Col. Richard Kemp: Why we are optimistic about Zionism
By Col. Richard Kemp, Yossi Raskas and Dr. Harold Rhode
The Middle East is a mess. Terrorism is weakening resolve in the West. The migration crisis threatens to unravel the transatlantic security fabric. Civil society is faltering.
Yet we remain inspired by Israel as it celebrates its 68th year of existence. Why?
The answer is straightforward: Zionism, the movement inspired by belief that the Jewish people should return to the Land of Israel to rebuild their own sovereign state, has succeeded in one of the most inhospitable regions on Earth. And it continues to lead the way as a beacon of moral clarity and success for the West.
Of course, statehood is no guarantee for security, and we cannot perfectly predict fluctuations in the terrorist marketplace. We do not know, for example, whether Iran will decide to break out toward nuclear weaponization today, tomorrow fifteen years from now. What is clear, however, is that western rapprochement with Iran is moving forward, well before either the US or the European Union is capable of outlining an effective contingency plan.
But fears regarding Israel’s survival would be overwrought. The Israel Defense Forces—the strongest military in the Middle East —will remain battle-ready, as they always have been. They will continue to set the standard, morally and militarily, for armies of liberal democracies to operate against sub-state enemies.
Ultimately, Israel will not only survive but thrive. Since its inception, the Jewish state has endured several major wars, waves of suicide attacks, and other traumatic events. Still, Israel’s birth rate is steadily climbing, its economy is punching far above its weight, and its diplomatic ties with Sunni Arab states are growing stronger.
Douglas Murray: UK: The Left's Little Antisemitism Problem
Within a week, Britain's Labour party leadership was forced to suspend one of its newest MPs and one of its oldest grandees -- and both for the same reason.Douglas Murray: Britain? Moderates? How's That Again?
Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone both say that they condemn anti-Semitism. They always tend to add that they also condemn "Islamophobia and all other forms of racism," a disclaimer that always seems a deliberate attempt to hide a hatred of Jews under the skirts of any and all criticism of Islam. What is most fascinating is that all the while they are saying this, they stoke the very thing they claim to condemn.
They pretend that the Jewish state does such things for no reason. There is no mention of the thousands of rockets that Hamas and other Islamist groups rain down on Israel from the Gaza Strip. The comment turns a highly-targeted set of retaliatory strikes by Israel against Hamas in the Gaza Strip into a "brutal" attack "on the Palestinians" as a whole. While mentioning those death-tolls, Livingstone has no interest in explaining that the State of Israel builds bunkers for its citizens to shelter in, while Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields and useful dead bodies for the television cameras, to help Hamas appear as an aggrieved "victim."
It is the narrative of the "left" on Israel that is causing the resurgence of anti-Semitism. It is not coming from nowhere. It is coming from them. If the left wants to deal with it, they first have to deal with themselves.
A new poll of British Muslims found that a majority hold views with which most British people would disagree. For instance, 52% of British Muslims think that homosexuality should be made illegal. An earlier poll found that 27% of British Muslims have "some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks" at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last year.
Whenever opinion poll results come out, nearly the entire Muslim community, including nearly all Muslims in the media and all self-appointed groups of "Muslim community leaders" try to prove that the poll is a fraud.
If I had always known my "community" harboured such views, and a poll revealing this truth came out, I would be deeply ashamed. But when such polls emerge about the opinions of British Muslims, is that there is never any hint of introspection. There is no shame and no concern, only attack.
If there were indeed a "moderate majority," when a poll comes out saying that a quarter of your community wants fundamentally to alter the law of the land and live under Sharia, the other 75% would spend their time trying to change the opinions of that quarter. Instead, about 74% of the 75% not in favour of sharia spend their time covering for the 25% and attacking the polling company which discovered them.
Charles Moore: How the Labour Party embraced an ideology that has race hate at its heart
Although people like Mr Corbyn have never shown belief in Islamist doctrines about chucking homosexuals off cliffs or imposing sharia law or torching synagogues, they have found themselves absolutely unable to confront such things. In doing so, they would have to question the most sacred tenet of the “anti-imperialist” Left, that the Western powers are always wrong. Besides, why should they consider accusations that they are anti-Semitic? In their minds, anti-Semitism, like all other racism, is a product of fascism. They are anti-fascists, so they simply can’t be racists.Why the Left Hates Jews
By electing Mr Corbyn as leader, Labour in effect endorsed this paranoid narrative of grievance and conspiracy that has developed over the last 50 years. So its new recruits are drawn from that school of thought – more Islamists and anti-Semites; fewer Jews, or, come to that, ordinary working people. Unlike in the Eighties, the party has not been infiltrated in a calculated manner (though Mr Corbyn’s lieutenants are now making up for lost time). It has simply decayed so much that its immune system can no longer resist the infection. One of our two main parties has adopted, almost without thinking about it, an ideology of which race hate is an intrinsic part. This has never happened before in Britain.
Next week, London will elect a new Mayor. Sadiq Khan, the Labour candidate, is astute. He was quick to condemn Mr Livingstone on Thursday. But he too has done a good deal of platform-sharing. In 2004, for example, he appeared on the same bill in Tooting as prominent Holocaust deniers, Hamas supporters, misogynists and supporters of violence against Israel. He now says he “regrets giving the impression” that he shared their views The other main performer on the platform that day was a backbench Labour MP, one Jeremy Corbyn. Today, regrets are too late.
