Tuesday, February 13, 2018
David Collier: KCL – will someone please protect the Jewish students?
Demonstrators as victims
It is also interesting to record how the demonstrators twist the events. They had chosen to come onto a campus to disrupt an event. The campus security tried, and partially failed to contain the protest. One demonstrator was not permitted inside because he held a megaphone. An instrument clearly designed (outside a door of an event) to disrupt. This became the tweet of the night:
So as Jewish students are huddled in a room, struggling to hear what their invited speaker against a background of vocal hate, the demonstrators portray themselves as the victims. In the footage, the security man explicitly references the megaphone (see under his arm). The person tweeting this is Ayo Olatunji, who is part of the UCL student union, and was part of the UCL protest and disruption in late 2016. More of a concern was this tweet by Ayo:
He claims he was denied, not because of his behaviour, his intent, or the need to uphold free speech, but because he is black. I saw this weaponisation of racism at Cambridge with Malia Bouattia, and recently being used at Warwick by Nicola Pratt. A truly divisive strategy. There is of course nothing about his colour mentioned in the footage.
The protestors have complained to the university. They are in ‘outrage’. Why? Just as I described their dissatisfaction at events at UCL two week ago:
‘They are disappointed that they are not allowing them to do what they want to do. To permit their demonstration, to deny the other, to allow them entry to the building, to let them disrupt the event, to deny the speaker the platform in the first place. They want to be armed with a security force to impose their demands. A fascist mentality. ‘
What of the Jewish students?
This is all intimidation. And it works. The university is not capable of fighting a war for the Jewish students, because this is not a battle of students. Palestine Solidarity Campaign advertise it, Friends of Al Aqsa live stream it, off-campus ringleaders turn up to assist in the organisation.
How many of those Jewish students who may have been intimidated by yesterday’s events, will not attend another meeting of its type? Will supporters of those Jewish students now look over their shoulder and say to themselves ‘it is not worth it’? How many of those who organised the event, will not organise another? Will invited speakers not want to come?
Intimidation works because it works through intimidation, not debate. Non-democratic forces are undermining our academic spaces. Values of equality, democracy, free speech are all under threat. When you have Jewish students forced to leave a room surrounded by haters screaming ‘shame’, alongside posts on Facebook calling these students ‘cockroaches’, then you have to accept you are in dangerous territory.
#Jews run the gauntlet from @jeremycorbyn @PSCupdates #JewHaters @KingsCollegeLon tonight. What’s changed from #1938 #Vienna? @SamGyimah @COLRICHARDKEMP @GuidoFawkes pic.twitter.com/934YYjYwPZ
— Jewish HR Watch (@jhrwatch) February 12, 2018
Our statement about the event we hosted tonight featuring former #Israeli Deputy Prime Minister, Dan Meridor. We must continue to protect free #speech on campus & defeat #intolerance.
— Pinsker Centre (@PinskerCentre) February 12, 2018
READ: https://t.co/ntT2Gfjxr9 pic.twitter.com/aPwgarxSg3
BESA: Mahmoud Abbas’s Speech: Who Was the Real Audience?
Mahmoud Abbas’s blatantly skewed account of the nature of Zionism and the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict should bring Israel’s policymakers and opinion shapers to enunciate anew the story they tell their own people and the world at large.
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the January 14 meeting of the PLO’s Central Council lasted two hours. Apart from the phrase “May your house be destroyed,” which became the headline for the speech, Abbas’s “historical” survey of the chronicle of Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has drawn most of the Israeli criticism. According to Prime Minister Netanyahu, the survey underscored the root of the conflict: “The Palestinians’ rejection of the existence of a Jewish state in any borders.”
For the Palestinians, too, particularly the younger among them, much of the speech must have sounded like a tiresome history lesson. Yet political speeches of this kind often have more than one audience in mind. In this case, Israeli society with its various factions and leaders, along with the international community, was the main audience. Appealing to fashionable legal and moral fads, particularly in Western Europe, Abbas again set forth the supposedly problematic aspects of Zionism. His “historical survey” undoubtedly fails the minimum test of facts, but it is uncritically accepted in many circles. This poses a real challenge to Israeli policymakers and opinion shapers.
By every historical account, the Zionist revolution – the incredible ingathering of the exiles and the establishment of the flourishing and highly successful state of Israel – is a unique and unprecedented phenomenon. Those who insist on viewing it as yet another immigration wave among the 20th century global population movements fail to grasp the real nature of this revolution. In this respect, Abbas touched the key issue that, in his eyes, made the Palestinians the main victim of Zionism: if the Jews yearn for a safe haven, and the international community wants to provide them with one, why does it have to be in Palestine, at the Palestinians’ expense? (h/t Elder of Lobby)
ADL Rips Ellison For Farrakhan Meeting
The head of the nation’s largest Jewish civil rights organization called it “extremely disturbing” that three Democratic congressmen, including the vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), attended a private dinner with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.IsraellyCool: American Jews: Do You Support Farrakhan Democrats?
Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Andre Carson of Indiana and Gregory Meeks of New York in 2013 attended the private dinner, which only became public on Friday. (RELATED: Three Democrats Attended Private Dinner With Iran’s President And Louis Farrakhan)
“Based on what we know, its extremely disturbing that Dem reps or members of any political group would attend a session hosted by hatemongers,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said Monday.
“Yes, there may have been many ppl there but the presence of Louis Farrakhan should have been a red flag. He is an unrepentant anti-Semite who has said Jews are Satanic & responsible for 9/11,” Greenblatt said.
The three Democrats owe an explanation to their constituents, as well as to the Jewish community, Greenblatt added.
