A picture of a booklet titled “Hanukkah” was circulated on social media, distributed by UNIFIL forces to the students of Our Lady of the Annunciation School in Rmeish, south Lebanon, on the occasion of Christmas. .
Indeed, it is stated in the pamphlet that Al-Akhbar reviewed, under the title Facts, that “thousands of years ago the Jewish people lived in a land called Judea (now Israel) and there were rulers who were not kind and respectful to the Jewish people... In about 165 BC, The king of Syria destroyed the temple of the Jewish people in Jerusalem, although he knew that this building was the cradle of the Jewish people, and he was deliberately trying to disturb them and make them feel despair.
According to an informed source in the town, “the Irish battalion distributed it,” describing the matter as “very dangerous, because it comes in the context of attempts to normalize relations with the occupying enemy, and it includes a denial of the right of the Palestinian people to their land, and it is a kind of introductory cultural normalization because it was distributed to students.”
A source in the school administration, who refused to reveal his name, ... reduced the seriousness of what these books contained, stressing that he burned them or what was left of them, “to avoid any problem.”
The story of Chanukah is a serious danger to Palestinians because it proves that Jews lived there first and that the Temple existed.
Better to burn it than to expose children to a story about fighting for religious freedom!
In case you don't think that Lebanon is institutionally antisemitic, the earliest tweet about this story I could find was from Mays al Jabal News, which was aghast that the book "talks about the Jews, and asks the student at the end to color elements symbolizing the Jews!"
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
The Hamas-supporting Middle East Monitor (MEMO) site has an article by the always ridiculous Ramzy Baroud, claiming that Israel is engaging in "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinian Christians.
After quoting lots of statistics on the disappearance of Christians and blaming Israel, not Muslims or the PA, the article brings its only piece of "evidence:"
A study conducted by Dar al-Kalima University in the West Bank town of Beit Jala and published in December 2017, interviewed nearly 1,000 Palestinians, half of them Christian and the other half Muslim. One of the main goals of the research was to understand the reason behind the depleting Christian population in Palestine.
The study concluded that “the pressure of Israeli occupation, ongoing constraints, discriminatory policies, arbitrary arrests, confiscation of lands added to the general sense of hopelessness among Palestinian Christians,” who are finding themselves in “a despairing situation where they can no longer perceive a future for their offspring or for themselves”.
One is that it is biased against Israel. One of the authors, Bernard Sabella, was at the time also a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. There is no way that this study would look objectively at Muslim persecution of Christians, well documented not only in the territories but also throughout the Middle East.
And when Christians think that the survey is associated with the government, they are unlikely to say anything that might upset the government.
Two is that in order to prove Israeli "ethnic cleansing" of Christians, it would mean that Israel is somehow targeting Christians more than Muslims. Yet this same study showed that Palestinian Muslims shared nearly the exact same level of fear as well as optimism as the Christians surveyed.
If they suffer equally, and the Muslims aren't persecuting the Christians, then why are only the Christians leaving and not nearly as many Muslims?
The third issue is methodological. If one wants to understand why Christians are fleeing the PA-controlled areas, you don't ask the people who are still there - you ask the people who left!
To be sure, part of the reason more Christians leave than Muslims because Christians were more middle class and had more economic opportunity to leave, as well as welcoming communities to go to where there are already many established Palestinian Christians, in the US and South America. But it is just as certain that there has been many cases of reported persecution of Christians by Muslims.
The most hilarious part of this absurd article is that after invoking this ridiculous report as the be all and end all on proof of Israeli persecution of Christians, it adds:
Unfounded claims that Palestinian Christians are leaving because of religious tensions between them and their Muslim brethren are, therefore, irrelevant.
I've published many articles over the past fifteen years documenting how Muslims have been attacking Christians in the West Bank and Gaza, forcing the Christians to look to live elsewhere. This study does not refute that at all.
Another problem with the article itself is that if Israel wants to persecute Christians, why is the Christian population in Israel itself steady and growing?
It is no surprise that MEMO publishes this garbage. Interestingly, eleventh-rate professor Juan Cole was so enchanted by this piece of bad reporting that he copied the entire thing to his blog.
(h/t Dan)
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According to journalist Yanki Farber, Christian
missionary Hananya Naftali has just been appointed Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu’s new deputy media advisor. This presumably means that
Naftali will be managing or directing the prime minister’s social media accounts.
As the Israeli PM has a significant online presence, this would seem to be a
position of some consequence.
קבלו את סגן יועץ ניו מדיה החדש לראש הממשלה נתניהו @HananyaNaftali נפתלי חנניה, שירת בשריון כטנקיסט, כשרון אדיר, לא סתם הוא הגיע לאן שהגיע pic.twitter.com/mRHluA6gcC
I’ve been aware of Naftali since at least 2015. Naftali
previously served in the IDF Armored Corps,
and used the close quarters of a tank to spread the word of Jesus (Y”Sh) to
Jewish soldiers. He also made pro-Israel videos while wearing his IDF uniform. No
one seemed to question his intent. People kept sending me his videos. “Isn’t he
wonderful?” they’d gush.
