Wednesday, April 17, 2019

From Ian:

Judea Pearl Renounces NYU Distinguished Alumnus Status as School Prepares to Award Students for Justice in Palestine
Turing Award winner Judea Pearl has renounced his status as a distinguished alumnus of New York University, following the school’s decision to award its Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter — which orchestrated an ongoing boycott of Zionist student clubs — for “extraordinary and positive impact on the University community.”

Pearl, who graduated with a doctoral degree from NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering in 1965, was granted a Distinguished Alumnus Award by the Polytechnic Alumni Association during a campus lecture in 2013 and is currently a chancellor’s professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also leads a foundation named after his late son, journalist Daniel Pearl, who was killed by Islamic terrorists in 2002 while on assignment in Pakistan.

“In the past five years, SJP has resorted to intimidation tactics that have made me, my colleagues and my students unwelcome and unsafe on our own campus,” Pearl wrote in a letter to NYU President Andrew Hamilton. “The decision to confer an award on SJP, renders other NYU awards empty of content, and suspect of reckless selection process.”

Pearl stated that his efforts to engage with university officials over these concerns “have been met with platitudes about ‘free speech’ despite the fact that the US State Department now includes, in its definition of discrimination, intimidation based on race, religion and ethnicity.”

“Mr. President, I have been in academia for close to 50 years, and I know the difference between free speech and campus norms,” he continued. “Entrusted with the mandate of maintaining a climate of learning and mutual respect, your office should distance itself from the SJP selection and explain to the campus why such distancing is necessary. In the absence of a corrective action by your office the academic standing of this university is begging for other voices to call out the Orwellian character of (SJP’s) award.” (h/t MtTB)
Ben Shapiro: Criticism of Rep. Ilhan Omar Isn’t Incitement
That minimization of 9/11—and that’s what it is—resulted in blowback from conservatives. It’s not as though Omar’s history of treating terrorism with kid gloves is anything new, after all. In 2013, Omar did an interview in which she chided one of her professors for treating terrorist groups with horror while failing to do the same to America, England, and the military:
The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘al-Qaeda,’ his shoulders went up. … But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity. You don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the Army’ with the intensity.

In 2016, Omar wrote a letter to a judge asking for lighter sentences for men accused of being Islamic State group recruits, noting that these men merely “chose violence to combat direct marginalization” and calling their recruitment “a consequential mistake” that resulted from “systematic alienation.”

In 2017, Omar wrote for Time magazine: “We must confront that our nation was founded by the genocide of indigenous people and on the backs of slaves, that we maintain global power with the tenor of neocolonialism. … Our national avoidance tactic has been to shift the focus to potential international terrorism.” That’s not exactly a ringing rebuke of international terrorism.

But now Omar is criticizing those who merely quote her as inciting violence. She has claimed that President Donald Trump, who posted a video that juxtaposed footage of 9/11 with her “some people did something” comment, is responsible for an uptick in the number of death threats she has received. Her close friend Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., went so far as to compare Omar to a victim of the Holocaust.

This is immoral in the extreme. Omar isn’t a victim because she’s being criticized. And speech isn’t incitement. Sen. Bernie Sanders wasn’t responsible for the congressional baseball game shooting. Former President Barack Obama wasn’t responsible for the Dallas police shooting. And Trump isn’t responsible for those who send Omar death threats. He’s responsible for criticizing her—rightly, in this case.

Democrats who hide behind the charge of incitement are simply attempting to quash debate. And that’s far more dangerous for the future of America than criticizing a radical politician.


Kgadishi Moloto is the deputy director of the treasury in Gauteng, the economic center of South Africa, a province that includes Johannesburg and Pretoria. He’s also a raving antisemite. When Moloto is not calling for the genocide of the Jewish people by cruel and painful methods, he’s accusing Israel of murdering babies.



Moloto is a Communist. He is heavily invested in the Congress of South African Trade Unions, or Cosatu. Cosatu is allied with the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP) as the Tripartite Alliance

Guess who!



Moloto retweets every tweet issued by Cosatu along with retweets of anti-Israel calls for action from the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).


When not disseminating hate or preaching the joys of communism, Kgadishi enjoys running in marathons as part of the Gauteng Provincial Treasury team.

Antisemitism is rising, naked and blatant throughout the world. We don’t need polls to see it. Germany's Merkel gave Bibi a talking to about his comments regarding Jewish sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. After all, Germany must bear the stain of murdering 6 million Jews. How else can it do this except by maligning Israel and ordering it around?
In South Africa there are people like Kgadishi Moloto who need a scapegoat, someone to hate. They like to point a finger at Israel. And they don’t care about the truth. Perhaps post-Apartheid South Africans also fling mud at Israel to take the weight off their own ugly history, to rise above feelings of inferiority.
Moloto chooses to believe the lies, the false narrative and the propaganda, instead of seeing the truth. Here is the truth:  in Israel, Arabs are treated in Israeli hospitals. Arab doctors operate on Jewish patients and Jewish doctors operate on Arab patients. In Israel, Arabs shop side by side with Israelis in Israeli supermarkets, Arabs sit on buses and trains alongside Israelis, and there is an Arab justice serving in Israel’s High Court.
But in Judea and Samaria, Jews are not allowed to enter Arab villages.

It is the same everywhere. Israel must serve as the world’s whipping boy, the one who must always absorb everyone’s shame and the blame, and be an outlet for the world’s frustrations.
And while the world is hating us, it tells us that antisemitism is nothing special, no different than any other hatred. Just one more hatred in the pantheon of hatreds.
In the U.S., the Democrats have underscored this idea with their resolution. The resolution tells us that hating Jews is no different than hating blacks or gays.

These ideas embolden haters everywhere. People holding government positions like Moloto, and certainly random haters on social media who tell us there is nothing to see here. Nothing at all.

