Hospital head is a Hamas lieutenant colonel. His lies were widely quoted by the media for months.

Times of Israel reports:

The director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital in Jabaliya has revealed in a Shin Bet interrogation that his northern Gaza hospital was turned into a military facility under Hamas’s control and that at one point, it had housed a kidnapped soldier.

In footage published on Tuesday by the Shin Bet and Israel Defense Forces, hospital director Ahmed Kahlot could be seen telling an Israeli interrogator that Hamas had offices inside the hospital and used it as a base for operational activity.

According to Kahlot, who said he has been a lieutenant colonel in Hamas since 2010, some 16 members of the hospital’s staff — including doctors, nurses and paramedics — were Hamas operatives serving in the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the terror organization.

He added that several members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades were also employed in the hospital.

Here is his statement:

 Kahlout was widely quoted by the media for two months. Now that we know he is Hamas, we can assume that a large percentage of his statements that helped shape world opinion were propaganda.

So what has the media quoted a Hamas official as if he was a dedicated medical professional?

AP quoted him November 7 defending how casualty numbers from Hamas' health ministry are trustworthy.  

“Hamas is one of the factions. Some of us are aligned with Fatah, some are independent,” said Ahmed al-Kahlot, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. “More than anything, we are medical professionals.”

The Guardian, November 12:

 The head of northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital has told Al Jazeera that the hospital has run out of fuel.

“Ahmed al-Kahlout, the head of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, said in an interview with Al Jazeera that the facility’s main generator has run out of fuel, forcing the hospital to shut its operation,” the news organisation reports.

More than 5,000 people are sheltering at the hospital in addition to patients, al-Kahlout said.

The Guardian, November 22, quoted him again:

The hospital had received more than 60 bodies with over 200 injured since last night, he added. “The medical teams are very tired. We don’t have a single drop of fuel. We work in the dark using handheld searchlights,” he said

In another message distributed by the health ministry, Kahlout said the hospital was using cooking oil rather than diesel to run the hospital’s generators, and an ambulance targeting the wounded had been struck near the hospital grounds.

CNN, December 11, quoted him as saying that the maternity ward was hit by tank shelling, killing two women and leaving two more so badly wounded their legs required amputation.

Pravda, December 12:

"Israeli drones target anyone entering or leaving the hospital. ...The IOF targeted the hospital's water system, and we had to rely on groundwater. No electricity, water, or food in the hospital. The IOF shelled the maternity ward. Three children in the hospital lost their lives in the last three days due to a shortage of oxygen. "

Every quote from every medical professional in Gaza since October 7 is as suspect as Al-Kahlout's. But there was no skepticism about his accusations - until now. 

Now that he is telling everyone that Hamas controls the hospitals and ambulances, the Times of London has lots of reservations about  his statements:

Israel has sought to justify arresting scores of medical staff in Gaza by posting a video that purports to show a hospital manager confessing to working for Hamas.

Ahmed Kahlot, head of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, was detained last week along with 70 other medical staff.

The release of the video was condemned by pro-Palestinian groups, who said there was no justification for publishing interrogation evidence obtained under unclear conditions without the presence of a lawyer.

Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian surgeon who spent weeks earlier in the conflict working in both al-Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals, said the Israelis were taking these actions because their attempts to show al-Shifa had been used as a command centre had failed.

“The Israelis plan to have show trials to justify the attacks on hospitals, because the whole narrative on al-Shifa was so ludicrous,” he said.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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04/03 Links Pt2: World Vision, Prominent U.S. Evangelical Charity, Caught Funding Jihadis; How J Street Turned Democrats Against Israel; Telling a Story Founded the Jewish Nation

From Ian:

World Vision, Prominent U.S. Evangelical Charity, Caught Funding Jihadis

When U.S. officials discovered that World Vision was funding a designated terror group, they ordered WV to stop paying ISRA, but WV maintained its relationship with the organization. In January 2015, WV said it had "discontinued any future collaboration." Yet almost a year later, WV posted a job position working with ISRA in December 2015, apparently indicating it had not ceased collaborating as it claimed.

Around the same time, World Vision partnered with yet another group that "has helped fund the Hamas military wing," the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH).

In 2012, World Vision was exposed using Australian government dollars to fund a terrorist front group operating in the West Bank. World Vision was funding the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), a front group for the U.S. terror designated Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Australian Solicitor Andrew Hamilton, who worked with the Israel Law Center which exposed the funding, told the Jerusalem Post that, "The Union of Agricultural Work Committees is an integral part of the proscribed terror organization, the PFLP, that Australian citizens and corporations are prohibited from providing support to."

In an email to FWI, Hamilton called on the recently elected Australian Government "to initiate a detailed criminal investigation into the Halabi scandal."

"For more than a decade, World Vision Australia has avoided justice in Australia for its criminal activities in funding PFLP terrorism using Australian taxpayer money obtained by deception," Hamilton told FWI.

"It would be reasonable to assume that if a smaller organization, whose CEO [Tim Costello] was not the brother of a former federal Treasurer [Peter Costello], had similarly deceived the Australian Government to obtain taxpayer funds which were then sent to terrorists, then they would have been prosecuted to the full extent of the law." (FWI has attempted to obtain a response from the Costellos and from World Vision Australia, but has been unsuccessful.)

In 2010, World Vision partnered with a group headed by a PFLP operative, Khaled Yamani, who led the Palestinian Children and Youth Foundation in Lebanon. And a few years prior to that, WV signed joint memoranda with the U.S. designated terror group Interpal, a financial supporter of Hamas.

WV responded to FWI's inquiry regarding the claims made by Cliff Smith in an email declaring, "We remain adamant we are committed to a positive relationship with Israel in our humanitarian work and we do not now, and never have, supported terrorism."

World Vision portrays itself as a "global Christian humanitarian organization." McDonnell asks how WV's support of Islamist terrorists is really in line with the Gospel message it presents. "To see this activity from World Vision in Sudan and then continuing in Israel too—it just makes me wonder: 'What kind of Christians are supporting a group that is funding terrorists?'"

Yisrael Medad: Update on Cordoba: "cultural reductionism"

Spanish Church ‘accused of glossing over Muslim identity of Cordoba’s Great Mosque’

February 28 2023,
The Catholic Church has been accused of glossing over the Muslim identity of the Great Mosque of Cordoba with a visitor centre that emphasises its Christian origins.

The Church’s planned centre for the mosque, which has served as a cathedral since the Spanish city’s reconquest by Christian forces in 1236, aims to “correct” what it deems to be an overly Islamic vision of the city’s past.

“The need to redesign the entire space [of the mosque area] derives from the finding that Cordoba is marked with a very powerful cultural label: that of a Muslim city,” said a report by Demetrio Fernandez, the Bishop of Cordoba.

The mosque has served as a cathedral for hundreds of years and is used for traditional processions at Easter

“The cultural reductionism is so strong that it has the capacity to eclipse the brilliant Visigoth, Roman and Christian [periods]..."

So, Muslims are engaged in cultural reductionism of Jerusalem as the capital of Judea, where the Temple stood on Mount Moriah?

Telling a Story Founded the Jewish Nation

Many of the basic fundamentals of the seder—not only eating matzah and bitter herbs, but also relating the story of the liberation from Egyptian bondage to one’s children—can be found in Exodus 12, which is set in Egypt just before the tenth plague. By imagining what this archetypal seder might have been like, Cole Aronson explores the ritual’s meaning for Jewish history:

You don’t tell the children they were once slaves in Egypt, because that’s all they know. But it wasn’t always so, you tell them—long ago, their ancestors enjoyed over a century of freedom under God. God chose to raise the patriarchs up from the idolatry of their native culture and gave them a covenantal life. A famine some generations later compelled the chosen family to live in Egypt, first as guests and then—until now—as slaves. Tonight, God will keep His promise to the patriarchs and restore the Israelites to His service.

What the parents of the Exodus told their children was the very first maggid the first “telling” of Passover night. But the story as originally told didn’t commemorate the founding of the Jewish nation. Telling the story founded the Jewish nation.

Until the Exodus, the before-time of the patriarchs was a rumor whispered by strangers subjugated in a strange land. On the Exodus night, teaching the children about God’s choice of Abraham converted his descendants into his self-conscious heirs. A free nation was created by restoring a memory of itself. The pageantry of the seder is often and correctly said to recreate the Exodus night in order to tell a story. The reverse is also true. Jews recreate the Exodus night in part by telling a story that the Exodus parents must have told their own children 3,500 years ago, and with the same function—initiating youngsters into the chosen people of God.

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01/11 Links Pt2: Col Kemp: Jew-Hate at American Universities; Caroline Glick: The ‘woke’ West is assaulting Jews for embracing their heritage with Richard Landes

From Ian:

Col Kemp: Jew-Hate at American Universities

[The Amcha] report paints a stark picture of an increasing, intensifying and carefully coordinated campaign of attacks on Jewish identity at over 60% of the colleges and universities that are popular with Jews, including 2,000 incidents intended to harm Jewish students since 2015.