The Jews can be whatever their enemies need them to be. For Henry Ford and more than a few on the modern left, the Jews are the international bankers secretly pulling the strings of the global economy. As one widely circulated Occupy video put it: “The smallest group in America controls the money, media, and all other things. The fingerprints belong to the Jewish bankers who control Wall Street. I am against Jews who rob America. They are 1 percent who control America. President Obama is a Jewish puppet. The entire economy is Jewish. Every federal judge [on] the East Coast is Jewish.”Holocaust deniers and the Muslim vote
For those who learned at the feet of that old fraud Edward Said, the Jews are the colonialists, the European modernists inflicting capitalism and technology upon the noble savages of their imaginations. The Israeli Jews commit the double crime of insisting upon being Jews and refusing to be sacrificial victims. They were okay, in the Left’s estimate, for about five minutes, back when Israel’s future was assumed to be one of low-impact kibbutz socialism. History went in a different direction, and today Israel has one of the world’s most sophisticated economies.
For the Jew-hater, this is maddening: Throw the Jews out of Spain, and they thrive abroad. Send them to the poorest slums in New York, and those slums stop being slums. Keep them out of the Ivy League and watch NYU become a world-class institution inspired by men such as Jonas Salk, son of largely uneducated Polish immigrants. Put the Jewish state in a desert wasteland and watch it bloom, first with produce and then with technology. Israel today has more companies listed on NASDAQ than any other country except the United States and China. The economy under Palestinian management? Olives and handicrafts, and a GDP per capita that barely exceeds that of Sudan.
The Arab–Israeli conflict is a bitter and ugly one. My own view of it is that the Palestinian Arabs have some legitimate grievances, and that I stopped caring about them when they started blowing up children in pizza shops. You can thank the courageous heroes of the Battle of Sbarro for that. Israel isn’t my country, but it is my country’s ally, and it is impossible for a liberty-loving American to fail to admire what the Jewish state has done.
And that, of course, is why the Left wants to see the Jewish state exterminated.
Why is this happening in the Labour Party? It is really no surprise. Labour has always been hesitant when it comes to Israel. The main supporters of the Jewish people's return to the land of the Bible have typically been Conservatives, from Arthur James Balfour 99 years ago to Winston Churchill, and now current British Prime Minister David Cameron.UK Labour's predictable descent into anti-Semitism
In contrast, Labour has always been cold, excepting its support for the transfer of Arabs from the land that would become Israel in 1944. Labour fought aggressively against the immigration of Holocaust survivors to Israel and opposed Israel's inception. British foreign secretary at the time, Ernest Bevin, is remembered unkindly for this. The current goings-on fit right in with Labour's historical behavior.
These recent anti-Semitic remarks also have to do with cynical considerations regarding the growing share of the Muslim vote in the parliamentary elections. No one knows when the elections will take place as the referendum over the possible exit of Britain from the European Union looms over Cameron, but they may be moved up.
The condemnation of anti-Semitism is not the end of the story. The Blitz over London's heart is at its height.
Back in September last year, The Commentator wrote a quick editorial explaining our view of Jeremy Corbyn's victory in the Labour Party leadership election. We billed it as the "retotalitarianisation" of the British Left. We condensed our concerns thus:Prominent UK journalist: Anti-Semitism in Labour a chronic condition, not just a ‘problem’
"Now, Labour has a leader who is essentially anti-Western, and that manifests itself in a multiplicity of ways from opposition to domestic free market economics to a systematic rationalisation of the anti-freedom agendas of groups such as Hamas and international leaders such as Vladimir Putin."
The latest string of anti-Semitic outbursts to come out of the Labour Party -- culminating in the party's much loved former London Mayor Ken Livingstone suggesting that Zionism was a kind of conspiracy between Nazis and Jews in 1930s Germany -- emphasises how far that process of retotalitarianisation has already gone.
As the centre-Left(ish) columnist Nick Cohen put it in an article in the Guardian on Saturday:
"When Jeremy Corbyn defended the Islamist likes of Raed Salah, who say that Jews dine on the blood of Christian children, he was continuing a tradition of communist accommodation with antisemitism that goes back to Stalin’s purges of Soviet Jews in the late 1940s.
"It is astonishing that you have to, but you must learn the worst of leftwing history now. For Labour is not just led by dirty men but by dirty old men, with roots in the contaminated soil of Marxist totalitarianism."
In a column in The Guardian, Nick Cohen, a die-hard atheist who now identifies as Jewish (despite not being Jewish, at least according to the principles of matrilineal descent), wrote: “The Labour party does not have a ‘problem with antisemitism’ it can isolate and treat, like a patient asking a doctor for a course of antibiotics. The party and much of the wider liberal-left have a chronic condition.”Nazi hunter: Livingstone’s claims about Hitler ‘absurd’
Cohen, profiled by the Times of Israel last month, charged that the Labour party’s task of rooting out anti-Semitism would be almost insurmountable given its deep-seated hold.
