Friday, January 09, 2015
Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas, Palestinian Authority Step Up Human Rights Violations
It would be a good idea if the international community and media stopped turning a blind eye to the suffering of Palestinians at the hands of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority [PA].Countering punch-drunk Palestinians
Abbas wants the world to support the creation of a dictatorship where people are arrested and intimidated for expressing their views in public. He is also asking the world to support a Palestinian state where Hamas is torturing Palestinians.
While the PA is accusing Hamas of human rights violations, its security forces in the West Bank continue to crack down on freedom of expression. In recent weeks, Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank have arrested more than 25 university students on charges of criticizing Palestinian leaders in Ramallah.
"You can still see the bruises on their bodies. They were subjected to harsh torture." — Hisham Sakallah, Palestinian writer, on Hamas interrogators beating Fatah officials with plastic hoses.
The Palestinians have come to believe that they can demand the sky and conduct diplomatic war against Israel with impunity. It’s time to disabuse them of these notions through determined Israeli action. And it’s time to reeducate Palestinian leaders and the global community as to the terms to a negotiated settlement that Israel can live with.Notorious Palestinian plane hijacker to promote BDS in South Africa
You see, the Palestinians long ago took a decision to reject the two-state solution as Israelis and most Western policy-makers envision it.
The Palestinian state that Israelis might be able to support in Judea, Samaria and Gaza cannot threaten Israel’s security – meaning that it must be truly demilitarized, cannot form hostile foreign alliances, will dismantle the Hamas army and hand over its weaponry, agree to Israeli monitors on all its external borders, and accept a permanent Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley to prevent the emergence of another radical Islamic bastion on Israel’s eastern border. (Sinai-stan, Hama-stan, Hezbollah- stan and Syria-stan are already more than enough for Israel to handle.) The Palestinian state that Israelis might be able to support in Judea, Samaria and Gaza must be a reasonable neighbor and willing to compromise – meaning that will not contain any large Israeli settlement blocs, cannot control and destroy Jerusalem, and must share its airspace, natural resources, and historical and religious sites with Israel.
The Palestinian state that Israelis can envision, if at all, in Judea, Samaria and Gaza has to agree to a permanent end to the conflict and all claims on Israel – meaning that it renounces the right of return, inculcates reconciliation and not anti-Semitism on its airwaves and in its schools, recognizes Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish People, and does not seek to criminalize Israeli leaders in international forums.
BUT TODAY’S punch-drunk Palestinian leadership does not want the constricted West Bank state that Israel can countenance.
Infamous Palestinian plane hijacker Leila Khaled will be visiting South Africa next month as a guest of the local chapter of the international Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions movement and Muslim organizations.The “Nonviolence” of the BDS Movement
BDS South Africa is known for its high-profile, anti-Israel stunts. Last November, It was prevented by court order from protesting outside branches of the Woolworths department store chain. In one of the protests, activists from the Congress of South African Students placed a pig's head in the kosher section of a Cape Town branch.
Born in Haifa in 1944, Khaled joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine at a young age and shot to global prominence with a series of hijackings in 1969 and 1970. (h/t Alexi)
However that may be, Khaled reveals to anyone who cares to listen exactly how she understands the role of BDS. BDS “of course, on the international level [is] very effective. But it doesn’t liberate, it doesn’t liberate land. If there’s BDS all over the world, and the people are not resisting, there will be no change.” In apartheid South Africa, she claims, boycotts “helped the people who were holding arms. But if they were not holding arms it may have affected them politically, but it would not have liberated, not on the ground.” BDS is a way of supporting an armed resistance. As Khaled sees it, BDS is the propaganda arm of groups like her own PFLP.
Rather than distancing themselves from Khaled and the terrorist organization for which she continues to labor, the purportedly nonviolent BDS-South Africa celebrates what they plainly regard as her praiseworthy legacy. Rather than denying that they happily march arm in arm with the likes of PFLP, they quote approvingly an unnamed source that calls Khaled the “poster girl of the Palestinian struggle,” and invite us to dine with her.