[T]hese activists demand an end to Zionism, which... means just one thing: an end to the democratic State of Israel. This itself is antisemitism in any book and is spelt out as such in the US State Department definition of antisemitism.

Despite expending so much energy against their fellow students, German Gentiles had plenty left for their Jewish professors. Unsatisfied with Nazi race regulations restricting Jewish faculty, students boycotted the classes of those who were exempt under the race laws and pressured university authorities to dismiss them. The result was that every Jewish professor who was still legally allowed to teach had resigned by 1935.

The Amcha report characterises the situation on US campuses today as a crisis for American Jews. It is much more than that. It is a crisis for us all that one section of our student body is bullied, abused, intimidated and cast down by their fellow students and often abandoned by their professors and faculty authorities.

It is high time for the federal government, under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to withdraw its funding from all universities that participate in bigotry such as that.

Jonathan Tobin: Ilhan Omar is the Democrats’ problem, not Kevin McCarthy’s

By standing with Omar, Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have effectively normalized antisemitism. And McCarthy’s effort to punish her will again test whether they mean what they say when they speak of their opposition to hate.

As was the case with Greene and Gosar last year, it will take a vote by the majority of the House to remove Omar from her perch on the Foreign Relations Committee. Given the GOP’s narrow majority, the fate of Schiff (who repeatedly lied about the hoax he helped promote that former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election) and Swalwell (who had an intimate relationship with a Chinese spy) will also be part of the same debate.

Democrats will also answer the list of Omar’s antisemitic statements and actions with their own brand of “whataboutism,” which will involve McCarthy’s recent embrace of Greene, who was an ally during his fight for the speaker’s chair. They’ll bring up other Republicans for censure, as well. One is Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), who lied about just about everything during his campaign for election, including whether he was Jewish.

If every member of Congress or the executive branch had to be censured for lying, however, Washington would soon be emptied of politicians, including Biden, who takes second place to no one when it comes to being a serial fabulist. Moreover, there is an argument to be made that neither party should be engaging in this kind of tit-for-tat punishment.

If the voters think they deserve nothing better than to be represented by such scoundrels, perhaps it’s best if we leave it to them to decide at the ballot box who should sit in Congress or on committees. As the great cynic, journalist H.L. Mencken wrote, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Nevertheless, if the Democrats are going to play this game, then McCarthy can hardly be blamed for answering in kind. And if House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) isn’t prepared to agree to remove Omar, then the speaker is justified in seeking to oust her.

At stake here is not the broader question of how much extremism or bad behavior Congress should be willing to tolerate in its members. Rather, it is specifically one that will force Democrats to decide what is more important to them.

Is it the fight against antisemitism at a time when Jew-hatred is on the rise throughout the globe? Or is their true allegiance to identity politics and the toxic intersectional myths that allow Omar to paint herself as an oppressed victim, rather than a hatemonger, simply because of the color of her skin?

Caroline Glick: The ‘woke’ West is assaulting Jews for embracing their heritage

As Israel is being pilloried at the U.N. Security Council by friend and foe alike for daring to allow Jews to visit the Temple Mount, professor Richard Landes joins Caroline Glick on this week’s episode of the “Caroline Glick Show” to discuss the contemporary roots of the demonization of Jews and the Jewish state.

Landes recently published “Can the Whole World Be Wrong: Lethal Journalism, Anti-Semitism and the Global Jihad,” the product of 22 years of work.

He began his study of the subject in the aftermath of the first modern blood libel, the alleged killing of Muhammed al-Dura, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, by IDF forces in Gaza on Sept. 30, 2000.

The false allegation that the boy was killed by IDF forces that day, and that they murdered him deliberately, formed the basis of a massive propaganda effort. Its product has been the legitimization of the mass murder of Jews in Israel and worldwide by Palestinians and other jihadists.

Landes argues that the West’s embrace of the al-Dura blood libel was the foundation not only of the antisemitism assaulting the Jewish people worldwide today, but also of the West’s inability to acknowledge, let alone defeat, the forces of global jihad, whether in the United States or Europe or in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and beyond.

Glick and Landes examine the current pathologies of the “woke” West—including the assault on Jews for embracing their heritage, by among other things, visiting the Temple Mount—through the prism of the al-Dura incident. Their conversation traverses space and time and ends with vital insights into what needs to happen for the West to survive the ravages of the Red-Green alliance which was born with the al-Dura blood libel.

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12/12 Links Pt2: The Apartheid Libel to Destroy Israel; Teaching Terror to Tots - reevaluating the Oslo Accords; Collier: An open letter to Gary Lineker

From Ian:

PMW: Teaching Terror to Tots - reevaluating the Oslo Accords

Many observers have been puzzled why the 1993 Oslo peace accords did not lead to peace but precisely the opposite. Sporadic Palestinian terror attacks prior to 1993 were replaced by repeated Palestinian terror waves murdering more than 2,000 Israelis. PMW’s report "Teaching Terror to Tots” is the key to understanding the post-Oslo terror enigma.

Palestinian Media Watch as been documenting official PA/Fatah ideologies, policies and messages disseminated through every framework they control for over 20 years and everything that PMW has exposed has raised questions about the sincerity of the PA/Fatah in the peace process. PMW recently published a report on Fatah’s Waed magazine for children ages 6 – 15, covering every issue published over the last eight years. The messages for Palestinian children spread through Waed confirm that the PA/Fatah end game was, and remains, Israel’s destruction and Israel’s replacement by “Palestine”.

The hundreds of examples in the 70 page report show that through Waed, Fatah – that has dominated and controlled the PA since its creation – has been teaching Palestinian children that:
“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” after “the Zionist invaders will go to the garbage can of history” because “the period of Zionism will eventually pass.” As a last step all “the Jewish settlers in Palestine will disappear.”

Israel must be destroyed because Jews/Israelis are:
“Zionist thieves who stole our land”… “Jewish invaders”… “foreigners from all ends of the earth who did not know Palestine and did not live in it – neither them nor their forefathers.”

Since Jews have no rights, Palestinians have the “right to wage an armed struggle to take back its stolen homeland.” This is the only PA/Fatah path, because “the liberation of Palestine will only be achieved through armed struggle.”

In short, the PA/Fatah’s message to children is that Israel was created by theft, its continued existence is a crime, and its destruction via the armed struggle is justified and inevitable. The children who read Waed are taught that they have the responsibility to bring about the future world without Israel.

The PA/Fatah education that is documented in the report is the driving force behind the current Palestinian terror wave that is led by Palestinian youth who have been raised on these hate messages. If no action is taken to combat the PA/Fatah education to hate and terror, it will continue to be the driving force for Palestinian violence for generations.

PMW’s exposure of the PA/Fatah messages through Waed should have far-reaching political implications. Attitudes towards the Oslo Accords and policy towards the PA must be reassessed based on the reality of what the PA is and not the illusion of what the international community imagined it would be. If Palestinian terror is to be stopped and stability returned to Israel, the newly exposed PA/Fatah teachings must be the impetus for a new attitude towards the PA.

PMW is releasing this report at the GPO’s Christian Media Conference in Jerusalem.

To read PMW's "Teaching Terror to Tots" click here.

The following is an Executive Summary of "Teaching Terror to Tots":

Khaled Abu Toameh: The Apartheid Libel to Destroy Israel

Recently... however, with the UNHRC's persistent allegations that Israel is an apartheid state, that label is being pushed even further in an apparent effort to make it stick. The complicity of recent reports from NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch appear to be trying to ensure that their libel will be complete.

The campaign emboldens the radicals among the Palestinians, including the Iranian-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), whose declared goal is to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Islamist state.

Terrorist groups such as Hamas and PIJ are undoubtedly happy to see non-Arabs and non-Muslims -- and even ostensible human rights organizations -- join their effort to falsely depict Israel as an apartheid state.

Former UNHRC chief Navi Pillay, despite extensive evidence of massive anti-Israel bias, was recently appointed to chair the UNHRC's first and only open-ended Commission of Inquiry.

Basically, [the New York Times] is saying that although the two countries cannot be equated, the comparison is being forced and twisted into place for the sake of furthering an alternate agenda which has little to do with the facts on the ground.

Israel's founding charter pledges to safeguard the equal rights of all residents: "... It will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations."

Among many of South Africa's Apartheid laws, the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act effectively stripped all Blacks of their South African citizenship and of the right to vote.

Israeli Arabs, however, have full citizenship, including the right to vote and to public demonstration. They are represented in all levels of government, including positions as members of Knesset (parliament), in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and as Supreme Court justices. Israeli Arabs hold positions as high-ranking officers in the Israel Defense Forces, including that of major-general in the Central Command.

David Collier: An open letter to Gary Lineker

Last week a Palestinian tried to attacked Israelis in the car. He then stabbed a nearby border guard in the face. When he lost a struggle to steal a weapon he was shot and killed. A UN spokesperson reduced it to a ‘scuffle’. This vile rewriting of history was then repeated in the Guardian newspaper.

There is no correlation remaining whatsoever between the event (the terror attack) and the way it was reported (an innocent man was shot). It is the lie that goes viral. Raw propaganda packaged for the international virtue signallers.

