Friday, September 23, 2016
MEMRI: Palestinian President Mahmoud 'Abbas: The Refugees Have A Right To Return To Their Homes; I Am A Refugee, I Have The Right To Return
During a recent visit to Venezuela to attend the Non-Aligned Movement Summit, Palestinian President Mahmoud 'Abbas met with representatives of the Palestinian community in the country and with Palestinian students. The meeting, held on September 17, 2016, dealt with the situation in the Middle East. Addressing the issue of the Palestinian refugees, 'Abbas said that he too is a refugee who has the right of return. "It is true that I live in Ramallah, but Ramallah is not my city," he said. "I have not returned [to my native city] and I am entitled to demand my right to return [there]." The next day, he made a similar statement about the refugees' right "to return to their homes" on his Twitter page. In the September 17 meeting, 'Abbas also spoke of the need for reconciliation with Hamas. Referring to the recent spate of Palestinian attacks on Israelis, he said that Palestinian children who have lost hope are taking up knives to carry out stabbing attacks.
The following are excerpts from his statements at this meeting.
"I Am A Refugee And I Have The Right To Return"
Addressing the issue of negotiations with Israel, 'Abbas said that, although the channels of negotiation are currently closed, "our hand is nevertheless extended in peace, [a peace] based on the two-state solution on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as the [Palestinian] capital, and [based on] resolving the outstanding problems, including the problem of the refugees." He added: "There are six million [Palestinian] refugees, and I am one of them. I am a refugee. It is true that I live in Ramallah, but Ramallah is not my city. I have not returned [to my native city] and I am entitled to demand my right [of return], for I am a refugee who lost his land and his homeland. This is one of the problems that must be resolved in negotiations with Israel."
The next day, 'Abbas's Twitter page posted the following message from him: "President Mahmoud 'Abbas: There are six million Palestinian refugees who are waiting to receive what they are entitled to, [waiting] to be allowed to return to their homes in accordance with UN Resolution 194."
Yair Lapid: B’Tselem’s lies
The latest report by B’Tselem on Operation Protective Edge which was published this week and titled “Whitewash Protocol” isn’t a real report. It’s incitement. It’s a biased opinion piece by a radical-left-wing organization which has no problem lying to achieve its goals.The ongoing NYT propaganda campaign
The lies hit the reader from the opening lines in which the report determines unequivocally that 63% of those killed in the operation were innocent civilians with no connection to Hamas. The IDF’s number, which come from an in-depth investigation, is almost the reverse – 36%. Even Israel’s harshest critics admit that Hamas inflated the numbers to serve its propaganda.
If anyone needs proof that the IDF doesn’t fire indiscriminately, they should look at B’Tselem’s own numbers. They’ll discover that the number of men of fighting age who were killed during the operation (aside from the 810 that even B’Tselem admits were terrorists) is five times greater than the number of women. If the IDF had fired indiscriminately then the ratio should have been close to 50-50, but hey, why let the facts ruin good hateful propaganda?
The simple truth is that B’Tselem doesn’t have the tools, or any real way, to know who among those killed was a terrorist and who wasn’t, but the NGO instinctively prefers to adopt Hamas’s position. It prefers an Islamic terrorist organization with utter contempt for the truth over the official position of a democratic and law-abiding state which conducts meticulous investigations. The staff at B’Tselem didn’t even bother to highlight that there are differences of opinion on the matter. They just copied Hamas’s position into their report and then – like always – translated those lies into English and circulated them around the world.
Israel has been on the front line of this war. It is, at least, better prepared, aware, vigilant, and well-defended. Israeli personnel knows how to vet passengers in ways that are far more sophisticated than are the methods used at world airports, including in the United States, where many security guards, engineers, baggage handlers, and airport personnel are themselves poorly vetted.
Israel’s greatest export will increasingly be its counter-terrorism intelligence. And Americans must wonder when and if our government will start paying attention.
Our lives are at stake.
Many millions of Arab Muslims are in flight and on the road; they are being robbed by human traffickers, their wives and daughters are being sexually assaulted by other Arab Muslim and Muslim men on the road; the doors of Europe are beginning to close to them. Among them move the criminals and the Jihadists.
The NYT increasingly claims that “immigrants” have made our country vital. Columnists compare the current Muslim influx to the tragically turned-back Jewish immigrants of the Holocaust era.
This is a totally immoral comparison which others have addressed, sparing me this tedious exercise of outrage.