I know most Democrat supporters have probably unfollowed me long ago but I really am curious to know how any Jews in America still think the Democrat party is in any way worthy of their support?Knesset Member Behind ‘Israel’s Taylor Force Act’: My Bill Will ‘Save Human Lives’
I’m also deeply curious as to how you feel about the bulk of the media deliberately lying to you about the connections of many in the Dem Party right up to and including Obama himself, with Louis Farrakhan. It is impossible to regard his views on Jews with anything but the same contempt you hold the views of David Duke and his ardent followers.
Please, someone, tell me how you feel. The point is this isn’t one off behaviour. The entire Congressional Black Caucus of the Democrat Party have no trouble dining and even defending this man. We’ve already seen Dershowitz completely admit that he wouldn’t have voted for Obama (let alone campaigned for him) if he’d known about the picture of Obama and Farrakhan. How do the rest of you feel? Now this from the Daily Caller throws in a new element of collusion with the Iranians! You know, the ones probing Israel’s aid defences this weekend and more than likely responsible for shooting down one of our F16I’s.
Elazar Stern, an opposition Israeli lawmaker who previously served as a leader in Israel’s military, has touted the benefits of a new bill he’s spearheading that would cut funds to the Palestinian Authority that are used to support terrorism.It’s Time to Tell the Truth About UNRWA
The proposed law will “save human lives,” said MK Stern, a member of the Yesh Atid party who introduced the bill, which passed a preliminary hearing at the Knesset on Monday, the first hurdle on the road to passage. He believes the bill will move forward to a first reading on Sunday.
The bill would deduct funds used by the PA to pay salaries to terrorists and their families from tax monies collected by Israel on behalf of the Palestinians.
Inspired by the similar Taylor Force Act currently before the US Congress, which would cut aid to the PA in accordance with its financial support for terrorism, Stern took the proposed law to major figures in government, the defense and intelligence establishments, the Knesset parties, and the IDF. They registered no objections, and the bill began its journey toward passage.
In an interview on Monday, Stern told the Algemeiner, “The idea was that we cannot continue the situation in which we collect money for the Palestinian Authority — and at the end of the day it’s their money, but they use it to encourage terror. We cannot allow them to encourage terror with their money.”
In December 2017, Lebanon conducted its first-ever census of Palestinian refugees living in the country — and the results were startling. The census workers counted 174,422 people — a number that was one-third of the generally accepted figure.The US Must Stop Supporting and Funding UNRWA
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) has maintained that there are 449,987 Palestinians on its rolls in Lebanon. When asked about the 275,535 refugees who don’t seem to exist, UNWRA spokeswoman Huda Samra told Arab News: “UNRWA does not have a headcount of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. What we have are official registration records for the number of registered Palestine refugees in Lebanon. If someone registered with UNRWA in Lebanon decided to live outside Lebanon, they don’t notify us.”
With the Trump administration withholding $65 million from UNRWA’s budget — and with millions of new Syrian refugees commanding international attention — it is time to rethink UNWRA’s future. (The US is UNRWA’s largest donor, paying $360 million of the agency’s $1.25 billion annual costs.)
The new, real number of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon offers an opening for a practical way forward to end a program that has not worked to resettle a single refugee in 70 years. Furthermore, UNRWA — alone among refugee organizations in history — has increased rather than decreased the number of its charges.
Despite UNRWA’s 70-year insistence that the Palestinians are a permanent class of dispossessed, under-educated, and underemployed people, the Palestinians in Lebanon are voting with their feet: two-thirds of them have left the country.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley made headlines on January 2 by saying that President Donald Trump has decided to stop funding UNRWA — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency — until the Palestinians agree to come to the negotiating table.House Dems urge Trump to fund UN’s Palestinian aid agency
On January 16, Trump — on the advice of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — agreed to transfer $60 million to UNRWA for now, as opposed to slashing all of the funding overnight. But the other $65 million of the US’s usual installment at this time of year has been held in reserve. The total amount of money paid to UNRWA by American taxpayers is approximately $370 million per year.
UNRWA was established in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 to handle the Palestinian refugee problem; in short, it was set up to deal with the immediate crisis resulting from the Israeli War of Independence. But it now has camps in Judea and Samaria, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.
Refugees from World War II were aided by the UN High Commission for Refugees, whose mandate called for immediate resettlement of refugees in their host nations. The Arab League, however, rejected that for the Palestinian refugees — because it wanted them to be a constant thorn in the side of the newly established Jewish state.
UNRWA is the only refugee agency in the world whose mission is not to resettle refugees — or integrate and re-enter them into the workforce of their host countries — but to instill in their minds that they will one day return to their grandfathers’ (or rather, great-grandfathers’) orchards and vineyards in Haifa and elsewhere.
Some 102 Democratic congressmen sent a letter to President Donald Trump calling on him to continue funding for U.N.’s Palestinian aid agency.Michael Oren pursued to head Jewish Agency
The State Department last month announced that it had put a hold on $65 million of the $125 million annual allocation to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which distributes its assistance in the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria, as well as to refugee camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Days later, the State Department announced that a $45 million payment pledged for the UNRWA food aid program would also be held up.
According to UNRWA, the United States provided more than $350 million in aid to the organization in 2017.
But critics say much of the food and medicine delivered via UNRWA is regularly diverted to the Hamas terror organization, while UNRWA-run schools in the Gaza Strip are used to conceal terrorist tunnels and spread anti-Israel incitement.
Nevertheless, congressional Democrats urged the president to restore full funding for the UN agency.