Move along.

via GIPHY


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By Shir Dimensha, Professor of Comparative Literature

girl with glassesNew York, April 17 - The quantity of self-identifying progressives in our society has grown steadily in recent decades, in volume if not absolute numbers, but the best way to demonstrate one's seriousness in the progressive realm remains to take an ancient Jewish text about individual and national liberation, and reinterpret it to divorce it from its original meaning and replace the Jews of the original with the marginalized group of your choice.

You may have attended all the right BDS rallies and signed all the cool petitions calling for the impeachment of that racist in the White House; you may have submitted a paper exploring the various ways in which beloved children's books actually convey sinister, fascist messages; you may fall to your knees every time you encounter a person of color, and ask how you can atone for the atrocities your ancestors most certainly perpetrated against theirs. None of those, however, reach the same rarefied stratum of progressive credentials as the de-Judaification of the Passover Haggadah.

The specific choice of marginalized population with which to replace Jews in your Haggadah matters less than the very fact of replacement. By removing Jews from the Haggadah, you declare you have arrived at the sine qua non of progressivism: subordinating Jewish concerns, rights, and culture to those of other groups.

Understandably, many observers of this practice elect to replace Jews with groups among whom they count themselves, but many progressives, through no fault of their own, have at least one Jewish parent, and thus, as determined by the high priests of the progressive movement, can never attain pure membership in any such group. The only choice these unfortunate Jews, far removed as they might be from their heritage and traditions, have, remains abject surrender to a culture infused with hate for the Jew. We therefore are witness to the blessed phenomenon of progressive Jews replacing their ancestral people with Palestinians, or Muslims in general, in the Haggadah narrative, the better to prove they belong in the movement.

But whether one composes a Muslim Haggadah, a trans Haggadah, an undocumented immigrant Haggadah, or the anti-Trump Resistance Haggadah, that step provides its creator with impeccable woke credentials: it represents a real-life manifestation of the demonstrator who punched the Nazi who smirked at an indigenous activist who shouted down a right-wing speaker who committed microaggressions against people of color that your ancestors bought as slaves for two zuzim.



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From Ian:

Noah Pollak: Michelle Goldberg’s Free Speech Martyr
In 2007, Barghouti founded, and runs to this day, a Ramallah-based umbrella group called the BDS National Committee that serves as the leading group organizing and promoting BDS outside the United States. The reason Barghouti was barred from entering the U.S. is not because he advocates BDS or Israel’s destruction. There is no speech issue here at all.

The reason he was barred is because the group Barghouti runs includes five U.S.-designated terrorist organizations in its membership: Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, and the Popular Front – General Command.

Not only does Barghouti run a group whose membership includes U.S.-designated terrorists, he himself promotes terrorism. You wouldn’t know this reading Goldberg, who claims in her piece that “The BDS movement doesn’t engage in or promote violence.”

Here is a video of Barghouti in 2011 stating, “The media only focuses on one form of resistance, which we’re proud of, we’re not ashamed to have armed resistance [terrorism] as well as peaceful resistance.” This wasn’t a one-off. Barghouti has stated his support for terrorism dozens of times, plainly, openly, publicly, proudly, without euphemism. Click the link and read his quotes endorsing terrorism.

The only good part of the BDS movement is how it is exposing so many progressives as wishful, gullible, or dishonest in their need to paint the anti-Israel cause as respectable.
Omar Barghouti: Israel enlisted Trump to ban me from America
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions founder Omar Barghouti has expressed dismay and confusion over his entry into the United States being refused.

In an op-ed to the UK newspaper The Guardian, Barghouti claimed that "Israel appears to have once again enlisted the Trump administration to do its bidding."

He claimed in the piece that with his "denial of entry, Israel appears to have once again enlisted the Trump administration to do its bidding, this time to repress Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights defenders," he wrote. "They wish to deny lawmakers, journalists and ordinary Americans their right to listen first-hand to a Palestinian human rights advocate calling for ending US complicity in Israel’s crimes against our people."

As a co-founder of the BDS movement "for Palestinian rights," Barghouti said he has "been smeared by the Israeli government and banned from travel repeatedly, including in 2018 when I was prevented from going to Jordan to accompany my late mother during cancer surgery."

"Israel’s intelligence minister threatened me with 'targeted civil elimination,' drawing condemnation from Amnesty International," he wrote. "Their de facto and 'arbitrary travel ban' against me was recently lifted for three months after Amnesty International’s pressure."
Jerusalem court upholds deportation of Human Rights Watch official
The Jerusalem District Court on Tuesday upheld a deportation order against Human Rights Watch’s local director and gave him two weeks to leave the country.

The court rejected an appeal by Omar Shakir to remain in the country. The New York-based watchdog has cast his case as a bid to suppress global criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

Israel enacted a law in 2017 barring entry to any foreigner who “knowingly issues a public call for boycotting Israel.” Tuesday’s ruling was the first time the law was applied to someone already residing in the country.

Shakir, a U.S. citizen, has worked as the New York-based group’s Israel and Palestine director since October 2016.

Israel’s interior minister ordered Shakir’s deportation in May 2018, calling him a “boycott activist.”

The court said that Shakir “continues his actions publicly to advance a boycott against Israel, but it’s not on the stages at conferences or in university panels, rather through disseminating his calls to advance boycott primarily through his Twitter account and by other means.”

“The appellant continues to call publicly for a boycott of Israel, or parts of it, while at the same time asking [Israel] to open its doors to him,” said the ruling distributed by the Justice Ministry.
David Singer: Jordan in Denial over Trump Plan for Israel in Judea and Samaria
In a closed-door meeting with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee King Abdullah of Jordan reportedly said the White House had given him
“zero visibility into the most fraught part of their peace plan: how it proposes to divide Israeli and Palestinian territory.”

