Saturday, June 07, 2014
J Street: Anti-Israel, Pro-Lying
The liberal fringe group J Street is facing renewed questions over its purported dishonesty to journalists and editors after one of its top campus officials penned an op-ed that was so thoroughly riddled with factual errors that a leading Israeli publication was forced to delete the piece and apologize.MAEL: Unpacking J Street's 'Myths and Facts' Page
Jacob Plitman, the president of J Street U’s National Student Board, recently attacked several pro-Israel groups in an editorial published by the Times of Israel (TOI). However, TOI editors quickly removed the piece after at least four major factual errors were discovered, according to an explanation of the incident provided to the Washington Free Beacon by sources close to the incident.
This is not the first time that J Street has come under fire for misleading reporters and editors at major publications.
J Street suffers from one major problem- an inability to tell the truth. Again and again the organization misleads both the public and its constituents on matters of policy, funding, and co-sponsorship. In its attempt to ignore the film the J Street Challenge and other critics, J Street often relies on its 'Myths and Facts' page, even claiming that "the Myths and Facts page offers a more comprehensive address of the film’s catalog of spurious allegations."Is the International Consensus on Jerusalem Fracturing?
The fact that the leftist lobby group has a need for such a page should be cause for concern in itself. The Orwellian contents on the page only confirm the widespread concern that J Street misrepresents the truth. Rather than address any of the issues that J Street's critics has raised, the George Soros-funded group resorts to double-speak to "diffuse" the situation. Here are four such examples of J Street's public relations spin, with J Street's "Myths and Facts" followed by commentary:
If Israelis have not been willing to vocally and uncompromisingly assert their rights to their own undivided capital before the court of world opinion, then it is hardly surprising if those who don’t have much love for the Jewish state have taken this as a cue to further delegitimize Jewish rights in Jerusalem. Both the Europeans and the Obama administration insist that they are friends of Israel, but if Israelis want to know what real friends look like then they can look to Stephen Harper’s government in Canada and now to Tony Abbott’s in Australia. The decision to no longer refer to East Jerusalem as “occupied territory” is a bold and brave move that displays a degree of moral clarity that one could barely imagine coming from Obama’s State Department and certainly not from London’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.Australia just made an enormous contribution to the Middle East peace process
Ideally, the move by the Australians will be repeated by other governments, but if nothing else it calls into question the attitude in Europe that holds the illegality of the Israeli presence in north, south, and east Jerusalem to be an open and shut case.
So why has the Australian announcement advance peace, if it has angered the Palestinians?
Because the history of Middle East peace negotiations is the refusal to speak the truth to the Palestinians, and instead, to cower at false claims of illegal occupation and Apartheid. Such diplomatic cowering, evidenced by John Kerry’s futile shuttle diplomacy, simply encourages even more unreasonable and unrealistic Palestinian demands.
If peace ever is to be achieved, it will be when the Palestinians accept that they can get no more from international boycotts and pressure than they can get through direct negotiations and meaningful concessions. The Australian announcement brought that moment a little closer.
The U.S. finally moving our Embassy to Jerusalem would move the peace process even closer still.
How Corruption is Ruining the Palestinian Future
Much of the foreign support for the Palestinians is given with the best of intentions. This makes those who question it susceptible to all manner of criticism. That this questioning is often warranted, however, escapes many supporters and financiers of the Palestinian Authority, because it contradicts the comfortable mainstream narrative that reinforces their motivation. Meanwhile, the PA is as corrupt as ever, and uses our foreign aid to literally sell its people short.EU donates $335 million to UNRWA
The gap between the Palestinian people and their leadership is nothing less than catastrophic, and it will not be closed unless donors change the way they support the Palestinian Authority. A good first step would be to tie aid to greater PA transparency and responsibility to the Palestinian people. Donors should also insist on fiscal and legal reforms, as well as the establishment of robust and independent institutions—judiciary and education included. These are all necessary ingredients for economic growth and nation-building. Unfortunately, so long as we and other donors refuse to take these steps, we will remain part of the problem, not part of the solution.
The European Union has approved a $335 million contribution to UNRWA, the United Nations agency responsible for people it defines as Palestinian refugees.CAMERA: Where's the Coverage? Many Nations Have State Religions… Not Israel
The contribution, which will go to UNRWA‘s General Fund for core services for the period 2014-2016, was announced on Wednesday at a ceremony attended by EU Foreign Affairs Chief Catherine Ashton and UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbühl.