In his father's name
One of the cruelest realities of the so-called “knife intifada”– which first engulfed Jerusalem, then the remainder of the country one year ago – is that the Arab killers who have carried out murders of innocent non-combatants have been deified as “martyrs” within their communities.NY judge raps Facebook for not taking suit by Israeli terror victims seriously
This fact is most painful for the family members of those killed, who endure not only profound loss, but widespread and ongoing celebrations of the killers who caused their pain – via television, the Internet, and Arab media.
The son of murder victim Richard Lakin – a gentle and celebrated 76-year-old American-Israeli educator, who was shot in the head and repeatedly stabbed by one such killer while aboard a public bus in Armon Hanatziv last October – is doing something about it, in his father’s name.
Citing his father’s legacy as an elementary school principal, activist and author who educated thousands of children to be kind and compassionate, Micah Lakin Avni on Thursday said that his violent death has inspired him to ensure that his legacy endures – despite the malevolent geopolitical climate threatening it.
A Brooklyn judge on Thursday slammed Facebook for making light of a $1 billion lawsuit filed by Israeli terror victims, calling a decision by the social media giant’s law firm to send a first-year associate to defend the case “outrageous, irresponsible and insulting.”Michael Lumish: Hanan Al-Hroub and the Evaporation of an Ethical Dilemma
In July, the families of five Americans murdered or injured in recent Palestinian terror attacks in Israel lodged a lawsuit against Facebook for failing to ban the Gaza-based terror group Hamas from using its social media platform.
The suit was brought to the New York State District Court under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows American citizens who are victims of terror attacks overseas to sue in US federal court.
In a hearing on Thursday, US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis gave a public dressing-down of the lawyer representing Facebook.
“You tell your folks back at Kirkland & Ellis that if they think so little of this court that they didn’t send a partner here to talk about this kind of problem which implicates international terrorism and the murder of innocent people in Israel and other places,” Garaufis said, according to the New York Daily News. “I think it’s outrageous, irresponsible and insulting.”
What is troubling, however, is the manner in which the media, and Al-Hroub, herself, imply Jewish-Israeli guilt for the violence created by ongoing Palestinian-Arab theocratically-inspired aggression against Jews living on ancestral Jewish land.Pollard: The nation is with me
For example, The Guardian, in a piece from last March concerning the original announcement of the award, claims in a context-free manner:
In 2000, when her youngest was established at school, Hroub resumed her education part-time at Al-Quds University. Within months, her husband, Omar, and two of her daughters were shot at by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint near Bethlehem. Omar was injured in the shoulder and the girls were traumatised.
I do not doubt it for one moment.
The year 2000 was the first year of Intifada Number Two, the Al-Aqsa Intifada, when Palestinian-Arabs went berserk because Ariel Sharon had the audacity to take a stroll on the Temple Mount.
The Guardian story, of course, also leaves out Omar's history of terrorism.
In conclusion, although I was willing to give Clinton and Al-Hroub the benefit of the doubt, when I see the way that certain media outlets, such as the Guardian, use this story to contrast alleged Palestinian-Arab sweetness and goodness versus Jewish-Israeli barbarism, the ethical dilemma melts away into the aether and all that I am left with is disgust.
For all I know, Hanan Al-Hroub is a terrific woman and a wonderful teacher worth every penny of that million dollars, but when these stories are used in a propagandistic manner to contrast bunny-like Arabs in conflict with Doberman-like Jews, it tells me that there is something more going on here than merely honoring a teacher.
Jonathan Pollard recently expressed pessimism regarding his chances of coming home to Israel.David Collier: Hinde Street #antisemitism in the Methodist Church
In an exclusive interview with Channel 1's Amir Bar-Shalom, Pollard said his health had improved greatly since his release.
In answer to the question of whether the Israeli government had abandoned him, Pollard replied, "The nation is with me."
He also said that it would take a miracle for the American government to agree to lower their restrictions on his activities.
Pollard was arrested in 1985, on charges of spying for Israel. Despite his deteriorating health, and the fact that his information went to a friendly country (spies from hostile countries served less prison time), decades of American presidents refused to discus his release. He was not allowed to attend his father's funeral. Pollard was finally released from prison in November 2015, after thirty years of imprisonment.
Pollard is still required to clear every outing with the authorities, abide by a 7 p.m. curfew, and wear a GPS device at all times. He is also forbidden to use the internet.