His Majesty – in complete denial – could not bring himself to call that territory “Judea Samaria and Gaza”

Abdullah has seen Trump ditch the Palestine Liberation Organisation financially and diplomatically over its continuing refusal to negotiate with Israel on any Trump proposal to divide sovereignty in Judea and Samaria between Jews and Arabs.

Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan laid out Jordan’s pivotal role in negotiating any such division in 1980:
“Israel and Jordan are the two Palestinian states envisioned and authorized by the United Nations. Jordan is now recognized in some 80% of the old territory of Palestine. Israel and Jordan are the parties primarily authorized to settle the future of the unallocated territories in accordance with the principles of the mandate and the provisions of Resolutions 242 and 338”

In 1982 duly-elected President Reagan made it clear that peace could not be achieved by the formation of an independent Palestinian state and the United States would not support the establishment of such a state.

  • Wednesday, April 17, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon
By Daled Amos

Myth #1: Palestinian Arabs launched BDS

On May 25, 2016, a discussion at the University of Westminster featured Gideon Levy from Haaretz, Illan Pappe from the University of Exeter and Ruba Salih from SOAS (London University School of Oriental and African Studies). At one point, on the topic of the leadership -- or lack thereof -- of the Arabs, Pappe made an unexpected admission:



Ruba Salih: “Well, the Palestinians launched the BDS”
Illan Pappe: “Yes, not really but yes. For historical record, yes”
Ruba Salih: “It’s important”
Illan Pappe: “It’s not true but it’s important”
The issue is who started the BDS movement: the Palestinian Arabs or someone else?

In an article in 2010 for The Guardian's Comment is Free, Barghouti claims the BDS movement is 5 years old, tracing its start to the "Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS" on July 9, 2005 -- a declaration that Barghouti was a part of.

Not so fast.

While Omar Barghouti is the face of BDS, the idea of boycotting and isolating Israel actually originated  4 years earlier. On September 2001 in Durban, South Africa, the UN Anti-Racism Conference was held. An NGO human rights forum ran parallel to the conference and ended with a declaration. CNN reported at the time:
The forum's document branded "Israel as a racist apartheid state," and called for the establishment of a U.N. committee to prosecute Israeli war crimes and the complete isolation of Israel as an apartheid state.
The language of the declaration was modified due to the backlash, but the tone was set, and an academic boycott of Israel soon followed.

In April the following year, Steven and Hilary Rose called for an academic boycott of Israel in an open letter to The Guardian. It called for a moratorium on all cultural and research links with Israel.

In June, one of those signers, Mona Baker, a professor of translation studies at the University of Manchester, removed 2 Israeli professors from the editorial boards of 2 journals she owned: Translator and Translation Studies Abstracts. She went on to say that Translator would no longer publish any research by Israeli scholars and would refuse to sell books and journals to Israeli libraries.

photo
Mona Baker Usage as per Creative Commons license

Jon Haber of Divest This! notes similarly, "divestment campaigns at US colleges and universities, Mainline Protestant churches, cities and unions dotting the landscape starting in 2002."

It would take another 2 years before, in 2004, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) was formed, with Omar Barghouti listed as 1 of the 8 original founding members:
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was launched in Ramallah in April 2004 by a group of Palestinian academics and intellectuals to join the growing international boycott movement.
Only then, on July 9, 2005, was there a Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS, accompanied by 170 Palestinian political parties, unions, mass movements and NGOs that signed on.

At the top of this list is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, also known as PNIF. An article last year, BDS Umbrella Group Linked to Palestinian Terrorist Organizations, noted PNIF's pedigree:
Among PNIF’s members are five different groups designated by the US as terrorist organizations, including Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Front – General Command (PFLP-GC), the Palestine Liberation Front, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)
Jon Haber, of Divest This, already noted the PNIF's terrorist ties back in 2010, suggesting that "it must be much easier for this Islamic Forces Council to get the Palestinian Dentist’s Association to agree to its agenda than vice versa." Actually, it is no more surprising to see Hamas involved in the BDS movement than it is to see them behind the Gaza riots attempting to break through into Israel.

David Collier explains the implications of the BDS movement actually predating Palestinian involvement in it by 4 years:
With a single exchange, Illan Pappe, a master of illusion and deception, basically admits that BDS was created by external forces. Forces that were intent on destroying Israel. The Palestinians did not call for a boycott. BDS is therefore not a response to a non existent call. And therefore all the humanitarian left wing groups that have rallied behind the flag, followed Jew haters, communists and Islamists down a road that doesn’t actually care about the Arab civilians at all.

It is time to tear the entire movement down. The single ethical pillar that could have been used to support a boycott, despite all its other ethical failings, has turned out to be false.

Myth #2: BDS is non-violent


Speaking of deceptions, another is the very idea that the BDS movement is a non-violent humanitarian group.

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information notes that Omar Barghouti supports armed terrorist attacks against Israel. It quotes from an interview he did in the November-December 2010 issue of Al-Adab, a Palestinian literary magazine. When asked if he supported ending the "Palestinian armed resistance," Barghouti responded:
"No, we most definitely have a moral and legal right to an armed resistance against the military occupation of our land, even according to international law, as long as we attack legitimate targets, that is, the occupation, settlers [i.e., Israeli civilians] and people who are armed. We don't attack anyone who doesn't fight indiscriminately...the resistance is not an ideology or dogma. We cannot be neutral, but have to think about ways to resist that are suitable for our situation and goals, at every stage [of the struggle against Israel]..."
If Barghouti says that unarmed Israeli civilians are legitimate targets, it is no wonder how violent BDS supporters are on college campuses.

Similarly, the Canary Mission profile on Omar Barghouti features a video where Barghouti endorses "armed resistance." He even goes so far as to falsely claim that such terror attacks are a legal right -- when in fact armed struggle is not supported by international law.



If the face of BDS is going around endorsing violence, no one should be fooled by those who claim that the BDS movement is non-violent or surprised when BDS confrontations turn violent.