“Continuing to freeze this aid will harm American interests by exacerbating the threats facing both peoples and reducing the United States’ ability to help the Israelis and Palestinians reach a two-state solution,” said the letter sent Thursday signed by more than half of the House Democratic Caucus.
Jewish leaders from the United States, Europe and Israel have expressed interest in having Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Michael Oren replace Natan Sharansky as Jewish Agency chairman, The Jerusalem Post has learned.In first, Israeli diplomats attend UN conference in Malaysia
Oren confirmed that the Jewish leaders approached him months ago about replacing Sharansky, who will be leaving the post he has held since 2009 following a Jewish Agency Board of Governors meeting in Jerusalem on June 24-26.
He has built up a close relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will appoint a candidate who must be approved by the board of governors, which is also meeting later this month in Zichron Ya’acov. He proved reliable to Netanyahu and built up his relationship with American Jewish leaders during his tenure as ambassador to the US.
“Appointing Michael to the job is a great idea,” said Jane Sherman, who has been a member of the Jewish Agency Board of Governors since 1983 and an honorary member since 2012. “He is truly interested in the betterment of the Jewish world. He understands the world Jewish community and American Jews in particular as well as anyone in Israel.”
If given the post, Oren would not be the first former ambassador to the US to also serve as Jewish Agency chairman. His predecessor in Washington, Sallai Meridor, headed it before becoming ambassador. Simcha Dinitz also held both posts and, like Oren, was also an MK.
But Oren said he is not actively pursuing the job.
A team of Israeli diplomats recently visited Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country that has never had diplomatic relations with the Jewish state and that has maintained a staunch pro-Palestinian policy in international forums, the Foreign Ministry said Monday.Mordechai Kedar: Religion and politics in the feud between Saudi Arabia and Qatar
A senior-level Israeli delegation attended a week-long conference in Kuala Lumpur, hosted by the United Nations Human Settlements Program, known as UN-Habitat, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon said, confirming a report by Hadashot TV.
The first-of-its-kind visit was headed by diplomat David Roet, who has served as Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Nahshon said. The Hadashot report said the delegation also included former minister Ofir Pines and other senior Foreign Ministry officials.
Malaysia was compelled to host the Israelis, since it was required to grant visas to all delegations in order to hold the international conference, the report added.
Roet “entered Malaysia with an Israeli diplomatic passport, participated in the conference with other Israeli representatives and also met Malaysian officials,” the Foreign Ministry added.
Since the advent of the French Revolution, Western culture has aspired to separate church and state, believing that religion deals with the status of man– the individual and the community – and God, while politics deals with administering the lives of the public, those who believe in various religions as well as atheists who believe in none. One result of religion's removal from the political sphere was that a Jew (Leon Bloom in France, Benjamin Disraeli in Britain) could become prime minister if he was considered worthy of the role.MEMRI: Russian Expert Suslov: The New U.S Nuclear Doctrine Could Lead To A Military Crisis Fraught With A Direct Military Clash Between The U.S. And Russia
The Middle East, however, is a totally different reality. Religion in the Middle East is an inseparable part of politics, and is often the main actor in political situations. That is how we have a political party called Hez b' allah - (God's party), war is called Jihad (a war commanded by the Koran) and a country can be called an Islamic Republic (Iran). Most of the Constitutions of Middle Eastern countries state clearly that Islam is the basis of their systems of law. The rule in the Middle East is that "Religion and state are twins" – Din wa-Dawla Tawaman - born at the same time and living together in harmony.
Often rulers, especially those whose legitimacy is questioned by their subjects, try to obtain religious approval for their regimes. I dedicated an entire chapter to the public efforts of Syrian monarch Assad aimed at his being considered a bona fide Islamic ruler, although he is an Allawite. Being an Allawite means he is viewed an idol worshiper and therefore, someone who not only usurped the throne but deserves to be killed as a heretic. He should, by all accounts, be forced to make the choice between converting to Islam or being killed.
The King of Jordan used his own funds to cover the Dome of the Rock with gold leaf in order to achieve legitimacy for his monarchy and make up for the fact that his grandfather Abdullah was brought in by the British to rule the Trans-Jordan Emirates.
Egypt's President Sadat prayed at the Al Aqsa Mosque on his first visit to Israel in November 1977 in order to grant his visit, vehemently opposed by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, a religious stamp of approval (h/t Elder of Lobby)
On February 2, 2018, the U.S Department of Defense released its Nuclear Posture Review. The new U.S. Nuclear Doctrine states that while Russia initially followed "America’s lead and made similarly sharp reductions in its strategic nuclear forces," it retained large quantities of non-strategic nuclear weapons. "Today, Russia is modernizing these weapons as well as its other strategic systems. Even more troubling has been Russia’s adoption of military strategies and capabilities that rely on nuclear escalation for their success. These developments, coupled with Russia’s seizure of Crimea and nuclear threats against our allies, markJewish Group Slams Conor Lamb’s ‘Ignorant and Extreme’ Israel Comments
Moscow’s decided return to Great Power competition," stated the Nuclear Posture Review.
Dmitry Suslov, a veteran America-watcher and program director of the Valdai Discussion Club noted in his assessment of the review, that a troubling aspect of the new U.S. nuclear doctrine is the "considerable erosion of nuclear employment terms." Suslov stated: "The current document says that the United States allows the possibility of using nuclear weapons in response to a non-nuclear attack not only against the U.S. itself and its allies but also against its 'partners,' a category that can include just about anyone apart from those the US openly calls its adversaries (today these are Russia, China, Iran and North Korea) or unfriendly countries (Syria, Venezuela, etc.). Officially, the United States' 'strategic partners' are Ukraine and Georgia, to name just these two. Does this mean that Washington will seriously contemplate using nuclear weapons if their security is under threat?"
