Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: AFP

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Tuesday, August 08, 2023

Palestinian journalists are being attacked daily - by Palestinians. World media and NGOs actively SUPPRESS this information.

Here is a list of attacks on journalists by Hamas, the PA and Palestinian protesters in just the past two weeks by the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA).

August 1:

The Palestinian General Intelligence Service had kidnapped the freelance journalist SAMI SAEED ALSAAI (43 years old) at around 12:00PM yesterday, Monday, in Nablus, and took him to an unknown place. According to the journalist’s wife, four masked men dressed in black came to the journalist’s workplace in two cars, one of which had yellow license plates, and kidnapped him at gunpoint.

MADA also strongly condemns the attack by members of the internal security of Hamas government in Gaza Strip against journalists in Gaza Strip while covering the peaceful demonstrations that took place therein, calling for an improvement in the living conditions of citizens. Individuals in civilian clothes - identifying themselves as members of the Internal Security Service - assaulted Palestine TV and Abu Dhabi TV reporter, journalist WALID ABDEL RAHMAN, while covering the peaceful event in Jabalia Camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, last Sunday. They insulted him and forced him to stop the coverage.

In the same context, the freelance journalist EHAB AL-FASFOUS was threatened by the investigation and internal security members while covering the same event in Khan Younes, southern Gaza Strip.

August 6:

The security services of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and the Internal Security Forces in Gaza Strip, have increased their aggression against journalists in a violent manner that threatens the professional work of journalists, which is a bad indicator of the reality of media freedoms that is witnessing bloody violations. For instance, the reporter, ALI AL-SAMOUDI, was injured by shrapnel in the head as a result of the shooting in Jenin camp yard, while the citizens were celebrating the shooting attack that took place in "Tel Aviv" yesterday, Saturday. The security personnel also targeted the reporter of "Quds News Network" MOHAMMED ABED with a gas bomb directly at the event.

This was preceded by a group of Al-Shabibah members assaulting a group of journalists at Hebron University a few days ago, during which journalist NIDAL AL-NATSHEH was flagrantly assaulted.

The situation in Gaza Strip is not any better than this, as the attacks of the Internal Security Service affected many journalists yesterday, Saturday, as the security services of Hamas Authority arrested a number of journalists, namely, MOHAMMED AL-BABA, the cameraman of the French Agency, and the journalist, BASHAR TALIB, for about 45 minutes inside Jabalia police station, north of Gaza City, before they were released after their cameras and mobile phones were searched.

The security members also arrested journalist MOHAMMED FAYEZ ABU AOUN, journalist YAHYA HASSOUNA, journalist MOHAMMED AL-HADDAD, and journalist IHAB AL-FASFOUS, who was attacked, and his phone was confiscated before it was returned to him. As for the journalist, MOHAMMED ISMAIL AL-HADDAD, he was threatened by a person in civilian clothes who identified himself as a member of the Investigation Department, as soon as he was filming, and informed him that "there is a decision to ban filming and asked him to stay away from the place”.

Meanwhile, journalist FOUAD JARADA and his colleague MUAMMAR ABU TABIKH were threatened via phone of a special number “not to engage in any journalistic work on the "We Want to Live" movement in Gaza”.

At least two of these journalists have received major media coverage when they were injured by Israeli forces.

Ali al-Samoudi was injured last year in the incident that killed Shireen Abu Akleh, and he was interviewed extensively at the time. This time, Palestinian and world media have not written a word about his being injured in the head by a bullet.

AFP cameraman Mohammed al-Baba was injured at a Gaza rally in 2018 by a gunshot blamed on Israel and that story was covered by wire services. But when Hamas arrests the same AFP journalist and confiscates his equipment, even AFP doesn't report it.

Perhaps even more shocking is that even though all these attacks and far more are documented by MADA, including in their monthly reports, the Committee to Protect Journalists has not said a word about Palestinian repression of press freedoms since February 2022. In that same time period they have issued dozens of alerts against Israel.

CPJ routinely reports on journalists injured and arrested worldwide - but ignores when it is done by Palestinian authorities. This means that even the major international NGO whose mission is to protect press freedoms is actively suppressing news of Palestinian violations of those freedoms.

(h/t GnasherJew)

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Arab media publish fake translation of Hatikva as a racist anti-Arab poem

Arabic and particularly Palestinian media have been spreading a new fake story over the past couple of days, claiming that the Jordanian ambassador to the UN confronted Benjamin Netanyahu at the General Assembly with the "real" racist lyrics of Israel's national anthem, Hatikvah.

In a session of the United Nations General Assembly attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jordan's ambassador to the United Nations, Mahmoud al-Hamoud, asked:

"Why is the Israeli national anthem not taught to our children in Arab schools and in Muslim countries as a kind of culture? Certainly knowledge of something is better than ignorance of it?.... Until every Arab and Muslim determines who his enemy is and prepares to confront him!"

He continued, saying: "Let us learn about an accurate literal translation of the Israeli national anthem, which is played on occasions and holidays and when receiving presidents and ambassadors in the Zionist entity (including Arab ambassadors)."

He wondered: "Why are they pressuring us to change our educational curricula and amend the interpretation of some Quranic verses, and it has never been suggested that they change their official national anthem?"

Al-Hamoud continued, saying: "What does the "Israeli" national anthem say? And why did the Jews choose this anthem for the Zionist entity when it carries hateful religious slogans for a country that claims to be secular, civilized, and democratic!"