As his social media presence grew, some pro-Israel
organizations shared Hananya Naftali’s videos in support of Israel and wrote
articles about him, too. In each video and article, I recognized certain code
words suggesting Naftali’s true motive was to gain the trust of the Jewish people
for the purpose of drawing them away from Judaism and persuading them to become
Christians.
Because Naftali was a social media star whose videos were
shared by pro-Israel organizations, in some ways, he was untouchable. I couldn’t
write to expose him because it would be smearing pro-Israel organizations. It
would be undiplomatic.
Writing to the pro-Israel organizations seemed to get me
nowhere. I got the brush-off: “Nah. He’s not a missionary,” they swore.
But he was. Is.
The only thing I lacked was a big ole smoking gun, where
Naftali would actually come right out and say: “I’m all about converting the
Jews.”
In June 2017, I interviewed
my friend Shannon Nuszen, a blogger at Jewish
Israel. As a former Christian missionary (now Orthodox Jew), Shannon knew
the lingo. She’d been following Naftali’s antics for some time. With Shannon’s
help, I laid out my case that Naftali’s seeming support for Israel in his
popular videos serves as cover for his missionary work.
But we still hoped for that
smoking gun, Shannon and I.
Some months later, Aussie Dave
of Israellycool
found it: the smoking gun we’d been seeking. A video in which Naftali came
right out and said that, “God put him in the army precisely to share Jesus with
Jews, to be ‘a light among Jews.’”
The video also had Naftali
saying, “It is not easy to be the light in the dark,” which Aussie Dave
credibly suggests is the missionary’s way of implying that “the dark” is Jewish
belief.
You cannot see the video anymore,
since Naftali took steps to remove the video from circulation after the blog
came out. (Apparently. Because when I went to see it at Israellycool, it was marked “unavailable.”) SEE UPDATE, at bottom for the video.
But it was out there long enough
to document. And I thank Aussie Dave for exposing the little creep. We did not
survive the Holocaust and create the State of Israel in order to let some sneaky
dweeb kill our connection to our Jewishness; our connection to God and His Holy
Torah.
On the other hand, people are
STILL NOW sending me Naftali’s videos. Each time, I explain it to them: He’s a
MISSIONARY.
Some believe me, some don’t.
And now I discover that Bibi has hired this missionary to handle his social media. Think of it! The prime
minister of the Jewish State becomes the vessel through which a Christian
missionary, Hananya Naftali, gets easy access to millions of Jewish Israelis
with his message about Jesus (Y”Sh). Appointing Naftali to a position of influence, moreover, tends to whitewash his missionary activities, gives him an imprimatur: makes him seem clean. I can just hear people saying, "He can't be a missionary if the prime minister of Israel hired him!"
As I was writing this piece, in fact, my attention was drawn to this article in the Jerusalem Post, which suggests that Naftali's missionary work is a figment of the imagination, and that the "accusations" are merely a part of his "colorful past."
It’s unconscionable.
So I did what I could. I wrote
to Bibi and explained the situation to him. I tweeted to him. But the thought
occurs that considering Naftali being Bibi’s deputy new media advisor and all, it may be Naftali who intercepts and reads my
tweets and emails.
I have not yet had a reply from
the prime minister or his deputy, the missionary Hananya Naftali. If I do, I will update this space.
Don't hold your breath.
UPDATE: Jewish Israel informs me that there are still two extant copies of the smoking gun video that was found by Aussie Dave at Israellycool in which Naftali says he is in the army to share Jesus with the Jews at 46 seconds in, see the clip at https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=93a_1511190545
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
The Daily Beast has an incomprehensible article that takes a few unrelated facts and half-truths to somehow blame Israel's existence and US support for Israel for the fact that Western Christians are mostly indifferent to the problems of Middle East Christians.
Diarmaid MacCulloch is Fellow of St. Cross College and Professor of the History of the Church, Oxford University. Here's his bizarre thesis:
[O]ne of the silences which I find most frustrating is precisely the lack of noise from Western Christians about the fate of ancient Christianities in the Middle East. At the heart of the problems in the Middle East is seven decades of unresolved conflict between Israel and Palestine, and I notice that when American politicians discuss those matters, they seem to assume that all Palestinians, and indeed all Arabs, are Muslims. Not so: there are Christians there too.... Why this blindness, why this silence?
Given that every single Christmas for over a century there have been articles in major American and British papers about the Christian community in Bethlehem, this first assertion seems not very plausible. (Not to mention that even after seeing two years of Arab upheavals, MacCulloch still places Israel at the center of all Middle East problems.)
But even if US politicians were uncommonly stupid, isn't this article about the silence of normal Christians? Are they equally unaware that Christians live in the Middle East?
His second unrelated point:
The problem is a Protestant one, going right back to sixteenth-century Reformation. From Martin Luther onwards, many Protestants have eagerly been awaiting an imminent end to the world, the return of Christ in glory. Reading the Bible, it’s easy to link this to the idea that a necessary precondition for Christ to return is that his ancient people the Jews convert to the Christian faith...But by the nineteenth century there was a further thought: the Jews must return to their Promised Land of Israel. In 1846 there was founded a worldwide Evangelical Alliance. One of its main concerns was to return Jews to Palestine and convert them there...