I have been to your church several times this week in an effort to engage with people over the ‘you cannot pass today’ exhibition. The Church decided to use a replica of an Israeli security checkpoint to deliver a message about ‘bringing down walls’.Call For Israeli Soldiers To Be ‘Burned Alive’ In London Church Visitor Book
Last night I was also at the circle discussion, that spoke about building bridges between the communities. I always try to reach out, try to understand. My learning process doesn’t include vocally arguing my case, but rather engaging and listening to others, absorbing their message (without confrontation) and trying to build a picture of what it is I see. There are three central points I would like now to get across:
The humanitarian safari park
The exhibition came about because one of the people involved with the church, Katherine Fox, had recently returned from a three-month humanitarian mission in Bethlehem.
Katherine did not go to Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan nor Libya. The reason she did not go to these places is because it is generally too dangerous and there is no similar industry to any of these life threatening areas. Only inside Israel does this type of tourism occur. It is safe to view the humanitarian situation in Israel precisely because it does not involve the dangers that exist elsewhere. I have written on this subject before.
If you had listened to Katherine speak last night, you would hear she was instructed to propagate the information. To return from the safari park and record events as if she had been into a jungle. It is part of the process, part of the industry. You get to go, provided on your return, you hold ‘x’ number of events that perpetuate the myths and convert others to the cause.
A message has been left in a London church’s guest book calling for all Israeli soldiers to be “burned alive”. The comment was left in response to an exhibition on Israel and the Palestinian territories, which some have accused of fuelling anti-Semitism.
Over the last five days Hinde Street Methodist Church in London has been hosting an exhibition composed of a replica of the checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, photographs, and accounts from those who regularly cross the borders between Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Visitors to the church have been encouraged to leave comments, some of which are critical of the state of Israel, others positive.
But one person left the message: “IDF [Israeli Defence Force] soldiers are the scum of the earth! They are disgusting filthy animals and deserve to be burned alive.”
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Criticizes Church's Israel "Checkpoint"
A Methodist church in London has agreed to display Israel’s justification for security checks in the West Bank alongside its replica checkpoint, after criticism from the former Archbishop of Canterbury.Douglas Murray: The Islamophobic attacks you don’t hear about
Hinde Street Methodist Church in Marylebone launched the exhibition to show Palestinians’ limited access between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, but was accused of “fanning the flames of anti-Semitism” by a rabbi, and of harming Christian-Jewish relations by the Board of Deputies.
Opened as part of World Week for Peace, the church said its display – called ‘You cannot pass today’ – was “carefully curated to reflect the issues of divided communities and to promote reflection and prayers for piece,” adding: “There is no criticism of the Jewish community or faith.”
But howls of protest led to a change of tune, with the church agreeing to show a table of information, prepared by the Zionist Federation, outlining Israel’s security needs, alongside a statement from the Israeli government.
On Tuesday, Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, said he was saddened by the portrayal of “Israel as oppressors of victims”.
Incidents of ‘Islamophobia’ are really getting out of hand in Britain. In fact there has been such a wave of attacks that it’s amazing that politicians and commentators across the political spectrum, (not to mention all those supposed ‘anti-fascist’ groups) aren’t grand-standing like crazy. Perhaps their problem is that this wave of attacks does not consist of people writing nasty and mean things on Twitter, but of Muslims killing other Muslims and still other Muslims extolling such killings.Herald Scotland Supports Violent “Human Rights Worker” Because…Israel.
It’s only a couple of weeks since a Sunni Muslim from Birmingham called Tanveer Ahmed was sentenced to prison for murdering an Ahmadiyya Muslim shopkeeper from Glasgow called Asad Shah. Mr Ahmed thought Mr Shah had ‘disrespected’ Islam, and so he repeatedly stabbed Mr Shah in the head until he was dead. Some people will remember that aside from the brutality of that case one of the most remarkable things about it was that while the family of Asad Shah were too terrified to turn up to court, the circle of the loved-one’s murderer certainly did show up to court and there showed great support for the killer. Indeed associates of the murderer interviewed outside the court seemed more annoyed that their friend had been sentenced to prison than that an innocent Muslim shopkeeper had been brutally murdered.
This month’s poster-boy for the ‘Ummah’ is a Muslim from Rochdale called Mohammed Hussain Syeedy. This young man, aged 21, has been found guilty of the murder of an Imam from Rochdale called Jalal Uddin (71) who the young Rochdale man thought had the wrong theological ideas regarding the peaceful religion of Islam. And so Syeedy took part in an attack on the Imam in which his head was smashed in with ‘repeated forceful blows’. Mr Uddin died a short time later in hospital.