Why on earth would you want to get involved in this?

Spreading myths empowers the extremists. It perpetuates the conflict and pushes peace further away. Nobody in their right mind seriously believes those people attacking Israelis want a two state solution. Nor do those putting up illegal structures. They have deliberately created a battlefield (it doesn’t actually exist unless they come out to confront Israelis).

All this ends with people on the outside, people such as yourself – making it all worse by promoting the propaganda.

So please, can you virtue signal at someone else’s expense – and leave what you do not understand alone.

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11/18 Links Pt2: Theodor Herzl was gone, but his message survived; BBC broadcasts folksongs that glorify attacks on Jews; FBI Director: Jewish Community Under Threat ‘From All Sides’

From Ian:

Gil Troy: Theodor Herzl was gone, but his message survived

Editor’s note: Excerpted from the new three-volume set “Theodor Herzl: Zionist Writings” edited by Gil Troy, the inaugural publication of The Library of the Jewish People, now available at www.theljp.org. This is the 11th in a series.

In 1897, Theodor Herzl essentially described himself when he wrote about a man who once “deep in his soul felt the need to be a Jew,” and who, reeling from Jew-hatred, watched “his soul become one bleeding wound.” Finally, this man “began to love Judaism with great fervor.”

In this short story, “The Menorah,” Herzl saluted his step-by-step Judaization and Zionization. Celebrating Hanukkah, he delighted in the “growing brilliance” candle by candle, gradually generating more and more light.

The “occasion became a parable for the enkindling of a whole nation.” Flipping from the reluctant, traumatized Jew he had been to the proud, engaged Jew he was surprised to see in the mirror, Herzl admitted: “When he had resolved to return to the ancient fold and openly acknowledge his return, he had only intended to do what he considered honorable and sensible. But he had never dreamed that on his way back home he would also find gratification for his longing for beauty. Yet what befell him was nothing less.”

Herzl concluded: “The darkness must retreat.”

Seven years later, Herzl spelled out Zionism’s dynamic power, its spillover effects. “For inherent in Zionism, as I understand it, is not only the striving for a legally secured homeland for our unfortunate people, but also the striving for moral and intellectual perfection,” he wrote.

This vision made Herzl a model liberal nationalist. He believed that “an individual can help himself neither politically nor economically as effectively as a community can help itself.”

Mark Regev: Did Israel's famed diplomat Abba Eban lack clout back home?

The 20th anniversary of the passing of Israel’s legendary foreign minister Abba Eban on November 17 is an opportunity to ask whether the acclaimed diplomat, with his stellar global reputation, was as effective in defining Israeli policy as he was in advocating it abroad.

An outstanding student at England’s Cambridge University, Eban graduated in 1938 with an exemplary triple first, positioning him to pursue a lifetime career as a respected academic.

But the South Africa-born Eban could not sit out the impending world crisis that would so heavily impact the Jewish people. Drawn to Zionism, he worked at the London headquarters of the World Zionist Movement under the leadership of Chaim Weizmann (who later became Israel’s first president).

With the outbreak of World War II, Eban joined the British military to fight the Nazis, serving as an intelligence officer in Mandatory Palestine. Discharged at the end of the war, Eban joined the staff of the Jewish Agency’s political department and was sent to New York where he became the Jewish Agency’s liaison with the UN’s Special Committee on Palestine, helping steer it toward recommending Jewish statehood. Subsequently, Eban was part of the lobbying effort that produced the necessary two-thirds majority General Assembly vote for partition on November 29, 1947.

After successfully orchestrating Israel’s acceptance to the UN in May 1949, Eban became the Jewish state’s permanent representative to the organization. In parallel, he also served as Israel’s ambassador to the US, concurrently working in both Washington and New York throughout the 1950s.

Eban was a celebrity. His remarkable intellectual and oratorial prowess made him one of the foremost English speechmakers of the period, on a par with Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy. Henry Kissinger wrote: “I have never encountered anyone who matched his command of the English language. Sentences poured forth in mellifluous constructions complicated enough to test the listener’s intelligence and simultaneously leave him transfixed by the speaker’s virtuosity.”

Howard Jacobson: Ulysses Shmulysses

Homeric he is not; but a hero for our time he is. Ulysses is first and foremost a comedy of exile. Joyce wrote it while living in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris. That Dublin went on calling to him throughout the years he lived elsewhere is clear from the novel’s intense recreation of the city’s bursting vitality. But novelists thrive on being away, and Joyce needed to be anywhere but Dublin, free from Irish politics, the church, and his own memories of personal and professional failure. Leopold Bloom is not given that choice; Joyce does not buy him a ticket from Dublin to Tiberias. But he is already, in his Jewishness, exile enough for Joyce. Behind the epic figure of Odysseus, in this novel, looms the shadow of the mythical Wandering Jew who, for having jeered at Jesus on the way to the cross, is doomed to roam the earth until the end of human time. Call him a figment of early Christian antisemitism. And while antisemitism isn’t a major theme in Ulysses, it shows itself with some unexpected savagery from time to time as in the figure of the headmaster Mr. Deasy who gets a kick out of declaring “Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the Jews … and do you know why? She never let them in. That’s why.” “That’s not life for men and women,” Bloom responds, “insult and hatred.” Those who are not let in, must find somewhere else to go.

This has been in large part the Jewish story for 2,000 years. And the homeless Jew is the metaphorical undercurrent of Ulysses. Joyce is said to have worked up the the character of Leopold Bloom from the Jews he met in the course of his own wanderings in Trieste and Zurich. He must have studied them attentively, for Bloom is no mere token Jew. In his queer lapses from Judaism, mistaking words and confusing events, he is every inch the part-time, no longer practicing Jew, making the best of the diaspora, more Jewish to others than to himself.

And in him, unexpectedly but triumphantly, Joyce sees a version of his own rejections and rebuffs. Without going into what we know or think we know of Joyce’s own sexual predilections, it is accepted that there are similarities between Bloom’s submissiveness and his creator’s, and that Joyce chose Bloom’s Jewishness as the perfect vehicle to express the passive, much put-upon and all-suffering openness to life that he needed to drive—or, rather, be driven by—this novel. At home in being far from home, content to be cuckolded and remaining in love with the wife who cuckolds him, pessimistic and yet happy enough, dialectical, pedantic—in one lunatic scene he morphs into “The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft who tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would, according to the best approved tradition of medical science … produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centre”—Bloom makes being a stranger in a strange land an enticing condition.

One of the best jokes made about Bloom is that he was once a traveler for blotting paper. His absorbency might not make him the most forceful husband for Molly, but it is the key to the novel’s plenty. With Bloom around to soak in every misadventure without complaint, there’s no limit to what Joyce might plausibly invent. Ulysses first appeared in 1922. Worse things than exile were still to happen to Jews. And for many novelists in the ensuing years, the Jew would become the perfect protagonist, the very model of humanity in extremis—homeless, tragic, patient, funny. But James Joyce got there first.

La Revue Blanche

The Dreyfus affair was not the only social battle in which the Revue engaged. In 1897, across two issues, it published a remarkable “Enquete sur la Commune,” a series of brief, firsthand accounts of the great uprising of 1871 whose specter still haunted France. A century and a half later it remains one of the best accounts of that event.

The repressive legislation passed in response to the anarchist bombing wave of the early 1890s, laws which effectively banned anarchist propaganda and activity of any kind, was harshly criticized in the pages of La Revue blanche. The strongest criticism was an article signed “Un Juriste.” The author described the legislation as, “Everyone admits that these laws never should have been our laws, the laws of a republican nation, of a civilized nation, of an honest nation. They stink of tyranny, barbarism, and falsehood.” The pseudonymous author was the future three-time prime minister of France, Léon Blum.

An 1898 volume of anti-militarist articles released by the review’s book publishing arm, provocatively titled L’Armée contre la Nation (the army against the nation) would lead the minister of war to press a charge of defamation against the publishers, a charge the Natansons were able to successfully defend themselves against by claiming the book contained nothing but articles that had already been published elsewhere and not been found criminal.

By the turn of the century French intellectuals began withdrawing from the political field. Charles Péguy later described the letdown felt during and after the Dreyfus affair by lamenting that “everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.” At the same time, the editorial staff and stable of writers at the review had turned over several times. One of its later editors, Urbain Gohier, was a barely disguised antisemite who would become an important figure on the anti-Jewish fringe. Yet the quality of the contributors was still high. If Mallarmé’s poetry no longer appeared in its pages, the young Guillaume Apollinaire did. Alfred Jarry became a regular contributor, the Revue publishing his masterpiece, Ubu Roi, as well as Octave Mirbeau’s classic Diary of a Chambermaid, serially and in book form by its Editions de la Revue blanche. That enterprise also published what is considered to be France’s first bestseller, a translation of—of all things—the Pole Henryk Sinkiewicz biblical epic Quo Vadis.