Yeah, we know that. So let's go to a third mostly unrelated point:
Fast-forward to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. For some years after that, American relations with Israeli governments were dominated by power politics. ... [I]n the 1980s [American politicians] discovered a large constituency emphatically in favour of Israel, precisely for reasons related to the apocalypse....
Now American Evangelicals made common cause with the Jewish community in the United States, and they seemed to care little if at all for the opinions or the sufferings of their fellow-Christians in the ancient Churches of the Middle East. Israeli politicians have not been slow to exploit this political windfall, caring little for the fact that Evangelical apocalypticism expected the conversion of the Jews to Christianity. American foreign policy has for decades seemed locked into hardly questioning its support for the State of Israel, even though the consequences for its relations with the Arab and Muslim world, and with others, are almost entirely negative. They have been particularly dire for the traditional Christianities of the Middle East.
OK, so the US - by siding with Israel to make US evangelicals happy - has caused Arab Muslims to turn against Arab Christians.
Um, what?
This has to be one of the most bizarre anti-Israel arguments I've ever seen, and I've seen some doozies. Although to call it an "argument" seems too charitable. It is more a vain attempt to blame Israel for Christian suffering throughout the Arab world by throwing things against the wall and hoping they would stick.
Exactly how does one draw a line from "US support for Israel" to "Muslims drive Christians out of all Arab countries"? How much can one twist facts in order to absolve Arabs from their actions?
But MacCulloch's theory is even nuttier. He still doesn't give a reason for those crazy evangelicals to ignore their fellow Christians. If they were all Islamophobes, wouldn't they be in the forefront of the campaign to defend Arab Christians from Muslims? Apparently, somehow, their support for Israel means that they don't have the mental capacity to understand that more than one thing can happen in the Middle East at once. It must be that they are just too stupid.
That's not all. MacCulloch thinks that US Zionist evangelicals are the only Christians on the planet who have the ability to help their fellow Christians. What about non-evangelical Americans? What about the entire continent of South America? What about European Christians? Are they all completely impotent because US Zionist Christians have taken over the entire religion?
What continent is the Vatican in again?
The entire article reveals much more about MacCulloch's mentality than about any reality in the Middle East. Rather than try to puzzle out the illogic of this piece, try this on for size:
1) MacCulloch is upset that Christians have been silent about Muslim persecution.
2) MacCulloch hates Israel and Christian Zionists.
3) Therefore, Israel and Zionism must be at fault for Christian apathy.
The rest is all detail. (And absolving the actual people doing the persecution is obligatory, as long as Zionists can be somehow blamed.)
Even the Daily Beast employee who wrote the subheading of the article can't quite figure out MacCulloch's argument:
Why has the suffering of the Middle Eastern Christian communities not ignited outrage and support from Western Christians? The answer has something to do with Israel and the Second Coming, writes Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch.
This year, Greenbelt celebrates 40 years as a Christian arts, faith and justice festival. The festival organizers have chosen the theme ‘Life begins’, and we will be using our presence there to remember those for whom life is permanently on hold.
Our installation in the Centaur foyer aims to give a glimpse of the challenges faced by ordinary Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. There'll be a giant, interactive floor game - Occupation! - for all ages. Roll the dice and make your way through checkpoints and challenges, permit denials and poverty. On your journey, you’ll learn about the issues affecting the West Bank and Gaza and find out how you can help Embrace the Middle East to make a positive difference to the lives of marginalised people. Occupation! is just a game, and you can walk freely away whenever you want, but the message behind it is a serious one. In the West Bank and Gaza, injustice continues to weave through the fabric of Palestinian life. Join us as we embrace the work of our Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters in their determination to be agents of change.
Not that Greenbelt is only indoctrinating children:
One of our Greenbelt highlights will be the official launch of Kairos Britain: A Time for Action, the new booklet from British Church leaders responding the 2009 Kairos Palestine Call, challenging British Churches and Christians to take action and stand with our Christian brothers and sisters in Palestine against Israel’s 46-year occupation of their land in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. The launch will be at 12.30pm on Sunday. We’re hosting a reception after the launch, so do stay and take the opportunity to talk some more.
While the Greenbelt site has many, many articles about how evil Israel is, there is not a single posting there about how Coptic Christians are being attacked, today, in Egypt. In case the social justice people at Greenbelt missed it, here are the latest stats:
47 churches attacked, of which 25 were burned, seven looted and destroyed, five partly damaged, and 10 attacked without sustaining heavy damage. Nor how Christians are fleeing Lebanon.
And only a single article about Syrian Christians becoming refugees. In the past two years, Syria has become the only Arab country that one is allowed to criticize without worrying about losing your lefty credentials. It is still nowhere as monstrous as Israel, of course, based on the amount of attention it gets at fun, family festivals like Greenbelt. They'd have to gas at least a half million more people to death and etch crosses in their faces to start getting the same attention Israel get from good, moral, justice-seeking Christians like the ones at Greenbelt.