Like many Russian experts Suslov regards the situation as worse than during the Cold War and urges the expert communities in both the U.S. and Russia to share their concerns with the policy makers.
Below are excerpts from Suslov's article, titled "Militarizing The Confrontation: Risks Of The New U.S. Nuclear Posture Review," published in the Valdai Discussion Club:
The Republican Jewish Coalition criticized Pennsylvania Democrat Conor Lamb for failing to address comments he made in 2002 in which he said Israel was guilty of "terrorism."Why Are Grantees of the New Israel Fund Supporting Terrorists?
In the comments revealed by the Washington Free Beacon on Monday, Lamb says that the Israeli Defense Forces were guilty of intentionally targeting innocent civilians and characterized it as "terrorism." Lamb was at the time a student at University of Pennsylvania, and was angered by a campus paper's decision to publish a pro-Israel advertisement.
"Just the other day, the Israeli Government launched an attack on innocent civilians in Gaza, citing them as ‘armed terrorists,'" Lamb wrote. "Among the dead were a 14 year-old boy and woman in her late 40s. The army intentionally fired on a medical facility treating the over 100 wounded."
"There is no doubt that both sides of this conflict have committed wrongs, but if this latest attack is not terrorism, I don't know what is," he concluded.
Lamb, currently running for Congress, is still yet to address the anti-Israel comments, a fact former senator Norm Coleman called "very troubling."
"Conor Lamb's refusal to address his own ignorant and extreme attack against Israel is very troubling," said Coleman, now the RJC's national chairman.
Coleman further pointed to Lamb's ties to J Street, a far left group highly critical of Israel, as a reason why national Democrats supporting Lamb should be concerned about where he stands on the Jewish State.
"Given that refusal and the fact that he's running as a supporter of the anti-Israel organization J Street, it appears his views have not changed at all," Coleman said.
The New Israel Fund (NIF) — a radical American Jewish non-profit organization — continues to harm Israel on a regular basis. But the latest revelations about the NIF by Makor Rishon, an Israeli newspaper, are shocking.Virgin Atlantic removes ‘Palestinian’ from couscous description
An investigative report has revealed that Mourad Jadallah, an employee and field researcher for Yesh Din — an organization that has received more than $500,000 from the NIF in recent years — praises Palestinian terrorists and posts pictures of them.
Jadallah has praised “the engineer” Yahya Ayyash and senior Hamas member Hassan Salameh on Twitter, lauding them as “Palestinian legends” responsible for the murder of more than 150 Israelis. Jadallah uploaded photos of himself with Salah Hamouri, an East Jerusalem resident who served jail time in Israel for plotting to assassinate former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef.
The investigation revealed that Jadallah also worked for B’Tselem (another NIF grantee) and participated in the writing of a report published last year about the condition of Palestinian youths in East Jerusalem. Yet despite his support for terrorists, Jadallah remains employed by these so-called “human rights” organizations.
A British airline has removed the word “Palestinian” from the name of a couscous grain salad on its in-flight menu following complaints from pro-Israel customers.Tariq Ramadan, Long the Civilized Face of European Islamism, Now Faces Multiple Allegations of Sexual Abuse
Virgin Atlantic has faced online criticism since December, when a social media user called its staff “terrorist sympathizers” and another called for an Israeli boycott of the airline for using the term “Palestinian couscous salad,” The Independent reported Monday.
The dish has recently been renamed “couscous salad” and the airline has issued a public statement saying it did not intend to “cause offense through the naming or renaming” of the meal, the report said.
The salad in question included maftoul grains, which are a version of couscous popular in the Palestinian territories and popularly known as “Palestinian couscous.” Couscous, originally a North African dish, is also popular in modern Israeli cuisine.
On December 23, Twitter user Dani Williams posted a photo of the in-flight menu and wrote there was “nothing like some BDS and delusion with your salad,” adding that it was the “last time” the airline gets his money and dubbing its personnel “terrorist sympathizers.”
In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein affair in the U.S., a French journalist encouraged her countrywomen to denounce the men who had mistreated them. Soon thereafter, several women, most of them Muslim, accused the Swiss political philosopher Tariq Ramadan of rape and battery. He has since been charged with two counts of rape by a French court. Dominic Green comments:NGO Monitor: NGO Campaigns for Ahed Tamimi, and Against the Rights of Children
Tariq Ramadan is . . . not just an Oxford professor and sought-after lecturer and talking head. He is . . . the most visible proselytizer for radical European Islam. Since the early 1990s, he has positioned himself as a one-man peacekeeping force in the clash of civilizations, performing a kind of shuttle diplomacy between Western liberalism and Islamism.
As the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Ramadan possesses hereditary legitimacy. He is a prince of Islamism. But, born and educated in multilingual Geneva, he is also a European. He trims his beard short and wears Armani suits. He fluently discusses the crisis of Christianity in Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche. He speaks the language of natural rights and citizenship and insists that Europe’s secular universalism is compatible with the theological universalism of Islamic tradition.
The tensions and contradictions in Ramadan’s public persona are more than philosophical. He has counseled Tony Blair and the European Union on the harmony of Islamic and Western values. But he aligns Islam with “resistance”—with anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Zionism, a message that has long endeared him to the French left. . . .
Ramadan also denies that he is a conduit for terrorist recruitment, but his romantic patter to “Christelle”—[a physically disabled woman who has credibly claimed he raped and beat her, and won’t use her real name for fear of retaliation]—included sweet nothings like “Are you ready to fight for Allah, and for your brothers and sisters in Palestine?” . . .