“Challenging prejudices on the left wing is going to be all the more difficult because, incredibly, the British left in the second decade of the 21st century is led by men steeped in the worst traditions of the 20th,” he wrote.
“When [Labour leader] Jeremy Corbyn defended the Islamist likes of [head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel] Raed Salah, who say that Jews dine on the blood of Christian children, he was continuing a tradition of communist accommodation with antisemitism that goes back to Stalin’s purges of Soviet Jews in the late 1940s,” Cohen added.
Nazi hunter and Holocaust scholar Dr. Efraim Zuroff has rubbished claims by former mayor of London Ken Livingstone that Hitler supported the establishment of a Jewish state.Israeli envoy to UK: Labour ‘in denial’ about anti-Semitism
Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office and a Holocaust historian, said that Hitler in no way supported the establishment of a Jewish state and that Livingstone was simply trying to delegitimize Zionism through his allegations.
Last week, Livingstone took to the airwaves last week to defend a Labor member of parliament who has been suspended over allegedly anti-Semitic remarks she made before being elected.
In a radio interview he said Hitler initially supported Zionism, and in a subsequent interview on BBC TV said “a real anti-Semite doesn’t just hate the Jews in Israel, they hate their Jewish neighbors in Golders Green or Stoke Newington, it’s a physical loathing.”
Zuroff said Livingstone was referencing an early Nazi plan to increase Jewish flight from Germany by allowing German Jews to take some of their possessions with them if they emigrated to Mandate Palestine, since emigration to most other countries , such as the US, was not possible.
Israel’s new ambassador to the United Kingdom on Sunday said parts of Britain’s left are “in denial” about the “disease” of anti-Semitism.Jeremy Corbyn worked for Iran's Holocaust-denying state propaganda arm and said calling the BBC "Zionist liars" is a good point
Speaking to The Sunday Times, Mark Regev addressed a rising tide of anti-Semitic outbursts by Labour party members, including most recently Ken Livingstone, who was suspended from the party on Thursday for declaring and continuing to insist that Adolf Hitler was initially a Zionist.
“I have no doubt that part of the left is in denial. They say ‘anti-Semitism, that’s the right, that’s the fascists.’ That’s a cop-out. It doesn’t stand up to serious historical examination,” Regev said in the interview, which ran on the newspaper’s front page.
“Anti-Semitism should concern everyone. When it does raise its ugly head, it should be condemned across the board. And failure to condemn has to be in itself condemned,” the Israeli envoy added, in remarks that the British paper said would likely be interpreted as an attack on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
In 2010, Corbyn worked as a host for Press TV, Iran's state-controlled English language propaganda network, Press TV is a clearing house for deranged antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial, all under the smiling guidance of Iran's depraved, apocalyptic-minded ayatollahs.Diane Abbott on the Andrew Marr Show
During a call-in show, Corbyn agreed with a caller's statement that the BBC, a TV network highly critical of Israel, were "Zionist liars," because their condemnation of the Jewish state wasn't vehement enough for the liking of Iran's shills.
That video was found by the Guido Fawkes blog in England, which has been the source of uncovering much of the outrageous behaviour in Labour under Corbyn.
Which all seems to demonstrate that the crisis of antisemitism now faced by the Labour Party isn't despite Corbyn's efforts, but because of them.
After a thoughtful contribution by Owen Jones and an excellent interview with Mark Regev the Andrew Marr show turned to guest Diane Abbott. Typically, she repeatedly asserted her deep commitment to fighting antisemitism – and repeatedly refused to engage with actual concrete examples of antisemitism on the left.Naz Shah’s local Momentum branch suggest her apology was forced out of her like a Stalinist show trial
Deflection was her key strategy. First she responded to Andrew Marr’s question with ludicrous straw man hyperbole.
‘You know yourself a number of Labour Party members, some of them in your immediate family. Have they turned into antisemites overnight?
She then accused Andrew Marr of smearing ordinary Labour Party members for simply raising the possibility hat the LP might have a problem with antisemitism. When he countered that if there was no problem, why was an inquiry being set up to deal with the issue, she answered that the problem was simply one of ‘process’. She then, by way of further deflection, insisted that antisemitism was a problem everywhere.
Andrew Marr quite rightly pressed her on the relationship between some sections of the left and antisemitism. To illustrate this point he showed her a cartoon depicting Menachem Begin as a Nazi officer. This appeared in the Labour Herald, a publication edited by Ken Livingstone in the 1980s. Abbott simply refused to engage with this question, and responded, irrelevantly, that she had joined the Labour Party because it was full of good people fighting racism.
Readers will be familiar with this site’s past scrutiny of Momentum, Corbyn’s Revolutionary Guard. The organisation now has branches right across the country, and they always seem to be willing to defend even the most indefensible behaviour from the hard left.The Guardian and Telegraph – creating a ‘safe space’ for anti-Zionists?
Against that background, meet Bradford Momentum, the local branch covering the constituency of Naz Shah, the Labour MP who has just been suspended for, among other things, supporting the deportation of Israelis to America and complaining that “the Jews are rallying” to fix online polls.
Shah herself has conceded that her views were anti-semitic and wrong. But, apparently, Bradford Momentum does not accept that to be the case.
