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Thursday, September 12, 2013

9/12 Links Part 2: Oslo and Israel’s red lines, Holocaust relativists, The Jewish 'Bond Girl'

From Ian:

Oslo and Israel’s red lines
We fight for the red lines at any price with all our might.
Before the Oslo Accord, the public was united behind indisputable red lines: we would not give up the Golan Heights or the Jordan Valley or move the 1967 Green Line.
Jerusalem and the return of refugees were not even up for discussion. Nor was negotiating with terrorists.
And yet every single one of these red lines was crossed over the last two decades; the debate centered instead on how high a price we would be willing to pay for each one.
Israel Urged to Make Further Concession to Help PA Economy
In a report published ahead of a September 23rd meeting in New York of donors to the PA, the IMF said the Palestinian Authority faced a budget deficit of $300 million (225 million euros) by the end of 2013.
"The PA's finances are not viable over the medium term if the current model of financing large deficits with unpredictable aid flows is maintained," the report said.
It predicted that Palestinian GDP growth would slow from 11 percent in 2011 and 5.9 percent in 2012 to 4.5 percent by the end of this year.
Islamic Group Denounces Jerusalem Discovery as 'Fake History'
Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu hailed the magnificent discovery as a testament "to the ancient Jewish presence and to the sanctity of the place," which he said was "as clear as the sun."
But in an official statement, the Waqf dismissed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's celebration of the finds as "an effort to dismiss the Arab and Islamic nature of the holy city."
“An immediate Arab and Muslim campaign is needed to stop the Israeli attempts to Judaise the holy city of Jerusalem,” the statement read.
Israel replaced with Palestine on map in language class at SDSU
Sources told Team 10 the map was handed out by a professor on the second day of class in an Arabic language course. Sources said students were upset and unsure how to protest the erroneous map because they feared speaking out publicly could have a negative impact on their grades.
One student talked with Team 10, on the condition of anonymity.
"I don't really believe it was the right place for dialogue," the student said. "It is a language class, it's not a class about conflict."
Students gave the map to the non-profit, pro-Israel San Diego group, "Stand With Us."
Honest Reporting: How to Libel Israel: A Case Study
This incident also draws attention to the relationship between Oxfam and an anti-Israel hate site.
Thanks to the Internet, a story libeling Israel will remain in perpetuity to be recycled by anti-Israel activists who either ignore or have not seen a correction.
This is one reason that HonestReporting’s material is so important. It is critical that a counterpoint is also accessible online providing the truth and a rebuttal to the frequent accusations leveled against Israel. We hope that, ultimately, this very post from HonestReporting will also be present in a Google search the next time someone looks for the false story of how Israel denied the Palestinians of Gaza access to clean water.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper: Blaming the Jews, again
In the 1980s, Saddam Hussein used poison gas to murder thousands of Iraqi Kurds.
Simon Wiesenthal warned then that we would all pay a price for our silence in face of the tyrant’s crime against humanity. Imagine what the world would be like today if a coalition of the willing had punished Saddam, then and there for verified WMDs, but we didn’t. Now Assad has taken a page from Saddam’s mass-murder playbook.
Many of us believe that failure to act now could bring a wider and deadlier wider war later. But whatever the outcome – one thing is certain – they’ve already blamed the Jews.
Brendan O'Neill: The people milking the memory of the Holocaust to justify an airstrike on Syria are moral relativists and charlatans
Holocaust relativists don’t deny that the Holocaust took place; instead they unwittingly water down its historical uniqueness, its status as the greatest crime in history, by describing all sorts of modern-day, comparatively small-scale acts of war or barbarism as “Holocausts” too. Such inappropriate use of the H-word, usually as a form of moral blackmail to get people to support military action against some tinpot tyrant said to be “the new Hitler”, has the effect of making the Holocaust mundane, unexceptional, an event that happens again and again in human history. The only real beneficiaries of such relativism are the Nazis themselves, whose wickedness is implicitly diluted and diminished if we accept the idea that Holocausts like theirs happen all the time.
Scale-wise, try to get your head around this – Auschwitz was capable of exterminating five times as many Jews in one day as Syrians have been killed with chemical weapons in the whole Syrian conflict so far. And Auschwitz was operational for five years. And it was one of 11 death camps.
Shapiro: 'We Need To See A Future Without Terror'
U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro was among the participants at the JNF initiated 9/11 memorial ceremony outside of Jerusalem on Wednesday, in which he took the opportunity to promote the ongoing US-sponsored talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
"No one can understand our pain from the disaster like the Israelis who have experienced terrorist attacks. On this day we see the friendship between the U.S. and Israel," he said, adding: "We need to see a future without terror, but ...with peace; and for that, Israelis need to negotiate with the Palestinians in order to bring a solution - two states for two peoples."
MEMRI: Online Jihadis Celebrate 12th Anniversary Of 9/11
As in past years, online supporters of global jihad celebrated the 12th anniversary of Al-Qaeda's September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., using the event for their propaganda efforts. They boasted of Al-Qaeda's success in striking the U.S., posting photos and videos of the attack, photos and biographies of the hijackers, quotes by Osama bin Laden, and the like.
The following are examples of these celebrations, from social media and jihadi forums.
BBC & Sky News Commentator Laments Loss of Syrian Chemical Weapons
It looks like Abdel Bari Atwan, the former editor-in-chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi, and a regular commentator on BBC and Sky News, is continuing his advocacy of weapons of mass destruction.
Having stated in 2007 on Lebanese TV: “If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight,” Bari Atwan is now coming out in favor of Syrian chemical weapons:
WSJ op-ed writer Elizabeth O’Bagy fired for resume lie
The Syria researcher whose Wall Street Journal op-ed piece was cited by Secretary of State John Kerry and Sen. John McCain during congressional hearings about the use of force has been fired from the Institute for the Study of War for lying about having a Ph.D., the group announced on Wednesday.
“The Institute for the Study of War has learned and confirmed that, contrary to her representations, Ms. Elizabeth O’Bagy does not in fact have a Ph.D. degree from Georgetown University,” the institute said in a statement. “ISW has accordingly terminated Ms. O’Bagy’s employment, effective immediately.”
Hezbollah’s global footprint
Hezbollah then expanded its operations further into the Middle East – Kuwait in particular – then Europe. In 1992 and 1994 Hezbollah truck bombs struck in Argentina, first hitting the Israeli embassy and then hitting the AMIA Jewish community center. In 1996, another large-scale attack was successful – this time targeting the Khobar Towers military housing at a base in Saudi Arabia.
Ironically, it would be another organization’s largescale suicide attack that, for a time, would change Hezbollah’s calculus; following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Hezbollah’s operational attacks declined noticeably, but the networks were not abandoned, just refocused on fundraising and logistics. Networks in South America embedded themselves into global narcotics trafficking networks, shipping drugs to other Hezbollah agents across the Atlantic to West Africa along the tenth parallel, known to smugglers as “Highway 10.” From there drugs would travel to Europe and the Middle East, with the profits sent to Lebanon. In one case, Hezbollah agent Ayman Joumma was laundering as much as $200 million in drug money a month.
IDF Blog: What Lurks Beneath the Playgrounds of Southern Lebanon?


