Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Academic fraud

Showing posts with label Academic fraud. Show all posts

Sunday, May 08, 2016

"Intellectual" believes that Saudi Arabia gives Israel billions of dollars a year

Seventh-rate academic Juan Cole writes that anti-Zionism cannot have anything to do with antisemitism, and he has five "intellectuals" to prove it, quoting an article in TeleSUR.

One of the towering examples of intellect is David Palumbo-Liu, who I've shown can get an astonishing number of facts wrong in a single paragraph.

On that very same day, that towering intellectual Palumbo-Liu tweeted this:

Did Money Seal Israeli-Saudi Alliance? https://t.co/1W8cLIpOxG via @truthout
— David Palumbo-Liu (@palumboliu) May 9, 2016

The article he links to, at conspiracy-theory hotbed TruthOut, says this:

According to a source briefed by US intelligence analysts, the Saudis have given Israel at least $16 billion over the past 2 ½ years, funneling the money through a third-country Arab state and into an Israeli "development" account in Europe to help finance infrastructure inside Israel. The source first called the account "a Netanyahu slush fund," but later refined that characterization, saying the money was used for public projects such as building settlements in the West Bank.

So the "intellectual" that academic Juan Cole thinks is so trustworthy believes that Saudi Arabia sends far more money to Israel and the US does - $6 billion annually - in order to build Jewish settlements (and turn the "Israel Lobby" to their advantage, of course.)

And the source is impeccable: "a source briefed by US intelligence analysts." How much more reliable can you get?

It's fun looking at how easily anti-Israel "academics" can not only lie but also believe the most absurd things, as long as it fits with their pre-existing biases of Israel being the world's most evil regime. Any pretense of academic rigor is not only missing, but actively discouraged.

It is a wonder that colleges employ these quacks.

Meanwhile, I need to ask the Saudis to send me a few hundred million, because I am very influential, as Electronic Intifada admits. As the US head of the Jewish Electronic Media Lobby, I can definitely help the Saudis achieve their political aims.

For a price.

UPDATE: Another "alternative news" site is claiming that Saudi Arabia gave $80 million to Netanyahu's re-election campaign, pretending that this was a Panama Papers revelation. Can't wait to see which intellectual giants will retweet that one.

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Another lie by "academic" Noura Erakat (UPDATE)

It's been less than a week since we saw an absolute lie from Noura Erakat, who teaches law at George Mason University and has taught at Georgetown and Temple U as well, according to her webpage.

Here's her latest:

While her last lie came from her quoting a thoroughly unreliable source, this one she made up from scratch.

Literally no one, even the most vehement anti-Israel sources, claim that Israel killed 100 members of the Samouni family in the 2008-2009 Gaza war.

The event she is referring to happened in January 2009. For reasons that are unclear, Israel bombed a house with over 20 members of the Samouni family after they were told to go there by Israeli forces.

One of the Samouni "civilians" killed

Several members of the Samouni family were Islamic Jihad Al Quds Force members, and Arabic sources at the time of the battle in Zaytoun bragged that their fighters barricaded themselves in civilian houses before attacking Israeli soldiers.

It seems unlikely that the Israelis who ordered the airstrike were aware of the number of civilians in the house; UAV images indicated that there were armed fighters in the house and the order was given to bomb it but there doesn't seem to have been proper communications with the ground forces who gathered the family into the house to begin with. There was active fighting in the neighborhood at the time.

Regardless, Erakat is wrong on the date, overtly lying about the casualties, and ignoring the fact that there were valid military targets in the house.

If she lies so easily in public where she can be fact-checked, imagine how much she lies to her students in private!

UPDATE: In response to my calling her out on her lies, Erakat tweeted

As a critical thinker/scholar I create space for the narrative of the oppressed & scrutinize the history written by the powerful #Gaza
— Noura Erakat (@4noura) May 6, 2016

And then tweeted (twice)

Tho the lives of marginalized communities are fit 4 fiction, our truth speaks 4 itself. We see u & ourselves w/o blinders. #PrivilegeBubbles
— Noura Erakat (@4noura) May 6, 2016

It's really funny how things that might sound intelligent in the university environment look so stupid when taken out of that bubble.

Of course there are different ways of looking at events, but Erakat is justifying making up facts to "create space for the narrative of the oppressed."

And if she needs to lie to support her narrative, it is probably because the truth doesn't do a good enough job for her purposes.

Which means that what she calls "narrative" is more accurately characterized as "propaganda."

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Academic fraud Noura Erakat gets Palestinian unemployment numbers way wrong

Noura Erakat is one of the more prominent of pro-Palestinian so-called academics in the US. She writes weighty papers pretending that Israel has no legal right to defend itself whatsoever, and her sycophants eat it up.

She has proven yet again that her interest in truth-telling is nil.

She tweeted:

She is quoting Middle East Monitor which in turn is quoting Qudsnet, two highly unreliable media outlets - and ones that this assistant professor of law trusts completely.

In fact, the 2015 unemployment rate in Gaza, released today, is at 41%, a little better than it was in 2014!

It is the unemployment rate of women that is at 60%, and the quality Palestinian media that Noura Erakat relies on for her pseudo-facts got it wrong.

I'm not trying to argue that Gaza is a paradise. But Erakat simply believed that the unemployment rate there went up by some 20 points in very little time when in fact it went down.

There were some other interesting facts in the annual May Day labor report that Noura would not want you to know.

Regarding wage employees in the West Bank, more than half of the employees 51% work in the private sector compared with 25% in the public sector and 24% work in Israel and Israeli settlements.

24% of all West Bank employees are employed by Israelis - and they are paid more than twice what their counterparts are paid. This means that some 40% of the wages paid to West Bank employees are coming from Israeli employers! (h/t Gabriel for fixing my math...)

If Gaza was not run by terrorists, its labor statistics would be dramatically better. But people like Noura Erakat will never admit that simple, obvious fact - because they are more interested in finding new ways to bash Israel than to actually help Palestinians.

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BET News correspondent/CNN commentator advocates boycotting Israel

Marc Lamont Hill is a political news host at the BET network, although I have a hard time taking anyone seriously as a supposed newscaster who chooses to do TV appearances wearing a T-shirt.