You might almost think that they are auditioning for the role—of propagandists to ease the way for the people with guns—Khaled has assigned them.
Police arrest East Jerusalem youth for Thursday stabbing
Jerusalem police on Friday arrested a 15-year-old East Jerusalem resident on suspicion of stabbing a yeshiva student near Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City Thursday evening.Muslim Cleric’s Visit to Jerusalem Exposes Rift Between Qatar, Moderate Arab States
The youth was apprehended in the Old City, and was brought in for questioning.
The victim, 21, was stabbed in the back with a screwdriver by an assailant described as an “Arab,” according to an initial Channel 2 report.
He was taken to the hospital in moderate condition, according to a Magen David Adom Twitter post.
On Monday, the Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Iyad Madani, paid a rare visit to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, announcing what he termed an “Islamic Tourism Year” in the holy city.US condemns Turkey-Hamas ties
Madani is a citizen of Saudi Arabia, whose government does not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel and views itself as the guardian of Islam’s most important sites – Mecca and Medina. Muslims consider the Al-Aqsa Mosque to be Islam’s third-holiest site.
Pinhas Inbari, a consultant and a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, observed that Madani’s visit to Jerusalem exposed some of the internal struggles within Sunni Islam, and the limits of the Qatari reconciliation with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.
The United States has criticized Turkey for courting Hamas amid reports that leaders of the Gaza terror group could be expelled from Qatar, its top financial and political backer.Israeli sisters of Hamas chief penalized for Gaza visit
If that happens, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu says Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal would be welcome in Turkey whenever he wants.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked about Turkey’s position at the daily briefing in Washington on Thursday.
“Our position on Hamas has not changed,” Psaki said. “Hamas is a designated foreign terrorist organization that continues to engage in terrorist activity and demonstrate its intentions during the summer’s conflict…with Israel. We continue to raise our concerns about the relationship between Hamas and Turkey with senior Turkish officials, including after learning of Mashaal’s recent visit there. And we have urged the government of Turkey to press Hamas to reduce tensions and prevent violence.”
An Israeli court sentenced two sisters of former Hamas Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniyeh to suspended prison terms Thursday for illegally entering the coastal strip.IDF Using Powdered Palestinian Children To Melt Snow (satire)
Court documents said Sabah Haniyeh, 48, and Leila Abu Rkaik, 65, both Israeli citizens, were sentenced to eight months, suspended for three years, and fined NIS 20,000 ($5,000) for crossing into Gaza from Egypt in 2013 without obtaining a permit from Israel.
Both women, who are the widows of Arab-Israeli men, said they made the trip to visit relatives they had not seen for several years.
Eli Settlement, Occupied West Bank, January 9 – Israeli military technology has now been applied to the thorny problem of snow and ice blocking roads, in the form of a new method that rapidly clears the routes to and from West Bank settlements by using powdered Palestinian children.Brandeis Lifts ‘No Contact Order’ on Student Journalist
Low-flying aircraft and several types of dispenser trucks could be seen plying the skies and hillside roads of Eli, Shiloh, and other Zionist outposts to spread the powdered children, which has been treated to cause melting and immediate evaporation of snow and ice. The experimental road treatment is most necessary for the relatively isolated settlements north of Jerusalem, where the hills are higher and the roads more treacherous than in other parts of Occupied Palestine.
Currently the program is being conducted on a small scale to gauge its environmental impact in addition to its basic efficacy. If the results prove satisfactory, production and application of powdered Palestinian children will continue on an industrial scale, possibly even for export, says IDF Colonel Oketz Peti.
Just hours after the Washington Free Beacon revealed that Brandeis University student journalist Daniel Mael had been slapped with a “no contact order” restricting his movement on campus, university officials lifted the punishment, according to emails obtained by the Free Beacon.London seminar for trade union supporters of Israel
Mael, who was unsuccessfully prosecuted for “harassment” by university officials before being hit with the “no contact order” late last year, was informed Thursday afternoon by a university official that the order would expire on Friday.