French soldiers face disciplinary action for anti-Semitic photo
Commenting on the actions of the French soldiers who were photographed in front of the synagogue a few weeks ago, Louisfert said Tuesday that they had been identified after being redeployed elsewhere as part of France’s Vigipirate anti-terrorist detachments stationed in urban areas. They posed for the photograph in front of the entrance door to the Beth David synagogue in the 16th arrondissement, or municipal district, of the French capital with their left hand placed on their right shoulder and their right hand extended over their right thigh.
Dubbed the “quenelle,” the gesture is the brainchild of the anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne, who invented several anti-Semitic words and gestures seen to be too vague to violate France’s law forbidding hate speech and Holocaust denial. The quenelle is thought to echo the Nazi salute. Diedonne has also referred to the Holocaust as “Shoannanas” — a combination of the Hebrew word for the Nazi genocide against the Jews and the French word for pineapple.
New biomed accelerator yields better dentures, obesity control
Using a wish list from medical professionals in Israel and the United States, participants in Israel’s first academic medical innovation accelerator have designed four unique products to vastly improve the delivery of healthcare.
The new Biodesign Innovation Program of the Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem now seeks partners to further develop and commercialize these inventions, which include:
Archive of Jewish WWII Heroine Spy, Original ‘Bond Girl,’ Captures Renewed Interest at London Museum (VIDEO)
Born Krystyna Skarbek, in Poland, her Jewish mother was killed at a Nazi concentration camp, according to a report in the UK’s Daily Mail. After Poland fell to the Nazis, she enlisted with the British Army in ’Section D’ – for destruction – later called the Special Operations Executive (SOE), to run espionage, reconnaissance and sabotage missions in occupied territory. She was given the cover name of Christine Granville, which she adopted permanently after the war.
Her escapades, which include bombing bridges in France, escaping with a Polish officer from a Gestapo jail by convincing their jailers that she had tuberculosis by pretending to cough up blood (through biting her tongue), and rescuing her superior officer, and lover, from a Nazi field prison by running mental circles around his captives, earned her military honors, including an OBE, Croix de Guerre, George Medal and a Polish Patriot Shielf.