But he is a former frequent guest on Fox News and has also appeared numerous times on CNN.

Here he is proving that he is a fraud both as a supposed news host and willing to make claims out of ignorance as well.

Yes, this is another professor who wants to curtail academic freedom in the name of academic freedom.

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Intersectionality: BDS professor links campus rape to Israel

Simona Sharoni is a professor, Israel-hater, BDSer and was one of those who gave Rachel Corrie college credit to go to Israel with the ISM.

Her niche in the loony Left world is to say that (because of "intersectionality") there is a link between Israel's existence and rape on college campuses.

While the idea of intersectionality had some merit when it was first defined, nowadays it is a catch-all buzzword to mean that the Jewish state is the very definition of evil.

From the far left Alternet site:

Why Feminists Should Care About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Dr. Simona Sharoni is a feminist scholar, researcher, and activist who has focused her career on the gendered nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Currently a Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Plattsburgh, Dr. Sharoni champions the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement...

In her recent academic work, Dr. Sharoni has been exploring the relevancy of the BDS campaign to a praxis of transnational feminist solidarity.

A few weeks ago, Dr. Sharoni spoke at an event at Columbia University, co-hosted by both Palestine student activist groups and No Red Tape, the anti-sexual assault group launched in January 2014.

Dr. Sharoni asks questions like, “What do Israeli Apartheid and the campus sexual assault crisis have in common? How can a feminist intersectional analysis help us understand violence at the heart of both cases? How can we use this comparative analysis to advocate for survivors of violence and to demand accountability for perpetrators?”

Aviva Stahl: Let’s start at the beginning. Why is BDS or what’s happening with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a feminist issue?

Dr. Simona Sharoni: Firstly, there is the fact that there is a direct connection between the violence of the occupation and sexual and gender based violence against Palestinian and Israeli Jewish women. The highly militarized conflict has gender dimensions.

For example, during my military service, we started raising the issue of the connection between the violence of the occupation and violence against women, because in Israel, men who serve, even after their mandatory military service, have their weapons in their home until they’re 55. There were many murders of women—intimate partner violence, which they used to call in Israel crimes of passion—that were actually done with weapons provided by the state.

By this logic, cookbook publishers are linked to women who stab their husbands with kitchen knives.

...BDS is a movement that emerged in response to a call for solidarity. Palestinian women’s groups were part of that broad civil society group that called for solidarity.

So feminists should be Zionist because of women-run Zionist organizations that have been around for over a hundred years.

Aviva: Can you talk a little bit about some of the parallels between Israeli Apartheid and the campus sexual assault crisis?

Dr. Sharoni: Power is made invisible in the narration of both the Palestinian-Israel conflict and campus sexual assault. Focus is placed on the relationship, not on the system.

In other words, it’s not a conflict between two parties on an equal playing field, even when it’s a healthy relationship. For example when we talk about what’s happening on college campuses—sexism and rape culture, interfere with [that possibility for equality.]

As for Israelis and Palestinians—the discourse is that there’s a “cycle of violence.” And of course it’s not a cycle of violence. There’s a history of colonization, and a settler-colonial movement—that sowed the seeds for this conflict. So the violence stems from that, it doesn’t stem from, “this side did this to the other side.”

We have to highlight these structural power inequalities and the way that violence is embedded in them.

I guess police, corporate executives, government officials and teachers are inherently prone to violence because they do not have an equal relationship with the people that they have power over.

Intellectual-sounding arguments fall apart very easily when the same arguments cannot work in other contexts. What is the common denominator? The fact that a lot of people hate Israel and need to justify their hate ex-post facto!

It’s a feminist idea, based on intersectional feminist analysis that views gender oppression as systemic and intertwined with other forms of systemic oppression. Postcolonial feminism addresses specifically feminist critiques of settler colonialism. The problem is that for many liberal Jewish feminists, the idea of treating Zionism as a settler colonial project is new and challenges how they were brought up to view Israel.

If we re-conceptualize the injustice of Palestine, and reframe it by taking an intersectional look at multiple oppressions and multiple struggles, then it makes sense. If you build a movement that moves away from narrow identity politics to coalition politics, you’re going to have people who are not comfortable, because they still have this single issue, one-identity understanding of the struggle.

But Jews who are the victims of antisemitic violence - like yesterday's bus bombing - cannot claim to be intersectionalized with feminism, even though there are plenty of women victims.

Why not? Because, (handwaving, yadda-yadda), Israel!

Here Sharoni almost admits that the real reason to link the issues is a strategy to delegitimize Israel, not because there is any merit in her laughable arguments.

Aviva: What is the importance of broad-based solidarity movements?

Dr. Sharoni: I think strategically, making the connection between the two struggles [Israeli Apartheid and campus sexual assault] makes sense. We do need to move from this narrowly defined strategies of identity politics—the idea that the group that is most hurt, and most targeted, has the burden of organizing…

The problem with how "intersectionality" is used nowadays is that it can be used as a bludgeon against anything. It is a fraudulent idea because the same logic can be used to come to opposite conclusions - in fact, opposite conclusions that make far more sense. So for example, the widespread and well-known cases of sexual abuse against female anti-Israel activists by Palestinians would indicate a far more direct relationship between Palestinians and rape.

An anti-Zionist professor at UCLA is accused of sexual assault - yet using the "logic" of people like Sharoni, this should indicate a much stronger link between anti-Zionism and rape than she claims Israel has.

Here's one more "intersectional" relationship that is stronger than any of the absurd theories that Sharoni espouses:

She is one of the mentors who awarded Rachel Corrie college credit to go to "Palestine" to protest Israel. If it wasn't for her, Corrie would be alive today. She is linked to Rachel Corrie's death!

Murderer!

See how easy it is to come up with linkages when you don't have to worry about things like logic, causality or consistency?

This all shows that the anti-Israel academic crowd are frauds.

It is no surprise that Sharoni is one of the frauds who signed a letter to McGraw Hill asking them to reinstate the Map that Lies in a textbook that had no reason to refer to it to begin with.