The latest punishment against the Brandeis senior followed an article he had written drawing attention to tweets by another student leader who endorsed on Twitter the recent murder of two New York City police officers and declared that “amerikkka needs an intifada.”
The order had prevented Mael from being in the same physical location on campus as student Michael Piccione, who launched a campaign to convince the Brandeis administration to punish Mael for writing the article.
We Believe in Israel, along with Trade Union Friends of Israel, is hosting a special seminar in London on Sunday 25 January 2015 from 11.15am to 5.30pm.Five Prominent Faculty at U. Illinois – Urbana Champaign come out against Salaita hire
This is aimed at trade union members who support Israel, with the objective being to help you network with each other, to give you the latest information about Israel and particularly about the work of Histadrut, and to help you understand how you can influence your union to take a more constructive stance towards the Middle East.
TULIP co-founder Eric Lee is one of the speakers at this event.
If you are a supporter of Israel and a member of a trade union and would like to attend, please register by emailing luke@webelieveinisrael.org.uk quoting your name, phone number and which trade union you are a member of.
Thanks — I hope to see you there!
In late December, the faculty Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure (CAFT) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign issued a Report and recommendations on the refusal of the Board of Trustees to grant tenure to former Virginia Tech Professor Steven Salaita.El-Sisi Becomes First Egyptian President to Attend Christmas Mass
We covered the CAFT Report in detail, U. Illinois Faculty Committee fails to call for Steven Salaita position restoration, including responses by Salaita supporters upset that CAFT failed to demand that Salaita be “restored” to his position (he only had a contingent offer subject to Board of Trustees approval, but his supporters consider him to have been hired).
The Report also found that “legitimate questions” were raised as to Salaita’s fitness based on his tweets, and recommended a “panel of experts” be appointed. That standard of “fitness” came under stinging criticism from Salaita supporters, as detailed in the updates to my prior post.
Now five past Chairs and Vice-Chairs of the UI-UC Faculty Senate Executive Committee have issued a “Response” to the CAFT Report, forwarded today to the President of the University of Illinois Robert Easter, incoming (in July) President Tim Killeen, and the Board of Trustees. The full Response is embedded below.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has become the first holder of his office to ever attend a Christmas mass.UN Investigators Highly Confident Chlorine Was Used in Syria
El-Sisi was present at the Christmas mass at Cairo’s Saint Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, where he visited with Coptic Pope Tawadros II and gave a brief speech, Al-Ahram reported.
Unlike Christians in the West, Coptic Christians celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7 due to their use of the older Julian calendar.
Saint Mark’s Cathedral, which serves as the seat of the Coptic papacy and the largest church in the Middle East, was the site of an unprecedented Islamic mob attack in April 2013 under then-president Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member.
Chemical weapons investigators have concluded "with a high degree of confidence" that chlorine gas was used as a weapon against three opposition-controlled villages in Syria last year, according to a report obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press (AP).Powerful New Iraqi Militia Has Deep Ties to Tehran
The chlorine gas attacks affected between 350 and 500 people and killing 13, according to the news agency.
The third report by a fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) didn't apportion blame but said 32 of the 37 people interviewed "saw or heard the sound of a helicopter over the village at the time of the attack with barrel bombs containing toxic chemicals."
Kataib al-Imam Ali, an Iraqi Shiite militia with strong ties to Iran, is headed by a terrorist with a long record of attacking American interests according to terrorism experts Matthew Levitt and Phillip Smyth in a paper published by the Washington Institute of Near East Policy on Monday.Kurds in Iraq Increasingly Threatened by Iranian-Backed Militias
Levitt and Smyth write that Kataib al-Imam Ali “burst onto the scene with uniformed and well-armed members,” and that some of its members “posed in videos with the severed heads of their slain enemies.” They also report about the group’s leadership.
