Sunday, June 22, 2014
It's time to stop infantilising the Palestinians
And yet, despite all this whooping and cheering about the trauma and possible death of Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, the Palestinians will likely pay a very small price in the international community or global public opinion. Why?Israeli boy, 15, killed in Golan Heights attack
In part, because an anti-Zionist mindset that has taken root in the West, and at its heart is unexamined assumption – that Israelis and Palestinians are different kinds of people. Israelis have agency, responsibility and choice, Palestinians do not. In short, the world treats the Palestinians as children – ‘the pathology of paternalism’ it has been called
The unarticulated assumption of anti-Zionism is that Palestinians are a driven people, dominated by circumstances and moved by emotions; qualities associated with the world of nature. Israelis are the opposite; masters of all circumstances, rational and calculating; qualities associated with the world of culture.
A 15-year-old Israeli boy was killed in the Golan Heights Sunday morning in what the IDF said was a missile attack from Syria, just south of the Quneitra crossing. Three others were hurt, including his father, a civilian contractor, who sustained serious injuries.They Killed A Minor
A vehicle that was delivering water to the contractors, who were working on the fence that Israel is building across the plateau, was targeted with an anti-tank missile fired from the Syrian side of the border, military officials said.
The IDF responded with tank fire at “Syrian military posts in the immediate vicinity,” IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said. The IDF was weighing a further response to what was regarded as a deliberate attack, military sources said later Sunday.
“This is not a case of errant fire but of an intended attack,” he said. “The IDF will continue to watch the northern border and react to developments in the field accordingly.”
This is the news item from Ma'an on the incident this morning:EyalGiladNaftali: Blame Terrorists, Not the Victims
Israeli killed, 5 injured in Golan Heights blast
Published today (updated) 22/06/2014 14:24
Why "updated"?
Because this is how it originally appeared:
Israeli settler killed, 5 injured in Golan Heights blast
Published today 22/06/2014 12:32
If you missed it, the term "settler" is now missing as is the reference to a "civilian" (as if the victim was really a soldier in disguise).
The dead person is Mohammed Karaka
Being Arab changes everything except for the fact that Syrian-based terrorists killed a minor.
Netanyahu: Hard evidence Hamas behind kidnappings
Israel has “unequivocal proof that this is Hamas,” Netanyahu said ahead of the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. “We are sharing this proof and information to this effect with several countries. Soon this information will be made public.”1,400 Sites Searched, 350 Arrests Made in Search for Teens
The prime minister said that once it became known on the world stage that Hamas had initiated the kidnapping, previous remarks by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in which he condemned the kidnapping, “will be put to the test in practice. His remarks will be tested not only by actions to return the boys home but by his willingness to dissolve the unity government with Hamas, which abducted the youths and calls for the destruction of Israel.”
The IDF has intensified Operation 'Brothers' Keeper,' IDF officials reported Sunday morning, and have searched in 1,400 different sites total since last week in an effort to locate three kidnapped teenagers.IDF Blog: IDF Chief of Staff Joins Soldiers in Search for Kidnapped Teens
As of Sunday, the IDF has shifted its focus to the northwest of Hevron, for a period of approximately 48 hours, they said.
While the IDF continues to emphasize that the assumption is that the boys are alive, IDF special units in the Naval forces have also begun searching underground and underwater for bodies.
Over 350 Palestinian Arabs - mostly Hamas terrorists - have been arrested since the operation began last Friday, the IDF announced Sunday.
Deputy minister: Shut off electricity in West Bank, Gaza
Israel should “shut off the electricity in the West Bank and Gaza” in response to rocket fire in the south and the abduction of three Israeli teens earlier this month, Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon said Sunday.500,000 Shekel Reward Offered for Return of Abducted Teens
“In my opinion there is room for extensive actions against the civilian population,” Danon said in an interview with Radio Darom. “I am saying something harsh here, but I believe it.
“We must change the way of life for the residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Shut off the power for a few days and you’ll see that suddenly all the world leaders will come and ask: ‘Why did you turn off the power?’ And then maybe we can tell them: ‘Sorry, didn’t you know three teenagers were kidnapped?’”
Matan Nahmani launches an initiative Sunday to pay out a 500,000 shekel ($145,150) reward for private citizens who have useful tips on the teens' whereabouts.Angry French Jews Demand Action on Kidnap Victims
While Nahmani has only collected part of the necessary reward money, he has appealed to the public for donations - and stated that the initiative could aid the IDF in saving the boys' lives.
"The project was conceived after consulting with ex-security officials, who thought that this could aid security forces by giving incentives for people to come forward with information," Nahmani stated to Kikar HaShabbat Sunday. "The general idea is that we do a mass funding project, pretty much - every participant contributing as much as he can toward the reward money."