He explained that the real translation of the Israeli national anthem is:

As long as there is a Jewish soul in the heart!
She longs forward to the east
Our hope is not made yet!
A dream of a thousand years on our land
Land of Zion and Jerusalem
Let him who is our enemy tremble
Let all the inhabitants of Egypt and Canaan tremble.
Let the inhabitants of Babylon tremble.
Let fear and terror hang over their skies
- When we plant our spears in their chests!
And we see their blood spilled!
And their heads cut off!
- Then we will be God's chosen people wherever God wants!

Al-Hamoud concluded his speech by saying: "The question that must be asked.. Who are the original terrorists, the masters of beheadings: the Muslim extremists, or the Jews!?"

It turns out this fake Hatikvah translation is at least five years old, and has surfaced every once in a while in Arabic media. AFP and Al Hurra debunked it years ago, but its too good a rumor to check.

In fact, since many Palestinians know Hebrew quite well, the Palestinian newspapers that have published this fake translation almost certainly know they are lying.

Do you know whose anthem is filled with violent imagery? Why, the Palestinian national anthem, known as "Fida'i" - "Warrior!"

Warrior, warrior, warrior,
Oh my land, the land of the ancestors
Warrior, warrior, warrior,
Oh my people, people of eternity

With my determination, my fire and the volcano of my vendetta
With the longing in my blood for my land and my home
𝄆 I have climbed the mountains and fought the wars
I have conquered the impossible, and crossed the frontiers 𝄇

With the resolve of the winds and the fire of the weapons
And the determination of my nation in the land of struggle
𝄆 Palestine is my home, and the path of my triumphal[b]
Palestine is my vendetta and the land of withstanding 𝄇

By the oath under the shade of the flag
By my land and nation, and the fire of pain
𝄆 I will live as a warrior, I will remain a warrior,
I will die as a warrior - until my country returns 𝄇

Yes, Elder's First Rule of Palestinian Projection ("whenever Palestinians accuse Israel of doing some crime, they are doing that exact crime, usually on a far grander scale than their accusations") remains in force, 16 years since I coined it.

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Palestinians still repeating the "flood libel"

In 2015, mainstream media did what it does best - parrot ridiculous Palestinian claims without checking - and reported that Israel opened dams to flood Gaza. Social media user made fun of AFP for being so stupid, and for once, AFP actually checked the facts and retracted its story, acknowledging that there were no "dams" in the Negev that Israel could open up to flood Gaza.

AFP said that its reporting was "shattering a long-held Palestinian myth."

Someone should tell the Palestinians that.

The mayor of Zawaida in Gaza, Sami Abu Muhaisen, said that "the occupation" deliberately flooded the eastern regions in the center of Gaza by opening dams and opening water and sewage culverts, which caused the flooding of agricultural lands, damage to crops, and the accumulation of water in large quantities in Salah al-Din Street.

There was also heavy flooding in Mecca this weekend, but Israel has not been blamed for that.

Yet.

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12/14 Links Pt2: No, Zionism isn’t out of date: Why the US arrests some terrorists but ignores others; Professor reveals pervasive antisemitism at University of Toronto Medical School

From Ian:

No, Zionism isn’t out of date

Ha’aretz columnist Anshel Pfeffer does not believe in Zionism. He doesn’t oppose it, he just thinks talking about it is a category mistake:

You cannot be either a Zionist or an anti-Zionist, he says, just as you cannot be a veteran of Iwo Jima unless you were born at least 90 years ago and fought in that battle. Zionism isn’t an ideology. It’s a program, or an ideological plan, to establish a state for Jews in the biblical homeland. And that program was fulfilled on May 14, 1948, when David Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s independence at the old Tel Aviv Museum. That’s it. Done.

"…believing that on the whole, founding the State of Israel was the right thing to do, doesn’t make you a Zionist any more than thinking that Oliver Cromwell was right to overthrow King Charles, makes you a Roundhead. It simply doesn’t matter what you think about long-ago events you didn’t take part in. Israel is a reality and it’s not going anywhere."

He’s wrong. There absolutely is such a thing as Zionist ideology, a set of basic principles that Zionists believe. And here they are:
-There is an am Yehudi, a Jewish people. You might think this is obvious, but Mahmoud Abbas denies it, and so do the “[insert nationality here] of the Mosaic persuasion” crowd, which includes the American Reform Movement.

-The survival of the Jewish people requires the Jewish state, a state that is more than just a state with a Jewish majority. The precise meaning of “more” differs according to the faction of the Zionist movement to which one belongs, but the Nation-State Law that was passed by the Knesset in 2018 is an example of a secular attempt to explicate that.

-Only in the Jewish state can a person fully realize his Jewish identity. You can still be a Zionist if you don’t believe that all Jews ought to live in the Jewish state, but Zionism includes the idea that diaspora life is sub-optimal even when it is not actively dangerous.

-One needn’t be a Jew to be a Zionist. Agree with the principles above and you are a Zionist, regardless of your own religion or ethnicity.

Pfeffer points out that there were religious and secular, socialist and revisionist Zionisms. This was true before 1948, and it’s still true today. But all of them affirm the principles above. The existence of factions doesn’t negate the truth behind an ideology. After all, these are Jews we are talking about!

Tom Stoppard and the Failure of ‘Diasporism’

As much as the contributions of Diaspora Jews should inspire pride and celebration, it has become clear that there has emerged no serious alternative other than Israel for those who would sustainably perpetuate specifically Jewish achievement and inquiry. Those of us in the Diaspora will not all move there—although Stoppard is here to remind us that Jews will always require a refuge from the forces of hatred that now seek Israel’s destruction. But we are called upon to support the Zionist project not only as a form of self-defense but also to continue providing the wider world with the fruits of Jewish labors. Leopoldstadt’s invocation of a potential Jewish state at the play’s beginning, and Israel’s existence at its end as the tiny remnant of the Merz and Jacobowicz families gathers in the once-grand apartment of assimilation in 1955, mark it as one of the most profoundly Zionist documents of our time.