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A useful list of academic frauds who demand textbooks publish lying anti-Israel propaganda

The "Jewish Voice for Peace" group seems very upset that McGraw-Hill removed a textbook from circulation after I showed that it included a false piece of anti-Israel propaganda.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 12, 2016

Dozens of Prominent Academics Urge McGraw-Hill Education to Reverse Decision to Censor Palestinian Loss of Land Maps

Last month, publishing giant McGraw-Hill Education withdrew and destroyed copies of a US college level textbook because of complaints from supporters of Israel over a series of maps showing loss of Palestinian land from 1946, shortly before Israel was established, to 2000.

In response to this shocking and outrageous act of censorship of the Palestinian narrative from US schoolbooks, dozens of respected Palestinian, Israeli, and American academics have signed onto the enclosed open letter calling on McGraw-Hill Education to reverse its decision. Signatories include Rashid Khalidi, Noura Erakat, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Sarah Schulman, Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappé, and Angela Davis.

Here is the letter they signed. Keep in mind that these people are considered "academics."

Academics Urge McGraw-Hill Education to Reverse Decision to Destroy Textbook

We, the undersigned, urge McGraw-Hill Education to reverse its recent decision to withdraw and destroy the US college level textbook, “Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World”, which was made following complaints about a series of maps showing loss of Palestinian land from 1946 to 2000.

This blatant act of censorship, in response to complaints from those who seek to suppress a free exchange of knowledge and ideas about Israel and Palestine, is shocking and unacceptable.

The maps in question are historically accurate and vividly illustrate Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinian people and appropriation of their land, which is why the Israeli government and its supporters wish to suppress them. If there were in fact any minor errors with the maps they should have been corrected rather than removed altogether. Last year, in a similar act of censorship, the cable news network MSNBC apologized for airing a similar series of maps and retracted them.

It is imperative that students be able to visualize history, including through the use of maps, in order to learn how to analyze and understand it. Further, it is essential that faculty and students have access to educational materials that speak to the dispossession Palestinians have experienced, and continue to experience today. We cannot have a truly comprehensive understanding of Palestine or Israel without this information.

We urge McGraw-Hill Education to reverse its decision and reinstate the maps and textbooks in question.

First these academics say that the maps are historically accurate, but they they admit that the maps may have "minor errors" that "should have been corrected." Which is it?

It is neither. The maps are lies from beginning to end, both individually as well as in the way they are presented as a series. But you wont find any of these "academics" actually answering the proofs that they are propaganda. If they were true academics, who wouldn't lower themselves to answer my proofs, they should answer the objections of Yaacov Lozowick, who really is a historian unlike virtually all of the signatories.

If you need more proof that these "academics" are academic frauds, think about this: I am willing to bet that not one of them has actually seen a copy of this textbook. They are defending this propaganda map without knowing if it even fits in with what the text is saying! They argue that "it is essential that faculty and students have access to educational materials that speak to the dispossession Palestinians have experienced" but without reading the book, how can they know that this is appropriate in this case?

Here are the facts, since I've seen the full context and they haven't. The section of the book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is less than two pages. The text mentions the separation fence and refers to the series of maps as showing where the fence is - but the maps don't show that.

I don't know whether it is the authors or copy-editors of the book who are to blame, but the reference the book gives for the Map that Lies is an obscure article, written in Arabic, that was published in a now defunct website. It was not published as an academic paper anywhere as far as I can tell.

Furthermore, the map was not created by the author of that paper; it was grabbed from some propaganda site and thrown in by the webmaster just to add an illustration. The paper was about possible security-specific solutions between Israel and a Palestinian state and had nothing to do with supposed land loss.

In short, there is no academic source for this series of maps. It was placed in the textbook even though it had nothing to do with the text, referencing a paper that had no relationship with the map to give it academic cover. There was some effort involved on the part of someone to include this piece of propaganda and to hide its origins from anti-Israel hate groups.

The academics who signed this don't give a damn about truth. They are saying that anti-Israel lies must be inserted in every possible medium and venue. In this sense they are echoing what professor Amy Kaplan said at a BDS conference on how to try to incorporate anti-Israel propaganda in courses that have little to do with the topic.

McGraw Hill did the right thing because the maps are filled with lies, the source for the maps was falsified (or laundered, if you prefer,) , and the graphics had nothing to do with the actual text. The Isrsel-haters know that the maps are a great propaganda tool and they cannot stand the fact that its lies have been exposed so publicly, both in this case and by MSNBC last year.

There are 37 signatories of this absurd letter. Being a signatory of this letter defending the indefensible is a very good indicator that these "academics" are simply frauds who are willing to sacrifice the truth in their hatred for Israel.

So here is the list of these academic frauds, courtesy of JVP. I include links where I previously showed them to be liars and deceptive (or quoted others who did.) Note also that there is at least one prominent J-Street member, Rebecca Alpert.

Nadia Abu-El-Haj, Professor at Barnard College and Columbia University

Rebecca Alpert, Professor of Religion, Temple University

Sofya Aptekar, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston

Sa’ed Atshan, Visiting Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, Swarthmore College

Elsa Auerbach, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts Boston

Daniel Boyarin, Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture, Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley

George Bisharat, Emeritus Professor of Law, UC Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco

Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley

Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus), Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Omar Dajani, Professor of Law at the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law

Angela Davis, Author and activist

Estelle Disch, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston

Lisa Duggan, Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University

Nada Elia, Program Manager, Global Cultures Program, Northwest Language Academy

Noura Erakat, Assistant Professor at George Mason University

Andrés Fabián Henao Castro, Political Science Department, University of Massachusetts Boston

Margaret Ferguson, Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Davis

Katherine Franke, Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Director of the Open University Project, and member of the steering committee of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University

Marilyn Frankenstein, Professor of Media and Society, University of Massachusetts Boston

Randa Jarrar, President of Radius of Arab American Writers

Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies, Columbia University

Martha London, University of Massachusetts Boston

David Lloyd, Distinguished Professor of English, University of California, Riverside

Saree Makdisi, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, UCLA

Ussama S. Makdisi, Professor of History and Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies, Rice University

Bill V. Mullen, Professor of American Studies, Purdue University

Nadine Naber, Associate Professor, Gender & Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago

David Palumbo-Liu, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, and Professor of Comparative Literature, Stanford University

Ilan Pappé, Professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies

Rachel Rubin, University of Massachusetts Boston

Sarah Schulman, Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, City University of New York, College of Staten Island

Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Professor of International Relations, St. Antony’s College, Oxford

C. Heike Schotten, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Boston

Jack Shaheen, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at New York University’s Asian/Pacific/American Institute and The Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies

Simona Sharoni, Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh

Barry Trachtenberg, Director, Judaic Studies Program, University at Albany – SUNY

Judith E. Tucker, Professor of History, Georgetown University

This is a very useful list - a list of so-called academics who act in opposition of what academia is supposed to stand for. Anyone who attends any of their schools - or pays tuition for someone who does - should really ask their deans whether they are proud to have educators who explicitly favor hate and lies over the truth.