By the first years of the 20th century only one Natanson brother, Thadée, remained on the magazine. Embroiled in a lengthy divorce, he seemed to have grown tired of the magazine. It was losing money, but then, according to Thadée’s wife, later famous as Misia Sert, that had always been the case. In 1903 La Revue blanche published the last of its 237 issues. Its closing was in no way an indication of failure. It had set out to be the voice of a new France, of a more open country, both politically and culturally, and was, in the end, both its begetter and its voice.

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11/07 Links Pt2: Elliot Abrams: No, Israeli Democracy Is Not in Danger; Jonathan Tobin: Democrats’ doomsday political appeals are bad for the Jews; Jew-Free Investing

From Ian:

No, Israeli Democracy Is Not in Danger

Surveying rhetoric concerning last week’s Israeli elections, and the upcoming American elections, Elliott Abrams writes:
There is a striking parallel between the comments being heard from the left in the United States about the meaning of a possible Republican victory on November 8, and from the left in the United States—as much as or more than in Israel—about the meaning of the victory of the right in the Israeli election on November 1. The meaning, we are told, is the end of democracy. That’s what President Biden and Hillary Clinton said on November 2 about our elections, [while] President Obama said, “democracy is on the ballot.” It is what we heard from commentators such as Thomas Friedman about the Israeli results and our own election.

What actually happened? There was a very high turnout of voters—over 70 percent, substantially higher than is typical in the United States (and this was the fifth election in under four years)—and it split almost down the middle.

Those inclined to apocalyptic rhetoric in response to the results cite the presence of two members of the far right, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, in Benjamin Netanyahu’s likely coalition. On this, Abrams comments:
For one thing, Netanyahu is a known quantity as prime minister because he was Israel’s longest-serving prime minister ever. His party is by far the largest in his coalition and as his long record shows he is as canny a politician as Israel has produced. Moreover, he has in the main been pretty prudent as a leader, avoiding war and conflict whenever possible and watching carefully where the voters are. It is not at all to be assumed that the government will be under the thumb of Ben-Gvir and/or Bezalel Smotrich, who are new and untested as government officials. Moreover, though they joined to run in this election, they actually come from separate parties and may soon find themselves rivals. If it is useful to Netanyahu to have this happen, he has the wiles to encourage it.

Jonathan Tobin: Democrats’ doomsday political appeals are bad for the Jews

Both parties spend a lot of effort seeking out and publicizing extremists among their opponents who have either said something anti-Semitic or support someone else who has done so. And each side has found plenty of such targets for their ire. But to jump from that game of political gotcha to a belief that the Jews must be loyal soldiers in an imaginary war for democracy is a trap.

Such is the conceit behind a conference on extremism, being held by the Anti-Defamation League just after the election, whose headliners, like ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, are believers in the war-on-democracy myth. It would have behooved them to invite at least one conservative who might refute that claim, but it appears they didn’t.

Mixing up real Jewish security concerns with partisan propaganda is a colossal mistake. What the ADL seems not to understand is that by enlisting the premier Jewish defense agency to back up the claim that democracy is at risk, they are helping to drag the country down a conspiratorial rabbit hole with incalculable consequences.

Responsible Jewish leaders should be doing the opposite. Even mainstream liberal groups have to understand that bolstering the narrative about the country’s being on the brink of an apocalyptic battle for freedom against domestic foes is bad for America and the Jews. It is exactly the sort of mindset in which those who dwell in the fever swamps of the far-left and far-right, and who actually do mean the Jews harm, thrive.

It remains to be seen whether leaders on both sides of the aisle can be found to pull us back from an abyss of delegitimization that poses a genuine threat to democracy. More than the security of the Jewish community will be at stake if we don’t find a way out of an ideological civil war fueled by intemperate political rhetoric.

Pennsylvania Jewish voters may vote Republican to defeat Israel critic Summer Lee

In Tuesday’s midterm elections, some Jewish voters are hoping for an upset in Pennsylvania’s 12th District, where insiders say Republican Mike Doyle is closing the gap with Democrat Summer Lee in the final days of the race.

It could all come down to support for Israel.

Some Jewish voters in the district, which encompasses most Pittsburgh neighborhoods—including Squirrel Hill, considered the heart of the Jewish community and the scene of the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in October 2018—have been deeply concerned by what they perceive as Lee’s political radicalism, including on the issue of Israel.

Some, in fact, were so alarmed that they organized a grassroots effort encouraging registered Republicans and independents to switch their party affiliation to Democrat in order to vote against Lee in the Democratic primary.

Several of Lee’s tweets have been of particular concern, including one that criticized U.S. support for Israel during the May 2021 war between Israel and Hamas.

Lee has also tweeted about a “plan” to “dismantle the Democratic Party.”

Many Jewish voters fear that Lee is sympathetic to the group of left-wing congresspeople known as “The Squad,” which is notorious for its hostility to Israel and includes several anti-Semites. The Squad recently organized a fundraiser for Lee.

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11/03 Links Pt2: Israeli Film Purports to Expose the Story of a Massacre That Never Happened; Melanie Phillips: The Jihadi Onslaught Against Christians; The Deception of Palestinian Nationalism

From Ian:

A New Israeli Film Purports to Expose the Story of a Massacre That Never Happened

Beginning this evening, the Manhattan Jewish Community Center is hosting its Other Israel film festival. Featured movies include Boycott, described as an “inspiring tale of everyday Americans” engaged in “legal battles that expose an attack on freedom of speech across 33 states in America”—namely, legislation that prevents states from doing business with entities that discriminate against and boycott Israel. Another film featured at the festival is about smugglers who help Palestinians evade Israeli soldiers, while a third film focuses on Mizra?im who were “denied their right to a better life in Israel” by the Israeli government.

At the festival’s opening night, there will be a screening of the documentary Tantura, directed by Alon Schwartz, which investigates allegations of a massacre perpetrated by the Haganah during the 1948 war. But like the “massacre” at Lydda, or the more famous one at Deir Yassin, it’s unlikely this atrocity ever took place. The distinguished historian Benny Morris sets forth the evidence:

In both [a recent article published in Haaretz] and the film, Schwarz maintains that Israeli forces, specifically the 33rd Battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade, perpetrated a large massacre against the inhabitants of Tantura immediately after they captured the seaside village on May 23, 1948. The film is based on the allegations made by Teddy Katz in his master’s thesis, submitted to the University of Haifa in 1998. . . . Katz is the film’s hero and chief narrator.

Schwarz maintains in the article that his film is based on Katz’s paper and on “documents, military aerial photographs, and other archival materials.” This is just another crude lie, which points precisely at the central historiographic problem with Katz’s thesis and Schwarz’s film: there is no written evidence from 1948—not in Israeli archives, not in United Nations’ archives, and not in the archives of the Red Cross or the Western powers—that describes or even mentions a big massacre at Tantura. Katz and Schwarz base the “big massacre” thesis entirely on interviews with Arabs and Jews who “remembered” or claimed that they remembered it 40 years after the event.

Particularly damning is the absence of reports on this supposed outrage from contemporaneous Palestinian sources. Radio Ramallah, for instance, reported on the Israeli victory at Tantura, but said nothing about a massacre.

It’s noteworthy that a memorandum of the Arab Higher Committee, titled “The Atrocities of the Jews,” which was sent to the UN in early July 1948, makes no mention of Tantura—another puzzling omission if a large-scale massacre had recently taken place there. It’s worth noting that Palestinian historiography in the decades after 1948 also did not mention a massacre at Tantura. The book deemed the Nakba bible, the six-volume al-Nakba published between1956 and 1960 by the chronicler Aref al-Aref, does not mention a massacre at Tantura.

Melanie Phillips: The Jihadi Onslaught Against Christians

Last Saturday, there was violence in the vicinity of Bethlehem. You won’t have read a word about this in the mainstream media. That’s because the perpetrators weren’t Israelis but Muslim Arabs, and the targets weren’t Palestinians but Christians.

This was but the latest in a serious of attacks on Christian Arabs in the Bethlehem area. You won’t have read about those in the mainstream media either — just as you will have read hardly anything there about the horrific attacks on Christians that continue to take place in Nigeria and other African countries.

This is what happened on Saturday, according to contemporaneous reports on social media. A Christmas bazaar opened in Beit Sahour, a town near Bethlehem. A young Muslim Arab went to the bazaar and started taking videos of Christian girls wearing western clothes, which to his eyes probably seemed immodest.

A Christian scout leader threw him out of the bazaar. A short time later, he returned with a gang of men. They started stoning the Holy Forefathers Greek Orthodox Church near the bazaar. They smashed up cars parked nearby belonging to Christians and struck the scout on the face. In the absence of the Palestinian police, the church rang its bells — a known danger alert for churches.

Videos of these events started circulating on social media. You can see one here, in a tweet which suggests the perpetrator had tried to enter the church.

2008: The Deception of Palestinian Nationalism

The evidence that simple autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza was never the PLO’s true goal is everywhere. In 1970, US Secretary of State William Rogers suggested that the West Bank and Gaza be given up by Israel in return for peace and recognition. This plan was accepted by Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Only Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO, rejected it, opting instead to attempt an overthrow of Jordan’s King Hussein.