As Israeli security forces continue their search for kidnapped teens Eyal Yifrah (19), Naftali Frenkel (16), and Gilad Sha'ar (16), dozens of Jews and supporters of Israel staged an angry demonstration outside the PLO embassy in France. The demonstrators slammed the support that they said the Palestinian Authority was giving to the kidnappers of the boys, and its tolerant attitude to terror in general. The demonstration was held by a coalition of Jewish activist groups, including the Jewish Defense League.Watch: French Rally Supporting Abducted Teens Comes Under Attack
Footage from Paris shows the moment pro-Israel march came under attack by anti-Israel extremists.Video of the attack is now "private", this video shows the march:
The rally was held to call for the release of three Israeli teenagers kidnapped by the Hamas terrorist group. People can be seen first fleeing the attack - which involved flares being hurled at Israel supporters - and then surging back to chase the attackers.
Police intervened, however, and can be seen making at least one arrest. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
Manif "Bring Back Our Boys" devant la délégation Palestinienne à Paris
Knesset Speaker: Sorry, I Can't Fire MK Zoabi
Knesset Chairman MK Yuli Edelstein (Likud-Beytenu) told his Facebook followers Monday that he has no way of dismissing MK Hanin Zoabi (Balad) from the Knesse, despite her provocative statements regarding the abduction of three yeshiva boys 10 days ago.Zoabi lashes out at Abbas' 'betrayal' of Palestinians for condemning kidnappings
"I want to respond to the numerous comments and questions that you have addressed to me about MK Zoabi,” he wrote. “You must all understand that as Knesset Speaker, I do not have the tools for dismissing a Knesset Member over his words or actions, severe as they may be.”
"The struggle against MK Zoabi and similar cases is mostly conducted through public campaigns, and among other things – by creating a solid wall between her and her likes, and the general Arab sector in Israel.
Balad MK Haneen Zoabi continued outflanking Palestinian officials Saturday when she accused Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas of betraying his people by condemning the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers.Most Palestinians support kidnapping of three teens
“Abbas’s goal is to strengthen his hold on power,” she said. “His military coordination with Israel is a betrayal of the Palestinian people.”
Amin Maqboul, member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, said that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians support the abductions, if the goal is to exchange them for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.PA turning to UN Security Council to halt West Bank raids
Defending Abbas’s stance regarding the kidnapping, however, Maqboul said that the PA president’s recent remarks were intended to “spare Palestinians the dangers of Israeli aggression and avoid international pressure.”
The Palestinian Authority is appealing to international institutions and attempting to urgently convene the UN Security Council, calling for an immediate end to a wide Israeli military operation in the West Bank, Ramallah officials said Sunday.Netanyahu to UN chief: Israel against transfering money to Hamas
The Palestinian statement condemned “the brutal, open aggression and collective punishment carried out by the Israeli occupation forces all across the Palestinian territories,” and said it “means that the Israeli government is pushing towards more tension and towards an ‘outburst.’”
The prime minister also told the UN chief that Israel was “oppose[d] to the transfer of funds from Qatar to Hamas” — a reference to a report Saturday that the UN’s Mideast coordinator in Jerusalem sought to transfer funds to the terror group, an action for which Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman was now seeking his expulsion.Abbas is waiting for 'smoking gun' to disband unity government
Coordinator Robert Serry denied the allegations, saying in a statement that he was approached by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah about transferring funds from Qatar to pay Gaza salaries, but that he had made it clear he would only act if Israel was also amenable to the arrangement.
Channel 2 reported that Serry has been seeking relentlessly to transfer funds to Hamas in Gaza, to the immense displeasure of Liberman. Israel, the US and others designate the Islamic extremist Hamas, which is formally committed to the destruction of Israel, as a terrorist organization.
The Palestinian Authority is waiting for the "smoking gun" that Hamas was behind the kidnapping of the three Israeli teens so that President Mahmoud Abbas could officially announce the reconciliation deal void and disband the government, a senior official in Abbas' office told Israel Hayom.JPost Editorial: The UN and Israel
"In reality the reconciliation deal has not been implemented and the unity government does not function," the official said.
The statements come against the backdrop of Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki's remarks on Saturday in which he said, "If it turns out that Hamas is behind the kidnapping, there will be grave consequences including disbanding the unity government and putting the reconciliation deal on hold."
Occasionally, there is an island of relative normality in the raging sea of injustice and outright absurdity that characterizes the UN’s workings.UNESCO silence on Jews from Arab countries
Last week, Israel was elected to serve as vice chair of a UN committee dealing with human rights. The Jewish state will serve in that capacity in the upcoming 69th session of the UN General Assembly. Mordehai Amihai won the appointment to represent the Western European and “Other Groups” voting bloc on the committee, which is known as the 4th Special Political and Decolonization Committee. He received 74 votes, far exceeding the 39-vote minimum.