It is a reflection of the durability and power of anti-Semitism that, even if the playwright had uncovered the facts of his own Jewish past in 1955 the way his young British character does, rather than in the 1980s, he would have risked a great deal by writing Leopoldstadt as a young man in the wake of his career-making success with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in 1966. He likely would have become known as a Jewish, rather than a British, playwright—a dramatist making a special pleading due to the tragedy visited upon his own family. No, it was his established reputation as the greatest living English dramatist that has enabled this unlikely production—among other things, Leopoldstadt has a cast of 38, the largest any play on Broadway has seen in generations. Therein lies yet another lesson about the limits of Diasporism.

The Hanukkah Queen Who Saved the Jews

A generation after the Hanukkah miracle, in the midst of great turmoil, Salome Alexandra defended Judaism and restored Jewish practice.

The story of Hanukkah is one of the best-known in Jewish history: how a small group of faithful Jews, led by the Maccabees, revolted against their Hellenist Greek rulers during the years 167-160 BCE, and restored the Temple in Jerusalem to Jewish worship once again.

Their unlikely military victory and the miracle of a single jug of oil burning in the Temple’s golden Menorah for eight days are celebrated during the holiday of Hanukkah. Less known is what came next.

The “Maccabee” brothers (named after one brother, Judas Maccabeus) established the Hasmonean royal dynasty that ruled the Jewish kingdom of Judea for over 200 years. Far from presiding over a peaceful nation, the Hasmonean rulers were mercurial, autocratic, and ruled a land continually on the brink of civil war. It fell to Queen Salome Alexandra - also known as Shlomit Alexandra and as Shlomzion - to stand up to some of the most terrifying dictators imaginable, champion traditional Judaism, and restore peace to Judea.

A key fact that’s often ignored in telling the Hanukkah story is that many Jews at the time embraced a Hellenist lifestyle, worshiping Greek deities and embracing Greek values. Within a generation of the Hanukkah miracle, the Jewish community was again riven into factions, most notably the Sadducees, who rejected the Talmud and many Jewish elements of a traditional Jewish lifestyle and who dominated the ruling classes, and the Pharisees who clung to Jewish traditions and lifestyles.

Queen Salome and her Wicked Husband
Queen Salome was born into a prominent scholarly family and married into royalty. She possessed incredible courage and calmness. Salome’s brother was Shimon ben Shetach, one of Judea’s most renowned rabbis and a champion of the Pharisee cause. When it became too dangerous for her brother to remain in Judea because of Sadducee persecution, Queen Salome hid him, as well as other rabbinic allies of traditional Judaism.

Iran's hypersonic missile threat - real or psy-ops?

AFP reports:

Iran has developed a hypersonic missile capable of penetrating all defense systems, General Amirali Hajizadeh, the commander of its Revolutionary Guards aerospace unit, claimed on Thursday.

Hypersonic missiles, like traditional ballistic missiles which can deliver nuclear weapons, can fly more than five times the speed of sound.

“This hypersonic ballistic missile was developed to counter air defense shields,” Hajizadeh said, quoted by Iran’s Fars news agency.

“It will be able to breach all the systems of anti-missile defense,” said the general, adding that he believed it would take decades before a system capable of intercepting it is developed.

“This missile, which targets enemy anti-missile systems, represents a great generational leap in the field of missiles.”

Iran was not known to be a leader in hypersonic missile technology, so this is almost certainly false. However, it indicates that this is what they want to do, and they do have expertise in missile tech altogether, so the threat needs to be taken seriously, in the coming years. Also, it is possible that Russia is sharing hypersonic tech with Iran.

And the threat is not only to Israel. An Iranian hypersonic missile, potentially equipped with nuclear warheads, threatens the entire world.

The US has been working on hypersonic missile defense for a while and does not have anything yet. It is a complex problem that requires multiple components from satellite to ships at sea. This video describes what the US is working on.

The US is not concentrating on using lasers for this, although they say they are assessing them as part of a multi-layered approach. I imagine that lasers would be difficult to use over large distances.

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11/08 Links Pt2: No More ADL; The Dangerous Mainstreaming of Kanye West and Kyrie Irving’s Brand of Antisemitism; First Israeli to Be Wounded by Gaza Rocket in Sderot to Become IDF Officer

From Ian:

No More ADL

To understand why, think, for a moment, about Kyrie Irving. What would the head of a serious version of the ADL have done? It’s actually pretty simple. First call attention to how messed up this situation is, not by issuing pompous statements with corporate logos slapped all over but by doing exactly what a bunch of Jewish kids did at a Brooklyn Nets home game earlier this month: wearing a T-shirt that says “Stop Anti-Semitism” in the front row of the stadium. Those kids probably invested a few hundred bucks, and in return received news coverage all over the world, appearing not as shadowy peddlers of indulgences but as what Jews actually are: outsiders getting pummeled left and right by bigots and haters.

Then, this ADL chief would go on TV and instead of cozying up to Sharpton, America’s greatest living pogromist, simply deliver the following speech: “I feel bad for Kyrie. I admire what seems like his willingness to seek out knowledge and to stand alone for what he thinks is true. But for all his alleged seeking, he still can’t find the right answer. He’s making the same mistake that millions have made throughout history—being smart and curious enough to wonder how the world works, but only finding imaginary Jews at the end of every road. This is the road to ignorance and misery, not to knowledge.”

Except, of course, that you can’t give that speech if your current or hoped-for donors are made up of the real thing Kyrie would uncover if he looked a bit more carefully: the very large corporations who have melded with government to create an almost impregnable, opaque, all-containing blob that controls American life, from dictating public health priorities to changing the way we produce and consume food.