(h/t Alyssa)

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Salon writer recommends people read websites that dabble in antisemitism

Salon's main writer about Israel and the Palestinians is David Palumbo-Liu, an obsessive Israel-hater and BDS supporter who is a professor of comparative literature at Stanford.

His latest screed is the easily debunkable "Brutal, ugly & illegal: 9 things you need to know about the Israeli occupation of Palestine." I won't bother fisking the entire thing, because it is time consuming, but I'll just comment on the first paragraph of the first "fact"he thinks "you need to know:"

1. The Occupation is illegal.

What do we mean by the “Israeli Occupation”? In 1967 Israel seized what is now termed the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) in an act of war. The United Nations condemned this action, and expressed that condemnation in Resolution 242 (November 1967), which emphasizes “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security.” The UN document sets forth principles calling for “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict; termination of all claims or state of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.” This is a precise statement that insists on the inviolable right of the Palestinians to a state.

First of all, even if you say that Israel occupies the entire West Bank, military occupations are not illegal. Period.

Resolution 242 did not condemn Israel. The word "condemn" is not part of it and in fact Israel agrees with 242.

The phrase "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" is in the preamble, and is not a declaration that Israel did anything illegal. In fact, Jordan attacked Israel first and it is nonsensical to say that land gained in a defensive war must be given back; otherwise there is no disincentive for countries to wage war knowing that the UN would force any land losses to be returned to them.

242 does not call for Israel to return all of the lands, and this is clear by the fact that it demands withdrawal from "territories occupied" and not "the territories occupied." It was deliberate wording. Israel has already fulfilled the terms of 242 by returning the Sinai to Egypt.

242 does not mention Palestinians and gives them no rights. No one called for a Palestinian state in the territories in 1967. Even the PLO did not ask for sovereignty those areas in its 1964 charter.

That's a lot of things to get completely wrong in a single paragraph.

Anyway, Palumbo-Liu seems frustrated that BDS is losing steam so quickly, so in addition to throwing lies at Salon readers, he is now erasing any shreds of pretense of integrity and fairness and he is telling readers to turn into anti-Israel activists like he is:

Here’s what you can do:

Find out more on your own from multiple sources—do not rely solely on the US mainstream media for your information. Look at Mondoweiss, the Jewish Voice for Peace, the American Friends Service Committee, Electronic Intifada, If Americans Knew. Read United Nations documents, and those of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Middle East Children’s Alliance, B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and other human rights groups.

Tell your representatives in Congress you object and don’t want your taxes going to pay for the Occupation any more.

Learn about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and if you are an academic or cultural worker learn about the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, whose endorsers include Bishop Desmond Tutu, Angela Davis, Patrice Cullors of Black Lives Matter, Barbara Ehrenreich, Naomi Kline, and hundreds of others.

Talk about it with your friends.

Mondoweiss (which partners with Salon!) is a hate site that has published classic antisemitic tropes over the years.

If Americans Knew is run by Alison Weir, who is so toxic in her behavior (and willingness to cozy up with white supremacists) that even other anti-Israel organizations are treating her like she has the plague.

Electronic Intifada is headed by someone who openly supports and encourages terrorism against Jews.

So Salon's resident anti-Israel writer not only lies. He not only tries to change Salon from a news site into an anti-Israel activism site.

He is now telling Salon readers to get their information on Israel from sites that are indistinguishable from antisemitic hate sites.

Good to know.

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Egyptians double down on idea that the niqab came from Jews

I reported last month that an Egyptian "scholar" who is against women veiling themselves blames the custom on Jews.

Aminat Naseer, a professor of religion and philosophy at Al-Azhar University, has been an outspoken opponent of allowing female students to wear the niqab that covers their faces. So to discourage the practice she makes up fake quotes from Maimonides saying that Jewish women are not allowed to show their faces. her motivation, of course, is to associate a practice she hates with Jews.

Apparently the Arabic version of Times of Israel has reported on her recent comments about the supposed Jewish origins of the veil, and debunked it by quoting some actual exports in Judaism. She insists she is right, of course, but didn't bring any new proof.

However, another Egyptian "expert" has.

Dr. Mohammed Abu Ghadeer, former head of Israeli Studies at Al-Azhar University, says that the Hebrew Bible proves it so Jews cannot possibly deny it. He quotes Daniel, "verses 30-36," without citing any chapter number about a woman named Susanna who unveiled herself: "Susanna, very delicate and beautiful, was veiled; but those transgressors of the law ordered that she be exposed so as to sate themselves with her beauty."

There is no such mention in the Hebrew Bible. He is quoting the Protestant Apocrypha book of Susanna which was never part of the Hebrew Bible and was not discussed in any early Jewish sources. Some Catholic Bibles incorporate this story as a 13th chapter of Daniel. It is an interesting story but it misrepresents the Jewish concept of "eidim zomemim" (collusive witnesses) and under what circumstances they would be put to death. (Briefly, witnesses who falsely accuse others of a crime get the same punishment that the victim would have gotten, but the way that they are disproven is not the way young "Daniel" did it, even though it is a great story.)

The story takes place in Babylon and there were certainly Arabian tribes that veiled women at various times in history, but it was never a Jewish custom.

It is really funny that Egyptians must resort to associating any hated practice with Jews in order to delegitimize it among Muslims.