The evidence runs deeper. Yassir Arafat, who was head of the PLO until 2004, was under the direct tutelage and control of the KGB. Ion Mihai Pacepa, KGB officer and onetime chief of Romanian Intelligence, was assigned to handling Arafat. Pacepa recorded several of his conversations with Arafat when they met in Romania at the palace of brutal dictators Nicolai and Elena Ceausescu. In these conversations, Arafat unequivocally states that his sole aim is to destroy Israel.

Pacepa and the KGB were delighted. They consulted General Giap, a close associate of Ho Chi Minh, who was involved with the North Vietnamese propaganda effort during the Vietnam War. Giap recommended to Arafat that he “stop talking about annihilating Israel and instead turn your [Arafat’s] terror war into a struggle for human rights.” It had worked in Vietnam, he claimed, because transforming the conflict from one of ideologies (Socialism vs. Capitalism) to one of an “indigenous” people’s struggle for liberty had turned the tide of popular support in the West against the war.

Similar advice was provided to Arafat by Muhammed Yazid, minister of information in two Algerian wartime governments. He wrote “wipe out the argument that Israel is a small state whose existence is threatened by the Arab States, or the reduction of the Palestinian problem to a question of refugees; instead present the Palestinian struggle as one for liberation like the others. Wipe out the impression that in the struggle between the Palestinians and Zionists, the Zionist is the underdog. Now it is the Arab who is oppressed and victimized in his existence because he is not only facing the Zionists but also world imperialism.”

Yasser Arafat heeded this advice, and with the help of bi-weekly plane-loads of Soviet supplies brought in through Damascus as well as the Soviet propaganda machine, he began to portray the Palestinian Arabs as a supposedly indigenous population whose human rights were being tarnished by Israel.

The fact is that after the War of 1967, Israel inherited Arab refugees living in the West Bank and Gaza that were forced to live there in the period of Egyptian and Jordanian control from 1948 to 1967. Israel immediately offered to return the lands it won in 1967 (West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights) in return for a peace treaty. This offer was rejected by the Arab countries in the Khartoum Conference (Aug. 29- Sep. 1, 1967). In Arafat’s authorized biography, Arafat: Terrorist or Peace Maker, Arafat claims this moment as one of his greatest diplomatic victories.

It is telling that Zahir Muhse’in, member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee, said the following in a 1977 interview with the Amsterdam-based newspaper Trouw. “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”

Palestinian nationalism is therefore a historical fabrication born out of a communist thirst for expansion and an Arab resentment of the existence of Israel. The “need” and “desire” for Palestinian is a veiled expression of the “need” and “desire” to end Israel’s existence.

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10/24 Links Pt2: An Inconvenient Truth: The Jewish People Never Left the Land of Israel; Bari Weiss: Kanye West's Dark, Twisted Fantasy And Jewish reality

From Ian:

An Inconvenient Truth: The Jewish People Never Left the Land of Israel

I just finished reading former US Ambassador David Friedman’s recent article, in which he makes the point that Judaism and Zionism are inseparable. It is a fine article and I agree with him, but I wonder if it places too much emphasis on the return of the Jewish people to their homeland after a lengthy absence. I have the same concern with an upbeat review of Israel’s achievements in a recent article by David Weinberg, which refers to two millennia of Jewish dispersion.

To imply that the Jews left the Land of Israel for 2,000 years, after the fall of Masada, is not accurate. It feeds into the view that the modern state of Israel is a European colonial enterprise with no historical connection to the land. What’s more, the Jewish return did not originate with the modern Zionist movement in the early 1880s. Aliyah has been continuous throughout the ages.

The Jewish people never really left the Holy Land. Certainly, many were killed or expelled at the time of Masada and later, but many Jews continued to live in “Palestine” (the name given by the Romans after the Bar Kochba revolt, 132-135 CE) for a considerable time afterward. The evidence is clear from the extensive archeological sites visible today, such as those at Beit Alpha, Beit She’arim, Tzippori (Sepphoris), Baram, and many others. Jews formed a majority of the population of Palestine until at least the fifth century CE, and an autonomous Roman-recognized Jewish patriarchate in Palestine existed until 429 CE.

Archeological ruins point to the establishment of more than 80 synagogues, particularly in the Galilee, during the six centuries after the destruction of the Temple. After Masada, the Jewish population was substantial enough for three serious revolts against Roman or Byzantine rule to occur; the last one, against the Emperor Heraclius, was in the seventh century.

Evidence from the Cairo Genizah, and the writings of the Spanish-Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela, indicate that Jews continued to inhabit a number of towns, including Jerusalem, after the Byzantine defeat by the Arabs under Omar Ibn Al Khattab in 637, and even during Crusader rule. In fact, the 12th century witnessed an upsurge in Jewish immigration from Europe; 300 rabbis from England and France, including a number of prominent Tosafists, immigrated to the Holy land in 1211, while the noted Spanish rabbi and philosopher Nachmanides (the Ramban) made aliyah in 1267.

David Collier: Pete Gregson’s campaigns. Just where are the Scottish police?

A Holocaust denying antisemite created a partnership with a Gazan scammer who has family links to proscribed Islamic terrorist groups. They are still taking £1000s from people in Scotland for increasingly dubious and unbelievable campaigns. Why is it left to an independent Jewish journalist to investigate them? Just where are the Scottish police?

The unfortunate Mohammed Almadhoun
Mohammed Almadhoun is either scamming the people of Scotland or he is the unluckiest man alive.

About 18 months ago his house was bombed, and he ran a campaign to raise funds to rebuild it. The image he used for his ‘bombed-out’ house was a bombed out Hamas bank and had been swiped from the internet:

Mohammed Almadhoun houseTwo years before this he claimed that a school he teaches in was also bombed out – and once again he tried to raise funds to have it fixed. This time Almadhoun used an image of a school in Syria bombed during the Syrian civil war:

Mohammed also claimed he needed back surgery at the time – and once again ran a fundraising campaign to raise money to help him:

None of this was real – but nor did Mohammed succeed in raising much cash. What he lacked was a ‘sponsor’ in the UK so blinded by antisemitic hate – that he would promote every story that Mohammed gave him. Enter Pete Gregson – an antisemite who has bought into almost every conspiracy about Jews that can be found.

So earlier this year Gregson tells everyone that Mohammed would go to jail unless he could pay his debts – raising funds to help him. This despite the fact Almadhoun is a relatively wealthy man from a very powerful clan. Gregson was campaigning for a bogus story – and I told him so. Since then, things have only got worse.

London Centre Study of Contemporary Antisemitism: Alvin Rosenfeld: ‘The Jews are Guilty’: Contemporary Echoes of Old Religious Tropes

Alvin H Rosenfeld, the Director of the Indiana University Bloomington Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism talks about how centuries old tropes of religious antisemitism are being recycled and expressed in today’s America.

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Even the Guardian's corrections are wrong on SodaStream

From The Guardian's "Corrections and Clarifications" on Monday:

An article about the issue of boycotts of Israel (US and Israel in war of words over boycotts warning, 3 February, ) wrongly stated that SodaStream, an Israeli company, is "based in the West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, which is built on expropriated Arab land". As we have said before, it is a factory that is based there, not the headquarters of the company. In another story about the issue, which examined the relationship between Oxfam and Scarlett Johansson, we said that the charity was "under pressure from anti-Israel campaigners to sever ties" with the film star. It would be more accurate to describe the activists in the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel as "opposed to settlements" (Oxfam under pressure to drop Johansson over Israeli ties, 30 January, page 23).

You know you're in bad shape when even your corrections are wrong.

The SodaStream factory is not based in Ma'ale Adumim, but in Mishor Adumim nearby.

Peace Now once came out with a report claiming that 86% of Ma'ale Adumim was built on private Arab-owned land. Then they were forced to release a revised report that showed that only 0.5% of Maale Adumim was built on private Arab-owned lands. The Guardian, by saying that the entire Ma'ale Adumin is built on "expropriated Arab land," is lying.

Moreover, all of Mishor Adumim - including the SodaStream factory - is built on state-owned land.

In their second correction, they were right the first time. BDS is against Israel, and the BDS movement explicitly calls to boycott all Israeli goods and cultural events, not settlement goods. (Peter Beinart is the one spearheading the idea of "only" boycotting goods created by Jews in Judea and Samaria.) It is completely wrong to say BDS is only against settlements, and one can only wonder why the Guardian made an incorrect correction.

(h/t Irene)

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8/07 Links Part 2: BDS Fail at Delta, Vatican Slams Water's anti-Semitism, Soros Funds Conflict in Israel

From Ian:

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Vatican op-ed slams anti-Semitism at pig-flying musician’s concert

“The spirit and the style of the Werchter Rock festival was visible, with the fans who had every right to listen to music that they enjoy,” Cristiana Dobner wrote in a weekend edition of Osservatore Romano, referring to the July 20 concert. “But did they also have the right to draw the Star of David on the back of a pig and not be reported? … We continue to talk about the respect for every religion and every human being, yet we keep falling into these shameful situations.”
The op-ed, headlined “Unrestrained anti-Semitism at a rock festival,” did not mention former Pink Floyd front man Waters, 69, by name. In his act he used a huge inflated balloon in the shape of a wild boar. A Star of David was prominently visible on it, as were other symbols, including a hammer and sickle, crosses and a dollar sign.

