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Saturday, April 26, 2014

04/26 Links: Why Does Jimmy Carter Ignore Hamas Terrorism?; NYU SJP Denies Israel's Right to Exist

From Ian:

LATMA 2012: Hamas and Fatah with the song "Anyone You Can Fool I Can Fool Better"

Why Does Jimmy Carter Ignore Hamas Terrorism?
Here is the Elders’ statement applauding the Palestinian unity deal. In the past, Elder delegations have traveled to Gaza to parlay with Hamas and have called for the lifting of a blockade which, of course, did not prevent the import of food, medicine, or building materials, but only mandated an inspection given Hamas’s predilection for rocketry, explosives, and terrorism. Carter and his fellow Elders have ignored Hamas terrorism and remained completely uninterested in details or facts that would interfere in their narrative of demonizing Israel. Indeed, Carter has even gone so far as to falsify his own notes in order to rewrite history to exculpate Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad.
That Mary Robinson has joined Carter in the most recent statement praising the Hamas deal also shouldn’t surprise. After all, she was the sponsor of the UN’s so-called “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance” which, under her leadership, became an orgy of anti-Semitic hatred. And, while she led the UN Human Rights Commission, she presided over the passage of a resolution that endorsed suicide bombing against civilians as legitimate under international law. Hence, her love affair with Hamas seems par for the course.
NYU SJP Denies Israel's Legal Right to Exist
A day after the New York University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine distributed anti-Semitic mock eviction notices on campus, the group doubled down on its Jew hatred. The group took to Twitter to deny Israel's legal right to exist.
@Laura_E_Adkins @WildFTracks @MaxBlumenthal The existence of Israel is in undeniably a flagrant violation of UN Resolutions and int'l law
— NYU SJP (@NYUSJP) April 24, 2014
NYU SJP also claimed that Israel is a settler colonial state guilty of ethnically cleansing Palestinians:
CNN's Jim Clancy's 'Jaw-Droppingly Awful' Interview About Palestinian Unification Deal
On Friday, CNN Reporter Jim Clancy conducted an eight-minute interview with Palestinian spokesperson Hanan Ashrawi and former Israeli Ambassador Dore Gold that was unique in its level of bias and lack of professionalism of the interviewer.
Clancy allowed Ashrawi to regurgitate the Palestinian talking points about the Fatah/Hamas reconciliation deal for the first four minutes of the interview and trash Israel in the last minute and in-between accusingly asked Gold if an Israeli attack on terrorists in Gaza was done to try and scuttle the reconciliation deal (and ignored his answer).
When he turned to Ambassador Gold, his first question was, "Did he [Prime Minister Netanyahu] personally order that strike on Gaza as they were in the midst of celebrating this deal?" making the implication that the strike was done to break up the celebration. Gold responded that Israeli military actions in Gaza had no link to the deal or its celebration. Cutting off Gold in the middle of his answer, Clancy asked about the civilian casualties. Finally the former Ambassador was able to return to the Hamas/Fatah deal and Hamas' long record of terrorism.



"I Think Israel Has Become A Proxy For People To Express Their Own Sense Of Western Self-loathing"
Brendan O'Neill, editor of Spiked online magazine, who's currently in Australia, in an interview with the current, hot-off-the-press Australian Jewish News.
"It's very fashionable these days to be against Western modernity, to see the modern world as destructive and problematic. Some time over the past 20 years the meaning of what is to be radical changed to self-loathing, to hate your own history, to hate your own nation.
What I think Israel represents to a lot of Western radicals and others is the kind of most outward symbol of that old-sense Western modernity. It's seen as obsessed with sovereignty, obsessed with national territory, brutally progressive, capitalistic and constantly talking about freedom – all those things that we in the West used to do, but we don't anymore because apparently we grew up.
I think Israel has become a proxy for people to express their own sense of Western self-loathing. I think it is the reason that so much contempt is visited upon Israel. More than North Korea, more than China, more than Belarus, and more than any other country, because Israel is seen as doing all the things that civilised Westerners don't think we should do anymore."
Obama Deserves Blame for Talks Collapse
When speaking at a press conference in South Korea today about the collapse of the Middle East peace talks sponsored by Secretary of State Kerry, President Obama adopted a tone of sorrowful resignation about the intransigence of both sides.