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Historians against history and the dogma of anti-Israelism

Yaacov Lozowick, head of Israel's archives, writes:

Last week I was e-mailing back and forth with Prof. Donna Robinson Divine of Smith College about an upcoming academic event. Along the way we detoured into a discussion of the sorts of things one can hear these days at academic conferences. Prof. Divine has given me permission to post the relevant segments of our correspondence for public consumption:

DRD:
The panel on Israeli Archives at the American Historical Association meetings placed a great deal of emphasis on Yishuv period and on the War of Independence with one panelist actually stating that if she and others had access to the documents, they might be able to show that policymakers planned the displacement of Palestinians. Then, she added that if they could prove that a so-called policy of elimination [of the indigenous read Palestinians], they could secure the return of all the refugees in accordance with international law.
YL:
Whoever the panelist was, she was not adhering to the truth. By and large, the documentation of that period is open. All she needs to do is come and use it. And if there's a specific file which has been sealed – here and there, there are such files – she should request of the State Archivist that he look into the matter so as to open it.
The documentation shows very clearly that there was no such policy. Since that's the case, she's reverting to falsehoods. In essence what she's saying is that although the record shows that what she wishes were historically true isn't historically true, she's claiming that the record must be wrong; and the reason the record must be wrong is that the evil Zionists are falsifying it.
DRD:
...From my reading of the field of Middle East Politics [US, England, Canada] the people who embrace this kind of so-called intellectual perspective are the ones gaining tenure and academic prestige. It is probably worse for the academy than for Israel but I am committed to do what I can try to reverse the course.
So, to summarize: it is now acceptable for a panelist at a prestigious academic conference to claim that the lack of documentation of Israeli crimes proves not only that Israel committed the crimes, but that it's being devious and hiding the documentation. This, at a time when the archives are open, the documents in them have been searched exhaustively, and they do not support the thesis the academics wish they would support.

Update: Dr. Divine sends in a comment on the aftermath of her encounter with researchers who blame Israel in spite of, or even because, there isn't any evidence for their thesis. It gets even worse:

DRD: After completing the Archives Panel, I turned to finish another of the panels I developed on the topic of the 'settler colonialist perspective'. I asked some of the very people who embrace this view of Israel--and who charge Israel with denying them or those adopting this view access to relevant archives--to participate in a panel that would interrogate this approach. In fact, with one particular person, I pointed out that there would be archivists at the conference holding out the possibility of determining whether or not Israeli archives are indeed 'open'. The academician who already has charged Israel with denying access to those challenging the country's legitimacy refused my offer because of a strong commitment to the boycott movement. Charge Israel with denying access and then prove it by ever refusing to gain access. Wonderful!

It is one thing if some fringe conspiracy theorists claim that Israel is hiding information in its archives. But these are professional historians whose entire careers are supposedly dedicated to using archives like these to uncover the truth.

Yet their hate is so deep that they choose their facts first and then fit all evidence - or supposed lack of evidence - to fit their bias.

The entire field of historical research is sullied because of these historians who are, quite literally, anti-history. This should be a scandal within the community of historians, but as far as I can tell, this dedication to being against research is not hurting anybody.

Of course, the deranged hate that people have for the Jewish state doesn't stop with the conspiracy theory that any evidence that doesn't support a pre-ordained result must be evidence of a coverup. The charge of "pinkwashing" - also supported by supposedly respected academics - says that evidence that contradicts their thesis of Israeli depravity in fact supports their thesis of such depravity!

At this point, Israel-hate (what I like to call misoziony) has gone way beyond any logic and even any pseudo-logic. It has crossed the line into dogma, where facts simply are not as important than feelings, and feelings of irrational hate for Israel are assumed to be true simply because they are so strong.

It does sound a lot like traditional antisemitism, doesn't it?

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UCLA and the LA Times should be ashamed

An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by Saree Makdisi, a UCLA professor, starts this way:

Why Israel's schools merit a U.S. boycott

At its annual convention this week, the Modern Language Assn., which represents 26,000 language and literature scholars, will become the latest academic body to consider the merits of adopting a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. This follows endorsements of such a boycott by the Assn. for Asian American Studies, the American Studies Assn. and, most recently, the American Anthropological Assn., which voted 1,040 to 136 to endorse a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions at its November annual meeting in Denver; the AAA's entire membership will soon vote on the resolution, which is expected to pass.

The justification for an academic boycott — which targets institutions, not individual scholars — stems from the peculiar relationship between Israel's educational system and its broader structures of racism.

The United Nations' Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination points out with alarm that Israel maintains two separate educational systems for its citizens — one for Jewish children and another for the children of the Palestinian minority — a structure that reinforces the profound segregation of Israeli society in everything from matters of citizenship and marriage to housing rights.

Here's the first indication of falsehood. Israel teaches Arabic language, culture and history in Arab schools and Jewish culture and history in Jewish schools. If Arabs were forced to go to Jewish-majority schools, you can be sure that Makdisi would be saying that Israel must be boycotted for destroying Arab culture.

According to official Israeli data cited by the human rights organization Adalah, by the turn of the 21st century Israel was investing three times as much on a per capita basis in the education of a Jewish as opposed to that of a Palestinian citizen.

The consequences are obvious: Schools for Palestinians in Israel are overcrowded and poorly equipped, lacking in libraries, labs, arts facilities and recreational space in comparison with schools for Jewish students. Palestinian children often have to travel greater distances than their Jewish peers to get to school, thanks to a state ban on the construction of schools in certain Palestinian towns (for example, according to Adalah, there is not a single high school in the Palestinian communities of theNegev desert in southern Israel).

These naked forms of discrimination extend into the university system as well. “The hurdles Palestinian Arab students face from kindergarten to university function like a series of sieves with sequentially finer holes,” Human Rights Watch points out. “At each stage, the education system filters out a higher proportion of Palestinian Arab students than Jewish students.”

Only one problem. This pseudo-academic is using statistics and quotes that are from one and a half decades ago.

He sort of admits it, by calling a 1999 study "the turn of the 21st century," a sly way to make it sound modern. But what has happened since then?

Haaretz notes that from 1999-2010, when science teachers in Jewish schools plummeted:

In Arab schools, however, the picture was different, with the number of computer science teachers rising by 50%. The Arab sector also saw a rise of 165% in instructors teaching technology classes and a 171% increase in the number teaching mathematics, the report found.