Carol Hunt: I'll ask this only once: What has Israel ever done to us?

You see, I've read all the histories, so I am aware that after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France divided up the Middle East – creating Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. I know that in 1921 80 per cent of what was called the "Palestinian Mandate" was made into (Trans) Jordan (where currently two million Palestinian refugees live yet only 167,000 are allowed citizenship or are eligible for education and healthcare).
I am aware that in 1948 the UN voted to halve the remaining 20 per cent; Israel was born and immediately invaded by five neighbouring Arab countries whose objective was – and still is – to annihilate it. In 1967, when tiny Israel was forced to pre-empt a massive Arab invasion, the West Bank was occupied by Jordan and the Gaza Strip by Egypt. I know that all current facts and statistics show that Palestinians are treated far better by Israel than other Arab nations –where they are subjected to apartheid discrimination. And I'm aware that if I am to be accepted in polite, liberal society I should keep my mouth shut and just agree – Israel bad, Arabs good.
But in all conscience I can't. I need to know why so many Irish politicians and groups are only "pro-Palestinian" "against Israel", as it were, and say, not Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan or the Arab League?

Embarrassment as Anti-Israel Claims Debunked

Last week, Electronic Intifada, a blog aligned with the BDS movement, announced its latest "victory," claiming that Delta Air Lines had decided to stop serving a snack produced in the Barkan Industrial Zone, due to its location in Samaria. Electronic Intifada claimed that the decision was made after a complaint was lodged by a member of the far-left "Coalition of Women for Peace," publishing what it said was the text of an email in which the airline said that it would be dropping the product. The blog's editor, Ali Abunima, claimed that "Delta Air Lines lawyers ruled that Israeli settlement-made snacks should not be served."
Veteran Israeli activist Avi Mayer, however, was unconvinced, and promptly discovered that claims of a boycott were completely false.

Watchdog Group: Soros Funding Conflict in Israel

OSF also funds Al Haq, an Arab organization based in the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Ramallah, north of Jerusalem. NGO-Monitor’s researchers described Al-Haq director Shawan Jabarin as “a human rights campaigner by day and a terrorist by night,” who is among the senior members of the PFLP terrorist group.
The extreme-left Israeli group B’Tselem also receives OSF funds. B’Tselem is notorious for publishing one-sided reports, and for inflating Arab civilian casualty figures. For example, the group included hundreds of Hamas policemen in Gaza as “non-combatants,” and counted Sheikh Ahmed Yassin – then the leader of Hamas – as not a definite combatant.

Wal-Mart pushes SodaStream profit up

SodaStream International Ltd. says its second-quarter net income jumped 36%, boosted by strong demand fueled by its launch at Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
The company raised its revenue and profit outlook, pushing shares higher in morning trading.
SodaStream makes beverage carbonation systems that enable consumers to easily transform tap water into carbonated soft drinks and sparkling water.

CiF Watch prompts correction to Guardian publication claim about Israeli immigrants

Per our communication with The Observer’s Readers’ Editor, EPA Photo Agency researched the matter and promptly issued the following the correction:

Attention editors, on July 23rd, 2013 we moved a set of images showing immigrants arriving from New York to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. We have been made aware of that the part of our caption saying ‘… New immigrants predominately move to Israeli settlements in the West Bank,..’ is wrong and is not supported by figures of the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics that we have received.

BBC Weather doesn’t know in which country Jerusalem is located

If you happen to be looking for the weather forecast for Tel Aviv, you will naturally also be offered the option “Israel”.
But if your search was for Israel’s capital city, well…that city is not located in any country at all according to the BBC.

Arab MK Attends Post-Ramadan Dinner on Marmara

The Turkish IHH organization, which was responsible for the 2010 flotilla aimed at breaking the naval blockade on Gaza, recently hosted a delegation aboard the Mavi Marmara ship, including one elected Arab Israeli Member of Knesset.
The Mavi Marmara is currently docked in Istanbul, where it arrived in December of 2010 after the incident during the flotilla, in which IDF soldiers who were forced to board the ship when it refused orders to change course and head towards the Ashdod Port, were attacked by the IHH activists on board with clubs and knives. The soldiers had no choice but to open fire, leaving nine Turks dead.

Over 50% of Palestinians back peace talks, survey finds

More than half of Palestinians support the resumption of peace talks with Israel, according to a public opinion poll published Tuesday.
The poll – conducted by Alpha International, an organization that aims to help decision-makers take “effective” decisions – also found that jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti would win in a presidential election if Mahmoud Abbas does not run for another term.

SWC to Greek President: Politician’s Swastika Tattoo is Grounds for Banning the Symbol Nationally

Jewish human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center on Tuesday called on Greek President Karolos Papoulias to ban the public use of the Swastika after photos surfaced of a high-profile Greek politician sporting a tattoo of the offensive symbol on his shoulder.
The front page of the August 4th edition of Greek’s largest newspaper, Poto Thema, featured the photo, obtained from the Greek Helsinki Monitor, of Golden Dawn Party Member of Parliament and Spokesman, Elias Kasidiàris, on his beach vacation last week.

VIDEO: Muslim IDF Soldier Keeps Watch Over Gaza Border

Watch our exclusive interview with Staff Sergeant Ahmed Inaim, a Bedouin soldier who guards Israel's Gaza border. Staff Sgt. Inaim's brother, who also served as an IDF soldier, was killed in combat several years ago. In 2006, Hamas terrorists injured another one of his brothers when they attacked Israel and kidnapped Gilad Shalit.
Despite his family's sacrifices, Staff Sgt. Inaim remains determined to serve his country. Last week, he spoke with us as he patrolled the Gaza border.

The Guardian wants your refugee story.

Do you have a compelling story to tell about the Jews who fled Arab or Muslim countries as refugees in the years following WWII? If so, The Guardian wants your story. Yes, I kid you not - The Guardian. Why? Because it does not feel it gave a fair shout to some refugees in its timeline by Mona Chalabi published recently (expertly ‘fisked’ by CiF Watch here). That timeline omitted 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries altogether. This is your chance to help set the record straight. But hurry – the deadline is in less than two weeks. Register as a commenter and write-up your story in no more than 250 words.

Treblinka Uprising 70th Anniversary Ceremony Features Last Living Survivor Samuel Willenberg

The site of the Treblinka concentration camp, in Poland, played host to a ceremony this past Friday commemorating 70 years since the Jewish prisoner revolt at the camp that became known as the “Treblinka uprising.”
The ceremony featured Samuel Willenberg, the last living survivor of the uprising, and Israel’s Deputy Minister of Education MK Avi Wortzman.

Yehuda Lev, who smuggled Holocaust survivors to Palestine, dies

Yehuda Lev, an iconoclastic journalist and veteran of World War II and Israel’s War of Independence who established a European underground route to smuggle Holocaust survivors to Palestine, has died.
Lev died Aug. 3 in Providence, Rhode Island, after a prolonged illness. He was 86.

Coke, Yoplait monitor water with Israel’s Blue I products

Israel’s Blue I (pronounced blue eye) had already defined the space for online water-quality monitoring in the early 2000s, before most people heard of smartphones.
Now the company, officially founded in 2003, boasts tens of thousands of its “smart” water systems in factories and municipalities around the world. Blue I smart boxes, based on electro-optics, are about to be installed in several American cities, and are found in about 150 locations throughout Barcelona.
Clients include Yoplait yogurt in France; BASF, the largest chemical company in the world; and 25 Coca-Cola bottling plants — including in India and Israel. Israel’s national water company Mekorot is another Blue I client, as is Israel’s Oil Refineries.

Stand With Us: Israel - Small Country, Big Ideas

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How Gazans celebrate International Women's Day

Today is the hundredth anniversary of International Women's Day.

Naturally, Palestinian Arabs are celebrating along with the rest of the world. For example, the Guardian published an article about how a Gaza women's advocate marks the day:

Women in Gaza love life as much as other women across the world. Although we lack basic rights, partly due to the blockade and unfair policies, we are strong. We hope the world will pay extra attention so that Gaza's women can help rebuild Palestinian society.

The celebrations have a bit of a different flavor in the Arabic media, however.

Palestine Today marks the occasion by profiling a woman, Mrs. Dadhouh (not sure of her first name), whose main claim to fame is the fact that three of her children were Islamic Jihad terrorists that were killed by Israel.

Mohammad Al Dahdouh was a senior Islamic Jihad member killed in May, 2006. His brother Khalid Al Dahdouh, also known as Abu Walid, was killed three months earlier, and a third brother Ayman was killed in 2005.

Mrs. Dadhouh is, of course, proud of her sons:

I do not regret that three of my children are martyrs; we all must have the Certificate [of martyrdom], and be ready to continue on this path for Palestine and for the redemption of Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque....Palestinian women are willing to sacrifice and give all that they possess for Jerusalem and to walk on the path of the martyrs.