In doing so, the president not only deflected blame from Kerry and the administration but also refused to frankly acknowledge that it has been the Palestinian Authority who torpedoed the talks both by violating their agreements and going to the United Nations for recognition but also by concluding an alliance with the Hamas terrorists which the U.S. has always acknowledged to be incompatible with the peace process.
But the blame doesn’t only belong to PA leader Mahmoud Abbas. Were he truly being honest about the events of the past several months, the president would have to acknowledge that the series of events that led up the current debacle has been set in motion in no small measure by himself. When the history of the fool’s errand that Kerry has wasted so much of the last year on is written, Obama must bear much of the responsibility for the mixed signals sent to the region that encouraged Abbas to think he would be let off the hook for delivering what amounts to a fourth Palestinian “no” to Israeli offers of statehood and peace.
Palestinian pact with Hamas threatens US aid
Congressional Republicans and Democrats signaled that any permanent arrangement between the Western-backed Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the US-designated terrorist organization that has called for the destruction of Israel, would force the United States to end some $400 million in economic and security aid provided annually.
The law states that no foreign aid can be provided to “any entity effectively controlled by Hamas, any power-sharing government of which Hamas is a member, or that results from an agreement with Hamas and over which Hamas exercises undue influence.”
The leaders of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees foreign aid — Reps. Kay Granger, a Republican, and Nita Lowey, a Democrat, — said the agreement clearly threatens the money the Palestinian Authority has grown accustomed to receiving.
Coalition with Hamas will recognize Israel, Abbas tells Kerry
Abbas insisted that "any government that is formed will be his government and represent his policies," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters of their phone call.
Psaki repeated, however, that no action had yet been taken to form such a government - that multiple attempts to unify the two parties have been made in the past, to no avail.
Historically, Hamas has refused to adopt either of those principles. The Islamic Resistance Front has codified its intention to destroy Israel in its charter, and is listed by the United States, European Union and Israel as a terrorist organization.
United States Denies Peace Talks Have Failed
The United States denied on Friday that Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts to secure a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have failed.
Rather, claimed State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, the talks are in a “moment of transition” and Kerry’s team is adopting a "holding period" as the sides decide their next moves.
"This is a moment of transition," Psaki said, according to AFP. "We can't force the parties to take steps they're unwilling to take."
"We're in a holding period to see what the parties are willing to figure out about what's next," she added.
Abbas tells Palestinian leaders Netanyahu doesn’t want a peace deal
Abbas said that in the past two days hope was renewed with the unity deal reached by Fatah and Hamas. “We have reached a peak of difficulty, complication in political situation but we will remain steadfast” to ensure Palestinian rights, he said.
The PA president lambasted Israel, saying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was determined not to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians, and that Israel’s refusal to negotiate with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas is proof it is not committed to a two-state solution. He praised US Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts, saying he was serious about helping the two sides reach a negotiated peace.
Iran hails Palestinian unity deal as act of solidarity against Israel
Iran on Saturday hailed the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation deal as an act of solidarity against Israel.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran welcomes the Palestinian groups’ solidarity against the Zionist regime,” Iran’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
It said Iran supported “any national reconciliation which leads to Palestinian unity and adoption of decisions in line with the materialization of that (Palestinian) nation’s valuable causes against the expansionism and aggressions of the Quds Occupying Regime (Israel).”
Israel was ready to allow wide-scale Palestinian building in key West Bank areas
On the night before Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts collapsed over the new Fatah-Hamas unity pact, Israel offered the Palestinians a package of incentives to extend the talks, including permission to begin wide-scale construction projects in West Bank areas that are under Israeli control.
Israel’s unprecedented readiness to sanction considerable Palestinian building in “Area C” parts of the West Bank — where Israel maintains overall control — was made clear during talks on Tuesday night between Israeli negotiators Tzipi Livni and Yitzhak Molcho and their Palestinian counterparts Saeb Erekat and PA intelligence chief Majd Freij, The Times of Israel was told Friday.
A ‘New Israel’… in eastern Texas? (not satire?)
Congressional candidate Allan Levene is proposing to cut the Gordian Knot of Middle East peace by creating a second State of Israel on the eastern coast of Texas, which he would call New Israel. The idea, briefly, is to take (through eminent domain) roughly 8,000 square miles of sparsely populated land bordering the Gulf of Mexico and give it to Israel as a second, non-contiguous part of the State of Israel. Israel would get the land only if it agrees to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders.