Instead, all you can do is shame people who are confused and undereducated using the brute force you have at your disposal: corporate power. Cancel their contracts! Nix their ad campaigns! Make them bleed cash! Which, as we all saw this week, only amplifies the original noxious allegation.

This is why having no ADL would be so much better than having the one we currently have. Because of its own massive conflicts of interests, the ADL under Greenblatt may very well be , inadvertently or otherwise, contributing to the growth of antisemitism, not its diminishment.

This is as much of a philosophical question as it is a practical one. If your goal is to exterminate antisemitism—make the world’s most ancient and persistent hatred disappear, vanish, go kaput—then what we’ve seen from Greenblatt this week is understandable: Let’s educate or punish one hater at a time, until they’ve all reformed or disappeared. But if you believe, like me, that antisemitism will never go away, this approach is nothing more than a silly game of whack-a-mole. If we believe antisemitism is here to stay (and if you doubt it, do I have a few really good history books for you), then what you need is a real defense organization—one that doesn’t waste time with selling indulgences but instead forms bonds with groups and communities across the American spectrum, remains very vigilant to every attack no matter the perpetrator’s identity, and provides real education in large part by, ya know, speaking the truth clearly and unequivocally.

Here, then, is my solution to the problem that is Jonathan Greenblatt’s ADL: Let’s accept that the ADL is no longer a Jewish organization and ask for a divorce. Greenblatt can keep everything: His anti-racism, AstroTurf organization and all the corporate money trees he shakes on its behalf. We amcha Jews walk away with nothing—nothing, that is, but our dignity and our safety, both improved by no longer being pawns in a profit game that is endangering us more by the day.

A Little Piece of Ground

Elizabeth Laird is a renowned British children’s author, twice nominated for the prestigious Carnegie Medal. Ironically, it is her ability to tell a gripping story with vividly realized Arab protagonists that makes her novel A Little Piece of Ground so powerful – and so pernicious. (The metaphoric title reveals the author’s bias: Just as Israeli soldiers deny the boys of Ramallah “a little piece of ground” for soccer practice during the Second Intifada, so Israel denies the Palestinians their “little piece of ground.”)

The book was recently listed as required reading for sixth grade in the Newark, New Jersey public schools, a choice that has been challenged by the Zionist Organization of America.[1] This isn’t the first time the book has raised hackles.

Written in collaboration with Palestinian teacher Sonia Nimr, A Little Piece of Ground met with controversy from the moment it was published in Britain in 2003. Phyllis Simon, co-owner of a Vancouver, Canada, bookstore, urged Laird’s publisher (Macmillan) to reconsider the book, pointing out that “there is not even one mildly positive portrait of an Israeli in the entire book. . . . A Little Piece of Ground . . . is for children, the overwhelming number of whom clearly haven’t a clue about this conflict, and thus depend on books like this for the opinions they form about what goes on in the Middle East.”[2]

Laird’s answer was disingenuous. “The book is written through the eyes of a 12-year-old who just sees men with guns,” she wrote. “It would not have been true to my characters to do otherwise.”[3]

Perhaps, but who made the decision to paint the Middle East conflict exclusively through the eyes of a twelve-year-old Arab boy living in Ramallah during the Second Intifada? Karim sees his father humiliated at checkpoints; not only has he no idea why the Israelis have set these up in the first place, it’s a question he wouldn’t think to ask. Karim and his friends are confined inside by endless curfews which to them seem arbitrary, and there is no voice in the novel to explain them. Soldiers damage his school; are they just throwing their weight around, or are they looking for stashes of weapons? The reader isn’t told.

First Israeli to Be Wounded by Gaza Rocket in Sderot to Become IDF Officer

Shila Naamat was just one year and eight months old when a rocket from the Gaza Strip hit his home in the southern city of Sderot back in March 2002.

Shrapnel from the rocket moderately wounded Naamat, who was playing on the balcony of the home when the projectile landed, and was evacuated to a hospital in moderate condition

Naamat was the first Israeli civilian in Sderot to be wounded by rockets from the Palestinian enclave.

The incident happened when there was no safe space and bomb shelters on every corner of the bombarded city, including private homes. There were also no rocket alert sirens, and certainly, no Iron Dome that could protect the civilians.

Every Qassam rocket that was fired from the Strip at Sderot in the first few years had fatal and destructive consequences. Residents of the city and other communities near the Gaza border were forced to adapt to a new reality, which sadly continues to this day.

Naamat sustained a major wound to his leg and was fitted with platinum in his leg that has accompanied him all his life. But, he decided his injury will not hold him back. On the contrary, the injury eventually provided him with the needed drive to achieve his life goals - becoming an IDF officer.

"The IDF officer's training meant a lot to me, I learned many things about the IDF command, Israeli society, and of course the security system," Naamat says.

"I have more ambitions and I won't let my injury stop me, I want to reach senior commanding positions, and in the future do some public service, especially for the Israeli periphery."

"Me and my cousin, who is an Israeli Air Force officer, are working with the Sderot Youth Council to open up the young people of Sderot to important and commanding positions in the IDF.

Seven inconvenient and under-reported facts about the Munich Olympics massacre

Today is the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis and massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed.

There are a number of details about the event that do not get the publicity they deserve.

One is that the terror attack was financed by Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. The mastermind of the Munich attack, Mohammed Daoud Oudeh (Abu Daoud), says that both Yasir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas wished him luck and kissed him.

The second is that German security officials were tipped off three weeks before the attack by the German Embassy in Beirut from a Palestinian informant, and did not do anything to stop the attack.

