February 2014 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Friday, February 28, 2014

UN commission says Israel is THE major problem in the Arab world. Yes, really.

The UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) just unveiled a report called "Arab Integration: A 21st Century Development Imperative." The report is book-length, 324 pages long. It took two years and dozens of authors to write this. The Foreword says: There is general agreement that the current state of the Arab world warrants serious concern. Observers concur that the Arab countries appear to be at a development impasse,...

02/28 Links Pt2: Richard Silverstein’s racist abuse continues; Anelka 5-match ban for ‘quenelle’

From Ian: Richard Silverstein’s racist abuse of Chloe Valdary continues: calls her a ‘house slave’ So, Silverstein, a Comment is Free contributor, has now called Valdary a ‘Negro Uncle Tom’ and a ‘House Slave’! This blog has previously exposed Silverstein’s defense of Hamas, his suggestion that Israel behaves like Nazi Germany (and, of course, his faux scoops), but after his latest racist outburst is there really anyone who can honestly claim that...

02/28 Links Pt1: Abbas rewords the three no’s; Why Israel No Longer Trusts Europe

From Ian: Sarah Honig: Those three no’s – reworded This in effect is Abbas’s counterpart to Khartoum’s no-negotiation stipulation. Abbas has set up a hurdle so high that, without duplicitous pretense, it becomes unsurpassable and thereby makes genuine negotiations a farce. Next comes Abbas’s present-day equivalent to Khartoum’s no-recognition proviso. While not identical in wording, its bottom line is no different from the 1967 prototype. Abbas repeats...

Earlier today I wrote that the State Department said that Shaun Casey, the head of the State Department's Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives, had met with Jews, Christians and Muslims on his recent, unannounced visit to the West Bank. At the same time Yisrael Medad found a third meeting that Casey had with a virulently anti-Israel Christian group during his trip. Since...

The State Department responds (well, not really) to my question about Shaun Casey (update)

After my two posts expressing concern over Shaun Casey, the head of the State Department's Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives, and his silent visit to the West Bank with some viciously anti-Israel (and antisemitic) Christian leaders, I asked Matthew Lee of AP if he would ask the State Department about what happened on this trip. (Lee is well known for his relentless questioning of State Department officials. ) He kindly agreed and submitted...

Thanks to Israel haters, we know where to buy incredible toys - part 1 (update)

I mentioned on Monday that Haaretz made up some numbers of Israelis who boycott settlements pretty much out of thin air, because Gush Shalom assumed that everyone who visited their webpage listing settlement products were boycotters. People then asked in the comments where to get this list so they could buy these products themselves! Usually, when you see lists of Israeli...

02/27 Links Pt2: Scarlett Johansson Breaks Her Silence on SodaStream; “Sky Shield” Tested

From Ian: Scarlett Johansson defends herself for first time since Super Bowl SodaStream ad which saw her dropped as Oxfam ambassador for breaching charity's Israeli boycott She quit her role as Oxfam ambassador in a row over her controversial Super Bowl advert for SodaStream - and chose to keep her links with the Israeli fizzy drink firm. Now speaking for the first time since she severed her ties with the humanitarian group, Scarlett Johansson insists...

Kuwaiti columnist: "Arabs need to have their brains examined"

From MEMRI: In an Al-Arabiya TV interview, Kuwaiti columnist Fouad Al-Hashem, talking about the tendency of the Arab peoples to idolize leaders, said that they "need to have large portions of their brains examined." Following are excerpts from the interview, which aired on January 16, 2014. Fouad Al-Hashem: The late Saudi author Abdallah Al-Qusaimi wrote in one of his books that the Arabs are “all talk.” The truth is that the Arabs are, in...

To AP, only Israel endangers peace

AP's Josef Federman writes: Israel has opened a new front in its attempts to halt weapons smuggling to Hezbollah, striking one of the group's positions inside Lebanon for the first time since the sides fought a war eight years ago. Hezbollah attacked Israeli soldiers in a border incident in 2010. An IDF soldier was shot and killed on that border in December. There have been a dozen rocket attacks on Israel from Lebanese territory in recent years....

02/27 Links Pt1: Hamas says Teaching Human Rights is Against Palestinian, Islamic Culture

From Ian: Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas: Teaching Human Rights is Against Palestinian, Islamic Culture What is also worrying Hamas is that UNRWA is seeking to teach Palestinian children about the disastrous repercussions of wars and violence by depicting a child burning a military uniform. "This does not serve the cause of human rights," the Hamas official said. "They want to raise children on calmness." The Hamas protests forced UNRWA to suspend its...

David Ze'ev Jablinowitz is an English-language Kol Israel reporter. This is from his Facebook page: So I'm speaking on a US campus, and during the question time that followed my remarks, a student asks how it can be that Judaism is older than Islam if the State of Israel wasn't established until 1948. He adds: This anecdote is part of an upcoming article; will keep you...

Muslims attack church in Gaza

Palestine Press Agency reports that two nights ago people attacked a Latin church in Gaza City, and they spray painted slogans against attacks on Muslims in the Central African Republic. The attackers tried to blow up a car belonging to the pastor, Father Jorge Hernández, but their Molotov cocktail failed to ignite. Before they left the scene the attackers wrote that they vowed revenge for the Muslims in the Central African Republic, writing "The...

Proof of bias in Amnesty's "Trigger-Happy" report

As I mentioned yesterday, Amnesty released a ridiculously biased report against Israel this morning. Now that the report is released, we can confirm Amnesty's bias. Here is their commentary on one incident, in August in Qalandiya, where the IDF fired live ammunition at stone throwers: Although the army stated that Palestinians were posing a danger to Israeli soldiers’ lives when the latter opened fire, the fact that one soldier only was lightly...