The Herald Scotland broke with journalistic ethics, and general reality, when it published an article claiming that “human rights worker” Margaret Pacetta was detained by Israeli authorities at the airport.Indy headline packs powerful propagandistic punch
Except that Pacetta is not a human rights worker.
Margaret Pacetta is active in an organization called “Glasgow Palestinian Human Rights Campaign,” through which she provokes riots, engages in violence against IDF soldiers, and directly endangers the lives of Israeli civilians.
In this video at time 0:37 we see Pacetta instigate a riot and then physically attack an IDF soldier. The soldier responds by pushing her out of the way, firmly but without any physical harm.
A 13-year-old Palestinian girl evidently came to an Israeli checkpoint, near the West Bank settlement of Alfei Menashe, on Wednesday for one reason: to take her own life.MEMRI: Bahraini Writer: I Was Shocked To Discover How Many Young Arabs Idolize Adolf Hitler
The girl approached the checkpoint carrying a bag, and ignored guards’ orders for her to stop. They then apparently fired a warning shot in the air, at which point the teen reached toward her shirt.
Guards then shot her in the leg.
She later reportedly acknowledged her desire to provoke guards to shoot her. “I came to die”, she said during questioning.
The suicide by fake terror attack was such a central element of the story that even the anti-Israel Russian propaganda site RT included this angle in their headline accompanying a report on the incident.
The Independent, on the other hand, published an article on the incident (a day after most outlets filed their reports) accompanied by a headline including only the most inflammatory elements of the story, ignoring the fact that the girl allegedly wanted to provoke guards and then ignored orders to stop.
Here’s the headline chosen by editors in an otherwise unproblematic story by Lizzie Dearden:
On February 27, 2016, Dr. Entesar Al-Banna, a columnist for the Bahraini daily Al-Watan, wrote that she had discovered, much to her surprise, that many young Arabs idolize Adolf Hitler, mainly for his strength and steadfastness in fighting the entire world. She assessed that this phenomenon stems from the wave of violence afflicting the region and the sense of helplessness that it causes, as a result of which people look to someone who challenged the rest of the globe. According to her, this worship of strength reflects the instability and the crisis of the Arab world, a crisis which is manifested in many ways, ranging from suppression of free expression to the use of extreme violence on all levels.California college students vandalize dorms with swastikas
The following are excerpts from her column:
"In a course for teenage girls, where I was present, the instructor asked the girls an ordinary question: 'Who is your favorite figure?' Most of the answers were interesting, and included new media figures with whom I am not familiar, especially from Snapchat. But the shocking answer given by several of the girls – which compelled me to argue with them – was that they were fans of Hitler!
"I interrupted one of the girls who said that Hitler was her favorite figure, asking her: 'Are you serious or joking?' She looked at me, amazed, and replied: 'Yes, I am serious.' This led another girl to add: 'I too love Hitler's personality.' I asked the first girl: 'What do you like about Hitler's personality?' She responded, very confidently: 'His strength, and his ability to unite his country's military and leadership and to stand fast in war.' I asked her: 'Do you realize that his strength caused an entire world war, and the destruction of Germany and France?' She responded: 'Yes. I read his book Mein Kampf and was impressed by his strength, his faith, and his perseverance.'
Two students at a Northern California university scrawled swastikas and other hate speech in residence halls, the campus president said Thursday.Near-blind boy gets dream skateboard in Tikkun Olam challenge
The swastikas were found Tuesday at two separate dormitories that mostly house first-year students at San Jose State University.
Next to one of the swastikas was scrawled “Admit One Jew,” President Mary Papazian said in a statement emailed to all students Thursday. She said police have identified the student responsible and “determined that this act, while bias-based, targeted no one in particular and is not by definition a hate crime.”
The other swastika was drawn on a white board in a common area of another dormitory. The white board was described to police by the student responsible as a “joke board,” said Papazian, adding that this incident remains under investigation and police were confident the two cases are not related.
Eleven-year-old Ben Zelinger was diagnosed with an illness that caused him to lose much of his eyesight nearly a year ago. Since then, one of his biggest dreams has been to ride a skateboard with his friends.Waze finds way to keep drivers on track in tunnels
On Tuesday night that dream came close to becoming true, as a group of developers and engineers, working within the Tikun Olam Makers (TOM) project, continued to work intensively to create a special helmet connected to sensors and a camera that would enable him to ride his board.