Today (February 13), Ahed Tamimi’s trial begins. She is charged with assaulting a soldier, incitement to terrorism, among at least nine other charges; some of her alleged crimes were caught on video, others on social media, including comments that “Whether it is stabbings or martyrdom operations or throwing stones, everyone must do his part and we must unite in order for our message to be heard that we want to liberate Palestine.”Ahead of trial, Amnesty says Israel must release Ahed Tamimi
A number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been participating in a campaign celebrating and defending Tamimi. Despite the video evidence, they insist that Israel has no grounds for trying and imprisoning her. Although these NGOs claim to promote human rights and the rule of law generally, and protect the rights of children specifically, in Ahed Tamimi’s case they ignore the exploitation and recruitment of children as “soldiers” in a propaganda war against Israel.
Support for Tamimi is also part of a broader campaign accusing Israel of “systematically” violating children’s rights.
As demonstrated in NGO Monitor’s analysis, Israel’s prosecution and treatment of Tamimi falls well within international law and norms for such charges and given such conditions.
Human rights group Amnesty International is calling for the immediate release of detained Palestinian teenage activist Ahed Tamimi, whose trial began on Tuesday.IsraellyCool: The Associated Press’ Terribly Slanted Report on Shirley Temper
Tamimi's trial is being held behind closed doors despite Tamimi's request for a public trial. The next session was scheduled for the beginning of March.
Tamimi rose to international fame when a video of her slapping Israeli soldiers in her village of Nabi Saleh went viral. She was arrested in an overnight raid on her home three days after the video was released. Tamimi, who turned 17 in detention, faces 12 charges including aggravated assault and incitement.
Human rights group Amnesty International released a statement on Monday calling on Israel to immediately release Tamimi, who has been held since December 19.
According to the Amnesty statement, "Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Israel is a state party, the arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child must be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time."
Karin Laub of the Associated Press has written a terribly biased report about the trial of Ahed Tamimi aka Shirley Temper.Danny Glover, Rosario Dawson sign 'Free Ahed' letter
The title of the piece, which refers to her as a “protest icon”, is perhaps the first clue this is no objective piece of reporting. But it get worse. A whole lot worse.
Palestinian protest icon Ahed Tamimi is to go on trial before an Israeli military court on Tuesday for slapping and punching two Israeli soldiers — an act Palestinians say embodies their David vs. Goliath struggle against a brutal military occupation and Israel portrays as a staged provocation meant to embarrass its military.
Israel’s full-throttle prosecution of Tamimi, one of an estimated 300 Palestinian minors in Israeli jails, and a senior Israeli official’s recent stunning revelation that he once had parliament investigate whether the blond, blue-eyed Tamimis are a “real” Palestinian family have helped stoke ongoing interest in the case.
The teen with the curly mane of hair who turned 17 in jail last month has become the latest symbol of the long-running battle between Palestinians and Israelis over global public opinion.
The case touches on what constitutes legitimate resistance to Israel’s rule over millions of Palestinians, already in its 51st year after Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in 1967.
This is highly misleading, especially given the Tamimis themselves see the entirety of Israel as the “occupation.” That includes Ahed. If Israel was to hand over all of the territories we liberated in 1967, the Tamimis would still be engaging in their violent shenanigans.
A slate of American actors, musicians, writers and activists have signed a letter calling for Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi to be freed and for US representatives to take action.Swedish man walking 4800 km to raise awareness for Palestinian cause
The letter, published on Monday by the Dream Defenders organization, is signed by actors Danny Glover, Rosario Dawson and Jesse Williams, musicians Tom Morello and Vic Mensa, NFL player Michael Bennett and activists including Cornel West, Alice Walker and Angela Davis.
“From Trayvon Martin to Muhammad Abu Khdeir and Kalief Browder to Ahed Tamimi – racism, state violence and mass incarceration have robbed our people of their childhoods and their futures,” the letter reads.
Tamimi, 17, whose trial began on Tuesday, was arrested in December for throwing rocks at and shoving and slapping IDF soldiers. She has been detained in an Israeli prison since her arrest.
The Dream Defenders is an activist organization associated with the Black Lives Matter movement and was founded in 2012 after the fatal shooting in Florida of Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old, by a neighborhood watch officer. Browder, an African-American from the Bronx, was accused in 2010, at age 16, of the theft of a backpack and its contents including a camera, $700, a credit card and an iPod. Browder was imprisoned for three years with time in solitary confinement. He was released when the case was found lacking in evidence. The main witness had left the United States. Two years after his release from prison, Browder committed suicide.
Benjamin Ladraa, a 25-year-old Swede, began a 4,800-kilometer journey last summer from Sweden to the Palestinian territories in order to raise awareness for the Palestinian cause.Campus Unmasked: Pro-Palestine Student Loves Hamas, Hates Jews And Gays
When he set out on August 5, 2017, Ladraa estimated the trip through Syria, Turkey and Jordan, as well as many European countries, would take a year.
Regarding the dangers in Syria, he told The Jerusalem Post, “I will try to make it through Syria but it depends on how much war there is. I am a bit concerned about that part, of course, but there aren’t many alternatives.”
He said the goal of the walk was to “shine a light and bring attention to the situation and hopefully inspire more people to do something about the occupation.” He purposely chose to start on the 100th year anniversary of the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
On Tuesday, he asked to relay a message to the Israeli people through the Post, saying: “We all need to work together to achieve peace.”
“What the IDF is doing in occupied Palestine is to enforce a system of segregation with the many crimes it entails,” he said, then cited testimonies by soldiers from the organization “Breaking the Silence.”