I wonder why the Guardian didn't interview Mrs. Dadhouh?

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The Guardian supports continued misery for PalArab "refugees"

Here is another article I wrote for NewsRealBlog, written a couple of weeks ago but that just got published, based on this article in The Guardian.

Excerpt:

To give these people hope that they will one day “return” is an act of cruelty. They have been in limbo for six decades holding on to this false hope that is fed to them by cynical Arab leaders looking to destroy Israel demographically.

This article makes it clear that The Guardian wants them to remain in perpetual misery as well.

This article has a single purpose — to keep the lie that they will one day “return” alive. The Guardian is using these people as pawns, exactly the same way that the Arab leaders have for generations: keeping them in camps as poster children for Israel’s supposed cruelty, with never a mention of the Arab responsibility for maintaining this situation for decades. Their continued misery today translates into a new generation of terrorists tomorrow.

As has been clear for a while, the Guardian wants Israel to disappear. This article is simply one more bullet in their arsenal of lies.

Read the whole thing.

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Guardian admits spinning PalPapers quote - but where are the other corrections?

From Just Journalism:

On the first day of The Guardian’s Palestine papers expose, on Monday 24 January, when Palestinian negotiators were attacked as ‘weak’ and ‘craven’, a quote from then foreign minister Tzipi Livni appeared in a box, titled, ‘What they said…’. It read:

‘The Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we’ll say that it is impossible, we already have the land and cannot create the state.’ Tzipi Livni, then Israeli foreign minister

However, the newspaper on Saturday acknowledged that the full quote shows that Livni was characterising the Palestinian perception of Israeli policies, and not the policies themselves. What she actually said was:

‘I understand the sentiments of the Palestinians when they see the settlements being built. The meaning from the Palestinian perspective is that Israel takes more land, that the Palestinian state will be impossible, the Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we’ll say that it is impossible, we already have the land and cannot create the state.’

By cutting the quote to exclude the first part of Tzipi Livni’s sentence, The Guardian portrayed the Israeli politician as brazenly admitting a policy of making a Palestinian state impossible.

That's great, but it is a drop in the bucket of Guardian misquotes from The Palestine Papers, a pattern that can hardly be accidental.

Here are some:

The Guardian headlined an article "Palestinian negotiators accept Jewish state, papers reveal." yet the papers said no such thing. Instead they said that the PLO has no problem with how Israel defines itself, a position they have said publicly, but they would never accept that definition. In fact, they would never accept that there is something called "the Jewish people."

In that same article, they claimed that "Israeli leaders pressed for the highly controversial transfer of some of their own Arab citizens into a future Palestinian state." In reality, the Israeli leaders were saying that they did not want to have villages divided into two states, and the villages should be in one state or another. Moreover, the Guardian misuses the word "transfer" which is usually meant to indicate moving people from their homes.

The same article mischaracterizes Livni a third time by writing

[I]n an extraordinary comment in November 2007, Livni – who briefly had a British arrest warrant issued against her in 2009 over alleged war crimes in Gaza – is recorded as saying: "I was the minister of justice. I am a lawyer ... But I am against law – international law in particular. Law in general."

She made clear that what might have seemed to be a joke was meant more seriously by using the point to argue against international law as one of the terms of reference for the talks and insisting that "Palestinians don't really need international law". The Palestinian negotiators protested about the claim.

In fact she was referring to putting a reference to international law in the Terms of Reference of a joint statement at Annapolis - not saying she was against international law altogether, as the Guardian implies. They also put the "Palestinians don't really need international law" as a  Livni quote, when it was a paraphrase in the actual memo, again referring to the joint statement.

Three misquotes in one single article. Three examples of willful deception onthe part of those who read the actual memos. And The Guardian has yet to correct any of them.

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The Guardian's whitewash of the Muslim Brotherhood

Last week, The Guardian looked at the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and - surprise! - managed to find that it was not nearly as bad as those ignorant Westerners think:

"There can be no question that genuine democracy must prevail," Mohammad Mursi, a brotherhood spokesman, wrote in an article for Tuesday's Guardian. "While the Muslim Brotherhood is unequivocal regarding its basis in Islamic thought, it rejects any attempt to enforce any ideological line upon the Egyptian people."

Although the Brotherhood appears to have firmly embraced democracy, the means for reconciling that with its religious principles are not entirely clear: the issue of God's sovereignty versus people's sovereignty looks to have been fudged rather than resolved.

The Brotherhood continues to maintain that "Islam is the solution" while at the same time demonstrating a kind of pragmatism that suggests Islam may not be a complete solution after all.

For example?

One example is jizya, the poll tax on non-Muslims, which is clearly prescribed in the Qur'an. The original idea was that non-Muslims, since they did not serve in the military, should pay for their protection by Muslims.

Today, most Muslims regard jizya as obsolete.In order to follow Qur'anic principles strictly, though, it would have to be reinstated. In 1997, the Muslim Brotherhood's Supreme Guide at the time, Mustafa Mashhur, did suggest reintroducing it but, in a country with around 6 million Christians, this caused uproar and the movement later backtracked. For non-Islamist Muslims, jizya presents no great problem: they can justify its abolition on the basis of historicity – that the circumstances in which the tax was imposed no longer exist today. For Islamists, though, this is much more difficult because the words of the Qur'an and the practices of the earliest Muslims form the core of their ideology.

The Muslim Brotherhood wants Egypt to be an Islamic country. The only way that can occur is through democracy. But if it acts too Islamic now, it can never gain the power it craves. So it tactically chooses what to emphasize and what to downplay.

This is not evidence that it believes that "Islam may not be a complete solution after all." It is evidence that they know how to play the game, very well. The Guardian completely misses the point.

The Guardian's misinterpretation gets worse:

Years of repression at the hands of the Egyptian authorities have made the brotherhood more interested in human rights than many might expect from an Islamist organisation. When the European parliament criticised Egypt's record in 2008, the Mubarak regime responded with fury, while Hussein Ibrahim, the brotherhood's parliamentary spokesman, sided with Europe.

"The issue of human rights has become a global language," he said. "Although each country has its own particulars, respect of human rights is now a concern for all peoples" – though he specifically excluded gay rights.

Rather than deploring criticism from abroad, he said, the Egyptian government would do better to improve its human rights record, which would leave less room for foreigners to cause embarrassment.

The Brotherhood's interest in human rights extends in exactly one dimension - human rights for Islamists in Egypt. While the Guardian parenthetically concedes that the Ikhwan would not support human rights for gays, it pointedly ignores the other groups that the Brotherhood does not see as legal equals:

Women
Jews and Christians
Atheists, Hindus and other beliefs that are considered "idol worship"

We have a movement that openly looks upon Muslims as being a higher class than the rest of the world, and that advocates discrimination (or death) against everyone else. And yet The Guardian praises them for their stance on human rights!

Other criticisms of the article can be found at CiFWatch.

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Palestine Papers: Arguments about "two states for two peoples"

In the preparation for Annapolis, the Israeli and Palestinian Arab negotiators discussed what a joint statement might look like. Tzipi Livni wanted to say that the end-game is two states for two peoples - and the Palestinian Arabs objected, for reasons that they themselves detailed.

Here are some sections of the discussion:

Tzipi Livni: Two states is the ultimate goal of the process. But also part of the TOR [Terms of Reference document they are drafting.] Each state is the answer to the natural aspirations of its people.

Saeb Erekat: [Raises roadmap language regarding unequivocal duty to accept each state as is. Reads from the roadmap.]

TL: To say the idea that two nation states contradicts the roadmap..…

SE: [But we’ve never denied Israel’s right to define itself.]
If you want to call your state the Jewish State of Israel you can call it what you want. [Notes examples of Iran and Saudi Arabia.]

TL: I said basically that our position is a reference to the fact that each state is an answer to the national aspirations of their people.


Akram Haniyeh: There was an article in Haaretz saying that Palestinians would be stupid if they accept this [i.e. the Jewish state].

TL: Someone wrote the Palestinians?


Ahmed Querei [AA]: I want to say two state solution living side by side in peace security stability and prosperity, Palestinian democratic state independent with sovereignty, viable with East Jerusalem as its capital.


Tal Becker: That’s all? [Sarcastically.]


AA: Yes that’s our position. Two state solution living side by side in peace security stability and prosperity, Palestinian democratic state independent with sovereignty, viable with East Jerusalem as its capital. This is what we want to have. This small sentence.


TL: I just want to say something. ...Our idea is to refer to two states for two peoples. Or two nation states, Palestine and Israel living side by side in peace and security with each state constituting the homeland for its people and the fulfillment of their national aspirations and self determination...


AH: This refers to the Israeli people?


TL: [Visibly angered.] I think that we can use another session – about what it means to be a Jew and that it is more than just a religion. But if you want to take us back to 1947 -- it won’t help. Each state constituting the homeland for its people and the fulfillment of their national aspirations and self determination in their own territory. Israel the state of the Jewish people -- and I would like to emphasize the meaning of “its people” is the Jewish people -- with Jerusalem the united and undivided capital of Israel and of the Jewish people for 3007 years... [The Palestinian team protests.] You asked for it. [AA: We said East Jerusalem!] …and Palestine for the Palestinian people. We did not want to say that there is a “Palestinian people” but we’ve accepted your right to self determination.