The third inconvenient fact is that the Palestinian terrorists in Munich were aided by German neo-Nazis. At the time, it was assumed that German Leftists had been involved, but in this case the Palestinians allied with Nazis.

Another is that while the organization that took responsibility for the attack is still referred to a Black September, that organization was Fatah. Black September was a front for Fatah in order to publicly distance itself from terror. Abu Daoud was quoted in Arab media in 1972 saying, "There is no such organization as Black September. Fatah announces its own operations under this name so that Fatah will not appear as the direct executor of the operation." The US government confirmed this in a 1973 memo.

The hijackers were not simply professionals trying to arrange a prisoner. They were bloodthirsty, and as they killed weightlifter Youssef Romano, they castrated him in front of his teammates.

A sixth, and almost unbelievable, fact about Munich is what happened to the three surviving terrorists after the botched rescue attempt at the Munich airport. They were released less than two months after the attack, before going on trial, in exchange for hostages from a hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615 flight.

But that hijacking was, according to credible accounts, arranged by the Germans colluding with Fatah to get rid of the headache of jailing and trying the terrorists.

From a 2000 article in The Guardian:

Black September, the Palestinian terror group that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, was allowed by the German government to hijack a passenger jet two months later to provide a 'cover story' for the release of the three gunmen captured at the scene.

According to One Day in September - an Oscar-nominated documentary which is to be released in Britain in May - Bonn indicated to the terrorist group that it would give in to their demands should a certain aircraft - carrying no women and children - be hijacked. The Germans were keen to release the three jailed terrorists to avoid Black September fulfilling threats to carry out a series of bombings and hijackings.

On 29 October, 1972 - not even eight weeks after the Munich attack - a Lufthansa Boeing 727 on its way from Damascus, Syria, to Frankfurt was hijacked by two terrorists as it left Beirut airport. There were only 11 passengers on board, all male. The pilot was told to fly to Munich and the terrorists' demands were relayed to Bonn. Within hours the German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, gave in and the three men were handed over. The Israelis were not consulted.

And only last month, TheJC reported:

“We have found documents that state that the German government asked the Palestinian terror organisation to fake the hijack of a German plane in order to be able to set them free — and for doing so, a month after the heinous terrorist attack, the Palestinians were paid nine million dollars,” Dutch lawyer Carry Knoops-Hamburger, one of the team negotiating with the German government for compensation for the victims’ families, told the JC.

The final inconvenient fact about the Munich massacre is that it is still praised as "heroic" in Palestinian media and by Palestinian officials, including Abbas himself, today. It is obvious why Abbas didn't apologize for the attack when asked by a reporter last month - because he still considers it an achievement, not a source of embarrassment.

Not one of these facts were mentioned in, for example, AFP's summary of the massacre.

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Gaza staged fauxtography 2022

As sure as the flower after the rain come the obviously staged photos in the rubble of any Israel/Gaza fighting.

Like these:

I don't know if the AFP photographer told the subjects where to stand, or if the Palestinian terror groups that run Gaza set up an event for kids in the rubble and called the photographers. (As we will see, it is probably the latter.)

Either way, this is not close to spontaneous. It is staged for maximum effect.

The photos were taken in Rafah. Israel destroyed the building where Khaled Mansour, the Islamic Jihad commander for southern Gaza, was. The total damage is restricted to that building and surrounding buildings - less than one city block.

If you want to cheer up kids, why take them specifically to the most dangerous place in all of Rafah? Why set up a pop-up summer camp in on top of unstable rubble and exposed electrical wires, when you can move a short distance away and be in a neighborhood that looks like this?

And look at how many photographers there were to cover this story!

Photos like this don't reveal the truth: they are specifically meant to hide it. And the journalists happily do their part, to show Gaza the way Hamas wants it to be shown - and nothing else.

(h/t Yoni)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Jabaliya: How The Media Listened To Israel's Side Of The Story And Why (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

In the midst of Operation Breaking Dawn, on Saturday night, at about 9pm, a rocket explosion in Jabaliya in Gaza killed 4 children.

As expected, Israel was blamed.

But this time, unexpectedly, Israel was able not only to present its case that it was not responsible, but also to get the media to present a balanced report that presented Israel's contention that the explosion was the result of a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Israel Gets The Media To Notice

The results were media reports that actually were balanced. The Times of Israel had a survey of some of the reporting:

CNN reported:

In one incident Saturday, four children were among seven people killed in an explosion in Jabaliya. The Palestinian Health Ministry initially said the blast was caused by an Israeli airstrike. Israel rejected the claim and said it was the result of errant rocket fire, and released a video showing what it said was the Islamic Jihad rocket sharply changing course in the air and hitting the building.

The New York Times referred to the incident twice. First, on Saturday:

Three children were also killed on Saturday, though it was not immediately clear whether they were hit by an Israeli strike or a misfired Palestinian rocket. The Israeli military said they were killed by a failed Islamic Jihad rocket launch.

Then on Sunday:

Israel said some of those children were killed on Saturday night when an Islamic Jihad rocket misfired and fell short in the northern Gaza Strip. The Israeli military said it had not been operating in that area at the time. Islamic Jihad has not commented on the Israeli claim.

France's AFP quoted Israeli sources that “it had ‘irrefutable’ evidence that a stray rocket fired by Islamic Jihad was responsible for the deaths of several children in Jabalia, northern Gaza, on Saturday.”

Al Jazeera reported:

At least four children were killed in a blast close to the Jabaliya refugee camp on Saturday, according to Hamas, the group that governs the Gaza Strip. It blamed Israel for the deaths, but the military denied any responsibility, saying the explosion was caused by a failed rocket launched by Islamic Jihad. Al Jazeera could not verify the claims immediately.

