8/16 Links Part 1: Hobson’s choice, Pollard Speaks, Palestinian Heroes, Would Norway Release Breivik?

From Ian:

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Sarah Honig Hobson’s choice – the Obama variation

The buzz about Obama’s alleged variation on Hobson’s choice might be altogether unfounded. In that case all we’d supposedly gain from going to the gallows is the hope that we can at the last moment avoid execution but in the meanwhile diminish our excruciating delegitimization abroad.
Our delegitimization, though, is inextricably bound with Obama’s perception that there’s no conflict with Islam and that peace on earth and goodwill to all men would be at hand… if Israel weren’t in the way.
With that in mind, can anyone seriously count on Obama to fight Israel’s fight? He hasn’t exactly been eager to fight America’s own fight. Hence the panicky evacuation of US embassies. Hence the preposterous resort to the YouTube pretext and the workplace violence charade.

Jonathan Pollard: Restoring Israel to greatness

The Land of Israel is eternal and the State of Israel has temporal stewardship over the land. The corrosive moral ambiguity that has brought us to this dreadful day is relentlessly eating away at the legitimacy of the state’s continued role as legal guardian of the land. The prognosis is dire.
Only a reawakening of national resolve and a rebirth of ethical politics rooted in national selfrespect, moral rectitude and courage of conviction can guarantee the future. No political process devoid of these fundamental values will ever end the agony or the fear for the State of Israel.
It is clearly time for an historic restoration.

Irwin Cotler: Israel and the United Nations

While Ban cannot control the actions of member states, he does have the power to give moral leadership and direction. Words matter.
In his public speeches on Friday, he should condemn the systematic bias perpetrated against the Jewish state by numerous UN agencies, in gross violation of the UN Charter’s guarantee of equal treatment to all nations large and small.
Mr. Ban should acknowledge that the UN Human Rights Council, meant to embody the organization’s highest principles, is a case study of such bigotry. Examples abound.

Netanyahu protests anti-Israel incitement at UNRWA camps

At a meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected to present proof of anti-Israel incitement in summer camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian children in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip.
Videos show counselors at a UNRWA camp telling campers that the Israeli cities of Acre and Haifa will soon return to Arab hands and that all means of fighting Israel are legitimate, including jihad.

JPost Editorial: PA incitement

A documentary broadcast twice on official PA TV declared that the PA plans to destroy Western Wall Plaza, Judaism’s ultra-scared prayer site frequented by millions of Jews, and replace it with assorted edifices. The documentary stated that Jews worshiping at the Western Wall were “sin and filth.” No foreign statesmen or journalists were bothered in the least.
There is more here than an unspeakable double standard.
Ceaseless indoctrination of young, impressionable minds is an antithesis to peace. Its effects are lasting and pernicious. The PA has promised repeatedly to clean up its act but in reality has done the opposite with absolute impunity. Clearly in the eyes of the international community, Ramallah’s rulers are unassailable, which in itself constitutes a huge disincentive to compromise.

WSJ Editorial: Palestinian Heroes
Releasing murderers will not advance the peace process.

The Israeli decision to release the prisoners was shortly followed by the approval of additional construction permits for housing in East Jerusalem and West Bank settlements. The move elicited howls of condemnation from the usual suspects, as if building houses is more objectionable than murdering people in cold blood. Perhaps the larger question is why anyone should expect that a peace process that begins by setting murderers free is likely to result in peace.

Israeli envoy panned for comparing Palestinian and Norwegian terrorists

Israel’s ambassador to Sweden is drawing fire in Scandinavia after comparing Palestinian prisoners released earlier this week to a Norwegian terrorist who killed 77 people in 2011.
Isaac Buchman told Swedish Radio on Tuesday that Israel’s freeing of 26 Palestinian prisoners as part of an agreement to launch peace talks was akin to Norway freeing Anders Breivik, a far-right activist who set off a bomb in Oslo and shot up a summer camp on a nearby island in one of the worst terror attacks in the Continent’s history.