It was no big deal, really. The vice chair does not have a critical impact on the decision-making process.
What made it exceptional was the fact that even Israel’s election to serve as a vice chair – not a fullfledged chair mind you – did not proceed completely as normal. Moral luminaries such as Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Libya, and Egypt objected to the appointment simply because it was Israel that was appointed.
It was irrational for Arab states, at one and the same time to combat the existence of a Jewish state and to be instrumental in its creation through the expulsion of their Jewish populations, who inevitably, for the most part, ended up in Israel. The only consistent explanation for both Arab state behaviors is hatred for Jews in their midst. That is a story that, understandably, Arab states did not want told.Baghdad condemns Kurdish oil exports to Israel
Palestinian peace negotiators have argued that whatever injustice was done to Jewish refugees from Arab countries was not inflicted by the Palestinians. This position ignores the fact that many of the Jewish refugees generated by the wars against the existence of Israel, about 40,000, came from the West Bank and Gaza.
Be that as it may, the refusal of Arab states to confront the reality of the injustice to Jews from Arab countries, which their opposition to the insertion of this issue in the UNESCO exhibit illustrates, means that if the issue is not dealt with in Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, it is not likely to be dealt with at all.
We need to take a cue from the anti-Zionists’ own rankings. If what is central to the core of anti-Zionist propaganda is the covering up of the story of Jews from Arab countries, then that story must be central to combating anti-Zionism. If we can learn that lesson from the UNESCO cover up, it will have done us a favor. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
Baghdad’s oil ministry condemned Iraqi Kurdistan Saturday for further exports of crude from wells in the autonomous northern region, part of a long-running row over the country’s vast hydrocarbon reserves.Paul Seeks to Remove Obama Waiver Power on Palestinian Aid
The federal government alleged that a shipment of oil, the second to be pumped in the three-province Kurdish region and shipped internationally in the past month, had been sent to Israel. It reiterated the threat of legal action against any companies that receive the crude.
Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) is urging his colleagues to support a new bill that would remove President Barack Obama’s executive waiver authority and block him from sending continued U.S. taxpayer aid to the new Hamas-backed Palestinian government.Gazan with grenade thwarted from infiltrating community
The Stand with Israel Act, which is not supported by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), seeks to fully eliminate U.S. aid to the new Palestinian unity government and, in an unprecedented move, rescind the national security waivers that permit Obama to continue aid in the face of congressional opposition.
Paul’s bill has garnered just 17 cosponsors since it was introduced in April, prompting the senator to send a letter to his congressional colleagues urging them to support the bill. (h/t Canadian Otter)
A Palestinian man armed with a hand grenade broke through the Gaza fence and tried to infiltrate an Israeli community before he was stopped early Sunday morning, the military said.Gaza Lecturer: Suicide Bombers Motivated by Islamic Faith, Not Financial Need or Brainwashing
The incident occurred in the Eshkol region, adjacent to the southern Gaza Strip.
British BDS'er expresses his desire for more kidnappings
Kudos to the intrepid activists at Sussex friends of Israel for standing up to hate, and for documenting the antisemitism of the BDS movement on the other side of the pond.NGO Monitor: Presbyterian support of divestment a loss for true peacemaking
From Today's protest at EcoStream- an environmentally friendly business that sells bulk Palestinian olive oil. However, since the dark and ugly core of the BDS movement is isolating and punishing Israel, NOT helping the Palestinians, it is subject to protests for daring to sell the home carbonation device Sodastream
Abdul of Brighton BDS describes the three kidnapped Israeli youths as "soldiers" and expressed his desire for 3,000 more kidnappings.
Again, thanks to our friends at Sussex Friends of Israel for not allowing hate to reign unchecked and unchallenged on the streets of Brighton.
NGO Monitor denounces the vote in favor of divestment resolutions by the Presbyterian Church (USA) at its biannual General Assembly, calling the vote a "blow to morality and peacemaking" in the Middle East.Tel Aviv Hospital Under Fire For Violating Apartheid Policy (satire)
"The divestment resolutions were pressed on the PCUSA delegates by supporters of the international anti-Israel boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign. The vote shows that most delegates either failed to recognize that BDS seeks to end the existence of Israel or did understand that and supported the resolution nonetheless ," said Yitzhak Santis, Chief Programs Officer, NGO Monitor.