The Islamists have now started on Sunday: the Christians are in their crosshairs, and when they have finished, the Islamists will return to Saturday and destroy the Jews. The Zionists in Israel understand the threats of radical Islam and its intentions for their country far better than the U.S. administration will ever be able to. The Jews do not fear to show their determination and willingness to fight a life-and-death battle for their continued existence; it is that determination which has made the Islamists avoid confronting them for the present and target the Christians instead.
What is unreal are the dictates America imposes on Israel, including the demand to release convicted murderers from jail and to reach an agreement with Mahmoud Abbas, who does not have the support of the Palestinian people. This approach will lead to a Hamas takeover of the West Bank and most likely then of Jordan; and it will destroy what is left of the Christian community in Bethlehem and east Jerusalem, whose members after the Oslo Accords and the withdrawal of Israel from the territories, were killed, raped and threatened into fleeing their homes.
Whilst Muslim Brotherhood-led attacks on Egypt’s Christians, and the burning of churches, since the July coup alone makes a mockery of such claims, it’s interesting to note that back in 2010, as one of two members of Egypt’s delegation to the Gaza flotilla, Al-Baltaji was singing a different tune concerning peace, justice and the dignity of man.
Per MEMRI: "Al-Baltaji…said at a March 2010 conference, “A nation that excels at dying will be blessed by Allah with a life of dignity and with eternal paradise.” He also said that his movement “will never recognize Israel and will never abandon the resistance,” and that “resistance is the only road map that can save Jerusalem, restore the Arab honor, and prevent Palestine from becoming a second Andalusia."
MEMRI: Saudi Author: The Arabs Were Occupiers in Andalusia; We Should Reexamine our History Books
Walt rose to prominence as co-author of a conspiracy book about Jewish manipulation of American foreign policy and has been referred to by prominent liberal journalist Jeffrey Goldberg as someone who “makes his living scapegoating Jews.”
AJA has boasted of the additional airtime it will provide guests such as Mr. Walt — AJA will not be “cluttering the news with commercials,” said one executive — so that they may explore current events in a nuanced, balanced fashion. Walt concluded his interview by noting that the only reason the United States provides aid money to Egypt is to placate the Jewish state.
In an August 18 article titled "Why Is The Gulf Divided Over Egypt?," 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, the general manager of Al-Arabiya TV and a columnist for the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, attacks Qatar for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which, he says, is pushing this country towards chaos and conflict. He points out that, in taking this position, Qatar has come out against all the other Gulf states – namely Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait – who realize that the Muslim Brotherhood poses a danger to Egypt and to the region at large.
Tuesday’s meeting reflects the deepening collaboration between the two security forces over common trouble in the Sinai, where Israel’s Shin Bet security service now counts 15 Salafist terror groups operating from the desert, with four seen as being especially violent, Israel’s Haaretz daily reported, citing unnamed sources at the security agency.
An Egyptian court ordered Wednesday the release of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, but it is not yet clear if the ailing ex-leader will walk free after over two years in detention, officials said.
President Barack Obama is expected to hold a Cabinet-level meeting to discuss the issue, according to White House spokesman Josh Earnest. "That review has not concluded and ... published reports to the contrary that assistance to Egypt has been cut off are not accurate," Earnest told reporters in a briefing.
If the US does cut the $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt, the country could find other supporters, but it would be “a bad sign and will badly affect the military for some time,” Beblawi said, noting that in the past “Egypt went with the Russian military for support and we survived. So, there is no end to life. You can live with different circumstances.”
In a blunt warning to countries critical of the Egyptian military crackdown and considering suspending aid, longstanding U.S. ally Saudi Arabia suggested that the decisions they make now will have long-term consequences for their relationships in the Arab and Muslim world.
Saudi Arabia has led the way in supporting the Egyptian military’s actions, first in removing the Muslim Brotherhood administration early last month and in its subsequent steps against supporters of the ousted Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi.
The arrested Islamists include a preacher known for his fiery sermons at Muslim Brotherhood gatherings who was reportedly caught as he tried to flee to neighboring Libya in disguise, and a spokesman for Brotherhood said to be on his way to catch a flight out of the country.
Haroun, the president of the Egyptian Jewish community, doesn’t enjoy hearing anti-Semitic slurs on the street. She gets nervous when she hears Egyptians are burning the churches of Coptic Christians, a much larger religious minority than the country’s tiny Jewish community. She assumes that most of her compatriots have forgotten there are any Jews left in Egypt.
The ongoing turmoil in Egypt “is not a political struggle, but a war against terrorism,” the head of the Catholic Church in Egypt, Bishop Ibrahim Isaac Sidrak, Patriarch of Alexandria, said in a recent statement.
“With pain, but also with hope, the Catholic Church in Egypt is following what our country is experiencing: terrorist attacks, killings and the burning of churches, schools and state institutions,” Bishop Sidrak said.
Bdair’s brother, Abdel Fattah, said that the security agents stormed the family’s shop in Tulkarem and confiscated all the Morsi perfume bottles, in addition to a computer. The shop specializes in selling locally made fragrances for men and women.