This morning, the group’s Facebook page shared a blogpost disputing her apology:
British media reports on the ongoing antisemitism scandal plaguing the Labour Party have been largely unproblematic, and quite unsympathetic to those attempting to rationalize or defend expressions of anti-Jewish racism by party members.BBC News tries – and fails – to explain antisemitism and anti-Zionism
However, the latest story, involving the suspension of former London Mayor Ken Livingstone for arguing that Adolf Hitler was a Zionist, inspired an official Guardian editorial on the row which indicate that editors do not understand – or aren’t willing to acknowledge – what the term “anti-Zionism” actually means. The editorial (‘The Guardian view on antisemitism: Stay vigilant on the left flank, April 28) included the following passages, which attempt to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism:
Most people committed to justice for the Palestinians are more than capable of distinguishing between opposition to the Israeli state and hatred of the Jews, but the placards sometimes seen on demos – equating a swastika with the star of David, for example – suggest that some campaigners don’t. The post-1967 occupation needs to be condemned, and it is not in and of itself illegitimate even to question the original creation of Israel. It is, however, never legitimate to discuss the conflict without taking seriously the rights and claims of the people on the Israeli as well as the Palestinian side.
Whilst nobody would accuse critics of the occupation of being antisemitic, the editorial defends those who ‘question the original creation of Israel’, a muddled characterization of the views of those who consider themselves anti-Zionist.
In fact, what Naz Shah was supporting is the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Middle East but the BBC does not have the honesty and integrity to inform its audiences of that fact. It instead whitewashes the true meaning and significance of comments made by her and others whilst at the same time failing to provide audiences with a clear and accurate explanation of anti-Zionism which would enhance their understanding of what the scandals currently engulfing the UK Labour party are actually about or where their long-existing roots lie. Moreover, it further muddies the waters with repeated promotion of the Livingstone Formulation: a device deliberately intended to discredit those raising concerns about antisemitism.A.D. 2040: Tories send Androids through Time to destroy Labour (satire)
There is nothing very surprising about that given the BBC’s record on antisemitism and its past repeated failure to inform audiences what anti-Zionist groups such as the PSC and the BDS campaign really stand for despite frequently showcasing their agendas. But what this so-called backgrounder does demonstrate once again is that (notwithstanding beacons of light such as Andrew Neil) the BBC is currently incapable of properly serving its funding public’s interests on this topic.
By The Pan-Earth Daily Freier Conglomerate StaffPreOccupiedTerritory: May 1: Gov’ts Issue Postage Stamp With Large-Font List Of Successful Communist Regimes (satire)
Last Updated 4/30/2040 at 300 Solar Hours
Edgeware Spaceport: Leaked reports from today’s Conservative Party Conference point to a sinister plot to destroy its rivals: create a team of unpleasant and obtuse androids, send them through a Black Hole to the Earth Year 2016, program them to infiltrate the Labour Party, and destroy the Party from within by making it an international laughingstock.
Prime Minister Beckham held a news conference where he denounced these plans; “We fully and forcefully denounce this treacherous attempt to preemptively destroy the Coalition by ensuring that it never existed. We denounce the creation of the Corbynborg, designed to seek out unsavoury Hezbollah and Hamas “friends” for tea. We stand fully against the Gallowayback Machine, allegedly programmed to annoy even its friends while it dresses as a cat. And we deplore the planned RedKen 2000, and its obsession with a certain Austrian Corporal from the mid-20th Century.”
In honor of the international socialist workers’ holiday on this date, governments around the world have jointly issued a new postage stamp that features, in large typeface, a comprehensive listing of all the successful, prosperous, and liberal societies in history that have Communism to thank for that success.Officers who shot wounded terrorist to get citation
Forty-five countries, among them the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, Mexico, Japan, Australia, and Israel, collaborated on the design and issue of the stamp, which covers the cost of standard-weight first-class international postage. Its unconventional format, in the shape of yellow numeral zero against a fire-engine-red background, will be made available at post offices for the entire month of May, or until hoarders and black marketeers make them unobtainable by standard means, as befitting what the stamp represents.
A spokesman for the committee that designed the stamp told reporters at a press conference today that the members had settled on the use of a postage stamp as the medium to pay tribute to Communism because they could think of no other institution still in existence that embodies the inefficiency, ineptitude, funny uniforms, and effectiveness-stifling bureaucracy of Communism better than the postal service.
The Israeli police are recommending to give an honorary citation to a patrol officer and a police volunteer who killed the Arab terrorist responsible for the lethal Jaffa (Yafo) stabbing attack in early March.PreOccupiedTerritory: Shock As Soldiers Not Arrested For Shooting Attackers (satire)
In the attack on March 8, the terrorist murdered US tourist Taylor Force and wounded 12 other victims, before the officer and volunteer shot and wounded him, and then as he was wounded shot him again and killed him.
The decision to recommend a citation for the two would seem to indicate a sharp double standard, given that IDF soldier Elor Azariya is currently facing manslaughter charges for shooting a wounded Arab terrorist in Hevron in similar circumstances, over fears he was going to detonate a bomb belt.
Jaffa district police commander Brig. Gen. Yehuda Dahan wrote a recommendation to give the officer and volunteer a citation, as revealed by Walla on Sunday.
