7/25 Links Part 2: Egyptian Blogger Denounces Khaybar, Irish MEP Calls For a New Intifada

From Ian:

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Hussein Aboubakr: The Holy Anti-Semitic Month of Ramadan

Ramadan specials like Khaibar are designed to remind large numbers of Arab viewers every day for a month that their Jewish neighbors are plotting their destruction. I distinctly remember Ramadan in 2005, when a Lebanese TV series titled The Diaspora Arabs featured a scene in which Jews slaughtered a Christian child for their secret matzah ingredient, the blood of Christians!
Given the fact that Arabs don’t have a strong reading culture, most of the information Arabs depend on comes from television, although lately the internet is becoming more prominent. Because of this, it may not be unusual to find a viewer of The Diaspora Arabs utterly convinced that the Jews eat matzah tainted with the blood of Christians. Unfortunately some Arab TV stations have decided to take advantage of a Muslim holiday to broadcast paranoia, obsessions and illusions.
Ramadan is supposed to offer Muslims a month of spiritual reflection, self-restraint, an opportunity to give charity and empathize with those who are less fortunate. Yet because of those who make decisions on Arab TV networks, this year’s Ramadan offers another dose of unchallenged hatred and historical forgery, planting deeper seeds of Jewish hatred that is all too often becoming an expression of Arab identity in the modern age.

Irish MEP condemned for suggesting Palestinians return to intifada

In an interview last week with the Russia-based television network RT, Paul Murphy, a Socialist Party MEP for Dublin, said that a “struggle” along the lines of the first intifada was “necessary.”
“You’ve seen significant protest, significant movement, the potential to redevelop a struggle along the lines of the first intifada.
That’s the kind of thing that is necessary,” he said.
“Such a movement could link up with the genuine Israeli left, with working people and young people, who don’t benefit from the oppression of the Palestinians, overthrow the capitalist establishment of Israel.”

Terra Incognita: Helen Thomas’ lost teaching moment

Thomas had what might be described as a anti-Judeo-centric worldview, one where almost everything in the world has a Jewish or “Israeli” connection. Israeli in this case is interchangeable with “Jew,” since she argued that Israelis should return to where Jews, in her view, came from. She interposes the two, as in the construction “every Jew is a persecuted victim forever – while they are victimizing Palestinians.”

The Helen Thomas Cover-Up: Media Whitewash Bigoted Record

Miami Herald critic Glenn Garvin likewise had Thomas’ number in a 2008 review of what he called “the fawning HBO documentary,” Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas At The White House ("Documentary Forgets to Ask Hard Questions," Aug. 18, 2008). Garvin said that in her nearly half-century covering presidents; Thomas “broke no major White House story.”
Though she “is routinely referred to these days as iconic, legendary, and fearless, journalism has little to do with it. She’s celebrated not for her work as a journeyman reporter at a second rate wire service or as a virtually unread political columnist .... Her reputation really derives from scolding, tendentious speeches nominally delivered as ‘questions’ ....”

Pro-Israel groups slam US court decision on Jerusalem passports

“The court has effectively given a stamp of approval to the offensive State Department policy that singles out Israel for ‘special’ treatment,” declared Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti- Defamation League.
“All other American citizens born abroad may choose to list a city or area of birth instead of a country,” he continued.
“Even Taiwan-born US citizens are permitted to identify Taiwan as their birthplace, despite protests from China.”

Eugene Kontorovich: The Jerusalem Passport Case – Separation of Powers and Standing

More interesting was the plaintiff’s argument that Congress itself acted through an enumerated power – Immigration and Naturalization. The Court rather convincingly showed that passports were not central to this power, which in any case was concurrent with the Executive’s foreign policy powers. Thus in rock-paper-scissors terms, an exclusive executive power (recognition) beats a concurrent legislative one.

Chabad rabbi gunned down in Russia’s Dagestan

A Russian Chabad rabbi was gunned down Wednesday night near his home in what police speculated was an anti-Semitic attack.
Artur (Ovadia) Isakov, 40, the chief rabbi of Derbent, in the Republic of Dagestan, was taken to the hospital in serious condition, according to RIA Novosti, the Russian state news agency.

French politician appealing libel conviction on al-Dura video

Karsenty has said he would not pursue the case further but changed his mind “because of procedural and ethical issues” that he says led to a “miscarriage of justice” in his latest trial. He declined to elaborate, citing legal issues.Russia

NYC’s De Blasio Formally Calls on Transit Authorities to Ban Saudi Arabian Airlines for Discrimination Against Israelis

In a letter sent Wednesday to the heads of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, De Blasio urged them “to take necessary steps to bar Saudi Arabian Airlines from operating at John F. Kennedy International Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport, respectively, if the airline does not immediately end its discrimination against Israeli passengers on the basis of national origin.”

New Shoah Book Is Hit Among Non-Jewish Iranians

Dr. Ari Babaknia, an Iranian Jewish doctor based in Southern California, spent 15 years working on what some viewed as a quixotic project: the first-ever history book about the Holocaust in Farsi. But now the four-volume work—which details the facts of the Holocaust from the rise of Nazism in Germany to the final days of World War II and eventually chronicles the other genocides of the 20th century that occurred in Armenia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Sudan—is becoming a hit among the very audience Babaknia intended to reach: Iranian Muslims.
“There are about 120 million-plus people in the world who speak Farsi, but there has never been a book written in their mother language about the Holocaust,” said Babaknia, an obstetrician-gynecologist by profession who said he wrote the first draft of the work by hand.

American university heads wave welcome sign for Israelis

Many Israelis believe that American campuses are hotbeds of anti-Israel activity. But on a visit to Israel — for some, their first — several US university presidents said that their campuses have no problem whatsoever with Israelis.
“If that kind of thing is going on, I haven’t seen it,” said Brian McCall, chancellor of the Texas State University System, in a comment echoed by other top American university officials who came to Israel on a recent trip sponsored by Project Interchange.

CUFI confab pushes halt to US funding for Palestinians

More than 4,000 activists attending the annual Washington conference of Christians United for Israel cheered calls to stop funding for the Palestinians.
Pastor John Hagee, who founded the movement, said at its “Night to Honor Israel” on Tuesday night that the United States should “shut off the foreign aid to the Palestinians until they publicly recognize the right of Israel to exist, the right to defend themselves against all of their enemies and the right to secure borders.”

Hackers Launch Operation to Fight Cyber Terrorism

An independent group of anonymous hackers has banded together to announce a cyber warfare operation aimed at fighting against anti-Semitic and jihadist sites, set to begin on Friday.
One participating group called the Israeli Elite Force launched a Facebook page on June 5 called #OpIslam aimed at gathering support for the operation.

Israel announces plans for West Bank train network

Since the planned routes of the network extend throughout the West Bank, including into areas A and B, which are governed by the Palestinian Authority, construction cannot begin without Palestinian cooperation, a Transportation Ministry official told The Times of Israel Thursday.
Palestinian officials have refused to cooperate publicly with the proposal, but the official insisted that Palestinian Authority officials quietly acknowledge that the plans, if implemented, would bring enormous economic benefits to PA-controlled areas.
“They support keeping the lands available for the trains,” the official said.