Shebl al-Zaidi, the secretary-general of Kataib al-Imam Ali, was once a noted figure in Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army — and reportedly one of its more vicious sectarian leaders. He was jailed during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, only to be released by the Iraqi government in 2010. Last summer, as Kataib al-Imam Ali became more established after its June debut, Zaidi was photographed with Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force. The group also appears to have strong links with the Iraqi government; in August and September, it published pictures of Zaidi riding in an Iraqi army helicopter and one of the militia’s field commanders, Abu Azrael, manning a different helicopter’s machine gun.
The authors of the report, Alex Vatanka and Sarkawt Shamsulddin, note that fear of the Iranian-backed militias come at a time when the Kurdish Peshmerga forces have demonstrated a capability to repel the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) forces and hold territory captured from the group, with little help from Washington.Report: ISIS Beheads Street Magician for Performing 'Haram' Entertainment
Already in September of last year, Phillip Smyth warned that “Iraqi Shiite militias are also on a collision course with the Kurdish community.”
Iran controls numerous militias in an attempt to “slowly impart and legitimize its ideology and power within Iraq.”
The Mirror reported that terrorists called his show “haram – or forbidden by the Koran – because it was idle entertainment and kept locals from praying and attending the mosque.”Iran Serious About Banning 'Un-Islamic' WhatsApp
“The magician was a popular man who entertained people with little tricks on the street like making coins or phone disappear,” allegedly said one witness who attended the show. “He was just called Sorcerer by people and children loved him. He was doing nothing anti-Islamic but he paid for it with his life.”
Islamic State terrorists, the report notes, consider magic tricks “anti-Islam” and an insult to God “because they created ‘illusions and falsehood.’” “This is the reality of life in Raqqa, murdered in the name of Allah for performing a few tricks,” said the witness quoted.
Iran is once again trying to ban the WhatsApp social media app.Erdogan Grooms a New Jihad Generation
An Iranian court Wednesday ordered the government to halt the activities of WhatsApp, along with other social networking apps LINE and Tango, the IRNA news agency reported. Social websites including YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have already been blocked by censors.
The original ban on WhatsApp, which is used by millions of Iranians – including President Hassan Rouhani himself – was issued last May, because of the application’s “Zionist connection”, a likely reference to the fact that Facebook, headed by Mark Zuckerberg, bought the company for $19 billion last year.
In September, the Iranian judiciary gave the government one month to block WhatsApp, citing its immoral and criminal content.
By reintroducing Ottoman as a language, especially alongside religious educational systems, Erdogan is returning his country to its Ottoman, Islamic past both in knowledge and in thought – and away from the modern secular state that has long been a partner and ally of the West. And in his oft-underestimated shrewdness, he is using the minds of Turkey's youngest to lead the way: those six-year-olds now learning to honor death and memorize the Quran and identify with the glory of the Ottomans will, in 12 years, enter the nation's military.US shelves transfer of frigates to Turkey
Which seems to be just what Erdogan has had in mind all along. Writing in World Affairs Journal in 2013, Hillel Fradkin and Lewis Libby pointed to a little-noticed remark then-Prime Minister Erdogan made to his congress, in which he called on the country's youth to look beyond the 100th anniversary of the Republic in 2023 and to prepare for the year 2071. "This is a date that is unlikely to be meaningful for Westerners," Fradkin and Libby observe, "but is evocative for many Turks. 2071 will mark one thousand years since the Battle of Manzikert. There, the Seljuk Turks—a tribe originally from Central Asia—decisively defeated the leading Christian power of that era, the Byzantine Empire, and thereby stunned the medieval world. At the battle's end, the Seljuk leader stepped on the Christian emperor's throat to mark Christendom's humiliation. The Seljuk victory began a string of events that allowed the Seljuk Turks to capture the lands of modern Turkey and create an empire that would stretch across much of Palestine, Iraq, Syria, and Iran.