The epic meltdown of an Israel hater at UCLA (NOW WITH MUSIC VIDEO!)

If you haven't seen this yet, you have got to check it out. From The Daily Caller: A student at the University of California Los Angeles broke down in tears after the student government voted against the resolution she favored, which would have condemned the state of Israel and asked the university to support divestment. The unnamed student was taking notes at the meeting where the vote occurred, according to Legal Insurrection. After the result...

02/26 Links Pt2: Norwegian Chain Quits SodaStream Boycott; ASA Cal. rejects Israel Boycott

From Ian: Norwegian Store Chain Drops SodaStream Boycott MIFF notified Staples it would publicize that Staples was a boycotting company, thus potentially hindering its international sales. Staples announced: “We want to make it clear: We still sells SodaStream. We take no position on political issues.” General data shows BDS organizations have failed not only with Staples and SodaStream, but in regards to all trade between Israel a Norway. Norway’s...

A new Jordanian group to boycott Israeli goods has started going to stores in Jordan to ensure that they do not sell any "enemy" products. When stores are found to adhere to the boycott, they are asked to prominently display this tasteful poster of a bloody handprint on an Israeli flag so people know they can buy goods safely there. The poster says: Don't pay the...

Amnesty proves its anti-Israel bias yet again

Tomorrow, Amnesty International is releasing a new anti-Israel report. Before it is even released, we already know how ridiculously biased against Israel it will be - because of the title. It is called "Trigger-happy: Israel’s use of excessive force in the West Bank." Let's look at some numbers. Last year, according to B'Tselem and the UN, the IDF killed 27 Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank. Compared to 2012, when 8 were killed in 2012, that...

02/26 Links Pt1: Amnesty's Moazzam Begg Arrested in Terror Case; Jordan's Panic over Peace Talks

From Ian: Ex-Gitmo detainee latest to be suspected of terrorism Western human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, promoted Begg's account of his experiences as a U.S. detainee but their association with him was controversial even among their own staffers. Gita Sahgal, who headed Amnesty International's gender unit, was suspended by the organization in 2010 after objecting to Amnesty's association with Begg, whom she described as...

Peter Beinart, hypocrite

From Peter Beinart in Haaretz: Last spring, some students at New York’s most prestigious Orthodox Jewish high school, Ramaz, eager for a greater diversity of perspectives on Israel, invited me to speak to their club. I did - and enjoyed it immensely - but told them I hadn’t solved their problem. If they wanted a truly open discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I ventured, they needed to do more than hear from both hawkish and dovish Zionists....

Hezbollah on Tuesday charged Israel with planning to demolish the Al Aqsa Mosque. Now, where have I heard that before? Maybe in 1929. And in 1931, seen here. And in 1936. And 1991. And in 2001. And in 2007. And in 2009. And in 2010. And in 2012. And in 2013. Including from Abbas. It sure takes a long time to do a simple demolition job, doesn't it? It's taking...

On Sunday, the Egyptian army held a press conference where they announced that after years of research, they have developed cures for the AIDS and hepatitis C viruses. The cures are virtually total and there are no side effects, according to the spokesmen. The cure seems to be a combination of pills and some sort of medical device. It was found ten years after the army came...

NYU responds about Lisa Duggan's anti-Israel ASA conference

JTA picked up on my scoop about the anti-Israel ASA conference scheduled for NYU this weekend: The New York University American studies program’s annual conference this year is focused on the boycott-Israel movement and dominated by its supporters. The student-organized conference is scheduled to take place this Friday and Saturday and is titled “Circuits of Influence:...

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02/25 Links Pt2: German Paper Depicts Zuckerberg as Hook-Nosed Octopus; Harold Ramis dies at 69

From Ian: Palestinian State of Failure A fascinating discussion from Jonathan Schanzer on the John Batcheler show. Listen to the whole thing and learn yourself something. I was not aware, until Batcheler’s introductory comments, about the NYC bomb plot targeting Golda Meir. Guess who uncovered the plot. The NSA. Note how Fatah was formed in 1959, 8 years before the “occupation” of the West Bank. It’s never been about the West Bank, it’s been the...

Naftali Bennett on BBC Hardtalk (video)

(h/t Yerushalimey...

The truth behind Palestinian water libels

Two weeks ago I noted how the PLO was successfully using water as a weapon against Israel. Here is the beginning of a must-read paper by Prof. Haim Gvirtzman showing the truth about the water situation in the territories. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Water shortages in the Palestinian Authority are the result of Palestinian policies that deliberately waste water and destroy the regional water ecology. The Palestinians refuse to develop their own significant...

02/25 Links Pt1: The Myth of Israel’s Refusal to Make “Tough Decisions” for Peace

From Ian: The Myth of Israel’s Refusal to Make “Tough Decisions” for Peace The relentless calls for Israel to take difficult decisions for peace not only neglect to account for the attitude of the Palestinian side but also of the extensive concessions already offered by the Israelis. Both under Ehud Barak during the Camp David talks in 2000 and certainly under Ehud Olmert in 2008, Israel’s offers for peace went just about as far as possible without...

Ukranian, Arab, Iranian, French antisemites together blame Jews for Ukraine violence

It seems to have started with an Iranian PressTV reporting: Ukrainian media have reported that a former Israeli army officer is playing a leading role in the anti-government protests in the former Soviet republic. According to reports, the unnamed Israeli commands a group of 20 Ukrainian militants. Four other Israelis, who had previously served in the army, were recently reported to have taken part in opposition rallies in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev. They...