"They strove to confront (the terrorist) in this act, and by doing so prevented harm to additional citizens," wrote Dahan in his recommendation.
Hours after a pair of Palestinian siblings attacked soldiers here with knives and were shot in the attempt, the soldiers who fired the shots that neutralized the attackers have not been arrested or placed under investigation for murder, IDF sources reported this afternoon.JPost Editorial: Sanctifying the Mount
A brother and sister tried to stab soldiers manning the Kalandia checkpoint today, but were shot and killed before they could stab anyone. No soldiers were wounded. An uproar has ensued in the defense establishment and news media amid revelations that, despite clear precedent, no murder charges are being considered against the troops who shot the assailants.
“I don’t understand,” said Army Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot. “You mean they’re not following procedure? What kind of outfit are we if we don’t treat soldiers who kill terrorists as criminals?” He vowed an inquiry into the process that did not result in at least an arraignment of the two soldiers.
“I think we should wait until all the information is in before we jump to any conclusion that proper procedure wasn’t followed,” intoned Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon. “We just don’t know enough yet to say whether anything inappropriate is going on at the Chief Prosecutor’s office.” He also promised to verify that proper protocols were followed in not immediately arresting and charging the soldiers who killed their attackers, and repeated his mantra that the IDF cannot sink to the level of its enemies by actually killing people.
How can such a sacred place be such an unholy mess? Instead of a unique place of worship, it is the scene of endless confrontations – between Jews and Arabs no less than among Jews. Instead of being an inspiration for piety, it is the focus of a turf war over who can worship where, from Muslims denying Jews access to the Temple Mount above, to ultra-Orthodox Jews denying the non-Orthodox access to the Western Wall below.Why Deny Jews the Right to Pray?
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority and its puppet media propagate the dangerously false accusation that Jews plan to seize and destroy al-Aksa Mosque, which has led to what many refer to as a third intifada.
Hamas children’s television shows – part of the PA’s barrage of anti-Semitic brainwashing – have driven Palestinian children as young as 10 to attempt to murder Jews throughout the country. Would-be “martyrs” regularly cite “defending al-Aksa” as their motivation.
An arrangement made immediately after the Six Day War grants Muslims unlimited access and prayer rights on the Mount, while stingily restricting the number of Jewish visitors and forbidding them even from silently moving their lips, lest Muslim guards think they are praying.
In the West Bank city of Nablus, Arabs rioted on Thursday. Were they complaining about Jewish settlements or the lack of a Palestinian state? No. Their issue was the fact that a group of Jews had entered the city, and as is their right under agreements concluded with the Palestinian Authority, sought to pray at the Tomb of Joseph, an ancient Jewish site of worship. Palestinians threw rocks and burned tires. But Israeli troops defended the pilgrims and, thanks to the army’s efforts to prevent injuries on either side, no Palestinians were reported hurt. This wasn’t the first time Palestinians sought to prevent Jews from praying at the tomb. There was a similar incident in February. Prior to that, the tomb and the synagogue that encompasses it were burned last October as well as in 2000 in a bloody riot at the start of the second intifada.Lebanese journalist: 'Aleppo would have been safe like the Golan were it annexed by Israel'
Why can’t the Palestinians accept the site of Jews praying at an ancient site? It has nothing to do with arguments about borders, settlements or statehood. It’s the same reason they treat Jewish prayer on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount — the holiest site in Judaism — to be a declaration of war on Islam. It’s a function of a narrative in which the presence of Jews in any part of the country is seen as offensive and a challenge to national pride. It’s also the reason why the Palestinians and their allies managed to get UNESCO to pass a resolution that denied any connection between the Temple Mount and the Western Wall and Judaism or the Jewish people.
As Yossi Klein Halevi noted in an insightful article published last week in the Los Angeles Times, the whole point of this campaign is to deny Jews not only a state but also the right to their own history and faith. If Passover, which concludes this weekend, is the annual festival of freedom, in which the story of the Exodus from Egypt commemorates the birth of the Jewish people, the purpose of the anti-Zionists and anti-Semites that deny Jews rights in Jerusalem, Nablus or anywhere in the holy land, is to erase the entire Jewish story. They do it because only by denying the narrative of Jewish history that validates the rights of Jews to sovereignty in their ancient homeland can you achieve their goal of delegitimizing the modern state of Israel. If you accomplish that goal, you can not only convince a credulous world that a democratic Jewish majority nation is an “apartheid state,” but also deny Jews self-defense and allow hate-driven terrorists to be glorified as heroes and martyrs fighting for human rights.
In a contentious move, Naidm Koteich, a well-known Lebanese political analyst revealed his support for Israeli annexation of the currently embattled Syrian city of Aleppo, arguing that were this scenario to take place, the city would have been peaceful, like the Golan.Palestine, not Israel?
In a comment he wrote on his Twitter page, Koteich expressed dismay over the absence of an Israeli move to annex Aleppo.
"If Israel would have annexed Aleppo, it would have been safe today, like the Golan. Aleppo's citizens would have been better off living under occupation than living under ruins," Koteich wrote.
Israel took the Golan Heights during the 1967 Six Day War, and in 1981 extended Israeli law to the region, thereby de facto annexing it.