Strikingly, a majority of Israeli Arabs accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state. Still, many critics believe that Israel simply cannot be a Jewish and democratic state, perhaps believing that democratic states don’t reference any religion. This is simply an uninformed view. Israel has no written constitution, but the Basic Laws have been given that status by the courts. Yet many other countries recognize and even sanction various religions in their very constitutions and attract no criticism whatsoever.CAMERA: Harvest of Propaganda at Tent of Nations
The underlying question is whether or not the Tent of Nations has title to the valley where the trees were planted. Information provided by the Coordinator of Activities in the Territories (COGAT) indicates that the answer is no.Israel's Existence Too Controversial for Translators
What none of the publicity surrounding the Tent of Nations story reveals is that there are two legal controversies in play.
The first controversy involves the hilltop property upon which the farm (“Tent of Nations”) itself is located. COGAT reports “On this plot buildings comprising an outpost were constructed without the required building permits. A legal proceeding is ongoing concerning this plot.”
The second controversy relates to the valley where the trees were planted. COGAT reports that in a separate proceeding before the Appeals Committee, which came to an end in 2012, the Tent of Nations failed to establish its ownership:
So what is going on? It appears that the Tent of Nations and its supporters have used the story about its struggle over the hilltop farm to describe what is happening in the valley where the trees were planted and then removed.
Tent of Nations has characterized the valley in question as part of the farm to which it holds title. Aerial photographs, however, indicate that the valley was not cultivated until 2006. Images from 1990, 1999 and 2004 show the land was not cultivated at these times. This helps explain why the Appeals Committee ruled the way it did. (These photos are appended below, as is a statement from COGAT.)
Israel’s existence is apparently too controversial for the translators associated with the company ProTranslating. When Prager University reached out to the company to translate its video devoted to the Middle East conflict and Israel’s existence, the order was initially ready to go. The company accepted the order to translate the video into French, Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian.
Prager U administrators soon received the following notice from ProTranslating: “We have been unable to find people willing to translate this script due to its controversial nature and it seems we will no longer be able to deliver this project to you. I apologize for the delay in letting you know but we’ve been trying to get translators to accept the job and simply have had no luck.”
The English version of the video is approaching 570,000 views on YouTube and has been hailed as a remarkable video, with some even asking if it is the "most important important Israel film ever made."
Meet New UN Human Rights Chief: A Jordanian Prince With An Anti-Israel History
So how likely is it that a High Commissioner for Human Rights who comes from a country that is a member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation - which has hijacked the UN Human Rights Council to serve as its personal Israel-bashing tool - will confront his nation's allies and refuse to become part of the problem?Dershowitz Challenges J Street: Why Won't You Let Me Speak?
"His Royal Highness Prince Al-Hussein of Jordan" represented Jordan before the International Court of Justice when it considered the legality of Israel's security fence in 2004. The case was a farcical "legal" exercise that answered a "question" posed by the General Assembly. The Assembly had already decided the illegality of "the Wall" and gave the Court the information to "prove" the foregone conclusion.
During his appearance Al-Hussein said that Israeli "practices" were "no less horrific" than suicide-bombing.
Professor Dershowitz contrasted the pluralistic outlook of the parade's organizers with the attitude of J Street's leadership, who ironically pose as a liberal alternative but simply shut out opinions they don't agree with, he said.Z Street and the IRS
"J Street is the worst hypocrisy going. They want to be part of the 'big tent' but they will not allow people like me to ever speak at J Street events... because they don't want their members to hear the truth about what their positions really are."
Addressing J Street directly, Professor Dershowitz challenged: "If you want to be part of the big tent invite me into your tent. Let your people hear a real pro-Israel point of view."
The Z Street case may be what forces the IRS to pull aside its carefully constructed curtain and reveal how it made decisions regarding organizations deemed out of step with the current US administration.California university passes divestment resolution
Once the IRS files its response, the investigatory period known as “discovery” will commence in the lawsuit. A lot of people will be paying attention, and so should we.
Perhaps it was J Street – as posted on its website five years ago, or The New York Times or The Washington Post, which coincidentally posted articles making similar suggestions at the same time – that led the IRS to put organizations that support Jewish life beyond the Green Line on a different, more onerous track when seeking tax-exempt status.
The University of California, Santa Cruz student government passed a resolution calling for divestment from companies involved in alleged human rights abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank.Brussels Museum Attack Victim Dies of Injuries
The non-binding resolution calls on the university to divest from companies that including Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, Hewlett Packard and General Electric which profit from alleged violations of international law and human rights abuses against the Palestinians on the part of the Israeli government.