The number of physics teachers in Arab schools grew by 25%, those teaching chemistry by 44% and in biology by 81.7%.

There are still gaps but Israel has poured lots of money into the Arab school sector since the gaps were first reported. But Makdisi wants to boycott Israel first, and doesn't want the facts to get into the way. So he wants an academic boycott in 2016 based on statistics from 2000.

Even the Human Rights Watch article he quotes is from 2001!

But what about these damning figures that he quotes that are more recent?

About a quarter of Israeli schoolchildren are Palestinian. But as a recent study by the Assn. for the Advancement of Civic Equity points out, the higher you go in the system, the lower the number of Palestinian students. As of 2012, according to data published by the Israeli Council for Higher Education, Palestinians constituted only 11% of bachelor's degree students, 7% of master's students, and barely 3% of PhD students. A mere 2.7% of the faculty in Israeli universities are Palestinian, and the percentage of Palestinians in administration is even lower.

I went to the website of the Israeli Council for Higher Education, and discovered another way that this "academic" is willing to lie with statistics. Indeed, in the 2011-2 academic year, only 11.8% of all university students were Arab. Yet that number went up to 12.4% in 2013, 13.1% in 2014 and 14.1% in 2015 - indicating that the money that Israel put in Arab public schools has paid off. In fact, since 1999, the number of Arab university students has increased by 50%.

Clearly the problem was identified and is being addressed from way before anyone ever heard of BDS. Which shows that BDS advocates are first and foremost anti-Israel and only afterwards do they try to muster up facts to support their own racism.

Beyond that, the idea that Israel universities must be punished because the Arab education sector has been historically underfunded makes absolutely no sense. I am not aware of any studies showing that Israeli universities discriminate against Arabs. By boycotting the very institutions that Arabs need to attend to gain equality in the next generation, the BDSers are trying to perpetuate the problem, not solve it.

It is amazing that UCLA allows an academic with such sloppy and dishonest research methods to be employed.

And it is more than disappointing that the Los Angeles Times published this without doing the basic fact checks that took me about 15 minutes to complete.

(h/t GLR)

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National Women's Studies Association passes absurd pro-BDS resolution

This looks like a parody, but it's not. It is a recommendation that was overwhelmingly approved by those voting at the National Women's Studies Association meeting:

Recommendation 1
The first recommendation, developed by Feminists for Justice in/for Palestine (FJP), an ad-hoc group founded in Puerto Rico at NWSA 2014, urges the Association to join the international Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and draws on transnational, intersectional feminist frameworks to emphasize an “indivisible sense of justice.” Voting on this question follows on a solidarity statement released by NWSA early in 2015, issued in response to strong member engagement with BDS at the 2014 NWSA Conference in Puerto Rico.

How does the recommendation or resolution relate to the NWSA mission, which reads, NWSA leads the field of women's studies in educational and social transformation.

As feminist activists, scholars, teachers, and public intellectuals who recognize the interconnectedness of systemic forms of oppression, we cannot overlook the injustice and violence, including sexual and gender-based violence, perpetrated against Palestinians. This resolution is an act of transnational solidarity aimed at social transformation for a better world.

Who will do the work required to execute the proposed recommendation or resolution?

Feminists for Justice in/for Palestine (FJP), an ad-hoc group founded in Puerto-Rico at NWSA 2014 will lead the efforts to publicize and disseminate the resolution, including education, outreach, media and publicity.

Full text of recommendation or resolution.

Feminists for Justice in/for Palestine Support An Indivisible Sense of Justice!

Support BDS
A Resolution submitted to: National Women’s Studies Association 2015

As feminist scholars, activists, teachers, and public intellectuals we recognize the interconnectedness of systemic forms of oppression. In the spirit of this intersectional perspective, we cannot overlook the injustice and violence, including sexual and gender-based violence, perpetrated against Palestinians and other Arabs in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, within Israel and in the Golan Heights, as well as the colonial displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba. The discriminatory treatment, exclusion, military siege and apartheid imposed by Israel on its own Palestinian citizens as well as those residing in the occupied territories constitute flagrant breaches of international law, UN resolutions, and fundamental human rights.

In the present moment, our counterparts in Palestine face daily violations of their human rights, including their academic rights to free speech, assembly, association, and movement. At the same time, Israeli institutions of higher learning have not challenged, but instead legitimized, Israel’s oppressive policies and violations. These violations, which severely impact the daily lives and working conditions of Palestinian scholars, students, and the society at large, are also enabled by U.S. tax dollars and the tacit support of western powers, thus making any taxpayer in the West complicit in perpetuating these injustices.

As members of NWSA who are committed to justice, dignity, equality and peace, we affirm our opposition to the historical and current injustices in Palestine that we view as part and parcel of the multiple oppressions we study and teach about. We also affirm the commitment of NWSA to principles of human rights, justice and freedom for all, including academic freedom. At our 2014 national conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, nearly 800 participants signed a petition calling upon the organization to declare its support for the international movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. About 2500 members of the audience at the plenary on Palestine stood in unison in support of freedom and justice for/in Palestine.

Therefore, in keeping with these principles and the strong consensus of the majority of our 2014 conference participants, let be it resolved that the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) endorses the 2005 call by Palestinian civil society for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) of economic, military and cultural entities and projects sponsored by the state of Israel. In doing so, we join the growing grassroots international consensus and add our voices to other professional U.S. academic associations that adopted similar resolutions in recent years. These associations include the African Literature Association, American Studies Association, Association for Asian American Studies, Association for Humanist Sociology, Critical Ethnic Studies Association, National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, Peace and Justice Studies Association, University of Hawaii at Manoa-Ethnic Studies Department, United Auto Workers Local 2865, The University of California Student Workers Union, and over 1000 members of the American Anthropological Association.

In plain English, a group of people who hate Israel use pseudo-intellectual gobbledygook to claim that somehow historic oppression of women are interconnected with Israel's actions to defend itself from terror. Therefore, out of all of the examples of oppression in the world, these academics decided that Israel's actions are the only ones that must be condemned and the only ones that are "interconnected" with women's studies, and therefore Israel is the only country that must be boycotted. Syria and China and North Korea are just dandy.