Koteich's comment came shortly after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel would never renounce the Golan, infuriating Syrian politicians. Thus, many Syrian social media activists began wrangling with Koteich for voicing pro-Israel opinion.
An event co-sponsored by the Palestinian American Coalition (PAC) advertised MK Ahmed Tibi's (Arab Joint List) arrival to California with an image of the politician adjacent to the American and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) flags. Also present was an image of the entire State of Israel, including Judea and Samaria, painted in the colors of the PLO flag.Joint List MK: Israel is ethnically cleansing the West Bank
The event, entitled “A Palestinian in the Knesset: Perspectives on identity, equality and advocacy for Palestine," described Tibi as the “Head of the Arab Movement for Change Party."
Despite claims by MK Tibi that he is interested in a political solution that would enable the Palestinians to establish a state with the 1949 Armistice line as a border, it seems he may be aimed at erasing Israel off the map completely.
The Israeli government is destroying Palestinian buildings and homes in the West Bank in order to pave the way for Israeli settlers to move in, according to Joint List MK Dov Henin.Remembering the Mike’s Place Suicide Bombing, Tel Aviv, April 30, 2003
The Knesset member described the recent demolitions by the Israeli government of illegally built Palestinian structures in the West Bank as "ethnic cleansing in a very sophisticated way," according to reports by the British media outlet, Sky News.
The Israeli government responded to the allegations in a statement to Sky News stating that demolition orders are applied to any illegally built structures belonging to Palestinians and Israeli settlers alike.
Earlier today I saw a tweet by Arsen Ostrovsky regarding the bombing of Mike’s Place in Tel Aviv in 2003:Hungary arrests 2 men suspected of murdering Israeli
I had heard of it, but only vaguely.
The list of Palestinian suicide bombings is so enormously long, I couldn’t remember the details. It was not one of the higher profile bombings, unlike the Dolphinarium disco (21 dead), the Sbarro Pizza restaurant (15 dead including 7 children), or the Park Hotel Passover Seder (30 dead).
As with other Palestinian terror attacks I have researched and written about, I learned that there were stories within stories, and surprises that made terror from decades ago so real today:
Rasmea Odeh’s victims – then and now
Remembering Haifa Bus 37 Suicide Bombing
Israeli school bus bombing survivor reunites with nurse who saved him – 45 years later
So I set out to learn the story of the suicide bombing at Mike’s Place.
First, the basic history of Mike’s Place:
Mike, a retired photo-journalist started this tradition in 1993, when he opened a cozy little bar in downtown Jerusalem, where he welcomed all.
This tiny little pub that many people mistook for a private living room later became a prominent Jerusalem landmark.
From the very beginning, Mike’s Place attracted the most eclectic assortment of individuals: from travelers to native Israelis, foreign students to Russian immigrants. Arabs, Jews and Christians all sat together with, journalists, diplomats, soldiers and UN personnel – all sharing the good vibes, good music and great beer.
In the background, unique and unmistakable, the signature of Mike’s Place; free, live music – every night….
Hungarian police on Sunday arrested two people suspected of murdering Israeli tourist Ofir Gross, his family confirmed to Israeli media.Gazan freerunner seriously hurts himself, Israel treats him
The body of the 40-year-old Gross, a resident of Jerusalem, was found in a forest overnight Saturday, two weeks after he went missing in the Eastern European country.
“We received word that suspects were arrested,” Gross’s mother, Hannah, told the Ynet news website on Sunday. “We still don’t know very much, we’re still trying to process the terrible news.”
According to the report, the Hungarian police — based on forensic evidence discovered at the scene — believe Gross was murdered. Local media reported the two suspects are 19 and 21 years old.
His family was traveling to Hungary to identify the body, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement earlier on Sunday.
A Gazan parkour practitioner seriously wounded himself last Friday while showing off his acrobatics - and in an ironic twist given Gaza's virulent hostility, he was sent to an Israeli hospital for treatment due to the extent of his self-inflicted injuries.Hamas operative charged with planting explosives, firing rockets at Israel
Trouble befell Muhammad Zakkut as he was taking part in a demonstration for a Ma'an news report in the southern Gazan town of Khan Yunis, according to a statement by the Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Health on Saturday cited by the Palestinian news agency.
Evidently Zakkut tried a little too hard to impress with his parkour skills and ended up falling, apparently from a considerable height as he was left with wounds and fractures all over his body.
PA Health Minister Jawad Awwad said that due to the seriousness of Zakkut's wounds, he would be sent to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, which is ironic given that the Hamas regime ruling Gaza seeks the destruction of Israel and in its charter calls for the genocide of Jews.
Israeli prosecutors announced on Sunday that they have filed charges against a Hamas operative, accusing the militant of several serious crimes including planting explosives against IDF positions and launching rockets into Israeli territory.AFC orders Palestinian club to forfeit match, pay fine
Southern District prosecutors said that they filed at least 18 separate charges in the Beersheeba Magistrate's court against a 24-year-old Hamas operative who has been active within the terror organization since 2007.
One of the charges filled against the defendant includes the accusation that the militant, along with several others, had tracked the movements of IDF vehicles in order to plant explosive devices along several routes the military utilizes along the Gaza border.