AA: Why is it different?

TL: I didn’t ask for something that relates to my own self. I didn’t ask for recognizing something that is the internal decision of Israel. Israel can do so, it is a sovereign state. [We want you to recognize it.] The whole idea of the conflict is … the entire point is the establishment of the Jewish state. And yet we still have a conflict between us. We used to think it is because the Jews and the Arabs… but now the Palestinians… we used to say that we have no right to define the Palestinian people as a people. They can define it themselves. In 1947 it was between Jews and Arabs, and then [at that point the purpose] from the Israeli side to [was] say that the Palestinians are Arabs and not [Palestinians – it was an excuse not to create a Palestinian state. We'’ve passed that point in time and I'’m not going to raise it. The whole conflict between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is not the idea of creating a democratic state that is viable etc. It is to divide it into two.] For each state to create its own problem. Then we can ask ourselves is it viable, what is the nature of the two states. In order to end the conflict we have to say that this is the basis. I know that your problem is saying this is problematic because of the refugees. During the final status negotiations we will have an answer to the refugees. You know my position. Even having a Jewish state -- it doesn’t say anything about your demands. …. Without it, why should we create a Palestinian state?

...There is something that is shorter. I can read something with different wording:
That the ultimate goal is constituting the homeland for the Jewish people and the Palestinian people respectively, and the fulfillment of their national aspirations and self determination in their own territory.

The joint declaration at Annapolis did not include any wording about the Jewish people, but afterwards President Bush said "The [final peace] settlement will establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people just as Israel is the homeland for the Jewish people...The United States will keep its strong commitment to the security of the State of Israel and its existence as a homeland for the Jewish people."

---

By the way, the Guardian definitely saw this memo, because it was the one that they and Al Jazeera misquoted as saying that Livni said she was against international law. (She didn't.)

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Palestine Papers: Jews legally own land in the territories

Here's another EoZ scoop that the Guardian could have broken - but decided not to.

In another bombshell document that the Guardian and Al Jazeera did not believe is newsworthy, in 2008 the PLO wrote a paper describing the legal rights of Jews to lands that they owned prior to 1948.

The intent was to have a position ready in case Israel brought the issue up in negotiations. It was not presented to Israel.

It is astonishing to read paragraphs like these from the PLO:

Jews who owned land have the right to have their land restored to them or to be compensated, if restitution is not materially possible. Jews are entitled to compensation for other material and non-material losses, including lost profits, lost income, etc. caused by their displacement and dispossession.

Of course, they hold this position because they do not want to appear hypocritical with their demands from Israel. (The PLO also includes an annex to list legal arguments that Jews do not have any rights to the land anymore, in case they need to use those arguments publicly.)

Some of the parts are fascinating. For example, it describes (and implicitly supports) the bigoted British policy of severely restricting the rights of Jews - and only Jews - to buy land before 1948:

In 1940, in response to Arab concerns regarding Jewish land ownership in Palestine, the British introduced restrictions on land transfers to Jews. Pursuant to the Palestine (Amendment) Order-in-Council of 25 May 1939, the High Commissioner was authorized to prohibit and regulate land transfers.23 Acting on these powers, the High Commissioner adopted the Land Transfer Regulations, 1940, which established three zones: Zone A (16,680 km2), where land could generally not be transferred except to Palestinian Arabs; Zone B (8,348 km2), where land transfers from Arabs to Jews required permission that was generally withheld; and land outside Zones A and B (1,292 km2), which could be freely transferred.24 According to the hand-drawn map annexed to the Regulations, what became Gaza and the West Bank was entirely Zone A, meaning that land transfers to Jews were, with few exceptions, prohibited.25 Britain apparently repealed these Regulations upon the termination of its Mandate (12 May 1948).26

Between 1948 and 1967, Jordan and Egypt essentially confiscated Jewish-owned land, against international humanitarian law:

The Custodian [of Enemy Property] held and administered Jewish-owned in the West Bank until 1967 according to the Trading with the Enemy Ordinance (as opposed to administering the land like absentee property according to the powers and rules of IHL).38 Some of these assets were used by the Custodian for public purposes, such as the establishment of refugee camps, the rehabilitation of refugees, and the setting up of army camps and marketplaces. In other cases, the property was leased to private individuals, who used the land for agricultural, commercial or residential purposes, depending on its characteristics.

...
By the Order Providing Regulations for the Administration of Jews’ Property in the Areas Subject to the Control of the Egyptian Forces in Palestine, No. 25 (issued in 1948, published in 1950), Egypt appointed a Director General to administer property owned by Jews who fled in 1948. The Director General used the parcels for public projects, including refugee camps for Palestine Arabs, or leased them for private uses.41

Finally, the document describes some specific lands indisputably owned by Jews - even according to the Palestinian Arabs.

[L]and located on Mount Scopus...was purchased from a British national in 1916. Boris Goldberg, a member of Lovers of Zion, paid for the land and took title in his name.51 He gifted the land to the JNF, which gave a 999-year lease to Hebrew University.52 Additional land was purchased on Mount Scopus from Raghib al-Nashashibi, Mayor of Jerusalem, and was used for the Hebrew University. Hadassah Hospital was also built on land purchased on Mount Scopus.53

...By 1946, the JNF acquired 72,300 dunums in the Gaza district, which encompassed more than present-day Gaza.

In 1930, a Jewish farmer from Rehovot, Tuvia Miller, bought 262 dunums of land in Dayr al-Balah in the Gaza sub-district. Miller eventually sold his land to the JNF in the early 1940s. The JNF then allowed settlers from the religious Ha-Poel ha-Mizrahi movement to build the kibbutz of Kfar Darom on the land in October 1946. They abandoned the kibbutz in June 1948.59

Stein reports a purchase of 4,048 dunums in Huj (Gaza sub-district) in 1935 but does not indicate the identity of the Jewish purchaser.60 Note, however, that the Palestine Partition Commission reported that, by 1938, only 3,300 dunums in Gaza were owned by Jews.61

In 1941, 6,373 dunums were purchased by the JNF around Gaza City, though it is unknown whether the purchase was permissible under the Land Transfer Regulations 1940.

The government of Palestine estimated a population of 3,540 Jews in the Gaza sub-district at the end of 1946. Information has not been found on the circumstances under which these Jews departed from Gaza in 1948.

There were Jewish settlements north of Jerusalem called Atarot and Neve Yaakov, which were evacuated in 1948.65

A settlement called Bet Haarava, and Palestine Potash, Ltd., both located at the northern end of the Dead Sea, were situated on miri land leased by the government of Palestine and were evacuated in 1948.66

During the 1920s and 1930s, individual Jews and two Jewish-owned realty companies, Zikhron David and El Hahar, bought land in the hills around Hebron.67 Notwithstanding (and, actually, because of) the Land Transfer Regulations, 1940, which placed nearly all of the West Bank in Zone A, the JNF began purchasing land around Hebron in 1940. It acquired about 8,400 dunums by 1947, some of which was purchased from individual Jews and from Zikhron David and El Hahar. The settlements established on this land were called Kfar Etzion, Masuot Yitzhak, Ein Tzurim and Revadim. The JNF circumvented the prohibition on acquisition of land by Jews by creating front companies. Most of the Jewish-owned land around Hebron was held, as of 1948, by the JNF rather than by individual Jewish owners.68

Some 16,000 dunums of land were purchased by Jews before 1948 in the Etzion Bloc and Beit Hadassah.69

Himnuta bought land near Jericho and present-day Ma’ale Adumim. The funding in urban areas usually came from state coffers, while the purchase of agricultural land was paid for by the JNF.70

During the British mandate, the government of Palestine leased miri land on a long-term basis (50 or 100 years) to Jewish settlement organisations.71

By 1948, the concentrations of lands owned by Jews were in the old Jewish quarters of Jerusalem and Hebron, on the periphery of Jerusalem, and in the Tul-Karem region and the Gaza Strip.72

* Apparently, 80% of Har Homa’s [Jabal Abu Ghneim’s] land is Jewish land purchased in the forties and before.73

The JNF lost land in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank as well, and this matter has been postponed for the eventual [peace] talks for over a decade.

Now, why wouldn't The Guardian or its partner Al Jazeera want to write about a paper that details Jewish legal rights to lands in the territories?

Could it be that these "news" organizations are more interested in manipulating the news rather than reporting it?

This paper doesn't merely hurt the PLO, as most of the papers that made The Guardian's pages were intended to do, but the entire Palestinian Arab national movement - and that's a big taboo in the newsroom of The Guardian. (Not to mention the inconvenient fact that Great Britain made laws specifically banning land sales to people based merely on their religion. Slightly embarrassing, no?)

This is one of the Palestine Papers stories they wanted to remain buried.

(Other Palestine Papers scoops here.)

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