Not surprisingly, Barghouti endorses Antisemitic metaphors --  like another Omar we know:




Myth #3: Barghouti as BDS role model


One of Barghouti's more well-known deceptions, actually an evasion, is the fact that as the face of the BDS movement, Barghouti has a degree from Tel Aviv University.

When confronted with this hypocrisy, Barghouti's original response was:
My studies at Tel-Aviv University are a personal matter and I have no interest in commenting.
Faced with the obvious inadequacy of his excuse, Barghouti came up with others.

Maan reports:
In 2009, PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) of whom Barghouti is a founding member, stated that Palestinian citizens of Israel or Palestinians carrying Israeli ID cards have no other possibility than to study in Israeli institutions and as such cannot be asked to join the academic boycott.

During a Q& at a session at Loyola Law School, Barghouti responded:
Oppressed people don’t have a choice of where they go to school.
The problem, of course, is that the issue is with Barghouti himself, not other Palestinian Arabs. He earned a masters in electrical engineering from Columbia University while living in the US for 11 years - where he travels on his speaking tours. Barghouti does have choices.

Even if he cannot afford to go back to Columbia or elsewhere outside of Israel, there are a number of universities in both the West Bank and Gaza.

Wikipedia has a list -- of both colleges and universities, in the "West Bank" and Gaza.

In the "West Bank":
o An-Najah National University
o Arab American University
o Bethlehem Bible College
o Bethlehem University
o Birzeit University
o Dar Al-Kalima University College of Arts & Culture
o Edward Said National Conservatory of Music
o Hebron University
o Ibrahimieh College
o Khodori Institute, Tulkarm
o Palestine Ahliya University
o Palestine Polytechnic University
o Al-Quds University
o International Academy of Art, Palestine
o Other education and research institutions
o Applied Research Institute–Jerusalem
o Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute
o Palestinian Academic Network
o Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs
o Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education

In Gaza:
o Al-Aqsa University
o Al-Azhar University - Gaza
o Al-Quds Open University
o Gaza University
o Islamic University of Gaza
o Israa University
o Palestine Technical College
o University College of Applied Sciences
o University of Palestine
Yes, there are choices.

And if Barghouti really is concerned, as he claims, that "Palestinian citizens of Israel or Palestinians carrying Israeli ID cards have no other possibility than to study in Israeli institutions" -- there is good news: Arabs now outnumber residents of the territories at the first private Palestinian university in Jenin
Nur and Mohammed are two of the thousands of Israelis Arabs who are getting their higher education in the West Bank. At a time when the number of students attending universities in Israel is dropping, in general (students are also flocking to private colleges instead), a report from the Palestinian Education Ministry, which Haaretz has obtained, shows that the number of Israelis at the university in Jenin has climbed from 36 to 5,294 in a decade.

An organized transportation system takes students from their homes in the Galilee and Little Triangle area of Arab cities in central Israel to the West Bank. In fact, Israeli Arabs now make up a majority of the student body at AAUJ, the first private Palestinian university. Founded in 2000, the institution is located southeast of Jenin in Area A of the West Bank – i.e., under the Palestinian Authority’s full civil and security control.

Barghouti's claim of no options outside of Israel is false.



If you cannot trust Omar Barghouti -- the face of BDS -- to give you an honest answer, what can you expect of other representatives of BDS?




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This week saw a relatively minor story from Israel's perspective, and one that was heavily reported in Palestinian Arab media.

Arab prisoners went on a hunger strike last week because Israel put cell phone jamming devices in prisons, making illegal cell phones impossible to use. Palestinian Arabs freaked out, claiming that the devices would cause cancer or other illnesses.

The reason cell phones are banned is obvious. Terrorists can plan new attacks from prison. They can recruit new members of terror groups. They can speak via teleconference at terrorist gatherings and incite more hate and violence. Indeed, Israel has evidence of 14 recent attacks planned via illegal prison cell phones.

Instead of telling the prisoners to drop dead from their hunger strike, Israeli prison officials negotiated with them. And they came up with a solution that seems to address all the issues: Israel agreed to install public telephones in the prison wards where the Arab terrorists are kept, and to allow prisoners to make regular calls to first degree relatives that Israeli officials can listen in on.

Israel no longer has a security issue and Arab prisoners are happy they can speak to their families, which makes prisons a safer place for guards as well. This is a win-win situation.

But that is not how Palestinian media is looking at this.


Today is Palestinian Prisoners Day and Palestinian media is saying that the compromise was a "qualitative victory" for them. (Suddenly the fears of the supposed radiation from the cell phone jammers, which presumably will remain in place, have dissipated.)

Palestinian Arabs simply cannot think in terms of cooperation and compromise with Israel. They can only frame this incident as a victory for them - and a loss for Israel.

This is only a minor example of how the entire conflict has gone. For the Palestinian Arabs, perception is more important than reality (a corollary of the honor/shame culture they inhabit) and therefore they cannot accept anything but what can be framed as total victory - and, just as importantly, a total loss for the Jews.

From Israel's perspective, making a concession is evidence of how strong and secure it feels. From the Arab perspective, Israeli concessions is evidence of their weakness in the face of Arab power and resolve. The two attitudes are not compatible except in minor situations like this one where the actual facts can be papered over.

This difference in attitudes is one important reason peace is so difficult. Every time Israel compromises, the Palestinian Arabs assume that this is evidence of weakness, and it invites further demands and concessions. Only Israeli strength minimizes that attitude.

Western insistence on Israeli concessions ignores this dynamic and how they don't make Israel more secure - as they would with a like-minded negotiating partner - but they endanger Israel by making her appear weak to her enemies.

The EU and UN demand Israel act like a modern Western state when negotiating with people who have not evolved psychologically from the days of Mohammed. Israel's strength allows it to make concessions at times - but it has to balance them with the long term effects on how it is perceived by its enemies, not just the immediate easing of tensions.