The PA leadership in the West Bank has come out in full support of the ouster of Morsi, hailing the Egyptian army for its crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood supporters
Egypt warned Turkey on Tuesday that it was losing its patience, after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of being behind the removal of former President Mohammed Morsi by the Egyptian military.
The state news agency MENA quoted Egyptian ministers as having said that Erdogan's comments aimed to divide Egyptians.
"The cabinet stresses that Egypt's patience is wearing thin," the ministers were quoted as having said. "Egypt does not share others' enmities, and is not about to go in search of a new identity. Its Arab and Islamic nature is obvious," they added.
“Anyone who heard Erdogan’s words, which were full of hate and incitement, understands without any doubt that we are talking about the successor to Goebbels, and his plotting is in the same vein as the Dreyfus trial and the Elders of Zion,” Liberman said Wednesday, referring to two notorious instances of anti-Semitism.
“After years of stifling repression and brutal oppression, the people of the Middle East said enough is enough. Millions have poured into the streets from Benghazi to Beirut and from Tehran to Tunis. They have raised their voices for liberty, for democracy, and for opportunity,” Ambassador Prosor said. “By far, the worst instance has been Bashar al-Assad’s murderous campaign against the Syrian people.”
Senior Hezbollah member Nabil Qaouk bragged today that the Iran-backed terror group is capable of saturation bombing Israeli population centers, bragging that Israeli cities were being targeted with tens of thousands of missiles.
Syrian activists close to the country’s opposition claimed hundreds of people were killed in a devastating “poison gas” attack by regime forces outside Damascus Wednesday.
The attack came as UN chemical weapons inspectors were beginning a probe of chemical weapon use in sites around Syria.
There were several differing reports on the numbers of dead. A Free Syrian Army source told Al Arabiya the death toll stood at 1,188, while the Local Coordination Committees said some 785 people were killed. A nurse at an emergency clinic in Douma told Reuters the death toll was at 213, and the head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 40 were confirmed dead and the death toll could reach over 200.
The Palestinians are a minority among the more than 600,000 Syrian refugees who have come to Lebanon. But their stateless status as lifelong refugees now forced to flee relatively secure lives in Syria has complicated the regional humanitarian crisis. The vast majority were born in Syria, descendants of parents and grandparents who left ancestral homes in what is now Israel.
Soon after arriving here, Rania and her family were joined by Rania's sister Riham and her husband, Ammar, who abandoned his lingerie shop on Damascus' Hamra Street.
While camp residents, including several relatives, have been welcoming, the Syrian Palestinians say the garbage-strewn squalor of this and other Palestinian camps in Lebanon has stunned them.
I had mentioned the Tamarod Palestine Facebook group that was making Hamas so nervous.
That group was against both Hamas and Fatah. But Tamarod Gaza is only against Hamas, and they are growing, now with over 30,000 Facebook "Likes."
They are pushing for a major anti-Hamas rally in Gaza on November 11, and just released a video slamming Hamas for its actions.
The video says that Hamas practices "murder, torture, vandalism and bullying, bribery, smuggling, as if they were one of the gangs in the Middle Ages, but it's shameful shameful that they practice [these crimes] in the name of religion and the homeland and the resistance..."
The group misses the old Hamas, the one that fought only against Israel. "The Hamas of today is not the Hamas of Yassin," they say.
Tamarod Gaza's message ends by saying "All our options are open, but we disagree with you as to the choice of weapon. We are not raising arms against our brothers, but you are; we are after bloodshed but you are; we do not drag bodies in the streets, but you do; we will not kill children and men, women and young people, but you do; we do not demolish mosques, but you do; we understand Palestine and its people and their will, their pride and dignity but not you."
Hamas has said that Fatah is behind this group and has started a crackdown on suspected members.
This week I had an email conversation with the COGAT Gaza spokeswoman about the precise process of how goods get transferred into Gaza.
Here is how it works. (These are mostly COGAT's words, I edited them from multiple emails):
When a Gaza businessman wants to order goods from Israel privately, his first stop would be at the PA offices. There, there's a committee that is in charge of integrating all the requests and putting them in order, the Civil Committee of the PA, according to the format that is familiar to both sides. After that, it is that committee's job to pass a list of trucks that are to cross the next day. The head of the civil committee is in direct contact with the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA) and they work with him closely every day, through phone calls and meetings, in order to make the work process efficient. The PA committee is the CLA's POC, but it is not the one ordering the goods.
When the lists are received at the Gaza CLA, they get to the approval process, and once they are approved they are passed to the CLA's representatives at Kerem Shalom, who are the first to receive the truck drivers the next morning.
As of today, the capacity of Kerem Shalom is 400 trucks per day. Due to the number of requests from the PA Civil Committee the number of trucks crossing per day never reaches 400. It can go up to 300 trucks on a good day.
Of course, if the Palestinian side would like to add more trucks to cross at Kerem Shalom, they're free to do so. The Israeli side will make its arrangements to meet the demands.