The indictment did not specify whether any of the planned attacks were successful.
The indictment also details the Hamas operative's activities following the conclusion of Israel's 2012 military operation in Gaza dubbed "Pillar of Defense."
The Palestinian Football Association Saturday denounced an Asian Football Confederation (AFC) decision to fine a Palestinian club $20,000 after nine of its players failed to report to a March encounter which was then cancelled.Haaretz: The Israeli who wants to be the first ambassador to Palestine
Al-Dharia was to have played Syria’s Al-Wahda on March 9 in Lebanon but the fixture was cancelled because Lebanese authorities refused entry to nine Palestinian players who hold Israeli nationality.
Lebanon bans Israeli passport holders from entering the country, and the Al-Dharia players were sent back from Beirut international airport to neighboring Jordan.
The AFC decision was taken Friday by its disciplinary committee which said in a press release that it had found Al-Dharia “was the relevant party that caused the cancellation of the match.”
Yael Patir, 35, J Street Israel director for the past four years. Married to Boaz Rakocz, mother of Michael, dreams of being Israel’s ambassador to Palestine.Imbalanced Reporting: HonestReporting's 8 Categories of Media Bias, Video#2 of 8
It’s hard to see that this peace industry of conferences, flights and hotels in Europe is getting anywhere. Can’t you do something more effective with the money and the dedicated people?
“I share some of the criticism. This is action I call hummus and hugs: meeting in a hotel abroad, getting to know each other for a few days, then go back home and reality penetrates, and the feeling is that maybe what we did there won’t necessarily hold. The way to deal with this is to do everything professionally. Veteran groups with experience know how to do it.”
A lot of people feel that what was once the peace industry, with all the criticism of it, has in recent years become an anti-Israel machine that supports boycott, divestment and sanctions.
“It’s true that there is a conscious effort of people on the Israeli left to turn [efforts] outward. They encourage boycott practices against Israel. I don’t support this, and we have to remember that not the whole peace movement and certainly not the whole Israeli left are part of this. What’s more significant is that there is a well-organized and well-funded campaign to delegitimize the left.”
Maybe this campaign is succeeding because the left has gone too far, as far as boycott?
“That’s a position that exists in a democratic society, which allows for freedom of expression. It doesn’t justify sullying the name of the peace camp.”
Yes, but it apparently keeps the left’s positions from reaching the wider public in Israel.
“No doubt the peace camp failed, and many of the flags it’s trying to raise are not flying here.”
No, give up the foreign funding. Raise money and support locally.
“The country was established with financing from outside, endless educational projects, infrastructure, elections, settlements. Anyhow, money that can come from governments goes to certain, very specific projects. It’s legitimate that foreign ministries of democracies all over the world promote democratic values in things connected to the conflict. It’s part of their agenda, there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Muslim Analyst: Jews To Blame For Al-Qaeda, Ferguson, And Donald Trump
Essentially blaming the Jews for creating the circumstances that led to the rise of Al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups, a Palestinian Muslim journalist expressed a view common among left-wing political, media, academic, and cultural elites. A featured speaker at a neo-Marxist event ostensibly examining “Israel’s influence” on the United States, Rula Jebreal occasionally moonlights as a “foreign policy analyst” on like-minded media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC. She also attributed Jewish and Zionist influence with what she described as anti-black racist police brutality in Ferguson and the ascendance of Donald Trump.CNN/MSNBC Muslim: Jews Created Al-Qaeda; 3-18-2016
"Israel’s influence here goes beyond Israel and Israeli borders,” said Jebreal, claiming that Israeli and Jewish political influence maintained the approximately $2.5 billion per year (since the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty) in mostly military aid to Egypt. The aid, said Jebreal, preserved the authoritarian government and facilitated the rise of Al-Qaeda.
In the absence of the Egyptian “police state,” suggested Jebreal, democracy would have flourished in North African state with a population that is 90% Muslim.
US museum: Iran does support Holocaust cartoon event
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum challenged a claim by the Iranian foreign minister that Iranian government authorities had nothing to do with a Holocaust cartoon contest.Chelsea soccer club warns fans against anti-Semitism before Tottenham match
“The organizations associated with the contest are sponsored or supported by government entities, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Tehran Municipality, and the Ministry of Islamic Guidance,” the museum said Friday in a statement.
“Previous contests in 2006 and 2015 have had the endorsement and support of government officials and agencies,” the museum said. “There are reports in the Iranian press that the Ministry of Culture is asserting its support for the upcoming contest.”
Mohammad Javad Zarif last week told the New Yorker that his government “does not support, nor does it organize, any cartoon festival of the nature that you’re talking about.”
He said the festival is organized by a non-governmental organization “that is not controlled by the Iranian government.”
Famed English soccer club Chelsea has warned its fans not to engage in any anti-Semitic or discriminatory behavior following a complaint about bigoted messages on social media, The Jewish Chronicle reported Friday.13-Year-Old Israeli Girl Develops Satellite System for Producing Oxygen in Space
The issue was brought to the attention of senior officials within Chelsea after at least one fan reportedly witnessed anti-Semitic posts on Facebook, prompting the club to release a statement asking fans to behave in "a passionate but respectful manner."
