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Wednesday, November 20, 2013

11/20 Links Pt2: How did Arafat get so rich? Netanyahu: Islamists taking us to the Dark Ages

From Ian:

Netanyahu: Islamists taking us back to the ‘Dark Ages’
“Radical Islam wants to take us to the past,” he said. “We march toward the future; they, to the Dark Ages. We aspire to open our society to everyone — men, women, minorities, to the right to be different. They want oppressive uniformity, rigid doctrine.
“And they want to support all this with weapons of mass destruction,” he added, alluding to Tehran’s alleged attempt to produce nuclear weapons. “We cannot allow them this. I think it would be a grave mistake to repeat the mistakes made with North Korea, another closed society with tough and aggressive doctrine.”
Hollande visits graves of French school attack victims
French President Francois Hollande visited the Jerusalem graves of the victims of the attack on a Toulouse Jewish school.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accompanied Hollande to the cemetery on Tuesday. They were joined by members of the Sandler and Monsonego families, who recited Kaddish.
Palestinian Incitement’s Exposure Seen as Israel’s ‘Front Offense Around the World’
Also in October, Israeli Strategic Affairs Ministers Yuval Steinitz penned a New York Times op-ed titled “How Palestinian Hate Prevents Peace,” focusing on anti-Israel messages in the PA’s television and radio stations, public schools, summer camps, children’s magazines, Web sites, and Facebook pages.
Steinitz’s angle was no coincidence. His article was “virtually completely based on material that we have supplied his office,” says Itamar Marcus, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). While top Israeli officials attribute a lack of success in the current negotiations to PA incitement, the exposure of that incitement in the PA’s official media outlets is “Israel’s front offense around the world,” Marcus tells JNS.org.
Frederick Forsyth: So exactly how did Yasser Arafat get so rich?
I have seen acres of breast-beating journalism about the Palestinian misery but never an examination into where all the donated money has gone over the years. For this is certain: Arab donors and a generous non-Arab world have donated many billions to the Palestinian cause.
Take the Gaza strip. It is a bloc of land 25 miles long and six miles wide on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.
Its northern and eastern borders are Israel, its 11-mile southern border is Egypt and its western border the glittering Med. Over the years since the founding of Israel in 1948 literally billions of pounds have been donated to help its people have a decent life.
If it had been invested shrewdly and well Gaza today could be a mini-Monaco. It could have a deepwater freight port, a flourishing fishing port and a leisure harbour crammed with the yachts of wealthy visitors. It could have resort hotels on the sea and farms, ranches and orchards in the hinterland producing nutritious food.
Elliott Abrams: Palestinians from Syria: The worst treatment of all
But there is another story here: the way UNRWA's special treatment of Palestinians has backfired. It is not just a whim that the government of Egypt does not allow UNHCR to treat Palestinians the way it treats all other refugees, for in fact Palestinians are the only refugees over whom UNHCR has never had jurisdiction. When those fleeing Syria attend UNHCR or UNRWA schools, or receive medical attention at UNHCR or UNRWA clinics, that division is perpetuated and deepened. Once upon a time, Palestinians thought this special status was a great boon. For Palestinians fleeing Syria it's hard to see it that way today. UNRWA can now add to its achievement of perpetuating "Palestinian refugee" status the achievement of separating Palestinians from all other Syrian refugees. And now we can use the word refugee without quotation marks, for we are speaking of people born and raised in Syria and now driven from their homes there. This is just another piece of evidence that UNRWA has outlived its usefulness and is doing more harm than good for Palestinians.
Georgetown University to Host Member of Egypt’s Nazi Party
Georgetown University’s Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Center for Christian Muslim Understanding is scheduled to host a Dec. 5 event on “Egypt and the Struggle for Democracy.”
The event features a slew of speakers sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as Coptic Christian Ramy Jan, who cut his teeth on the Egyptian political scene as a member of the country’s Nazi Party, according to multiple sources.
The event is scheduled to take place all day at Georgetown’s ICC auditorium and feature a keynote address by Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.).
Terra Incognita: The Haniyeh family health plan in Israel
The story sent shockwaves through Israel’s media and abroad. It was paired with the usual responses of “look at Israel, Israel treats the children of its enemies and its enemies only want to kill Israel’s children.” One writer noted, “it’s what they [Israelis] do; it’s who they are.”
But there is something off about this story, and others like it. The reports of Israel’s medical care for Palestinians, including Palestinians involved in violence against Israel, goes back many years. Alan Dershowitz highlighted it in his book The Case for Israel.
'Hamas PM's granddaughter returns to Gaza 'clinically dead' after Israeli doctors unable to save her'
The one-year-old Amal Haniyeh was admitted in serious condition to Schneider Children’s Medical Center for Israel in Petah Tikva on Sunday after being diagnosed with an acute digestive tract infection, source in Gaza said.
Israeli doctors reportedly deemed her chances of survival as slim and returned her to a hospital in Gaza City.
The Guardian Walls Out Israelis, Suicide Bombers, and Balance
An interactive feature at The Guardian look at walls and barriers around the world. From the US-Mexico border, to the 2,500 mile barrier separating India and Bangladesh, along with 99 walls separating Belfast’s Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods, call it “wall-to-wall coverage.”
Israel’s security barrier is featured too.