Unfortunately, many trucks are a no show at the crossing, for Palestinian personal matters. The trucks are coordinated, and are on the list, but every day the CLA sees a large number of blank forms for trucks that never crossed. That depends almost entirely on the Palestinians. Should they decide to cancel a truck for whatever reason, the CLA only knows about it at the end of the day, when they sum up the merchandise that went through. (It appears possible that the Israeli seller might renege sometimes as well, but that doesn't appear to be the normal case.)
The Palestinian businessmen do their coordination with Israeli private companies on their own. They only interact with COGAT (through the PA) when it comes to making sure the goods actually cross.
My comments:
While Kerem Shalom can handle 400 trucks a day, and perhaps 300 actually are hired typically, often dozens of the expected trucks never make it, for whatever logistical reasons that the Gazans canceled the delivery at the last minute. Last week about 10% of the expected trucks did not arrive.
The upshot is that Kerem Shalom is not being run at capacity - not even close. If Israel's "siege" was so painful, one would expect that the crossing would be over capacity and that there would be pressure to expand it. But even now that Egypt has cracked down on smuggling, Kerem Shalom is not close to its limit. It has increased transfers markedly, from 4700 in February to 6600 in July, but it can handle far more.
It seems apparent that Hamas prefers goods to be sent through Rafah than from Israel, for a number of reasons. One is that the PA is not involved in Rafah tunnels. Another is that Hamas can tax tunnel goods at will. Yet another is that fuel and some other smuggled goods are cheap because Egypt subsidizes them, so Hamas can buy things like construction material and diesel at a discount. And the fourth is that Israel happily ships goods to businessmen and to NGOs, but not to Hamas. (Also, dual-use materials are still restricted so Hamas has no choice but to smuggle those.)
People and businesses in Gaza don't need that many imports from Egypt - but Hamas does.
The simple fact is that if Gaza was suffering from a "crushing siege," Kerem Shalom would be operating at capacity. It isn't.
For 67 years, the Virgin Mary Church has been a peaceful refuge for Shenouda El Sayeh, much like the Giza province village of Hafr Hakim where it rests and where he has lived all those years.
But, as he swept its floors on Thursday, it was painfully obvious things had changed.
The night before, a mob -- chanting against Coptic Christians such as El Sayeh and calling for Egypt to become an "Islamic state" -- had torched and looted the Virgin Mary Church.
"I didn't expect this to happen," El Sayeh said.
He's not alone. Christians all around Egypt are cleaning up in the aftermath of a spate of attacks, which not coincidentally came on the county's deadliest day since the 2011 revolution that overthrew longtime President Hosni Mubarak.
Bishop Angaelos, the Cairo-born head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, said he was told by colleagues in Egypt that 52 churches were attacked in a 24-hour span that started Wednesday, as well as numerous Christians' homes and businesses.
Ishak Ibrahim, a researcher with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, told CNN he had confirmed attacks on at least 30 churches so far, in addition to the targeting of church-related facilities, including schools and cultural centers.
Those churches reportedly set ablaze Wednesday included St. George Church in Sohag, a city south of Cairo on the Nile River.
And the new day brought new attacks. Prince Tadros Church in Fayoum, which is southwest of Cairo, was stormed and burned Thursday night, according to the official Middle East News Agency.
CNN is trying to avoid blaming any group for the torchings, but Al Ahram explains who did it:
Incensed by the bloody crackdown that has claimed more than 500 lives, Morsi loyalists orchestrated nationwide assaults on Christian targets, wreaking havoc on churches, homes, and Christian-owned businesses throughout the country.
The Muslim expression "First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people" is coming true in Egypt.
.
The Palestinian Christian Initiative (Kairos Palestine) issued a statement strongly denouncing the Israel attempts to recruit Arab Palestinian Christians, in historic Palestine to the Israeli military that occupies their people.
The statement came in response to the Israeli decision to form a joint committee of Palestinian Christians, and the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, with the aim to encourage and act on recurring young Arab Christians in the Israeli army.
Kairos stated that the officials who are encouraging enlistment in the occupation army are conducting provocative actions that harm Christian Churches, national interests and the Christians themselves.
“Those who call for recruiting Christians to the occupation army do not represent us, do not represent our Churches, and do not represent the Christians”, Kairos said, “It seems that some of those who have been deceived chose a wrong path that does not serve our interests and faith as Arab Christians”.
It added that trying to recruit the Christians is immoral, and harms the Palestinian Christian identity in the Holy Land.
“We need to be united, we need to protect our national identity, only our Arab, Palestinian, identity will be able to protect us, and protect our interests”, Kairos said, “Our choice will not be sectarian, but will only be national unity between all Palestinians regardless of their beliefs and faith”.
...When Kairos Palestine was established in December of 2009, it published its mission statement calling for people, justice and equality, expressed it rejection to the Israeli occupation, all sorts of apartheid in the world, and called for justice and equality.
You get that? They claim that they want equality, but then they say that Israel giving Christians the same rights and responsibilities as Jews is immoral.
Calling them hypocrites is an understatement.