The resolution was passed on May 28.
A young Belgian man who was badly hurt in the attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels died of his injuries on Friday, the public prosecutor's office said, according to AFP.Why the Jihadist Killings in Belgium Are Just the Beginning
The Belgian, who is in his early 20s, is the fourth fatality from the May 24 shooting. An Israeli couple and a French woman were killed immediately by a lone gunman.
The attack is suspected to be the work of a 29-year-old Frenchman, Mehdi Nemmouche, who has spent more than a year fighting with radical jihadists in Syria and who was detained days after the shooting.
The May 24 murders have brought long-overdue focus to the situation in Belgium, where radical Islam has long been spilling poison on its soil.Senior Hebrew U. Lecturer Compares Religious Zionists to 'Nazis'
And the problem is not just about the strength of Sharia4Belgium, one of the strongest Sharia4 organizations seeking to install Sharia law in European countries; nor is it about the estimated 3,000 European Muslims who have joined the Syrian rebels.
The problems began much earlier and have been growing more incendiary by the year. On the afternoon of 9/11/2001, for instance, controversial activist Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born Belgian with alleged ties to Hezbollah, celebrated the attacks on New York’s World Trade Center with friends. Jahjah, who also founded the now nascent Arab-European League (“AEL”), a political group that sought to combine democracy with Sharia in Europe, described the day in his autobiography, writing: “We sat as if hypnotized by the radio, and heard that another plane was missing, maybe two. And that the Pentagon had been hit. We couldn’t hold our joy, and laughed together.”
Professor Amiram Goldblum, a senior lecturer at Hebrew University and co-founder of the extreme leftist organization Peace Now, has made use of his Facebook page to tear into the nationalist camp, the Jewish Home faction and religious Zionism.Mahmoud Abbas Says Jews Are 'Destroying Al-Aqsa'
"Let someone dare say that this is not Judeo-Nazi youth,” wrote Goldblum next to a video of the “rikudgalim” flag dance celebration on Jerusalem Day. “The Arabs are under curfew in the streets of the Old City. The apartheid that exists beyond the Green Line is in Jerusalem now. Jewish youths are raised on the monstrous style that we have seen in other places.”
Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday urged the Muslim and Arab world to rush to the defense of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, accusing “the Zionist interlopers,” as he put it, of planning to destroy it.Jerusalem is the '2016 Islamic Tourism Capital'
In what Israeli officials were calling a serious case of incitement by Abbas against Israel and the Jewish people, Abbas complained about how Israel was conducting archaeological digs under and around the Temple Mount. The digs, he said, were likely to topple the Mosque.
Abbas also demanded that Arab nations do something to protect the Temple Mount from ongoing “invasions” by Jews, who were too often being permitted to ascend the Temple Mount in his opinion. Many religious Jews have been attempting to visit the Mount in recent years, despite being banned from praying at the site, which is the holiest in Judaism but is currently controlled by the Islamic Waqf trust.
A Palestinian Authority (PA) official said Thursday that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) chose Jerusalem as the "capital of Islamic tourism" for 2016.Egyptian judge defends mass death sentences of Muslim Brotherhood - for teaching Jewish Scripture
The first OIC International Forum on Islamic Tourism was held in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta this Monday and Tuesday.
According to PA Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Habbash, the Forum decided on Jerusalem as a means of "breaking Israel's siege" of the 3,000-year-old Jewish capital, reports the Arab Ma'an News Agency.
Earlier this year, after a two-day trial, the Egyptian court sentenced 529 members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood to death for the murder of a police officer and other offenses. The court eventually upheld the death sentences for 37 of the Islamist defendants while the remainder had their sentences commuted to life in prison.Egypt’s new leader vows to uphold ties with Israel
The presiding judge, Saeed Youssef, stated this week that “the accused came out of the depths of hell...to plunder Egypt’s wealth, tyrannize its people and they killed the deputy commissioner,” adding that the men were “enemies of the nation” and used mosques to promote the teachings of “their holy book, the Talmud,” a series of scriptures on Jewish Law.
According to Ahram Online, el-Sissi “reaffirmed Egypt`s commitment to all its international treaties, especially the peace treaty with Israel” in a phone conversation Friday with Israeli leaders. The former defense minister, who was elected president last week after ousting Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi in a coup in July 2013, said it was an opportune time to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict and promote regional peace.'AMERICA CANNOT DO A DAMN THING'
Sissi won some 97 percent of the vote in late May in a barely contested election seen by many as a formality.