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  • Wednesday, April 17, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon
The EU Parliament Plenary session on US recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory and the possible annexation of the West Bank settlements.

Some right wing MEPs supported Israeli control over the Golan, although most did not. You can watch the debate here:


The statement from High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini was predictably against Israel - and wrong on facts. She referred to the 1949 armistice lines between Israel and Transjordan as "pre-1967 borders," saying, "The EU will recognize changes to the pre-1967 borders only if and when agreed by the parties, including with regard to Jerusalem."

But they were never borders and Palestinians were never officially presumed to own the land on the other side. The entire premise of the Oslo process was that all the land east of the line was disputed, which is why it was subject to negotiation to begin with. It wasn't a border dispute where cartographers could determine where an earlier boundary was, it was a negotiation over who gets what land to create border between the State of Israel and a Palestinian Arab entity, which may or may not have ended up as a state.

Mogherini then redoubles on international law as it applies to borders - borders that are fictional.

"The idea that you can change borders with the use of military force is a dangerous one in Europe, in the Middle East, elsewhere," she said. Yet the 1949 armistice lines were created by war that was started by the Arab side to begin with, and they were never meant to be permanent. UNGC 242 says that Israel has the"right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force," a phrase inserted specifically because the 1949 lines were not secure nor recognized. The Arabs certainly didn't recognize them as borders, and the armistice agreements made that explicit.

There is something wrong where a top EU diplomat can publicly lie about the Green Line and international law and no one even notices.

(h/t Irene)



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Tuesday, April 16, 2019

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Jewish critics of Israel have a problem with Israelis, not with Netanyahu
The issue on which they are prepared to discard the ties between Israel and American Jews is one that is hardly worth such a split. Netanyahu made it clear that he’s not talking about annexation of the West Bank, but applying Israeli law to settlements where, it must be pointed out, Israeli law already is applied as a general practice. Doing so wouldn’t prevent a two-state solution were the Palestinians ever inclined to accept one, which Jacobs and his friends know very well they have repeatedly rejected.

What is really at stake here is nothing more than the anger of American Jews who are still shocked that Israelis don’t value their advice. The clear majority of Israelis, including many who voted for Blue and White because of disgust with Netanyahu’s legal problems and because Gantz offered no substantive disagreements with the prime minister on security issues, have rejected the blind belief of Jacobs and his friends in withdrawal from the West Bank as an end in and of itself.

We know Jacobs and ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt oppose Netanyahu and Trump. But it’s time to acknowledge that their real beef is with the Israeli people, who have repeatedly rejected their opinions by margins of landslide proportions. Most Israelis believe that endangering their security by creating a hostile sovereign power in Judea and Samaria—the way Ariel Sharon did in Gaza with his 2005 withdrawal—would be madness.

Writers like former Forward editor Jane Eisner and Peter Beinart, who are open about rejecting the political will of Israeli’s people and in abandoning the notion of Israel’s centrality (Eisner) or working to subjugate Israel to the will of foreign powers who wish to impose a solution on it (Beinart), are more honest than Jacobs and Greenblatt about their goals.

Regardless of their own opinions about Netanyahu or the conflict, it’s likely that many Reform and Conservative Jews, as well as donors to ADL, aren’t comfortable with having these organizations express such contempt for the people of Israel or for them to attempt to sabotage the U.S.-Israel relationship. Nor should they be. These unelected leaders of American Jewry who have the nerve to lecture the people of Israel about Jewish values and morals deserve to be ignored.
Nikki Haley interviewed by Hillel Neuer, King David Gala, Montreal, April 10, 2019.



Holocaust survivor Tomi Reichental: the boy from Belsen brings urgent lessons to Belfast…
Tomi’s story informs that every German family has a skeleton in their cupboard from that period. This is not to suggest that most Germans have not exorcised old ghosts and recognise uncomfortable truths. They have, as the film shows. Rather, for some it is taboo. Nazis are still admired, and anti-Semitism has not gone away.

In one clip, Tomi is in the room the Wannsee conference took place. This is where Hitler and his henchmen conceived the final solution. In typical German efficiency, everything was catalogued.

Now a museum, on the wall a list itemising the number of Jews across Europe to be exterminated, one of them being Tomi. The plan included 4,000 Jews in Ireland.

Factor in, others deemed unfit to be citizens by nationalist extremists and categorised with different coloured stars other than yellow, and the number was certain to rise.

I raised the Irish aspect with Tomi and Gerry. In Northern Ireland, unionist understanding of the Republic’s neutral role in World War II is routinely coloured. Constantly cited is De Valera offering condolences to Germany on Hitler’s death.

It may not have been Dev’s greatest moment but nor is it representative of a nation that interned IRA suspects throughout the war and executed those who collaborated with the Nazis.

My point here is this. Had Hitler had his way, the people to administer the Zyklon B in Ireland were the IRA, a sinister organisation based on whispers. Kids like Tomi Reichental would have been rounded up by men like Sean Russell, the IRA chief of staff who died on a Nazi submarine.

For the Sinn Fein family, Russell is an Irish patriot or victim, but never a perpetrator. No, never that. Each year they pay homage to his statue in Dublin. If Russell was still alive, Tomi would ask him, are you sorry for what you did?

  • Tuesday, April 16, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon
Ten years ago I decided to make The Elder of Ziyon Haggadah, one of the very few English-language purely Zionist Haggadot with a selection of commentaries from a variety of religious Zionist sources on the themes of redemption and the relevance of the Haggadah to Zionism, today.

I can look at it more objectively today and say, it is still pretty good. It is very usable - print it out in color and get it bound with plastic ring binding so it can lay flat and you can use it during your seder. (Don't you hate haggadot that close on you when you need to make Kiddush or drink one of the four cups?)