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student Ahmad Ewis needs to practice what he preaches if he works with Students for Justice in Palestine and believes justice means “I would have killed all the Jews in the world, but I kept some to show the world why I killed them,” a quote he attributes to Hitler, according to watchdog group Canary Mission.
Ewis is affiliated with American Muslims for Palestine, a group whose former members donated $12.4 million to Hamas, according to information released during a 2016 congressional testimony. He doesn’t seem to be the most tolerant bloke either. Watchdog group Canary Mission discovered him tweeting “If my son is gay I’m personally gonna go to Palestine weld me a sword come back and chop his head off.”
Okay but surely this hatred doesn’t translate to support for actual terrorists, right? Well, Ewis loves blowing smoke, but he’s totally serious when it comes to his twisted political views. Here was the kid’s response to the Israel Defense Forces tweeting that “so far today, more than 100 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel.” While the student graced his Twitter profile with that Hitler quote I showed at the beginning, he’s apparently an even bigger fan of Hamas. During the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict, which Hamas started by kidnapping and murdering three Israeli teens, Ewis tweeted “all the brainwashed people just blame it on Hamas.” I think George Orwell would diagnose this fellow with stage 4 doublethink.
Huffington Post Arabic, Platform for Hamas Propaganda
Hamas has found an unlikely platform to amplify its propaganda. Huffington Post Arabic has copied and pasted a Hamas caption, word for word, including language completely at odds with journalistic norms ("Video and first pictures.. see the site of the Israeli F-16 plane's crash and its debris after it was shot down by fire from inside Syria," Feb. 10).'Moderate' Qatar leader defends anti-Semitic al Jazeera TV
Thus, a caption which appears at Huffington Post Arabic, reproduced entirely from the Facebook page of from Hamas' Shehab News Agency, refers to Israel as "the occupation" and "the enemy," and its territory as "occupied Palestine" (translation by CAMERA's Arabic department)"
The occupation's media publishes scenes which it said are of the moment of shooting down the Iranian drown (according to the announcement of the enemy) that entered the skies of occupied Palestine early in the morning.
At the time of the launch of Huffington Post Arabic, Ariana Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of Huffington Post Media Group, averred: "The Huffington Post’s DNA of a combination of original reporting plus a platform for voices in the region to express themselves in video, in text, in pictures is quite needed." Apparently, in the view of Huffington Post Arabic editors, that need extends to providing a terror organization with a platform..
-- Research and reporting by CAMERA Arabic
The openly anti-Semitic Al Jazeera television network “follows professional standards” and its content should not be changed in any way, according to the foreign minister of Qatar, Al Jazeera’s sponsor.The New York Times is Puzzled: Who’s Responsible for the Mess in Gaza?
Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Al-Thani issued his full-throated defense of Al Jazeera in response to questions from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz this week.
Al-Thani’s remarks may seem surprising, coming in the wake of the parade of American Jewish officials to Qatar in recent months. After all, the Jewish visitors to Qatar have been justifying their journeys to the Emir’s palace by claiming that they were going to convince Qatar to stop all the anti-Semitic vitriol that pours forth from Al Jazeera.
The meetings and visits with the Qataris began last September. After five months of being wined and dined in the luxurious Gulf kingdom, how successful were the Jewish leaders in their alleged mission of trying to influence Qatar? Not very, to judge by what Foreign Minister Al-Thani told Haaretz:
“In response to a question from Haaretz whether Qatar gave any assurances to U.S. Jewish leaders regarding Al Jazeera's coverage of Israel and the Palestinians, Al-Thani stated that Qatar’s constitution forbids the government from interfering in the media.”
And he didn’t stop there. Al-Thani explicitly defended Al Jazeera, by recalling the criticism in Great Britain about Al Jazeera’s viciously anti-Israel series “The Lobby” last year. “There were some complaints filed against Al Jazeera in the United Kingdom,” Al-Thani said, “and it's [been] proven that Al Jazeera follows the professional standards. We are not questioning the content of Al Jazeera.”
How to account for such misery? The Paper of Record is on it: Citing Nathan Thrall of the International Crisis Group and other “Gaza experts,” the Times grimly found that “Hamas itself has few ways to alleviate the crisis.”IsraellyCool: Plenty to Like About NY Times Report on Gaza
Now, I’m no Gaza expert myself, but sad stories of starved children break my heart, so I grabbed the nearest napkin and did some math. Which, mind you, is not easy, because Hamas, like every self-respecting terrorist organization, takes care to hide its assets well. But we know from both Israeli and Palestinian estimates that Hamas spends approximately $100 million a year—or about 20 percent of the overall budget of the government in Gaza—on preparing for and executing attacks against Israel. We also know, because the Times piece tells us, that one economic sector in Gaza is booming: “Five concrete plants have been set up,” the piece reports matter-of-factly, “supplying 20 digging sites, at a cost of nearly $1 billion,” all for the exclusive purpose of digging tunnels designed to facilitate the kidnapping and murdering of Jews. And then, of course, there’s good, old-fashioned charity, the sort that devout people ought to practice gladly. “For the moment,” the Times reports, those with money in Gaza are trying to help those without. Not mentioned in the report are the square footage of Hamas chief’s Ismail Haniyeh’s beachside home—that would be 27,000—or its cost, a cool $4 million, or the fact that hundreds of the terror group’s bosses have become millionaires by commanding a shadowy smuggling industry and depriving their own people of the chance to prosper.
How to read all these numbers? You could nod understandably, as the Times had, and argue that given Hamas’s steadfast commitment to destroy Israel at all cost, and given their dedication to spend every last shekel on tunnels, Qassam missiles, drones, and other weapons, it indeed has “few ways to alleviate the crisis,” which means that if Israel isn’t going to provide free electricity, sewage treatment, and hospital care to the terror group busy trying to kill it we’re looking at a deep humanitarian crisis. Or you could have some compassion for the actual Palestinians living under this evil regime and state the actual cause of their misery.