International leaders were invited to el-Sissi’s inauguration ceremony scheduled for Sunday, but Israel’s elected officials were not, Israel Radio reported Saturday. Instead, a representative from the Israeli embassy in Cairo will attend.
In response to President Obama’s speech at West Point last week, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khomeini spoke before throngs on Wednesday above a banner reading “AMERICA CANNOT DO A DAMN THING.” Khomeini’s speech came on the 25th anniversary of the death of Imam Khomeini.Khamenei blasts 'evil Zionist regime' for sowing discord among Muslims
“The Islamic Awakening might be suppressed in part of the Islamic world for a while but undoubtedly it would not be uprooted. It would keep growing,” he said. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has the first say when it comes to policy making in the region; it stands alone against the usurper regime (of Israel), that is supported by the world bullying powers; it does not tolerate the tyrant while defending the oppressed.”
Khameini also stated, “military attack is not a priority for Americans now,” adding, “They realize that military attacks are as dangerous or even more dangerous for the assaulting country as they are for the country attacked.”
Khamenei then called the United States the “Great Satan” and said, “Despite the sanctions imposed upon it, Iran today is launching satellites and sending live organisms into space and is producing nuclear power.” He added, “Battle and jihad are endless because evil and its front continue to exist.”
Iran's supreme leader accused Israel on Tuesday of sowing dissension and pitting Muslims against one another in Syria.Iranian Men Now Dressing as Women to Protest Government
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took to Twitter on Tuesday to denounce the "policy of the enemies of Islam to stir up fratricide and civil war in the Islamic countries."
In an apparent reference to Western-backed rebels in Syria, Khamenei wrote: "Some in the name of Muslims are hand in hand w/devils & consented to be an ally of evil Zionist regime to beat their brothers to ground."
As the government regime in Iran continues to enforce strict social mores, citizens have taken to social media in drag as a means of supporting Iranian women.Alabama youth group pulls Hitler billboard
Iranian men have taken to dressing as Iranian women to protest the government’s harsh policies restricting women from the public sphere. These unusual photos have gone viral on social media, with the Facebook page gaining nearly 80 thousand “likes” in just two weeks.
What’s most surprising about these photos is that women do not appear in any of them. In this role reversal, the men dress as seductive women, along with the slogan “secret male liberation of Iran.”
The advertisement for Life Savers Ministries, a Christian youth program, features five smiling children beneath the quote attributed to Hitler, “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future,” according to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer in Georgia.Moroccan Berbers set up anti-Semitism watchdog
It went up May 31 on a Lamar Advertising billboard near a mall in Auburn, Ala., and was to be removed Tuesday.
“We are pulling the billboard and certainly never intended to cause confusion,” Life Savers Ministries founder James Anderegg told the Ledger-Enquirer.
The Moroccan Observatory for the Fight against Anti-Semitism, founded last week, is headed by Berber minority rights activist Omar Louzi, according to a report Thursday on the online edition of the Ya Biladi daily.Spain approves Sephardic Jew citizenship plan
“We are here to stop the anti-Semitic attacks in mosques and elsewhere against Jews and their culture,” the news site PanoraPost.com on Thursday quoted Louzi as saying about his association, which he cofounded with two other Berbers. Media reports did not name the other co-founders.
Louzi is planning to organize trips to Israel for Moroccans to “meet the Moroccan Jews and visit their holy places, especially in Jerusalem,” Ya Biladi reported.
Spain’s cabinet on Friday approved a bill allowing descendants of Jews forced into exile centuries ago the right to dual citizenship, but said applicants will have to take a Spanish culture test in addition to having their ancient ties to the nation vetted by experts.S. Carolina Drivers Can Wear Their Love for Israel on Their Car
Sephardic Jews who want to apply must have their heritage checked by the Spanish Federation of Jewish Communities or by rabbis where they live, Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said. She did not provide details about the culture test but said it will be developed by the Cervantes Institute, which promotes Spanish language and culture abroad.
By an Act signed into law by Governor Nikki Haley on June 2 and effective immediately, the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles is permitted to issue to car owners in South Carolina special license plates. Those special license plates will have the message: “South Carolina Stands With Israel.” The graphic on the plate will have intertwined flags of Israel and South Carolina.
Rep. Alan Clemmons, a passionate supporter of Israel, introduced the legislation into the South Carolina House of Representatives on Dec. 3 of last year. The bill was approved in committee, approved by the full House on April 3, 2014 in a vote 57 to 1. The bill was approved unanimously by the Senate on May 21 and became law on the date it was signed by South Carolina’s governor, on June 2.
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