I would need to rewrite it if i was to market it because I copied and pasted different ideas from all over the Internet. (The artwork came from a Chabad haggadah.)

While I have to give it away for free, you can still give me a donation for it!

You can download it here, and you can view it below.

Try this link if the other doesn't work.










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  • Tuesday, April 16, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon


Egypt's El Watan News has an article about the poor state of historic Jewish cemeteries in Cairo.

It describes how tombstones and markers in a 120 dunum area have deteriorated due to neglect, being disintegrated by mold.

Hills of rubbish mixed with sewage, accumulate, wearing away the stones and erasing history. Grave robbers steal marble and stone from the sites. There are no fences or walls protecting the areas and area children  and youths hang out among the graves and the stray dogs.  Witnesses in the area say they see kids go to the graveyard to party, drink and take drugs.

Zeinab Abd al-Halhi, a resident of the area, says she saw Jews visit only three times in the last 15 years, under police protection.




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From Ian:

The False Palestinian "Nakba" Narrative
The failed Palestinian Arab attempt to destroy the State of Israel at birth, and the attendant flight of some 600,000 Palestinian Arabs, has come to be known internationally as the "Nakba," the catastrophe, with its accompanying false implication of hapless victimhood.

Ironically, this was the opposite of the original meaning of the term when it was first used by Syrian historian Constantin Zureiq in his 1948 pamphlet The Meaning of the Disaster (Ma'na al-Nakba).

Zureiq wrote: "When the battle broke out, our public diplomacy began to speak of our imaginary victories, to put the Arab public to sleep and talk of the ability to overcome and win easily - until the Nakba happened.... We must admit our mistakes...and recognize the extent of our responsibility for the disaster that is our lot."

In his 1956 book Facts on the Question of Palestine, Hajj Amin Husseini, the leader of the Palestinian Arabs from the early 1920s to 1948, avoided the term "Nakba," which was widely associated at the time with a self-inflicted Palestinian Arab disaster - either through land sales to Zionists, failure to put up a fight, or the issuing of instructions to the people to leave.

"Nakba" is not a fact. It is a manipulative term designed to service the Palestinian propaganda campaign against Israel by imposing a false sense of guilt or culpability for the creation of the refugee problem. The flight of the Palestinian Arabs was the direct result of a failed "war of extermination" (in the words of the Arab League's secretary-general).

As Israeli Ambassador to the UN Abba Eban said on Nov. 17, 1958: "The Arab refugee problem was caused by a war of aggression, launched by the Arab States against Israel in 1947 and 1948. Let there be no mistake. If there had been no war against Israel...there would be no problem of Arab refugees today. Once you determine the responsibility for that war, you have determined the responsibility for the refugee problem."

PMW: Olmert offered Abbas more than 100% of West Bank, says PA leader
As Israel, the PA and the international community await the publication of the American peace plan, it is clear, based on PA leader Mahmoud Abbas' behavior in previous peace talks, that nothing the United States can offer will be enough for the PA leader.

PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat who was present at the negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas in 2008, recently told PA TV how generous Olmert's offer was on all final status issues. In fact, Olmert literally accepted all of the PA's publicly expressed demands, and even offered Abbas more than the full area of the West Bank and Gaza, and yet Abbas still rejected the offer.


Erekat explained that the area of the West Bank and Gaza Strip before they came under Israeli control in 1967was 6,235 sq. km. Olmert offered Abbas even more land than that, a total of 6,260 sq. km. At the negotiations, Erekat encouraged Abbas to accept the offer, saying that he could tell Palestinians: "I got more than the 1967 territories." And still Abbas rejected the offer.

Regarding Israel's capital Jerusalem, Olmert was likewise very generous. According to Erekat, Olmert offered: "What's Arab is Arab, and what's Jewish is Jewish." This would have kept the Temple Mount - Judaism's holiest site - under Palestinian rule with far-reaching implications for Jews and Judaism. The PA has said many times they would never allow Jews access to the Temple Mount since they consider Jews' presence on any area of the Temple Mount a desecration of the nearby Al-Aqsa Mosque. Yet Olmert still offered to give this to the Palestinians for peace - and even this wasn't enough for Abbas.

On the topic of refugees, Olmert was also forthcoming. He offered to have 150,000 refugees absorbed into the state of Israel over a period of 10 years. And still Abbas rejected it.


How the Israeli Left Has Undermined Faith in the Rule of Law
In the months leading up to Israel’s recent elections, the country’s attorney general announced that he would seek indictments against Benjamin Netanyahu on multiple charges of corruption. Nonetheless, Netanyahu’s Likud party gained seats in the Knesset, ensuring that he will retain the premiership. Evelyn Gordon points to a survey, conducted in February, that may explain why the corruption charges haven’t damaged Netanyahu at the ballot box:

Fully 65 percent of Likud voters and 75 percent of ḥaredi voters think law-enforcement agencies are simply trying to oust Netanyahu. On one level, this is shocking. But on another, it’s not shocking at all because the Israeli left has spent decades successfully subverting the concept of “the rule of law” for its own political benefit.

For instance, Israel’s Supreme Court repeatedly overturns government policies not because they violate any law but because the justices deem them “unreasonable.” . . . Moreover, in almost every Western democracy, the executive and legislative branches choose Supreme Court justices; only in Israel do sitting justices have veto power over the choice of their successors. Yet the left has branded every attempt to align Israel’s judicial appointments system with this Western norm as “contrary to the rule of law,” and has thereby successfully staved off change. . . .

[In addition], there’s the unequal application of laws, as epitomized by a pre-election [Supreme Court] ruling that disqualified a Jewish Knesset candidate but nixed the disqualification of an Arab party, Balad. . . .