Accurately Referring to the Hamas Tunnels as ‘Attack Tunnels’Washington Post Publishes Muslim who Served Time for Terror-Related Charges
We are used to reports misleadingly referring to the tunnels built by Hamas and other terror groups as “smuggling tunnels”, considering their main purpose is to either attack Israel or smuggle through weapons with which to ultimately attack Israel.
Israel, in an underground-barrier project with a nearly $1 billion price tag, is steadily sealing its border to the attack tunnels that Gaza militants spent years digging.
So this was another refreshing truth – although as I mentioned, I am not happy with the euphemism “militant.”
Mentioning How The Tunnels Are Supplied With Valuable Resources
While this report mentions the general lack of electricity and fresh water in Gaza, it also mentions the important fact that the attack tunnels are supplied with both (I have made this point about the electricity before).
Brig. Gen. Yehuda Fox, who leads the army’s Gaza division, recently showed Hamas and Islamic Jihad tunnels discovered and destroyed in the past few months. The tunnels were supplied with air, electricity and water, and dug by an estimated 100 men working in shifts.
I would like to have seen this report make the point more explicitly, but this is still progress of sorts.
At least they admit it. The bio tag for this Washington Post article reads: “Ismail Royer is an American convert to Islam and a research and program associate at the Religious Freedom Institute, a D.C. nonprofit organization. He served 13 years in federal prison for terrorism-related charges. Since his release, he has worked in the nonprofit sector developing strategies to promote religious liberty and undermine extremist ideology.”Sorry, Whoopi, But That Pence-Is-to-Gays-What-Nazis-Are-to-Jews Analogy is Horrible
Which “extremist ideology”? Why not “…to promote religious liberty and undermine the jihad ideology”? Probably because what is meant by “extremist ideology” is “right-wing extremism,” a label often attached to resistance to jihad terror.
Interestingly, the Washington Post bio for Royer doesn’t note that before his incarceration, he worked for Hamas-linked CAIR.
Meanwhile, the title of the piece is “Muslims like me don’t have theological beef with evangelicals. It’s the prejudice against us that’s the problem.” Note that Royer is taking that ever-familiar stance we see again and again, on a drearily regular basis, from Muslim spokesmen: victimhood. Poor, poor Muslims are victimized by everyone else in 1000 ways — as the jihad body count rises ever higher. One would think that any man would be embarrassed to make his living as a professional whiner, but Islamic spokesmen seem to have a never-ending supply of chutzpah and no capacity for embarrassment at all.
And “Muslims like me”? What kind of Muslim is like Ismail Royer? Let’s review what the Post blandly reports as “13 years in federal prison for terrorism-related charges.”
Take it from this faygele, Whoopi: A gay man meeting with the Vice President of the United States is not like a Jew hobnobbing with a Nazi. To start, the evangelical Christian Mike Pence does not insist that gay-owned shops be boycotted. (Actually, it’s gay activists advocating that some evangelical Christian-owned shops be boycotted, but leave that inconvenient fact aside for the moment). Mike Pence does not allege that a worldwide conspiracy of homosexuals is bent on destroying humanity. He also does not refer to gay people as “vermin.” Nor, most significantly as far as this particular analogy is concerned, does Mike Pence believe that the United States government should track down every single last gay man, woman and child on earth, crowd them into ghettoes, herd them onto cattle cars, ship them off to concentration camps, force them to subsist on starvation rations, and gas them in a process of industrial-scale extermination the likes of which the world has never seen since, well, that thing called the Holocaust.Polish Senator Warns That Holocaust Survivors Not Exempt From Prosecution Under Widely-Condemned New Law
Mike Pence is hardly anyone’s idea of an advocate for the legal equality and dignity of LGBT people. Far from it. Yet the particular claim upon which Goldberg and Rippon’s antipathy towards the vice president relies—that he supported or “funded” gay conversion therapy at some point earlier in his political career—is simply not true. I addressed this claim in Tablet a year ago. It is based upon a single sentence from Pence’s 2000 congressional campaign website stating that federal funds targeting HIV/AIDS prevention “should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.” One would have to be particularly uncharitable to assume Pence was advocating government funds be allocated to the fruitless and harmful effort of trying to make gay people straight; this language about altering “sexual behavior” more likely meant encouraging the use of condoms and safe-sex practices more generally. Regardless, there exists no evidence whatsoever of Pence ever actually saying anything in support of conversion therapy, much less “funding” it. Yet that did not stop the New York Times, in its summary of the controversy, from committing the basic journalistic sin of using the passive voice to insinuate factuality where none is warranted, stating that the language on Pence’s old campaign website was “widely interpreted as signaling his support for conversion therapy.”
One of the leading advocates of the widely-criticized World War II remembrance legislation approved by Poland’s president last week has warned that Holocaust survivors could find themselves on the wrong side of Polish law from now on.Germany records average of 4 anti-Semitic crimes daily in 2017
Sen. Jan Zaryn, a professor of history who represents the ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) Party, was asked in an interview for the current edition of the Wprost weekly newsmagazine whether the new law “can be used to prosecute Holocaust survivors, as the Israeli Ambassador (in Warsaw, Anna Azari) alleges.”
Zaryn answered: “If a Holocaust survivor falsifies Polish history, lies and says there were Polish concentration camps during World War II, then his status as a survivor is irrelevant in the context of the lie.”