On Saturday, The Associated Press reported

The Israeli military said an errant rocket fired by Palestinian militants killed civilians late Saturday, including children, in the town of Jabaliya, in northern Gaza. The military said it investigated the incident and concluded ‘without a doubt’ that it was caused by a misfire on the part of Islamic Jihad. There was no official Palestinian comment on the incident.

However, by Sunday the AP apparently decided that in the interests of balance, instead of presenting the two sides as to who was responsible, it would not address the question of responsibility at all and merely reported “among the dead were six children and four women” -- without any mention the possibility that some of them may have been killed by misfired PIJ rockets.

On the other hand, is the German news site Bild, whose headline was straightforward without hedging, "Palestinian missile kills civilians in Gaza."

What Did Israel Do Differently This Time?

One of the criticisms of Israel when it comes to getting its side of the story out to the world is that it is just too slow, allowing the terrorists and Israel-haters plenty of time to get their version of things out and presented before the world audience. Israel just does not react quickly enough.

Not this time.

Lahav Harkov addresses this in her article How Israel shot down false reports on Jabaliya explosion. Israel already started responding on the same day -- Saturday.

“We identified the potential for damage from this incident very quickly,” Head of the Public Diplomacy Directorate Lior Haiat said on Sunday. “We understood it could be a public diplomacy catastrophe that could lead to diplomatic harm that could change the direction of the campaign.”

Within minutes, Haiat, IDF Spokesperson Ran Kohav, representatives of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), the Prime Minister’s Office and the Foreign Ministry discussed the incident. Defense officials were quickly able to determine not only that the IDF was not responsible, but that Islamic Jihad very clearly was.

Haiat was able to coordinate a media plan with the others within an hour. [emphasis added]

Here is Israel's statement that came out the very same day, via Twitter:

And that was only the beginning.

The statement was translated into multiple languages and delivered to Israeli embassies worldwide, which then passed the statement on to local media.

The IDF posted a statement as well:

Keren Hajioff, PM Lapid's International Spokeswoman made a video for TV and social media, where she made a similar statement:

Tonight, Islamic Jihad terrorists in Gaza fired a rocket towards Israeli children, but ended up killing Gazan children instead.

This is the truth about what happened ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/sLVLWlU0tS
— Keren Hajioff (@kerenhajioff) August 6, 2022

Another welcome step, considering Israel's reputation of not dealing well with the media, was Culture and Sports Minister Chilli Tropper being released from an ongoing Security Cabinet meeting so that he could speak to Israeli media on behalf of the government.

Of course, it helped that Israel was able to provide videos to support its claim:

Palestinians accusing Israel of killing 5 kids yet at 20:40 a rocket barrage was reported into Israel. At the same time, the news broke of massacre in Jabaliya in which 5 children were killed. The IDF confirmed NO ATTACKS were carried out in the area at that time by Israel. pic.twitter.com/kIX72TnxR5
— Emily Schrader - אמילי שריידר (@emilykschrader) August 6, 2022

Now that Israel has demonstrated the ability to get its message across and reported in the media, what Israel needs is the ability to do this consistently.

Maybe it can even do a better job in presenting its side in the death of Abu Akleh.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Read all about it here!

Somehow, Gaza's beaches are clean this year. But I thought Israel didn't allow sewage treatment facilities to be built!

When Gaza suffers from environmental catastrophes, Israel is blamed because it supposedly blocks lifesaving infrastructure from being set up.

Yet this year, Gaza's beaches have re-opened after being closed due to tons of sewage being dumped into the sea.

AFP reports:

Palestinians in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip are rediscovering the pleasures of the Mediterranean Sea, after authorities declared the end of a long period of hazardous marine pollution.

Marine pollution has worsened in recent years in Gaza, where insufficient wastewater solutions have turned the Mediterranean into a dump.

The problem has been further exacerbated by the dilapidated infrastructure of the impoverished and overcrowded enclave.

[S]ix months ago, a German-funded plant began operating in central Gaza, and now treats 60,000 cubic metres (more than 2 million cubic feet) of wastewater per day, which is half the enclave's sewage, according to Mohammed Masleh, an official at Gaza's environment ministry.

This is just the first phase of the project, and eventually, the plant could treat all wastewater in the territory.

The quality of marine water in Gaza has already improved significantly.

Now, according to samples collected by Gazan authorities, two-thirds of the enclave's beaches are suitable for swimming, said Masleh.

How can this be? Isn't there still a blockade where Israel is depriving Gaza of basic necessities needed for living?

Could it be that Israel never blocked materials for treating wastewater to begin with, and the problems came because the PA and Hamas didn't prioritize the quality of life of the people they are responsible for?

According to Reliefweb, once Israel approved the project, it took only four years to build this sewage treatment plant.

The media blames Israel for everything wrong in Gaza and remains strangely silent about Palestinian dysfunction and petty conflicts between the PA and Hamas that are the real root of the majority of Gaza's problems.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The "flood libel" returns for this year's rainy season in Gaza

It's been raining heavily in the Levant, causing some localized flooding throughout the region.

And, like every year, Gaza officials are blaming their own flooding on Israel opening up non-existent dams.

The Nusseirat Municipality in the central Gaza Strip "confirmed" that the "Israeli occupation" opened the dams around of Wadi Beit Hanoun, threatening an environmental catastrophe, as the opening of dams leads to the flooding of the stream and the flooding of neighboring areas and houses.

The head of Hamas's Winter Emergency Committee, Zuhdi Al-Ghariz, also said that "the Israeli occupation opened dams in the east and north of the Gaza Strip on Sunday, which threatens to cause a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe for the people of the Strip."