Other so-called scholars in those other groups said that "one has to start somewhere," and they always start with Israel and then lose all interest in boycotting anyone else.

Here's some extra comedy from the same organization's Code of Ethics:

NWSA members/staff may not engage in discrimination in the organization based on age; gender; race; ethnicity; national origin; religion; sexual orientation; disability; health conditions; marital, domestic, or parental status, gender identity and gender expression; or any other applicable basis proscribed by law.

So will they work with Israeli Jewish professors or won't they? (BDSers never have a problem with working with Israeli Arabs.)

This resolution makes the National Women's Studies Association into a laughingstock whose members have no ability to evaluate the difference between easily debunked lies and truth, for whom rhetoric trumps facts, and who cannot even understand their own sickness in condemning the only country in the Middle East that gives a damn about Arab women's rights.

The icing on the NWSA hypocrisy cake is that the resolution passed at the exact same time that young Arab women under PA rule are being incited by their own government's ruling party to stab any Jew they find.

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Fairies, unicorns and a peaceful binational state

Yossi Beilin in the NYT writes:

[W]e who know that a peace settlement is essential for Israel’s future should now rethink the ultimate goal. When I do that, I keep returning to the idea of an Israeli-Palestinian confederation, rather than a classic two-state solution. By acknowledging that our two peoples live too close together to ever be completely separate, we might finally persuade both sides to make historic concessions to each other.

I answered this stupidity in 2010 when an Arab proposed it in another op-ed in another major US newspaper. Here was my post:

George Bisharat, writing in the Washington Post, paints a lovely picture of how well a bi-national state in Palestine would work:

The answer is for Israelis and Palestinians to formalize their de facto one-state reality but on principles of equal rights rather than ethnic privilege. A carefully crafted multiyear transition including mechanisms for reconciliation would be mandatory. Israel/Palestine should have a secular, bilingual government elected on the basis of one person, one vote as well as strong constitutional guarantees of equality and protection of minorities, bolstered by international guarantees. Immigration should follow nondiscriminatory criteria. Civil marriage between members of different ethnic or religious groups should be permitted. Citizens should be free to reside in any part of the country, and public symbols, education and holidays should reflect the population's diversity.

Although the one-state option is sometimes dismissed as utopian, it overcomes major obstacles bedeviling the two-state solution. Borders need not be drawn, Jerusalem would remain undivided and Jewish settlers could stay in the West Bank. Moreover, a single state could better accommodate the return of Palestinian refugees. A state based on principles of equality and inclusion would be more morally compelling than two states based on narrow ethnic nationalism. Furthermore, it would be more consistent with antidiscrimination provisions of international law. Israelis would enjoy the international acceptance that has long eluded them and the associated benefits of friendship, commerce and travel in the Arab world.

It sounds so lovely! Palestinian Arabs from Lebanon, Syria and Jordan can move into this new binational Palestine by the millions, but don't worry: they won't do anything to hurt their treasured Jewish minority.

Once upon a time, not too terribly long ago, there was an Arab majority in Palestine. How well did they treat the minority population? Here are the news briefs for a single day, September 4, 1938, in the Palestine Post:

Wasn't life just grand then? Didn't everyone live together in peace and harmony? No need for a state for Jews - that would be racist. No, they can live in peace among the Arabs, in full safety and security, knowing that they are protected as dhimmis by force of Koranic law.

Bisharat couches his dream in multicultural terms:

The main obstacle to a single-state solution is the belief that Israel must be a Jewish state. Jim Crow laws and South African apartheid were similarly entrenched virtually until the eves of their demise. History suggests that no version of ethnic privilege can ultimately persist in a multiethnic society.

The idea that there are 22 or so states that define themselves as "Arab" - and discriminate against non-Arabs - is not a problem at all for Bisharat. The fact that the constitutions of many of those statesproclaim that their state religion is Islam, and that the Koran is the source for their laws, is also just peachy for oh-so-cultured Bisharat. No, the only evil is a Jewish national home - that is racist! Jewish self-determination is inherently evil, while the addition of another de-facto Arab state is supremely moral.

His plan recalls another Arab plan.

In 1947, on the eve of the partition, Arabs put forth another single-state plan in a desperate effort to avert the possibility of a Jewish state, however tiny, in Palestine.

In this plan the Arabs stressed that the state would have equal rights, free access to holy places, and they would even deign to let Hebrew be spoken in certain ghettos where Jews would be the majority.

This plan was just as utopian-sounding as Bisharat's plan today, and its purpose was exactly the same: to destroy Israel.

Yet one only has to look at what happened a mere ten days after this transparent Arab plan couched in liberal terms of equality and tolerance and co-existence was offered. Jews were attacked mercilessly by the very people who were supposedly ready to display tolerance towards them.

And what happened when the relatively liberal kingdom of Transjordan took over the Jewish areas? Jews were forbidden to visit their holy places. Every Jew in the country was expelled. The Jewish Quarter was destroyed; the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives gutted, dozens of synagogues burned down in the course of a few weeks.

This is the reason why a Jewish state is needed. To have a tiny area in the world where Jews can live as Jews, without fear. The morality of a Jewish state where Jews can live safely and securely far outweighs the pseudo-morality of Bisharat's vision where the clock would go back to the days of Jews being bombed in markets because of a never-ending series of perceived injustices and affronts.

When the Arab world shows that it can treat its minorities with the sensitivity that Israel treats hers, then maybe Bisharat can make a valid point. When Jews can buy land in Jordan and Lebanon and Syria and Saudi Arabia and move there without fear, then maybe we can talk about how Israel discriminates against parts of its population. When that day occurs, and Jews can live anywhere in the world with as little fear as Muslims can today, then the raison d'etre of a Jewish state would melt away.

However, today, it is Arabs themselves who show by their actions exactly why a Jewish state, in the Jewish homeland, is not only necessary but moral.

(h/t Yoel)

To the haters, Israel has only one right: the right to be destroyed

I mentioned last week that the anti-Israel crowd has latched onto a new meme: that Israel, under international law, has no right to defend itself.