So here’s how your average rightist voter understands the rule of law today: [as] a trick for ensuring that the left can continue imposing its views no matter how many elections it loses. That trick has successfully thwarted all legislative efforts at reform. But the price is that many rightists now distrust and despise “the rule of law” to such an extent that they dismiss pending indictments against a prime minister as just another attempt by the legal establishment to subvert democracy.

  • Tuesday, April 16, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon
Assaf Voll in Israel published a Biblical-style description of Netanyahu's political career that has gone viral, and it is quite funny. (Haaretz called it "irritating.")

Here it is in Hebrew and an English translation from EoZ friend Yoel:


דברי ימי נתניהו
---
איש היה בישראל ושמו בנימין בן בן-ציון נתניהו איש ימיני; ויך בנימין את שמעון הפרסי ויושע את ישראל מיד פרס; וימלוך על ישראל ימים רבים ושם אשתו שרה ושם בניו יאיר ואבנר; ויקומו אנשים מישראל ויקהלו על בנימין ויאמרו להפילו ויתמודדו עליו זה ארבע פעמים ולא יכלו לו; ויהי ה' את בנימין נתניהו והאיש הולך וגדל בכל אשר יפנה יצליח; ויפתח נתניהו את השמיים ואת השווקים, את האבטלה נתץ ואת האינפלציה שרף באש; ואת התמ"ג העלה מעלה ויעש אקזיטים ככוכבי שמים לרוב וילך בצוללות גרמניא; וכל מלכי הארץ מבקשים את פני בנימין לראותו ולשמוע דברו כי גדול האיש בעיניהם מכל אשר התהלך לפניו על פני האדמה;
ויאספו אנשי מדון אל בלפור ויזעקו אל בן בן ציון השכם והערב ויאמרו: צא צא איש הדמים המושחת המפלג ובן הבליעל; וישנאו אותו בלבם לאמור, המלוך תמלוך עלינו אם משול תמשול בנו; וישטמהו עוד על דבר סיגריו ושמפניותיו ולא יכלו דברו לשלום ויהיו לו לשטן ולמוקש כל הימים;
ויאיר בן יוסף איש לפידות מתנשא לאמור אני אמלוך; ויקשור על בנימין בן בן-ציון בירושלים; וישלח אל שר הצבא רב אלוף כנען בנימין הגנצי לאמור, לכה והיית לנו לראש ולקצין ונלחמה בבנימין בן בן-ציון; ויען בנימין הגנצי לאמור, אם ייתן ה' את בן בן-ציון לפני והייתי לכם לשר ולראש וחצי המלכות תתנו לפני; וישב יאיר איש לפידות דבר את גנץ ויאמר טוב הדבר בעיני; ויכרתו ברית ויאכלו וישתו ויחרפו את נתניהו לאמור, מי הוא זה ואיזה הוא בן-ציון כי נעבדנו; ויהי כי גבה ליבם ויוסיפו עוד דבר: מי ייתן את העם הזה בידינו והסרנו את את ראש נתניהו מעליו ונתנהו לחיית הארץ, לעוף השמיים ולבהמת האופוזיציה;
אז יחלק העם ישראל לחצי; חצי העם היה אחרי בנימין הגנצי להמליכו והחצי את בנימין בן בן-ציון נתניהו; ויאסף כל איש שמאל כל איש מצוק ומר נפש על בן בן-ציון להלחם בו. וייצעק איש ישראל אל בנימין הגנצי מרמת אביב, מבוגרשוב ומארסוף; ויתקבצו אתם משה אלוף יעלון וגבי אלוף אשכנז וניסנקורן זקן הועדים ויתקעו בשופר ותרעש הארץ ותהום עד למאוד;
ויפקוד ביום ההוא בנימין הגנצי עשתי-עשר מאות אלפים מאיש ישראל למערכה; וימלאו אנשיו את המדיה, וירבו כתביהם כחול אשר על שפת הים ולאסטרטגיהם ולדולריהם אין מספר; וישאל בנימין הגנצי בחוזים, בנביאים ובסוקרים לאמור – האעלה למלחמה בנתניהו אם אחדל. ויענוהו הסוקרים: עלה ונתן ה' בידך; והוא לא ידע כי רוח שקר נתן עם ישראל ביד סוקריו, כי מאת ה' היה הדבר למען הפילם ביד נתניהו לחזק את ליבם להלחם עמו למען החרימם לבלתי היות להם תקומה וקואליציה;
ויתראו גנץ ונתניהו פנים בירושלים אשר ליהודה ותעל המערכה ביום ההוא; וייצעק איש נפתלי לעלות לבדו למלחמה ולא שמע בקול נביאי ה' וירם יד בקהל ה' לפרוץ פרץ ויפול בשדה הוא וכל עמו אתו; ויהי לעת ערב ותעבור הרינה במחנה לאמור: היכה לפיד באלפיו וגנץ ברבבותיו; אז עשה גנץ את הבמה לעלות בה ויעמוד ויקרא קבל עם בקול גדול, אני מלכתי וישם נזר המלוכה בראשו וחמישים מאבטחים רצים לפני מרכבתו; ויריעו העם תרועה גדולה ויתקעו בחצוצרות ויעמדו לאלפיהם ולדגליהם וישמחו שמחה גדולה ויעשו עולות ושלמים ויקומו לצחק;
ויהי באשמורת הבוקר והנה רץ איש מן הקלפי ויבא אל שער היכל האולפן השקוף ודפיו קרועים ואפר על ראשו והוא אבל וחפוי ראש; ויקרב המבשר וישא קולו לאמור: נס גנץ לפני נתניהו וגם מגפה גדולה היתה בשמאל וגם אורלי אשת לוי ומשה הפייגליני אבדו וגם הקואליציה והתקציבים נלקחו; ויהי כהזכירו את הקואליציה ואת התקציבים ותזעק התקשורת זעקה מרה ותעל שוועת השמאל השמימה;
ויושע ה' את בנימין בן בן-ציון נתניהו ביום ההוא וילכוד את המלוכה על ישראל בחמישית ותינשא מלכותו מעל כל המלכים אשר היו לפניו; וכל דברי נתניהו וגדולתו אשר עשה, אשר העלה את דירוג האשראי ואשר הביא את הגז מן הים אל היבשה - הלא הם .כתובים על ספר דברי הימין למלכי ישראל; וימלוך בנימין בן בן-ציון על ישראל עד היום הזה ותשקוט הארץ 40 דקה;
______________________________