Harriet Sherwood (with some credited assistance from B’Tselem) has plenty of comments, photos and videos of Palestinians talking about how the wall impacts their lives.
Left outside The Guardian gates, unfortunately, are Israelis sharing how the security barrier impacts their lives. That would mean addressing the deadly Palestinian suicide bombers who wreaked havoc in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv during the second intifada.
What about the Grand Mufti’s desire to ‘liquidate the Jews’ doesn’t Robert Fisk understand?
His claim that the pro-Nazi Haj Amin was merely attempting to “help the Palestinians” represents an extraordinary obfuscation.
As a CAMERA report (based on documentation in a book by Jennie Lebel titled ‘The Mufti of Jerusalem: Haj-Amin el-Husseini and National-Socialism‘) makes clear, Haj Amin’s desire to ‘help the Palestinians’ was superseded by a greater passion – to annihilate the Jews.
Funniest Temple Mount Propaganda Video Ever
This PressTv clip can only work with an audience that can’t tell the difference between the Temple Mount compound and the Western Wall plaza. Anyone who does know that those are two sites, each with its own distinct appearance that look nothing alike, realizes that this 2 minute clip which offers lavish descriptions of how the Jews are storming Temple Mount every day, with the support of police – has not a shred of a film to back it up.
Polish Forbes sorry for defaming Jewish groups
The Polish edition of Forbes magazine apologized for three articles about the restitution of prewar property of Jewish communities that targeted the leaders of Poland’s organized Jewish community and several Jewish organizations.
The apology for the articles published in September was published Monday on the magazine’s website.
Pope Francis Condemns Kristallnacht Memorial Protests
During a special memorial ceremony on Nov. 12 attended by Catholic, Jewish and Protestant leaders in Buenos Aires to mark the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, a small group of protestors from the ultra-traditionalist Catholic group Society of St. Pius X disrupted the proceedings, shouting “followers of false gods must be kept out of the sacred temple.”
Pope Francis told a group of Latin American religious leaders visiting the Vatican that preaching intolerance “is a form of militancy that must be overcome.”
German university opening Europe’s first school of Jewish theology
In what is being called a landmark moment for the Continent’s Jewry, Europe’s first university-level school of Jewish theology is set to open Tuesday at the University of Potsdam, situated just outside Berlin.
“The opening of the School of Jewish Theology marks a historical milestone in the training of liberal and conservative rabbis and is unique both in Germany and Europe,” university president Oliver Günther said in a statement.
David's Sling shoots down ballistic missile in trial
The Ministry of Defense and the US Missile Defense Agency (MSA) held a successful test of the David's Sling air defense system on Wednesday morning, in which a ballistic missile was shot down and destroyed.
David's Sling is designed to intercept intermediate and short-range rockets and cruise missiles, and should be effective against a good portion of Hezbollah's rocket arsenal.
Israeli-Palestinian Arbitration Center Opens
Given the political disputes and the apparent lack of progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, some are surprised to learn that the volume of trade between Israel and the Palestinian territories is $4 billion annually. Yet, there has been nowhere to turn in cases of commercial disputes.
Gomez Mill House, Oldest Jewish Site in North America, Approaches 300th Anniversary
The oldest Jewish site in North America is not Newport’s famed Touro Synagogue, or any other synagogue. Rather, it is a stone structure tucked away on the west side of the Hudson River, about 60 miles north of Manhattan.
Due to its multiple uses and inhabitants over the centuries, the Gomez Mill House—built in 1714 in Marlboro, NY—is one of the best-kept secrets in American Jewish history, and also holds a unique place in greater American history. With its 300th anniversary approaching, its story may very well become familiar to a much broader audience.
18th Century Haggadah, Found in Garage, Expected to Sell for £500,000 at Auction (VIDEO)
An 18th-century Haggadah found by chance in a Manchester garage is promising to offer a huge payday for its owner, the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.
Created for the Oppenheimer banking dynasty in 1726, the auction house handling the sale says it could fetch up to £500,000, or $805,000.
Ancient Jewish Altar Found in Shilo
An ongoing archaeological dig in the ancient Jewish village of Shilo in Samaria (Shomron) has turned up a stone altar dating back thousands of years.
The altar is believed to date back to the period from roughly 1,200 BCE to 600 CE known as the Iron Age.
The magnificent Maccabee mansion found under a home
Underneath the four-story modern house, 18 years of digging revealed what Siebenberg calls “the perfect continuation of Jewish history in one place.” The base layer has emptied burial caves from the era of King David and King Solomon some 3,000 years ago.
Above that are the remains of a Hasmonean mansion inhabited by children of the Maccabees – the heroes of Hanukkah fame — who ruled Judea from 142-63 BCE after liberating it from the Syrian-Greeks.
Israel Daily Picture: Another Photographic Treasure Trove Discovered: 120-Year-Old Colored Slides from Chatham University, Part 1
In the need for library and archival preservation, modern technology is certainly a friend of antiquity. Vintage photographs, some stored for over a century in old libraries, are now being digitized and often posted Online. Such is the case with this treasure of "Holy Land Lantern Slides" we found in Chatham University's archives.
Chatham University, a 150-year-old women's undergraduate school in Pittsburgh, digitized their slides in 2009. According to Rachel M. Grove Rohrbaugh, the school's archivist and public service librarian, "most of the slides roughly date to circa 1880-1900. We don’t have specific information on the photographer(s) or how they were used here at Chatham, but they were likely used for instruction in world history or cultural studies."