“We utterly condemn discriminatory behavior and the club will continue to challenge all forms of discrimination,” the statement added.
Tottenham, located in North London Borough of Haringey, has a large contingent of Jewish fans and has faced anti-Semitic harassment in the past.
For instance, in November of 2012 a brutal attack on fans of the soccer club in Rome left one man in serious condition after masked men armed with knives and baseball bats shouted "Jews, Jews" as they laid siege to a pub where the Tottenham supporters were drinking in a district popular in the Italian capital.
A 13-year-old Israeli girl has invented a system for the production of oxygen in space, the Hebrew youth paper Ma’ariv L’Noar reported on Thursday, along with an interview with the budding tween scientist from Ramat Hasharon.Chinese tech giant announces $300m. incubator in Israel
The recent winner of the “Satellite Is Born” award from the Israel Space Agency, Roni Oron developed BioSat “to solve a problem for astronauts trying to prove that life on Mars is possible.”
Oron said her satellite is “built like a large bubble on one side of which there is a mirror and the other is transparent, enabling the penetration of sunlight. In the middle there is a capsule, which will be made of a membrane through which air can pass but water cannot. Inside of it there will be water and algae, and outside there will be carbon dioxide. Through a process of photosynthesis, the satellite will produce oxygen. There will be additional mirrors inside the satellite that will enable sunlight to reach the capsule, but not by direct radiation, which would harm the algae.”
Oron told Ma’ariv L’Noar about her parents’ support.
Kuang-Chi, a Shenzhen-based technology conglomerate, has announced its Kuang-Chi GCI Fund & Incubator combining investment in early to mid-stage Israeli and global companies with incubation by the Chinese tech giant. The newly established international innovation fund – based in Israel — has an initial mandate of $50 million which is planned to grow to $300 million within the next three years.Dead Sea area contains oil worth NIS 1.2 billion – report
“Israel has unparalleled capabilities to offer the world. You share with Kuang-Chi a special mindset and vision. We intend to invest in the best local companies in the fields of biometrics, communications, robotics, and AR, and to take them to the next level commercially and technologically,” said Dr. Ruopeng Liu, the group’s chairman.
The Kuang-Chi GCI Fund & Incubator will bring together innovators from all over the world. Kuang-Chi — a global innovation group with operations from China to North America, Europe, Africa and Oceania – says it will make its full corporate resources, from sales and marketing to technology collaboration and joint development, available to the companies in which it invests.
“Kuang-Chi is one of the most important technology companies in the world today, combining the best of the Shenzhen tech ecosystem with China’s scale and development vision,” said Dorian Barak, managing partner of Indigo Global, Kuang-Chi’s longtime partner in Israel.
A new report released Sunday by Israel Opportunity Energy Resources LP and filed with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange claimed an oil reservoir near the Dead Sea is worth NIS 1.2 billion ($320 million).Cast used to make Oskar Schindler’s Ring Of Hope to go on display at Jewish Holocaust Centre
The study, conducted by the independent Australian-based Dunmore Consulting company, said that the Hatrurim area contains from seven to eleven million barrels of oil. According to Channel 2, the Israel Opportunity Energy Resources said the report indicates a 100 percent chance of striking oil at the site, which covers 94 square kilometers in the Dead Sea area.
In 1995, the Israeli Company Delek Group Ltd. struck oil in the area after drilling two kilometers under the surface. However, Israel Opportunity said on their website, the energy company decided not to continue its operations near the Dead Sea due to the low price of oil at the time.
Stock of Israel Opportunity, which was granted 25% of the Hatrurim license in December 2015, shot up 35% since the report’s publication on Sunday, according to the Israeli news site Ynet.
A UNIQUE piece of Holocaust history found in a box after more than 50 years is now on display in Elsternwick.Photos of the Holy Land from the 19th century sell for $1.4 Million
The model that was used to make a ring for Holocaust rescuer Oskar Schindler was found by the ringmaker’s son a few years ago, and has since been donated to the Jewish Holocaust Centre
Oskar Schindler, the hero of Thomas Kenneally’s book Schindler’s Ark and the Spielberg film Schindler’s List was a German industrialist and member of the Nazi party who saved about 1200 Jews by employing and housing them in his factory, treating them humanely and paying his fellow Nazis bribes.
Louis Gross’ father, Jozef Gross, made the ring for Schindler at the end of WWII.
Mr Gross said his father lived in Schindler’s factory compound, where they were loosely guarded and had basic sleeping quarters.
During their time there the inmates decided they wanted to give Schindler a birthday present, and asked Jozef, the only jeweller, to make it.
A collection of pictures of Jerusalem and other places in Israel from the 19th century has been sold for $1.4 million the British newspaper The Daily Mail reports.
The collection consists of over 1,000 black and white photos, the earliest of which are from 1840.
The photo set includes pictures of Mt. Zion, al-Aqsa Mosqe, and the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. The photos are amongst the oldest photos of Jerusalem ever captured.
Jews and Arabs appear in the pictures, and shows people praying in mosques, at the Western Wall, and at other holy sites.
The collector, who's name hasn't been released, collected the photos over a quarter century in order to create a special historical record of the city.
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