In evoking Manzikert, Erdogan recalled for today's Turks the glories of their aggressive warrior ancestors who had set out to conquer non-Muslim lands and, along the way, fought off the hated Shias of their day to dominate much of the Middle East."
Less than two years later, with ISIS building its caliphate-by-blood just across the border, the shaping of the new Erdogan generation looks more threatening than ever.
The United States has shelved the handover of two leftover frigates to Turkey, as Congress excluded Turkey from a bill seeking permission to transfer vessels to foreign countries, citing Mediterranean tensions.Arrests of Turkish Police Deepen Fears of Government Crackdown
The U.S. approved the “Naval Transfer Act” bill in late December, approving the transfer of six naval frigates to Mexico and Taiwan, but eliminated Turkey over political concerns.
In the 2012 version of the “Naval Transfer Act,” Turkey was to receive two Oliver Hazard Perry class guided missile frigates, the USS Halyburton and the USS Thach, which are being decommissioned by the U.S. Navy.
However, some members of Congress objected to the transfer of naval frigates to Turkey, mainly citing the county’s strained relations with Israel and Greek Cyprus in the Mediterranean.
A sweep of arrests of Turkish police officers conducted Monday – Turkish news outlets reported the detained officers were arrested on charges of illegal wiretapping – is set to deepen concerns that Ankara is again cracking down on government workers it fears are aligned with U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. The arrests are the latest in a series of anti-judiciary purges being conducted by Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). In January 2014, approximately 800 police officers were fired or reassigned, just weeks after the purge of some 350 Ankara officers who had taken part in a critical December 17 anti-corruption operation.Marxist Terrorists Claim Istanbul Suicide Bombing
For more than a year, the AKP has been locked in an open political war with police officers and prosecutors linked to Gulen, after Gulenists in December 2013 launched a series of graft probes that ensnared AKP elites, including now-President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was at the time the country’s prime minister, and members of his family. Last month, Turkish police arrested dozens of journalists and media executives, including the editor-in-chief of Turkey’s most widely circulated newspaper.
The Marxist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party–Front (DHKP-C) said in a statement on its website “our sacrificial fighter… carried out the sacrificial action on the tourist police department in Sultanahmet.”Turkey Issues Fatwa Against Tattoos
The suicide bombing early evening Tuesday killed one policeman and lightly injured another in Sultanahmet, the heart of Istanbul’s tourist district which is home to the Aga Sophia museum and the Blue Mosque.
The DHKP-C — a radical Marxist organisation considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States — had also last week claimed a January 1 attempted grenade attack on police guarding the the Dolmabahce palace in Istanbul that caused no serious casualties.
Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate, otherwise known as Diyanet, recently issued that fatwa, which decrees that tattoos are banned by the Islamic prophet Mohammed, the paper reported.Allahu Ak-Ouch! Saudi Man To Receive Medieval Punishment For 'Insulting Islam'
“A person who has tattoo on his/her body should erase it, if possible. He/she should repent to God if the tattoo cannot be erased,” according to the Diyanet’s fatwa as reported by Hurriyet.
“Our religious bans tattoos, making images on the skin by injecting paint under the skin,” it said. “Our prophet has said, ‘Allah has cursed the people who change their shape created by God, such as a woman who tattoos on someone else or has a tattoo done, those who remove hair from their face or eyebrows or those who remove their teeth or make them thinner.’” Having a tattoo is banned, but it does not prevent making ablutions.”
Saudi Arabia will begin punishing Raif Badawi Friday, a blogger and activist convicted of “insulting Islam.” His punishment includes 1,000 lashes, 10 years in prison and a million-riyal fine, equivalent to over $250,000.Relatives of Jewish family sent to their deaths in Auschwitz are reunited with treasured photographs and possessions found stashed in attic 9,000 miles away
The punishment will begin just two days after 12 people were murdered in an Islamic terrorist attack in France over “blasphemous” treatment of Islam and its prophet, Muhammad.
