Friday Links Part 2

From Ian:

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Latma: Clash of the Jew hating Titans, and Bibi searches for the perfect costume



Sarah Honig: Another Tack: Not created equal
Facts will never be allowed to interfere with popular prejudice – not so long as any refugee episode can be linked to some Jewish aspect or another.

There’s no end to the shameless perversion of truth. Soon after Israel’s independence, the young, embattled country was covered with tent cities full of refugees, many of them from Arab countries. In early 1950, legendary photographer Robert Capa captured the image of a tiny weeping girl in Haifa’s Sha’ar Ha’aliya transit camp.
In no time, the Arab propaganda machine hijacked the evocative image, falsely hyping it as that of a pint-sized Palestinian refugee crying her heart out. She became an instant poster child among self-professed humanitarians.
Nobody cared that she was, in fact, a Jewish refugee crying her heart out. The corrected caption put the picture out of mind. As we said – not all refugees are created equal.

Why does the world target Israel? by Kasim Hafeez
Op-ed: By singling out Israel, human rights activists abandon those who really suffer from apartheid

For me, a particular source of pain and anger is the situation of minorities and women in my parents' homeland. In Pakistan, not a week goes by without a story of rape, murder, humiliation and torture. In this Islamic country, terms such as Jesus Christ are banned in text messages and a young girl is shot for demanding basic education. Yet apart from the attempted murder of Malala Yusufzai, these stories rarely make it to the press. The brutally oppressed Christian minority suffers at the hands of an archaic blasphemy law, yet, apart from small-scale protests held by Pakistani Christian groups, there were no calls to boycott Pakistan and no flotillas were planned. I guess murdered Pakistani Christians maybe not a trendy enough cause. I wonder if a British newspaper would publish a cartoon of a Pakistani mullah murdering minorities to pave the way for a Sharia state. Our journalists love freedom and liberty, but the love their lives a little bit more.

Arab Group: Kotel is a Muslim Site, And Jews Don't Belong There
An Israeli Arab group says, Israel is “defiling the holiness" of the Kotel - as defined by Islam - by conducting Jewish prayers there.

An Israeli Arab group, “The Al-Aqsa Heritage Institute,” on Thursday issued a statement demanding that Israel halt its plans to bring more Jews to the Kotel (Western Wall) – which, the group claims, is holy not to Jews, but to Muslims.
In fact, the group says, Israel is “defiling the holiness of the site” by conducting Jewish prayers there.

CAMERA: In Washington Post, Palestinian Oxymorons Threaten Israeli Archaeology

The article’s lead paragraphs make clear that material in the exhibit was found at Herodium, built by Herod, a Roman-era king of Judea—that is, king of the Jews and their land. Yet it relays with a straight face, without contradictory context,
criticism from Palestinian Arabs that Israeli removal of artifacts from Herodium for display in Israel “violates international law and appropriates cultural property that should remain in the West Bank, which the Palestinians seek as part of a future state.”

BBC Watch: Yolande Knell parrots Palestinian political propaganda

Did the BBC Jerusalem Bureau’s Yolande Knell even bother to check the facts behind the Palestinian claims featured widely in both of her recent reports about the new exhibition of archaeological finds from Herodium at the Israel Museum? It seems not.

Richard Millett: Shlomo Sand at SOAS: Israel is “a shitty nation” and “the most racist society in the world”.

He was speaking in London at the SOAS launch of his new book The Invention of The Land of Israel. The much discredited thesis of his previous book The Invention of The Jewish People is that there was no expulsion of the Jews from the Holy Land; diaspora Jews, therefore, must have all descended from converts and so have no right to return to Israel.
The already much discredited thesis of The Invention of The Land of Israel is, simply, that the land of Israel holds no religious significance for Jews either.

Also: Shlomo Sand on BBC Radio Three

Israelis to protest outside Argentinian embassy
Immigrants, family members of AMIA bombing victims reject joint probe with Iran

Argentinians living in Israel have organized a rally to protest the agreement signed between Argentina and Iran on a joint investigation of the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing.
The rally outside Argentina’s embassy in the central Israeli city of Herzliya Pituach is scheduled for Friday. It was organized via the Facebook group Kehila Latina en Israel.

Recession, xenophobia prompting Jews to ditch Hungary

Though the couple would prefer to raise their child near their Jewish families in Budapest, rising nationalism and an economic recession are leading them to stay in Austria.
“I don’t want to cut my roots, but I see no good future for a child growing up in an increasingly xenophobic environment,” said Fanni, a lawyer, who along with others interviewed for this article asked that their full names not be published.
As many as 1,000 Hungarian Jews are believed to be leaving the country each year, spurring fears among Jewish leaders about the future of Central Europe's largest Jewish community -- some 80,000 to 100,000 people. Immigration to Israel has tripled in the past three years, to 170 in 2012. And many others have sought new lives in Berlin, London and Vienna, the Austrian capital just a two-hour train ride away.

Purim goodies to your home, courtesy of Samsung
Using a Facebook app, you can send out a free holiday candy basket sponsored by the Korean electronics giant. It’s for a good cause

In a combination marketing campaign and charity project, Samsung is sending 10,000 Purim baskets (mishloah manot) to anyone in Israel lucky enough to have a friend that signs them up for one on the Samsung Mobile Israel Facebook page. Each basket is full of Purim goodies (candies and the like), and will be delivered by the end of Shushan Purim (on Monday) to any address in Israel. Samsung is paying for the candy, and is paying two Israeli organizations, Variety Israel and the Enosh Fund, to assemble them.

Israel Daily Picture: A Purim Potpurri from Tiberias, Scotland, America..

The mirthful festival of Purim will be celebrated in the Jewish world on Sunday. Residents of Jerusalem celebrate "Shushan Purim" on Monday.
We present pictures we found in the Scottish Dundee University Medical Archives, including the mysterious picture of "Rabbi Aboulafia" blowing a shofar and holding what appears to be a Megillat Esther read on Purim.