The chronicles of Netanyahu

There was a man in Israel named Benjamin son of Ben-Zion Netanyahu, a Jaminite (also: a rightist). And Benjamin smote Simon the Peresite (also: the Persian) and saved Israel from Peres (i.e. the 1996 elections). And he ruled over Israel for many years and his wife's name was Sarah and his sons' names were Jair and Abner. And men from Israel rose and gathered against Benjamin and wanted to topple him and they contested against him four times and failed. And the Lord was with Benjamin Netanyahu and the man grew greater and greater and succeeded in everything he did. And Netanyahu opened the heavens (i.e. the open skies policy) and the markets (i.e. the free market policy) and smashed the unemployment and burned the inflation with fire and raised the GDP higher and higher and made exits as many as the stars in the heavens and bought submarines from Germania. And all the kings of the world wanted to meet Benjamin, to see him and hear his word because great was the man in their eyes, greater then all the men who walked the earth before him.

And people of strife gathered at Balfour (i.e. the anti-Bibi demos) and shouted at the son of Ben-Zion day and night saying "Come out, come out, you man of blood, you corrupt and divisive and wicked man". And they hated him in their hearts saying "Who are you to rule over us? Who are you to lord us?". And they despised him even more because of his cigars and champagnes. And they were not able to say any positive thing about him and they were an adversary and rival to him all the time.

And Jair son of Joseph, a man from Lapidot (i.e. Yair Lapid), was arrogant saying "I will be king". And he conspired against Benjamin son of Ben-Zion in Jerusalem. And he sent an epistle to the lord of the military, arch chief of Canaan, Benjamin the Gantzite saying "Go forth and be our leader and general so we can fight Benjamin son of Ben-Zion". And Benjamin the Ganzite answered saying "If the Lord will deliver the son of Ben-Zion to me I will be your ruler and leader and you will give me half of the kingdom". And Jair, the man from Lapidot, answered Gantz saying "Good is the thing in my eyes". And they formed an alliance and ate and drank and cursed Netanyahu saying "Who is he and who is this son of Ben-Zion that we should be his servants?" And because they were arrogant they also said "May the people be in our hands so we can remove the head of Netanyahu from them and give him to the animal of the land, the bird of the heavens and the beast of the opposition.

Then the people were divided: half of the people wanted Benjamin the Gantzite to be king while the other half wanted Benjamin son of Ben-Zion Netanyahu. And every leftist, distressed, bitter person gathered against the son of Ben-Zion in order to fight him. And the elites of Israel cried out to Benjamin the Gantzite from Ramat Aviv (a wealthy neighborhood in northern Tel-Aviv), Bugrashov (a street in central Tel-Aviv) and Arsuf (a wealthy village north of Tel-Aviv). And gathered with them were Moses the chieftain of Yaalon and Gabby the chieftain of Ashkenaz and Nissenkorn the elder of the workers union (i.e. Histadrut). And they blew the trumpet and the land rumbled and shook very much.

And on that day Benjamin the Gantzite enlisted eleven thousand people from Israel for the battle. And his people filled the media, and their reporters were as many as the sand that is on the beach, and their strategists and dollars were countless. And Benjamin the Gantzite asked the seers and prophets and pollstets saying "Should I go up to fight Netanyahu or should I not?". And the pollsters answered him "Go up, for the Lord is with you". And he did not know that a spirit of falsehood was given to the pollsters by the people of Israel, because this was from the Lord, for to bring them down at the hand of Netanyahu and strengthen their heart so they will fight him in order that they will be destroyed and will have no revival and coalition.

And Gantz and Netanyahu faced off in Jerusalem which is in Judah and the battle started on that day. And a man from Naftali (i.e. Naftali Bennett) went up to the battle alone for he did not listen to the prophets of the Lord and struck the congregation of the Lord (i.e. the orthodox) and broke through them (i.e. left the Jewish Home) so he and all the people that were with him fell in battle. And it was evening when joy spread through the camp saying "Lapid struck with his thousands and Gantz with his tens of thousands". Then Gantz erected the stage (also: alter) and went up on it, stood and - in the presence of a great crowed - cried out with a loud voice "I am king!". And he put the crown of kingship on his head and fifty bodyguards were running in front of his chariot. And the people cheered a great cheer and blew the trumpets and stood in their thousands with their flags and were very happy and sacrificed burnt and peace offerings and they rose up and mocked their rivals.

And it was on the morning watch when - behold! - a man ran from the ballot to the gates of the temple of the transparent studio with his scrolls torn and soil on his head and he is in mourning and his head is hanging low. And the messenger was near the studio when he raised his voice and said "Gantz fled from before Netanyahu and a great plague has hit the Left and also Orly the Levite woman and Moses the Feiglinite have perished and also the coalition and the budgets have been taken". And it was when he mentioned the coalition and the budgets that the media cried out a bitter cry and the Left's shout went up to the heavens.

And the Lord saved Benjamin son of Ben-Zion Netanyahu on that day and he seized the kingship over Israel for the fifth time and his kingship lasted longer than the kings who were before him. And all the words of Netanyahu and the great things he did - like raising the credit rate and the gas he brought from the sea to the land - are written in the Book of Chronicles of the Rightist Kings of Israel. And Benjamin son of Ben-Zion Netanyahu reigned until this day and the land was quiet for forty minutes.


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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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