One of the most-quoted "proofs" of this comes from Noura Erekat, writing in Jadaliyya, in a post that was "liked" nearly 20,000 times on Facebook.

Her argument is similar to John Dugard's argument I had responded to, claiming the nonsense that Israel is occupying Gaza and therefore cannot claim self-defense against an area that is occupied. As with Dugard, her own words prove otherwise:

Occupation Law is part of the laws of armed conflict; it contemplates military occupation as an outcome of war and enumerates the duties of an occupying power until the peace is restored and the occupation ends. To fulfill its duties, the occupying power is afforded the right to use police powers, or the force permissible for law enforcement purposes. As put by the U.S. Military Tribunal during the Hostages Trial (The United States of America vs. Wilhelm List, et al.)

International Law places the responsibility upon the commanding general of preserving order, punishing crime, and protecting lives and property within the occupied territory. His power in accomplishing these ends is as great as his responsibility.

Erekat, who teaches international law, allows that an occupying power is allowed to use police powers, and her own quote defines police powers as "preserving order, punishing crime, and protecting lives and property within the occupied territory." This is true: and it is proof that Israel cannot be occupying Gaza, because Israel does not have the ability to perform the duties required of an occupier, of setting up functioning security and judicial structure. By definition, if a state cannot exercise that level of control over an area, it cannot be considered an occupier. (This is derived from the Hague conventions, article 43.)

International law does not require a nation to be placed in an impossible situation where it cannot defend itself, either by policing or by war, but Noura Erekat and her ilk are actively trying to create a legal framework where Israel, and only Israel, is not legally allowed to defend itself under any circumstances (except, ironically, by forcibly conquering Gaza which would involve a death toll in the tens of thousands.)

The real agenda is clear. None of these people care about human rights. They simply want Israel to be destroyed.

This can be seen on a much more basic level by this recent incident in Sweden:

Social Democrat leader Stefan Löfven has been flooded with thousands of negative comments after he posted on Facebook that "Israel has the right to defend itself" in a post about the ongoing Gaza crisis.

The election favourite posted the comment on Saturday night and within minutes he was on the receiving end of angry replies from users of the social network.

"Israel must respect international law but obviously has the right to defend itself. It is a huge tragedy that the violence escalates," Löfven wrote.

Most of the comments were critical of the political party leader's stance with one user posting; "Israel kills right now Palestinian children every day. Is that self-defence?"

Several other people said they had no intention in voting for Löfven in September following the remark.

Löfven's comment appears to clash with a statement released by the Social Democrats' foreign policy spokesperson Urban Ahlin. In a press release issued on Thursday Ahlin stated that the party needed to be clear in its reaction against the Israeli bombing of Gaza.

He also condemned the Hamas rocket fire against Israel and called for a peaceful two-state solution.

"It's very surprising (what Löfven wrote) as it differs from what the party's foreign policy spokesperson Urban Ahlin said the other day," Ulf Bjereld, a professor of political scientist at Gothenburg University, told Aftonbladet.

Yes, saying that Israel has the right to defend itself while respecting international law is considered hugely controversial to large swaths of Sweden's citizenship.

This is a human rights issue.

The entire purpose of the State of Israel was to afford Jews the right to defend themselves. Noura Erekat and John Dugard and the Swedish protesters and many, many others want that right to be stripped away, and to bring back the old days where Jews could be slaughtered without protest.

(h/t Yoel)

Palestinian Red Crescent Society creates a new anti-Israel rumor about depleted uranium

From The Palestine Red Crescent Society website, in an article from today:

In a recent exclusive interview with Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel, Professor Christopher Busby from the European Committee on Radiation Risk, announced the results of his research and analysis having examined air and soil samples in the Gaza Strip months after the 22 days of Israeli military operations there had ceased.

Prof. Busby is one of the most prominent and widely respected radiation experts in the world, and an accredited witness on international fora such as the UN. In the past, he has testified on the impact of weapons used in wars in Iraq, Kosovo and Lebanon. The Israeli authorities prevented Professor Busby from entering the occupied Gaza Strip to undertake the necessary analyses, but with the help of other physicians he was able to obtain the samples he needed.

The professor said that he had obtained two items to analyze, one of which was a filter from an ambulance covered with dust, and the second was some soil from a hole created by an Israeli bomb. He stated that the analysis showed the filter to contain a degree of uranium, and that the soil sample contained a high degree of enriched uranium. Analysis also showed a high degree of zinc, chrome, and niobium in the air. This is not the first analysis carried out by Professor Busby; he also discovered a high rate of uranium in Lebanon after examining samples from the area in the wake of the Israeli aggression of July 2006.

Say what? 22 days of Israeli military operations?

Ah...they are referring to Cast Lead!

To give an idea of how reliable Busby is, after he accused Israel of using depleted uranium in Lebanon in 2006 , he was proven wrong.

By the UN!

UN experts have found no evidence to support a press report that Israel used depleted uranium (DU) munitions during the July-August conflict in Lebanon, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) says. "The samples taken by the UNEP scientists show no evidence of penetrators or metal made of DU or other radioactive material," said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. "In addition, no DU shrapnel, or other radioactive residue was found. The analysis of all smear samples taken shows no DU, nor enriched uranium nor higher than natural uranium content in the samples." The UNEP statement said inspectors looking specifically at the DU issue had visited 32 sites south and north of the Litani River.

In October, the British Independent quoted Chris Busby, the British scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, as saying that craters at Khiam and At-Tiri in southern Lebanon caused by Israeli bombs showed "elevated radiation signatures." (AFP/ABC-Australia)

Oh, but Busby is not just a overly zealous scientist. He is a well-known crank and a fraud.

You see, Busby has made a career out of finding radioactive dangers all over the world, where no one else can find it. He even hawked special, expensive, and worthless vitamins for Japanese after Fukushima. His theories about the dangers of low-level radiation have been disproven quite categorically - every single scientist on a panel to investigate his claims disagreed with his conclusions.

And guess where else he found "evidence of a nuclear explosion"? Where all conspiracy-theory cranks go: 9/11.

So not only is the PRCS - a supposedly non-political, humanitarian organization - digging up old discredited claims about Israel, but they are quoting a well-known fraud.

(h/t Gaia)