Ramallah, June 22 – Palestinian officals are accusing an Israeli medical facility of failing to live up to the characterization of Apartheid that the Palestinains and their supporters demand of the Jewish State.World Cup shirt exhibit gets attention with Nazi-era jersey
According to those officials, Assuta, a private Tel Aviv hospital, has allegedly violated the principles of Apartheid, which would require separating Arab and Jewish patients, or perhaps wholesale denial of treatment to Arabs.
During the initial stage of searching for three missing Jewish teenagers in the Hebron area, Amina Abbas, wife of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, underwent orthopedic surgery at the hospital.While her room was guarded around the clock by a private security detail, the surgery was performed in one of the regular operating rooms of the hospital, which does not segregate patients other than by gender, thus raising concern in Palestinian and leftist circles that equal treatment of such a high profile Arab in an Israeli medical setting could wreak havoc with claims that Israel is an Apartheid state.
An exhibition of football jerseys that includes a Nazi-era shirt and one from Mussolini’s fascist regime is raising the eyebrows of visitors to a busy shopping mall in this Brazilian city.Nazi-themed Indonesian cafe reopens
The exhibition includes more than 100 replicas and originals from different nations, dating back to the first World Cup tournament in 1930.
Salvador doctor Duda Sampao, the owner of the collections, said that the exhibition has been endorsed by the local Brazilian World Cup organizing committee, and therefore has the consent of FIFA. World football governing body officials refused to comment, referring the matter to local organizers.
Henry Mulyana voluntarily shut down his SoldatenKaffee last year after media reports exposed his swastika-clad establishment, prompting death threats and accusation of inciting racial hatred.China Wins Israeli Port Tender, Mediterranean Hub Poised for Growth
Following the closure, his lawyer told AFP that Mulyana would later reopen his business with a broader World War II theme and said he would remove all swastikas.
But at the opening on Saturday, three huge iron eagles bearing swastikas were on display, as were WWII propaganda posters bearing the Nazi symbol.
Globes cited unnamed industry sources as saying China offered to build the project – initially estimated at being worth about $1 billion – for substantially less than the four competing companies to cement its strategic foothold in Israel.Better Energy: Liberman's Africa strategy
In March, China won a tender to build a $2 billion, 300-kilometer freight rail link, connecting Eilat, on the Red Sea, with Ashdod Port. The project, nicknamed the ‘Red-Med,’ was greenlit by Netanyahu’s cabinet, and construction, which is expected to take five years, will begin within the year.
Industry sources told Globes that China also has its eyes on the 25-year contract to operate the new port. In that tender, which is still in the pre-qualification stage, China made a last-minute bid in April, competing against Germany’s Eurogate, Terminal Investment, from the Netherlands, and International Container Terminal Services.
Ten days is a steep investment for any foreign minister. Yet Avigdor Liberman’s five-nation African tour signals a strategic shift with likely significant political and economic dividends.At Paris Military Expo, Israel Brings Solutions for Assymetrical Warfare
The white Airbus A320, chartered by the Israel Export Institute, buzzed with business people, diplomats, Members of Knesset, the security detail and our own mission doctor.
While Europe’s economy stagnates and BDS creeps in, Africa is rising. Six out of the 10 fastest growing economies are in Africa, as well as a quarter of the votes in the United Nations. Yet even though Israel has proximity to the continent, only three percent of our trade is with Africa. All five of the African countries on the foreign minister’s itineray requested an Israeli company that develops solar fields. And no wonder.
Six hundred million people in Africa are literally powerless, while a couple of hundreds of millions more are afflicted with expensive power from dirty diesel.
At the Eurosatory 2014 military expo in Paris, 30 Israeli defense companies, a record for Israel’s National Pavilion, are presenting advanced solutions for symmetric warfare in urban areas, in response to the critical needs and developing trends among today’s armed forces.Israeli tech to ‘see’ through walls could aid in kidnap crisis
In a statement, Director of SIBAT Brig. Gen. (IAF, Res.) Shmaya Avieli said: “Today’s terror threats have created the vital need for solutions to counter asymmetric warfare, in urban areas and elsewhere, with existing technologies.”
This technology can “see” through solid walls, providing soldiers with an “inside view” of closed rooms, bunkers, basements, and other redoubts where the kidnappers are possibly holding the Israelis.
Camero’s through-the-wall imaging system uses ultra-wideband (UWB) radar to map the layout of an area that is blocked by brick, cinder blocks, rebar reinforced concrete, plaster drywall, wood, adobe, stone, and just about any other material — as thick as a meter or more.
The system shows the location of objects in a room, whether stationary or mobile, and can be deployed from as far as 20 meters away. Advanced algorithms translate the radar signals into 3D images, showing the relative positions of people inside a room and tracking them as they move around.
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