The helmet unfortunately wasn’t ready on time for TOM’s presentation evening, as the team had completed the design but was still testing it for safety. But Ben got to ride briefly on an adapted skateboard that had a wider platform and wheels to make it more stable, and was grateful in anticipation of what he’d be getting soon.
“Really thank you so much,” he said with a huge smile on his face, after the team completed its presentation, showcasing each stage of the design process of the helmet.
The popular navigation app Waze is putting a new twist on the phrase “tunnel vision.” It is trying to ensure drivers relying on digital maps do not lose their way when their GPS signal disappears in tunnels.CA Technologies pays $100 million for BlazeMeter
Waze plans to keep drivers connected in those GPS-less situations by installing low-cost, battery-powered beacons that will transmit to smartphones and tablets in tunnels that the company has it its database, covering about 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) around the world. The beacons can maintain map connections, as long as the drivers turn on their Bluetooth signal.
The beacons will be turned on Wednesday in two Pittsburgh tunnels, Fort Pitt and Liberty, and another in Israel, where Waze was founded before Google bought it in 2013 for $969 million.
Waze is trying to persuade all tunnel operators, mostly government agencies, to buy and install the beacons that it designed to address the problem. It costs about $1,200 for the 42 beacons required to provide coverage for every mile (1.6 kilometers) within a tunnel. Each beacon is guaranteed under warranty for four years.
As the week wraps up in Israel, the startup community is raising toasts to big funding rounds and a buyout of groundbreaking technology solutions.Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
CA Technologies has announced its signing of a definitive agreement to acquire BlazeMeter, a leader in open source-based continuous application performance testing. While terms of the agreement were not disclosed, reports say the deal is worth $100 million.
“BlazeMeter has redefined performance testing with its simplicity, fast-deployment SaaS model, and rapid time-to-value,” said Ayman Sayed, president and chief product officer, CA Technologies. “The acquisition will reinforce our leadership position in agile testing, and our efforts to democratize performance testing as organizations accelerate their DevOps journey to drive speed and quality in the delivery of new software updates and innovations.”
BlazeMeter’s solution allows developers and performance engineers to test earlier and more often in the application lifecycle.
A-WA first stole our beating, dance-floor hearts this summer when we learned about their undeniable throwback hit, “Habib Galbi.” A-WA is a trio of sisters (Tair, 31; Liron, 29, and Tagel Haim, 25) who hail from southern Israel, although they are based out of Tel Aviv. Recently, Vogue published a short video of the trio hanging out in Old Jaffa in Tel Aviv, where they visited a jewelry shop, the Levinsky Market, a traditional Yemeni restaurant, and a record store where they have spent a lot of time “scavenging for rare records.”IsraellyCool: Jeremy Piven’s Hilarious (But Filthy-Mouthed) Israeli Ads
Said Tar Haim to Vogue, “When we started working on this album, we collected a lot of old records of Yemenite singers that immigrated, like our grandparents did, to Israel.”
A-WA is currently on the final leg of a summer European and American tour (here’s the group performing at The New York Times yesterday), so catch them if you can. Or, just hop a plane to Israel and hope you run into them in Old Jaffa.
Actor and member of the tribe Jeremy Piven was recently here with the Omri Casspi Foundation (a trip that included him having a Bar Mitzvah of sorts.
But apparently, he also found time to film some ads for an Israeli gift card company called BuyMe.
The ads are hilarious but be warned – Jeremy will need to wash his mouth out with soap!
Did Mel Brooks try to pull down Obama’s pants?
President Barack Obama on Thursday paid tribute to comedian Mel Brooks, chef Jose Andres, NPR interviewer Terry Gross and others at a White House ceremony celebrating “creators who give every piece of themselves to their craft.”
The three were among two dozen artists, writers, playwrights and performers awarded the 2015 National Medals of Arts and Humanities. Obama touted the group, which included author Sandra Cisneros, composer Philip Glass and singer Audra McDonald, as figures at the top of their fields and contributors to a national conversation.
“We believe that arts and the humanities are in many ways reflective of our national soul. They’re central to who we are as Americans — dreamers, storyteller, innovators and visionaries,” he said.
The annual event is typically a serious affair, held under the glittering chandeliers of the East Room. But it took a comic turn this year when Obama paid tribute to Brooks by quoting the director’s instructions to his writers on the boundary-pushing film “Blazing Saddles.”
“Write anything you want because we’ll never be heard from again. We will all be arrested for this movie,” Obama said, laughing.
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