The government-run Saudi Press Agency released a statement in response to the terrorist attack on Wednesday, saying the Kingdom “condemns and strongly repudiates this cowardly terrorist act, which pure Islamic religion rejects.” Apparently, however, 1,000 lashes, 10 years in prison and massive fine is fair game.
The sentence will start with 50 strokes after Friday prayers at the al-Jafali mosque in Jeddah, and continue for the next 20 Fridays. (h/t Sara)
Surviving relatives of Holocaust victims who stashed treasured possessions before being sent to Auschwitz and their deaths have been tracked down in Australia.Record visits to Anne Frank House for fifth straight year
Little more than a week after MailOnline highlighted the find in Slovakia, Eva Wittenberg, daughter of the only surviving member of Samuel Gottschall's family and her brother, Alex Gottshall, were tracked down in Australia. She described the discovery of the items as 'miraculous'.
On December 31, MailOnline revealed that the personal belongings, including jewellery boxes and family photos, were found in the city of Presov in Slovakia.
Handyman Imrich Girasek was fixing his neighbour's leaking roof when he made the discovery in a dim and damp attic.
Speaking from her home in Sydney, Mrs Wittenberg, 66, said: 'It was like getting a message from heaven – as if we were making contact with our grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins that we have never known, because they were all murdered at Auschwitz.
'It was like a miracle. We are overjoyed that the things were found, it's beyond description really.'
The museum, located at the site where the young diarist hid from the Nazis with her family, had nearly 1.23 million visitors last year, 32,006 more than in 2013.Family mystery spurs Israeli filmmaker to dig up Holocaust past
The majority of the visitors came from outside the Netherlands. Some 140,000 of the visitors in 2014 were Dutch.
“It is inspiring that so many people from all around the world visit this place and learn about its history,” said Ronald Leopold, executive director of the Anne Frank House.
Also last year, the international traveling exhibition “Anne Frank – a history for today” was presented in over 30 countries.
“I have to turn this off. This is too sad.”Iraqi Torah scroll finds new home
This is something I said aloud (to no one, strangely) midway through watching “Farewell Herr Schwarz,” an award-winning documentary from new Israeli filmmaker Yael Reuveny.
I’ve seen countless movies about the Holocaust and I figured I had built up a tolerance to its tragedy. But Reuveny’s movie is about her generation – my generation – and ignores imagery of train tracks and chimneys.
The film resonated with me as one of the “grandchildren” and I did turn it off that first night. But the next day I put it back on and when I made it all the way through I found a moving and quite elegant work of cinematic expression.
Reuveny digs into her past – something many filmmakers have done before her. In a way, her family’s saga is no different than anyone else’s — and that’s because it is so strange.
Unlike the block text of history, individual stories are loaded with asterisks. Footnotes that don’t quite make sense. And yet, in the here and now, Reuveny exists, a vibrant, thoughtful sabra, “the Zionist Dream” as she somewhat jokingly refers to herself and her brother. However, for close to a decade, Reuveny, a descendant on her mother’s side from Lithuanian Jews, has chosen to live in Germany.
To what extent are the consequences of World War II still driving us?
A rare 200-year-old Torah scroll handwritten with pomegranate juice concentrate on deerskin, which sat for decades in the Iraqi intelligence's cellars, has made its way to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem after spending a few years in the Israeli Embassy building in Jordan. Y-Net News reports:
Following a complicated restoration process by a Torah scribe in Jerusalem, the scroll is being placed these days in the Foreign Ministry's synagogue.
The Torah scroll was kept for years in a storeroom in the Israeli Embassy in Amman. It was likely smuggled there along with other ancient Torah scrolls found by American soldiers in the Iraqi intelligence's warehouses, which were seized by US forces during the second Gulf war.
From the embassy in Jordan, the holy books were sent to Israel for restoration, apart from one disqualified Torah scroll which remained in the embassy for years.