Too Good to Last By David Pryce-Jones

Time to pay our respects to what was, and for European Jews to move elsewhere?
The European Union perceives nationalism itself as the cause of war, and seeks to deconstruct altogether the concept of the nation-state. Israel is the embodiment of the sense of proud nationhood that runs counter to EU ideology. With a logic all their own, EU policy makers oppose Israel while doing whatever they can to build a nation-state of Palestine. Jewish communities are unsettled to observe large-scale EU subsidies ending up in the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists, or measures like the boycott recently imposed on products, goods, and personnel coming from Jewish settlements beyond the pre-June 1967 borders.
If Jews do indeed abandon Europe, it will be to escape a situation in which their very identity is increasingly treated as a matter of suspicion and political contention. Should an emigration en masse come to be a reality, Gurfinkiel concludes, it would constitute “a profound blow to the collective psyche of the Jewish people” as well as a shattering judgment on the “so-called European idea.” In the absence of living Jews, Europeans will have nothing but Holocaust museums and memorials on which to base the moral reckoning of their past.

Add Brussels to the List of Where Jews Need to Hide. Again.

For years there have been reports of Jews being warned not to wear items that identify them as Jewish in places where there are large or numbers are particularly aggressive anti-Semites.
People are told it is best not to wear Magen David necklaces outside their clothing, or kippot on their heads when visiting certain neighborhoods in France, in England, certainly throughout much of the Arab Middle East or in parts of North Africa.
But now a Jewish school in Belgium has issued an edict to its schoolchildren: do not wear kippot near the school until you are safely inside the steel-paneled fortified building.

'Israeli scientific research does not depend on Europe'

Professor Yisrael Aumann, Nobel laureate in economics, sits down with Israel Hayom to discuss peace talks, European boycotts and the Arab Spring: "Israel should say that it needs no favors, and make up the science budget in place of the Europeans."
The conflict between Israel and Europe has new manifestations and episodes. Quite a few powers are stirring the political pot; some of them hope for a buildup of European pressure to the point of a general boycott that will force Israel to give up the country's heartland. As one of the world's foremost experts on game theory, Aumann has a position on the issue both in terms of his behavior during these conflicts and as a high-ranking member of the scientific community in Israel and worldwide. Not surprisingly, his stance is different from the voices we've been hearing this week.

Visit to Joseph's Tomb in Shechem Interrupted by Stone Throwing

A riot broke out early Thursday morning as Arab men burned tires and threw stones at Israeli worshippers gathered at Joseph’s tomb in Shechem, reported Ma’an, a news agency based in the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Israeli forces escorted buses loaded with Jewish worshippers to the site at midnight and continued to provide security for them until prayers concluded early this morning.

Israel is model for world dairy industries

The Volcani Center is a government-run research institute that investigates everything related to the agriculture industry, including dairy cattle. Miron showed ISRAEL21c his cowshed laboratory, a high-tech outdoor facility that waters, protects, feeds and milks 230 milking cows in the village of Beit Dagan, about 20 minutes south of Tel Aviv.
He shows us how 120,000 cows at Israel’s 1,000 dairies each produce about 11,500 liters of milk per year in an ecologically sound way mandated by law, says Miron.
Delegations from far and wide come to see the Israeli closed-loop cowshed ecosystem. In a typical month, you might see delegations of dairy farmers from Thailand, France, or Russia coming to the Israeli research center, which looks like a big farm.

Israel Tourism to Break Records in August; El Al Surges to Q2 Profit, Orders 6 New 737s

More than 70,000 passengers passed through Ben Gurion International Airport on Friday, August 9, 2013, an all-time high in passenger flow, Globes said. The passenger traffic record is expected to be broken again on Thursday, with Ben Gurion now on track to record the highest monthly passenger traffic numbers in its history for the current month of August.

Animation- Another Way to Tell the Story of the Holocaust

In the 70 years since the Holocaust happened, animation is now able to fill in pictures and videos of Holocaust related material and stand in place of words.
“It’s the first time that this subject, that used to be very heavy and sensitive, comes true in animation. Animators tried to reflect this trauma through the use of animation,” said artist and director Nissim Hezkiyahu.
He continued to stress that animation should not only serve as entertainment, but should also cater to serious topics like the Holocaust.