In addition to proscribing the term “Polish concentration camps” – a form of words which the vast majority of Jewish scholars have long agreed is an unfair, careless representation of Nazi Germany’s extermination program in Poland – the law prohibits any public discussion of Polish collusion with Nazi authorities during the war.
This includes events such as the 1941 pogrom in the village of Jedwabne, in which 1,600 Jews, according to the Polish-American historian Jan Gross, were murdered by their Polish neighbors with the approval of the Nazi authorities. (Gross’s numbers have been the subject of dispute; a 2003 Polish investigation concluded that no more than 340 Jews were murdered in Jedwabne, but agreed that their killers were Poles “inspired by the Germans.”)
The number of anti-Semitic crimes in the country remains high, with the equivalent of nearly 4 incidents per day in 2017, according to German authorities.Austrian Freedom Party leader: Zero tolerance for neo-Nazis
On Monday, Berlin's Der Tagesspiegel newspaper cited a report, prepared for Germany's The Left party, revealing that revealed that 1,453 anti-Semitic incidents were reported in 2017, based on preliminary findings. Of those incidents, 32 were acts of violence and 160 involved property damage, with 898 classified as "incitement," involving offenses such as hate speech.
The figure for 2017 was in line with the data from previous years – 1,468 incidents in 2016 and 1,366 in 2015.
Jewish groups have expressed concern that the influx into Europe of over 1 million migrants since 2015, primarily from Muslim states, could exacerbate the existing anti-Semitism.
But the figures show that 1,377 of the incidents involved far-right perpetrators, and only 25 were considered "religiously motivated," involving foreign-born or German Muslims.
Austrian Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache promised visiting Likud MK Yehudah Glick that he would oust anyone who expresses any support for neo-Nazism, racism, hatred, or antisemitism in his far-right Freedom Party.Streaming Giant Netflix to Produce Miniseries on Murder of Argentine AMIA Bombing Prosecutor Alberto Nisman
Strache told Glick in Vienna on Tuesday that his party supported recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the country’s embassy there. He said he even made it a condition for joining the government in coalition talks, and even though he did not succeed, he would continue trying to persuade Austrians of the justice of the cause.
Glick told Strache that he received criticism for the visit from the Austrian Jewish community when he met with them, as well as from MKs in Israel.
Meretz MK Tamar Zandberg accused the Likud of “dangerously flirting with the worst of the antisemites, as if support for the occupation and Islamophobia is more important than Jewish history and the commandment to ‘Never forget.’” She added that she did not believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who denied he had sent Glick to Strache.
Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl participated in the meeting. Glick told the Austrians that he was not an official representative of the Israeli government. He said he came “as a representative of the people of Israel, of whom six million sons and daughters were slaughtered in Europe and who formed a wonderful country in the land of Israel.”
Glick asked the Austrians to act against anyone who tried to harm the State of Israel or the Jewish people. He promised to do whatever he could to strengthen relations between the two countries.
Internet streaming giant Netflix has reportedly begun production in Buenos Aires on a documentary miniseries probing the January 2015 murder of Alberto Nisman – the federal prosecutor who spent more than a decade investigating the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in the Argentine capital, and then later exposed the role of former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her colleagues in a cover-up of Iran’s responsibility for the atrocity.Israel must rule generously in Jerusalem
Reports in the Argentine press on Monday said that Catalan production company JWP had been commissioned by Netflix to produce the series. Founded by the British documentary film director Justin Webster, the company has produced award-winning documentaries on Spain and Latin America, including a film about the celebrated Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez and another on the Basque terrorist group ETA.
Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment on January 18, 2015, hours before he was due to deliver a complaint to the Argentine Congress that charged Kirchner, former Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, and several key aides and cabinet officials with having negotiated a pact with Iran that involved the cancelation of six “Red Notices” — international arrest warrants issued by global law enforcement agency Interpol — for the Iranian officials wanted in connection with the AMIA bombing. The pact was voided by Argentina’s Supreme Court following Kirchner’s electoral defeat by current President Mauricio Macri in November 2015.
Arab Jerusalemites—despite their Palestinian national identity—have come around to a pragmatic attitude toward Israeli authorities. . . . And there is a demonstrable linkage between Israeli investment in the welfare of eastern-Jerusalem Arabs and a reduction in terrorism. The neighborhoods that have most benefited from government and municipal budgets have become much quieter—with less crime and much less nationalistic violence. . . . [Thus] Israel can no longer ignore its responsibilities to develop the eastern half of the city.Muslim Call to Prayer in Israel
However, the challenge remains enormous, particularly with regard to education. There are more than 105,000 children in eastern-Jerusalem schools. The system is short 1,500 classrooms. . . . The city is building seven to ten new schools each year, but it is not nearly enough, and there is an acute shortage of qualified school principals. . . .
Overcrowding, rampant illegal home construction, and (consequently) grossly overburdened water and sewage infrastructures are the norm in many eastern-Jerusalem neighborhoods, with the worst example being Silwan in the heart of the city. Last year the municipality approved a master plan for new home building in Sur Baher and Umm Tuba in the southern part of the city; but again, much more is needed.
The situation is complicated by the [political] struggles within the Arab community of Jerusalem. Many local Arab activists seek partnership with Israel in order to advance their communities, . . . and some are even considering running this fall for election to the Jerusalem municipal council on local Arab slates—for the first time. But Fatah leaders and the Palestinian Authority seek to dissuade them from working with the municipality and are threatening the families of moderate Jerusalemite Arabs with ostracism and even death.
Are Israel's new proposed noise regulations on the Muslim call to prayer (Adhan) oppressive? Let's take a look at how the call to prayer is regulated around the world:
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