Israel wins because it would gain a new, peaceful territory far from the strife of the Middle East, in a place where, as Levene suggests, “the climate is similar,” and Israel could “have access to the Gulf of Mexico for international trade.” The U.S. wins because it would no longer need to send Israel billions of dollars a year in foreign aid. Texas wins because of all the construction jobs from building an entirely new state within its borders. The Palestinians win because they get the West Bank, and because now Israel, too, gets to see just how fun it is to have a non-contiguous state. Everybody wins!
Regaining control in Jerusalem
It seems that the Palestinians are neither willing to countenance live Jews on the Temple Mount nor dead Jews on the Mount of Olives.
The radical Arab imams behind these disturbances and provocations have the full backing of Mahmoud Abbas' supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority. PA Religious Affairs Minister Mahmoud Al-Habbash and Mufti Muhammad Hussein constantly propagate lies about Israeli plans to undermine and destroy the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount.
The former Chief Justice of the PA's Religious Court, Sheikh Tayseer Al-Tamimi, recently declared that the PA's Islamic belief and political position is that Jews should not only be prohibited from praying on the Temple Mount but at the Western Wall of the Temple Mount too, since the wall is part of the "blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque" and not part of any "alleged" ancient Jewish temple.
All the while, Arab residents of greater Jerusalem enjoy the full gamut of Israeli civil rights and privileges, including freedom of speech without threat from Abbas' goons, full Israeli national insurance and health coverage, and municipal social services. Arab Jerusalemites can also be found by their thousands shopping happily in every mall in the city and picnicking in every park, free of threat.
HRW Accuses Israel of 'Shooting Palestinians'
The organization ignored the fact that Gazans have constantly been provoking IDF soldiers stationed near the border fence.
These provocations usually take place on Fridays, when Arabs riot near the border fence and attack security forces with rocks.
The soldiers ask the rioters to move back but they ignore the calls and continue to approach the fence, forcing troops to open fire.
IDF Spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner did not challenge the facts in the HRW report, but slammed the report which he said "completely ignored the reality of the state of conflict we have with Gaza, the perimeter with which is a springboard for terrorism from the Strip."
"The statement ridicules human rights. This week alone we've had numerous attacks emerging from the immediate perimeter of the fence," he said, according to AFP.
"They don't magically arrive there," Lerner said of the perpetrators.
He also referred to the terror tunnels from Gaza and the rockets and missiles fired at southern Israel by Gaza terrorists, all of which were not mentioned in the HRW report. (h/t Yenta Press)
Overland Park KKK Shooter was federal informant
Frazier Glenn Cross, the man accused of murder in the shootings of three people outside Jewish facilities in Kansas last week was, for all practical purposes, born at the age of 49.
The federal government gave him that name when he was released from prison in 1990, along with a new social security number and a new place to live, not far from the Missouri River in western Iowa.
The idea was to erase any connection to the man he had been before: Frazier Glenn Miller. White Nationalist leader. Spewer of hate. Federal informant.
Less than three years earlier Miller had been a fugitive from justice, the subject of a nationwide manhunt after he had declared war on blacks and Jews, exhorting his thousands of followers to violently overthrow the very government that would soon become his protector….
In the course of their investigation, authorities also learned the stunning details of Miller’s arrest a year earlier. Raleigh police officers had caught Miller in the back seat of a vehicle, in mid-act with a black male prostitute masquerading as a woman.
Jewish-born founder of radical Islamic website sent to jail
Yousef al-Khattab, 45, had converted from Judaism and started the Revolution Muslim website in 2007. He was born Joseph Leonard Cohen and was brought up in a Jewish home in New Jersey and in Brooklyn.
Al-Khattab admitted posting articles encouraging readers to take unspecified action against Jewish leaders and publishing names and addresses of Jewish leaders and synagogues.
Al-Khattab pleaded guilty in US District Court in October to using his position as a leader of the ‘Revolution Muslim’ websites to incite violence against Jews.
My anti-Israel French experience
Anti-Semitism has many faces. However, contrary to popular belief, it has never reinvented itself. The image of “the Jew” throughout the years scaled from “the bourgeois capitalists,” “the greedy banker of public funds,” “the undermining communist saboteur” and “the warmongering traitor.” “The Zionist-Jew” is no different; he has very similar characteristics: the colonizing land thief, the racist oppressor of minorities and even the National-Socialist mass-murderer.