Back in 2015, after AFP parroted the absurd claims to widespread derision, the French press agency belatedly went to the Negev to see if any dams existed and found that it was a Palestinian conspiracy theory with no basis in reality.

In fact, some of the responsibility for the flooding from Wadi Gaza comes from Gazans themselves.

"Wadi Gaza is liable to flood in an area which is about 70-100 metres wide but in some of these places, there has been illegal construction and cultivation, which has reduced this area to 15 or 20 metres," Munther Shoblak, a senior official in Gaza's water utility, told AFP at the time.

Notice that this year the libelers are emphasizing blaming Israel for the "environmental catastrophe" aspect. Only last week, the anti-Israel graphic designers at Visualizing Palestine (favored by Human Rights Watch) accused Israel of - get this - "climate apartheid." Because, you know, the Jews control the weather.

They also threw in "green colonialism," "greenwashing" and "environmental racism."

Throw them in a blender and pour them out and the letters all spell out "Antisemitism."

The Flood Libel returns - with a new twist

From Middle East Monitor:

Israel yesterday opened one of the gates of its rainwater stores east of Gaza, allowing rainwater to flood large swathes of Palestinian land, Ma’an reported.

The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement that the water drowned “hundreds of dunams of agricultural lands and damaged barley and wheat crops.”

According to the statement, the water storage area was located in the east of Shuja’iyya neighbourhood in the east of Gaza city.

This absurd accusation was popular a few years ago. In 2015 AFP even published the accusations. Juan Cole and HRW's Sarah Leah Whitson doubled down. But when the truth was pointed out, AFP didn't just issue a correction, but it published a full debunking of the libel and made an accompanying video showing it was a complete lie.

The accusation of Israel opening floodgates has since died down - until now.

(The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture referred to is the Hamas version, not the PA version. )

But then Middle East Monitor goes even further

Israel builds a number of reservoirs to stop rainwater from running through the Gaza valleys in winter. These prevent Palestinians in the enclave from storing rainwater to irrigate their crops and to fill underground wells.

Israel builds reservoirs in the desert just to deprive Palestinians of rainwater??

Just more lies about Israel being reported and retweeted by the usual crowd of Israel haters.

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AFP publishes a detailed retraction of #FloodLibel (UPDATE: Video)

Even though it is days too late, it is the best demolition of the "flood libel" that the mainstream media has published yet:

Tzeelim (Israel) (AFP) - Once again this winter, following days of very heavy rainfall across the region, the banks of a riverbed running through central Gaza were breached, flooding dozens of Palestinian homes.

For the residents, there was no doubt: Israel was responsible after deliberately opening "a dam" to flood the enclave.

But an examination of the facts on the Israeli side tells another story, shattering a long-held Palestinian myth.

People living in Wadi Gaza say flooding happens every year after heavy rain, creating yet another challenge for those struggling to survive in the tiny coastal territory.

Residents of the Gaza Strip have lived through three wars in the past six years and are unable to leave due to an Israeli blockade.

That Israel, the invisible enemy on the other side of the fence, would flood Gaza in a bid to make life even worse is therefore accepted as fact -- as is the alleged existence of one or more dams upstream controlled by the Jewish state.

Following the latest flood at the weekend, the local authorities in Gaza on Sunday published an "urgent" statement which reiterated the claim that Israel was to blame.

AFP reported these allegations on Sunday February 22, in the form of a video and photos showing the flooding in the village of Al-Mughraqa in central Gaza.

The script of the video and the photo captions said Israel had opened the sluice gates of a dam. And the video included interviews with residents openly accusing the Jewish state.

The AFP images, in particular the video, unleashed a scathing response on social networks.

The Israeli authorities denied the information and said they had allowed four high-power water pumps into Gaza ahead of the storm in order to cope with any potential flooding.

The criticism was even more acute because Israel itself had suffered from flooding in the south.

Al-Mughraqa is located on the edge of Wadi Gaza, a river which is dry most of the year and that has its source in the southern West Bank. The watercourse then runs through the Negev desert and Gaza before reaching the Mediterranean.

In Israel, the section which links up with Gaza is known as Nahal Besor.

"In Nahal Besor, there are no dams that can be opened or closed, meaning that there is nothing that can cause or prevent a flood," said Nehemia Shahaf, head of the Drainage and Rivers Authority in the Negev area.

"To my knowledge there is no dam on the Israeli side and terrain is not suited to the construction of a dam," she told AFP.

Trottier believes that due to the heavy rains, "the waters gathered naturally and it flooded."

She said there were "a lot of myths about the question of water in the Palestinian territories and Israel."

Israeli experts say that the volume of water which flooded the river last week was unusually large due to the heavy rainfall, with an estimated five million cubic metres passing through Nahal Besor. The last time it happened was in 2010.

"It was a lot for one storm," explained Boaz Kretschmer, head of strategy at Eshkol Regional Council, the local authority in an area of Israel flanking central and southern Gaza.

"We had 30-40mm of rain across the whole region, in the Negev, in Hebron, across the whole drainage basin and of course, the water ended up in Gaza."

What does exist here is a low stone structure, barely a metre high, next to a shallow concrete channel, which is sometimes referred to as a "diversion dam" -- whose purpose is to slow the flow of water so some of it can be diverted into a nearby reservoir for irrigation purposes, Kretschmer explained.

It has no gates, nor openings, and when the flood waters hit, they simply glide over it as if it did not exist.

"If it does anything, it actually reduces the quantity of water flowing towards Gaza, and not the opposite," Shahaf said.

"We don't try and stop the flow of water. That would be impossible -- it has incredible power," explained Kretschmer.

"There have been many dreams and plans in the past about how to stop the water because it comes in such a quantity that it could save the Negev. But all attempts to channel the floodwaters have failed. It's just not possible."

