusion was warranted. But after getting a deeper understanding of their views and after hearing from others for whom we have great respect, we realize that we were simply wrong to have included Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam in the Field Guide in the first place.”

Damn right. But Nawaz wasn’t the only victim of SPLC smears. Another was the Somali-born author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has written for these pages. In the same Field Guide, the SPLC seemed to question Hirsi Ali’s personal story–she suffered genital mutilation in her native land–and accused her of bigotry for emphasizing the religious and ideological dimensions of Islamic terrorism. She, too, deserves a retraction and apology from the SPLC.

As for journalists who regularly rely on SPLC, the religious-liberty law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, another victim of the group’s smears, got it exactly right in its statement on the Nawaz settlement: “SPLC has become a far-left organization that brands its political opponents as ‘haters’ and ‘extremists’ and has lost all credibility as a civil-rights watchdog . . . SPLC’s sloppy mistakes have ruinous, real-world consequences for which they should not be excused.”

Southern Poverty Law Center Lists SPLC as ‘Anti-Muslim Hate Group’ (satire)

Blasting the group as a “bunch of Islamophobic bigots,” the Southern Poverty Law Center has officially classified itself as an anti-Muslim extremist group.

“The Southern Poverty Law Center targets Muslims like Maajid Nawaz – who are most certainly not anti-Muslim extremists– simply for their faith,” SPLC President Richard Cohen said in a recorded statement on Monday. “These folks are using their white privilege to attack innocent Muslims.”

Earlier in the day, SPLC apologized for listing Nawaz in a directory of anti-Muslim extremists and agreed to pay a $3.375 million settlement to Nawaz’s organization, Quilliam, which combats Islamophobia and Islamic extremism. But in its later statement, SPLC went a step further, demanding that its followers take to the streets to confront SPLC over its hateful actions.

“We must all fight racial and religious extremism – and in this case, that means standing up to people like me,” Cohen said. “Where is antifa on this one?”

A Jewish marriage on the Temple Mount

A Jewish couple from Tel Aviv got married on the Temple Mount on Monday morning. The groom quickly put the ring on his bride's finger and said the words for a Jewish wedding.

Arab media said they were "settlers."

The interesting thing is that they are not religious. The couple already had kids together.

Even non-religious Israelis understand the holiness of the Temple Mount.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

I am sick and tired. More than anything, I am mad.

I am sick and tired of seeing cute stories of Israeli kids having kite festivals sending messages of peace and candy for Gazans. On one hand I love my people for their strength of spirit and eternal optimism. It is important to see to the psychological well being of children under attack. At the same time, the thought of children investing so much emotional energy in hoping for peace, in replanting trees that have been burned when they can be burned again at a moments notice seems to me to be both a waste of effort and setting them up for disappointment that could constitute one psychological knock too many.

My logic says stop the arson fires and then replant.

I am sick and tired of explaining our right to life. Over and over we in Israel find ourselves fighting for the right to live free in our own land. Over and over we find ourselves explaining to the nations of the world that we have a right to life and if life is threatened we have a right to fight to defend life. These aren’t theoretical issues, an opportunity for mental gymnastics or an exercise in philosophy. These are the most basic rights that all people have, rights that need no explanation.

“We recognize Israel’s right to defend herself but…”

I am tired of this politically correct, morally corrupt sentence. We hear this sentence in every political arena imaginable, in the UN, from the leaders of other countries and in the media.

It’s not acceptable. One little “but” negates the first part of the sentence, negates our right to self-defense, negates our right to LIFE. One little word opens the door for all the excuses that come after, every explanation under the sun as to why the Nation of Israel does not actually deserve the right to defend ourselves from our would-be murderers.

One little word makes all those who use it complicit with those who actively strive to murder us. There is no room for ifs ands or buts in that sentence. Israel has the right to defend herself. Period.

The Nations of the world are not actually blind, they simply have chosen not to see. We can explain ourselves blue in the face and it won’t influence those who have closed their minds to logic and common decency.

This is where the sick feeling comes in. It makes me physically ill to see Jews abroad and even my own government in Israel bend over backwards to not seem “too aggressive” to the nations of the world who love to condemn Israel for defending her citizens.

Israel is already being accused of using disproportionate force against rioting Gazans. Of course, the IDF’s reaction to 40 thousand people, reared on Jew-hate, instructed to kidnap and murder Israelis, attempting to storm Israel’s border was utterly disproportionate. It is stunning that from this mass of rioters the IDF managed to pick off only the major sources of the problem - 60 people, 52 of whom were claimed by Hamas as operatives (i.e. professional terrorists). Most of the remainder were claimed by Islamic Jihad (a different terror organization). Managing to kill terrorists and not the people they were using as human shields, killing so few people out of so many violent rioters is a breathtaking and unprecedented accomplishment.

But of course, everything good Israel does is somehow twisted against her.

Our border is under attack and our land is burning. Why do so few take this seriously?! This is the land that gives us life, our ancestral homeland whose name we share, the only country we have – and it is tiny. There is no place to move on to, no replacement. Attacks on our land are attacks on our person and there is a limit to how many scars one can take, how much abuse one can absorb.

My friend who lives in Be’eri tells me that it is hard to be in her home, the air reeks of so much smoke, it is hard to breathe. Hearing this, sitting in my (for the moment) comfortable home in northern Israel I feel tears of frustrated rage well up inside me.

I experienced a single day of arson terror that filled my city with flames, poisoned the air, imbedding the stench of smoke in our clothes, in the walls of our home and even our skin.

That was just one day.

Day after day firebombers fly seemingly innocent kites and balloons over our border. These weapons of destruction are diabolical in their simplicity and in the perversion of what would normally evoke happiness into tools of terror and ruin.

Day after day after day after day…

(next to Kibbutz Re’im)

It doesn’t look “nice” to send fighter jets after people flying kites and our government is worried about the Gaza conflict escalating to a war that will swiftly become a war – from both Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north.

I understand these dilemmas.

At the same time, my land, my People, my friends are under fire – literally.

And every day that Hamas is not deterred from continuing these horrific attacks I cannot help but wonder what Hezbollah is learning while they watch.

Every time they see Israel fire warning shots at Hamas firebombers, not aimed to kill, what do you think Hezbollah strategists think?

Every time I see images of the damage in southern Israel I think of the forests of northern Israel. I think of how I watched my own neighborhood burn.

I am sick and tired and angry. I don’t care what the nations of the world think. I care about my family, my friends, my land, my life. It is time to stop explaining our rights and simply do what it takes to protect them.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.