What kind of equality does Kairos want? The one where Jews don't have any rights to self-determination, where they are expected to act like good little dhimmis under Muslim rule, and where there is no state of Israel protecting Jews from bigots like these Arab Christians who pervert their very religion to express their hate.
Christians are being targeted and harmed in Syria and Egypt, they are fleeing Lebanon and Iraq - but these haters who masquerade as people of faith are obsessed with the Jewish state, the one place in the entire Middle East where the Christian population is increasing.
Somehow, I don't think that their primary interest is the well-being of Israel's Christians.
Last week I mentioned a Christian Israeli who spoke to an Arab newspaper about why she is enlisting in the IDF and why Arab MK Haneen Zoabi, who is against any non-Jews in the army, does not speak in her name.
Since then there have been numerous interviews with herand a fellow Christian enlistee by the Israeli media. Here is a video about them:
MK Miri Regev denounced on Wednesday Arab MKs who have campaigned for the dismissal of a Greek-Orthodox priest for backing IDF enlistment in the Christian community, during a hearing in the Knesset Internal Affairs and Environment Committee.
Last week, Balad MKs Basel Ghattas and Haneen Zoabi wrote to Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem Theophilus III, demanding that Father Gabriel Nadaf either halt his activities supporting Christian Arab enlistment or be fired by the patriarch from his position as a serving priest in his congregation in Yafia, near Nazareth.
Now, in a stunning article in Al Arab and picked up by other Arabic media, a teenage girl from Nazareth slams Zoabi and declares her intention to enlist in the IDF.
18-year old Raghda Gracie told the newspaper:
Our recruitment is not done with coercion or force, but is my choice...I believe that we as Israelis are obliged to provide the service to the state and we have to be faithful to her and offer loyalty.
Haneen Zoabi has no right to speak in our name; we are Christians and not Palestinians. We were born in the State of Israel, which existed before we were born and I call on Zoabi stop speaking in our name as Arabs, Palestinians.
My father was an army officer in the Golani unit and all members of my family have served in military units and combat.
I am the first girl in the family that will serve in the army and I am proud of it; I walk in the streets of Nazareth with my head held high and proud because no one can deprive me of this dream. The army is very important for me, especially since Israel is a democratic state and does not differentiate between citizens. We are Christians and proud Israeli army Christian recruits. We are not racists, we love Arab Muslims and we ask only that Haneen Zoabi not talk in our name.
Everyone here can says that Palestinians or Arabs do not believe in this country, but it must be known that they live in it. I say to everyone whether they are Muslim Arab, Druze or Christian: if you support the Palestinians, leave to another country.
Christ and the Virgin Mary were two Jews, and we [Christian Israelis] belong more to the Jews.
Al-Arab even asked her if she objected to going into an army of people who wanted to kill Jesus! She replied that nonetheless, Jews are God's chosen people.
The newspaper, apparently nervous about this interview, stressed that the opinions are Gracie's alone.
Arab Christian residents of Nazareth who proudly serve in the Israeli army and encourage their children to do the same are coming under increasing attack, and Israel is starting to take notice and come to their aid.
For a number of years now, a group of Nazareth Christians who are officers in the Israeli army have been actively recruiting young local Arabs to follow in their footsteps and serve the Jewish state. (h/t Zvi)
Jewish lawyers were prominently involved in defending Mandela in the various political trials in which he was involved, among them Isie Maisels (later a member of the governing body of the Jewish Agency), Arthur Chaskalson, Joel Joffe and Sidney Kentridge. He also worked closely with the journalist Benjamin Pogrund, who later made aliya and in addition to promoting Israeli- Palestinian dialogue has been a staunch defender of Israel in the propaganda war against it.
After Mandela’s release from prison in 1990, he and the mainstream Jewish leadership forged a cordial relationship and many leading Jewish businessmen were brought on board to assist in addressing the legacy of poverty and inequality left by the apartheid system.
Following Israel’s assassination of Palestinian arch-terrorist Salah Shehadeh in 2002, pro-Palestinian groups spurred efforts to have Israeli military and political figures arrested in Britain for alleged war crimes committed abroad, exploiting a loophole in British law enabling universal jurisdiction.
In 2011, however, the law was amended so that Britain’s director of Public Prosecutions would be required to give his consent if a group calls for an arrest warrant to be issued on the grounds of universal jurisdiction, effectively closing the loophole. Livni eventually visited Britain in 2011 to meet with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
The event, “Freedompalooza 2013" is a gathering of white supremacists, anti-Semites, anti-government extremists and conspiracy theorists, according to the ADL.
Scheduled for the July 4-6 weekend, it is being organized by Paul Topete, an extremist lead singer of the band “Pokerface,” and sponsored by the “American Free Press,” published by Willis Carto. The list of invited speakers includes two former members of Congress, both of whom have a history of hatred against Israel. Cynthia McKinney has long promoted anti-Israel rhetoric, and accused the pro-Israel lobby of sabotaging her political career.
The Christian Century, a mainline Christian magazine based in Chicago, has come under fire from the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) for its ties to James M. Wall, an associate editor at the controversial Veterans News Now (VNN),who appears on The Christian Century’s masthead.