The same France which laid the basic values ​​of modern society by forming the Declaration of Human and Civil Rights has a tendency of forgetting it again and again. As next year will mark 120 years of the Dreyfus Affair and the battle of Emile Zola for the freedom of expression in the French Republic, it would be proper if the in the Elysee Palace they will also be reminded of the day when students, Israeli and French Jews alike, were expelled from the university that bears the name of the city where the great philosophers of our time were born, lived and died. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, asked the UN General Assembly a few years ago, gathered in the occasion of International Holocaust Day – “Has the world learned its lesson?” On Friday afternoon at ‘Paris 8′ University, I realized that the world still has not learned anything.
Libyan Family’s Travails Provides Glimpse at Jews in Arab World During Holocaust
Although the commemoration of Yom HaShoah focuses primarily on the ghettoes and death camps in Europe, the persecution of Jews in North Africa and the Middle East during the Holocaust has gained increasing attention in recent years. For Ben-Gurion University professor Maurice Roumani, a scholar of the history of Jews in Arab countries, the subject has a personal dimension as well: members of his own extended family in Libya endured everything from expulsions, to a 1,200-mile trek through the Saharan desert, to deportations to Bergen-Belsen.

From commune to oasis: Postcards from the American Colony
If the American Colony Hotel could talk, the stories it would tell. Now, the intimate Jerusalem hotel, built in the 19th century as an Ottoman pasha’s mansion (and once home to an American-Swedish religious commune), is doing the next best thing, opening its rich archives to the public, offering a treasure trove of photographs, postcards, telegrams and sheet music memorializing its intricate history.
Placed in a restored anteroom of the hotel’s pink-stoned building known as the Palm House, the archives are a quiet, serene space. They also contain only a fraction of the tens of thousands of photographs and documents found in the American Colony’s attics and storage rooms, said Rachel Lev, the Israeli curator hired seven years ago by the hotel to organize the collection.
An additional 17,000 pieces are now part of the Library of Congress, completing a collection that is “very important to the library,” said Dr. Barbara Bair, historian in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
Spielberg launches center for genocide research
“The USC Shoah Foundation has made tremendous progress during its first 20 years, but its work is far from finished,” Spielberg said in a statement, noting the 52,000 testimonies it has gathered and the educational programs it has launched.
“Now comes the next significant chapter, one that establishes the Institute as one of the leading academic centers of excellence for the study of the Holocaust and genocides,” he said. “The potential is there for groundbreaking research.”
The Shoah Foundation’s testimonies deal primarily with the Holocaust but also include eyewitness accounts of the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi genocide and the 1937 Nanjing massacre.
Material on the Armenian and Cambodian genocides will be added to the archives this year.
Israel bids to host games in 2020 Euro soccer tournament
Israel has submitted a bid to host games in soccer’s 2020 European Championship.
Governing body UEFA said Saturday that 19 countries are bidding to host games in the tournament being played across Europe, while the final and semi-final stages will be held at either Wembley Stadium in London or Munich’s Allianz Arena.
England and Germany are also bidding for one of the 12 hosting packages of three group-stage matches in the 24-team tournament, plus a single knockout match from the last-16 or quarterfinals rounds.
Israel, along with Azerbaijan, Belarus and Macedonia are among bidders which have never hosted a major tournament. Last year, Israel hosted the 2013 European Under-21 Championship, which many analysts in Israel consider to be the most prestigious sporting tournament ever to be staged in Israel. Spain defeated Italy to win that tournament.
Qoros finds its own way to debut to the world
Most vehicles connected to China are often given little attention from Chinese consumers, given China's somewhat checkered history as an auto producer.
However, at this year's auto show, a new vehicle from a Chinese-Israeli joint venture, the Qoros 3 Hatch, has been creating a lot of buzz among both consumers and professional automotive observers.
A fashionable design, a five-star safety level and a reasonable price seem to be impressing a lot of people.
Stefano Villanti is the Executive Director of Sales, Marketing and Product Strategy at Qoros.
"This year to Beijing Auto Show, Qoros has brought the Qoros 3 Hatch. It is the second model. It is built on the same platform of the Qoros 3 sedan this year that is at my back here. It's got the same structure of the sedan that has won the Euro Car five stars in 2013. "