Experts believe that the flooding in the impoverished Gaza Strip, which is home to 1.8 million people and has been languishing under an Israel blockade since 2006, was likely exacerbated by chronic infrastructure problems and a flurry of illegal construction close to the riverbed.

But Munther Shoblak, a senior official in Gaza's water utility, said the Israelis "are not free from responsibility".

"They know people live on the other side of the border and they could have informed us that the water was coming.

"As usual, they didn't."

But he also acknowledged "some Palestinian responsibility" for the flooding.

"Wadi Gaza is liable to flood in an area which is about 70-100 metres wide but in some of these places, there has been illegal construction and cultivation, which has reduced this area to 15 or 20 metres," he told AFP.

I added a comment, which is not visible as of this writing:

Better late than never.

AFP might want to add that the Palestinian Authority, not only Hamas, also blamed Israel for the floods, even releasing a statement that they could not believe that the international community wasn't condemning Israel for opening the mythical dams.

(h/t Michaloush)

UPDATE:

(h/t Rudi)

Flood libel, part 2

Yesterday, I pointed out a false Ma'an story claiming that Israel deliberately opened up "dams" to flood Gaza with excess rainwater. As I pointed out, there are no dams near Gaza; there are some reservoirs but no evidence that they released any water.

This is one of those obvious lies that start getting believed by being repeated year after year, and even AFP ended up reporting that Israel opened up dams without doing a modicum of fact checking. ("Journalist" Max Blumenthal repeated the lie as well, as did Radio France International.)

Today, the claims were proven to be lies, as CAMERA reports:

Regarding the claim that Israel opened dams, thereby flooding Gaza, a spokesman for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) told CAMERA:

The claim is entirely false, and southern Israel does not have any dams. Due to the recent rain, streams were flooded throughout the region with no connection to actions taken by the State of Israel.

Prior to the storm, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories allowed the transfer of four water pumps belonging to the Palestinian Water Authority from Israel into Gaza to supplement the 13 pumps already in the Gaza Strip in dealing with any potential flooding throughout the area.
In addition, Nechemia Shahaf, the head of the Drainage Authority for the Shakma-Besor Region, confirmed to CAMERA that there are no dams which can be opened and closed in southern Israel. Shahaf said, "There is a diverting dam one meter high which directs water to reservoirs. This is a low dam which cannot be opened or closed." He also noted that the singular dam, which cannot be opened, is next to Kibbutz Gvulot, and approximately 20 kilometers away from Gaza.

But that was only one of the false stories claiming that Israel floods Palestinians.

IMEMC and Palestine News Network claimed that somehow Israel managed to flood a "refugee" camp by opening "barrages":

Aida refugee camp north Bethlehem city has drowned after Gilo Israeli settlement opened its barrages, throwing all excess rain and melted snow water onto the camp.

Aida camp is adjacent to the Israeli apartheid wall, which is backed by the Gilo settlement northwest, that opened the barrages to flood the homes of refugees.

The head of water pumps in the camp, Sami Hmedan, said that Israeli occupation authorities opens the barrage water with disregard to the Palestinians and without any official concerns.

Gilo as seen from Aida. Where are the "barrages"?

The only "barrage" between Gilo and Aida is the security barrier. If anything, that protected Aida from excessive flooding.

Or are they saying that those devious Israelis removed the "apartheid wall" to flood Arabs and then quickly put it back?

Who knows what crazy slander they will come up with next. But we do know that a percentage of those lies will end up in AFP and other mainstream media, because if there is something that Palestinian Arabs have learned over the years, it is that repeating their lies gets results.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv, Judge Dan, Bob Knot, Nurit Baytch, Rudi Roth)

The most expensive, expansive anti-Israel initiative just ended - and no one noticed (update)

This weekend was the final session of the "Russell Tribunal on Palestine."

"Jury"

Founded four years ago, the "tribunal" was from the start meant to be a kangaroo court to damn Israel. Using rabid Israel-haters like Roger Waters, Cynthia McKinney, Ronnie Kasrils and a host of others to lend it legitimacy, it would hold sessions in different cities and pretend to call "witnesses" to be evaluated by "jurors" who were all in on the scam from the start.

It held its first session in Barcelona in 2010 and from there went to London, Cape Town and New York, each time receiving less and less coverage.

This weekend, the "tribunal" wrapped up its pre-determined findings in Brussels. What was supposed to be its crowning achievement ended with barely a whisper, as there has been literally no news coverage of its final weekend.

I tuned into their webcast this morning to see that the final session had less than three dozen viewers - worldwide.

Keep in mind that this effort at delegitimizing Israel has cost hundreds of thousands of euros. Their budget for the Cape Town session alone was €190,000, so almost certainly the entire sorry exercise cost close to a million euros, paid by far-left anti-Israel extremists.

For all that money, effort and attempts to recruit D-list celebrities, the only articles about the sessions themselves can be found in the echo chamber of the anti-Israel sites like Mondoweiss. Even 972mag and Electronic Intifada criticized the sessions, for differing reasons.

This weekend, the final session wasn't even mentioned by Mondoweiss either!

The Zionist community gets upset, and rightly so, at these constant attempts to delegitimize Israel. We are so often on the defensive that we don't always notice that the haters generally have very little support outside their own circles.

In this case, however, the "Russell Tribunal on Palestine" was by any yardstick an expensive, time consuming, epic failure.

UPDATE: AFP did decide to do a generic story. Its best quote comes at the end:

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP: "They can write what they like, they only represent themselves. It's a private body with no legal or political weight and has moral weight only among its members."

"It has no political or legal significance, it is an ideological and propaganda document that people write for their like-minded friends."