According to CAMERA, VNN is a magazine that “traffics in ugly anti-Semitic tropes and imagery,” including several recent pieces that highlighted “Jesus’ Aryan identity” and a pro-Iran piece titled “Abraham is Not My Father.” On the front page ofVNN on July 3, an article titled “Earth’s alpha predator: Zionist Mafia” argues that the American public has been “brainwashed by lies” from the Zionists.
Really, what could be antisemitic about picturing Israel as an ugly greedy monster with horns? Why on earth would anybody take offense to see Israel caricatured like this as illustration for an article recommending two books highly critical of the Jewish state in one of Germany’s most influential newspapers?
Wrestling’s governing body says it suspended an Egyptian athlete who allegedly bit her Israeli opponent during a bout.
Enas Moustafa Youssef Khourshid also reportedly disrespected wrestling protocol by refusing to shake the hand of Ilana Kartysh of Israel before or after their semifinal match at a Grand Prix event last month in Sassari, Italy.
On 2 July, the stone-setting for Howard Grief took place in Jerusalem, and I should like to pay tribute to this extraordinary man, and the unique legacy he left to the Jewish people in his book, “The Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law“, published in 2008 —– the product of more than 20 years of research.
It is a work of profound scholarship, yet the documentation of the Jewish legal rights to the land set in a historical narrative, make it a compelling read. Each titled chapter within it is a stand-alone, with the first being the most important.
Pro-Israel advocacy and education group StandWithUs has launched an advertising campaign for the month of July on San Francisco’s Muni bus system to counter the latest round of anti-Israel ads.
“Anti-Israel groups attempt to misinform the public in order to undermine American support for Israel. Their ads typically demonize Israel and blame it for the lack of peace. They ignore context including the continued deadly actions and ideology of Palestinian terrorist groups like Hamas,” Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs, said in a statement reported by the JNS news service.
In a move widely expected to spark considerable controversy, one of the UK’s leading university unions, the National Union of Teachers, Trainers and Education Research Staff (known cheekily by some rebels within the union as ‘NUTTERS’) will announce a proposal that Britain’s university teachers and researchers take the unusual step of boycotting themselves.
A spokesperson for the union told CiF Watch the following:
“We realise this may seem drastic, but the gravity of the crimes being committed in the name of UK universities leaves us no choice. We have reliable information that several UK universities have collaboration programmes with educational facilities in such anti-democratic, misogynistic and apartheid states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar. We also know of several other British institutions which have received substantial donations from such puppet organisations as the Qatari Foundation and the King Faisal Institute.
Rejoice, hummus lovers (and football fans), because Monday Night Football will never be the same. That’s because hummus is now the official dip of the National Football League—Sabra hummus, that is, from the PepsiCo-owned Sabra Dipping Co.—and soon the entirety of this great country will finally know what you’ve known all along: that hummus is delicious.
Bloomberg reports that the sponsorship comes at the same time that the company approved its first U.S. television commercials, presumably part of a wider campaign to make the Middle Eastern spread more palatable to the American masses:
In November 2012, Pictet & Cie executives prepared the gala opening of the Swiss bank's Israeli branch. These were the early days of Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza, and for a moment, Tel Aviv was a city under missile attack. Rebuffing instructions from the Swiss Embassy, Pictet Wealth Management Israel manager Karen Schwok, went ahead with the event. "We opened under conditions of uncertainty, just when missiles began to fall here. All of the bank's eight partners and senior executives came to Israel for three days. We held meetings and events, and every time we all ran to the stairwell," she told "Globes" in an interview. (h/t Zvi)
The National University of Singapore (NUS) and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem are launching a Joint Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree program in biomedical science beginning in August 2013.
Prof. Tan Eng Chye, Deputy President (Academic Affairs) and Provost at National University of Singapore, and Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson, President of the Hebrew University, signed the joint degree agreement at NUS, in the presence of Ambassador of Israel to Singapore Her Excellency Amira Arnon and 30 invited guests.
Intel, the world’s top computer chip manufacturer, is in talks with the Israeli government about a $10-billion (U.S.) investment in Israel, a senior government official told the Hebrew-language Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Tuesday.
An Islamic Jihad leader has condemned the Israeli airstrike that killed a member of his group this morning, in response to rocket fire.
One of the things he said is interesting:
Palestine is holy ground, a royal land, and it is not for the Palestinians only , but for all Muslims.
Which brings up two questions:
Has any Palestinian Christian leader ever expressed discomfort at being explicitly sidelined and dhimmified when Islamic Jihad and Hamas make statements like these?
Has any leftist "pro-Palestinian" group ever condemned the ambitions of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whose clear goal is not to create an independent Palestine but to use it as a step in the creation of a pan-Muslim 'umma?
The answer to both can be found in the latter half of what the PIJ leader said:
[All Muslims] must release the land from the terrorism of the Zionist enemy.
As long as you frame your goals in terms of destroying Israel, who cares what your ultimate goal is? Because everyone can agree that the main goal is the destruction of the Jewish state, not the niggling details of what would replace it.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Monday, January 23, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
