Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: No Jews No News

Showing posts with label No Jews No News. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Let's see how "human rights" groups discuss this morning's deadly PA raid in Tulkarm - if at all

This morning, the Palestinian Authority clashed with terror groups in Tulkarm, leaving one person dead.

The specifics are disputed depending on whether one is reading PA-affiliated or terror-affiliated media.

The Political Commissioner General and the official spokesperson for the security establishment, Major General Talal Dweikat, said today, Wednesday, that the security services removed dangerous materials and barriers from inside the Tulkarem camp.

Dweikat added, in a telephone conversation with WAFA, that the Palestinian security forces had received several complaints from institutions and individuals in Tulkarm governorate, about the presence of dangerous materials and barriers in front of children's schools and on the roads inside the Tulkarm camp. Accordingly, the security services moved and removed them, to prevent any risks that might arise. about its existence.

He pointed out that after the security force finished its mission, some armed youths opened fire in front of the governorate building, which necessitated the intervention of the security forces to take the necessary measures and measures to control the security situation and prevent any manifestations that threaten civil peace in Tulkarm governorate.

"Dangerous materials" appears to be a euphemism for explosives - IEDs that terrorists bury in the road, that are meant to slow down Israeli forces when they conduct arrests and raids. We already know that these IEDs are a danger to children - even the UN reluctantly admits this. (Update: Other media confirm explosives near schools.)

It appears that the PA, perhaps for the first time and ahead of the beginning of the school year, decided that IEDs and iron barriers in front of schools is already a step too far when it puts children at risk.

And the terrorists were not happy about their hard work of risking the lives of their neighbors to be able to possibly damage an Israeli vehicle being removed, so they naturally started shooting at the PA forces.

Hamas media says that the PA used bulldozers to remove the barricades.

One person died - the accounts differ as of this writing but it appears that the gunmen killed an innocent bystander while shooting at the PA forces. Terror media says the PA killed the man.

.This video shows some of the tear gas, and apparently one older man - a father of a "martyr" so he may have been one of the protesters - was injured.

Will "human rights groups" side with the terrorists in this case? The PA did what Israel does - employed bulldozers and shot tear gas to quell a violent demonstration, and possibly used live fire. NGOs usually adopt the narrative that the PA is almost as bloodthirsty as the IDF.

On the other hand it is hard for them to say that the PA should allow IEDs and barricades to be placed in the middle of public areas and near schools. Amnesty and HRW have never, to my knowledge, berated the local armed groups for putting their own people at risk, and they are loathe to start a new complicating narrative that might indirectly exonerate the IDF for its own similar raids.

So chances are that they will remain silent, and the dead Palestinian bystander will not be mentioned at all.

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The Lebanese have always denied Palestinians access to their water network. Almost no one knows, and no one cares.

I spend a lot of time reading reports and news articles about how terribly Palestinians are treated in Lebanon - they cannot become citizens, they cannot access many jobs, there are many laws discriminating against them, they may not build in the camps, they cannot own land outside the camps. It is official, widespread and sanctioned discrimination that is far closer to apartheid than anything Israel has ever done.

But sometimes I still learn something.

UN Habitat wrote a long report on the State of Lebanese cities in 2021. On page 134, I saw something that surprised even me:

Water access standards is one of a range of determinants of slum living conditions. By definition, there are substantial differences between slum and non-slum households in terms of access to water and sanitation. The non-inclusion of slum settlements from service provision is often directly related to the legal tenure of the land in question. The UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme promotes the ‘need to enact laws and policies to dissociate the tenure status from service provision’ (WWAP, 2019:105). Palestinian camps, officially not connected to the public network, are relevant urbansited instances

I may be the first person on the planet to read page 134 of this report.

By and large, Palestinian camps in Lebanon are located in the middle of urban areas. The existing water infrastructure might not be ideal but it exists.

Lebanon decided long ago to deny Palestinian access to municipal water.

One would think that some NGO might have written about this over the past 75 years. But it is really hard to find anyone even elliptically talking about this.

Interpal says, "Palestinian refugees are forced to buy unregulated drinking water from local vendors." The World Health Organization says, "In Shatila, drilled wells within the camp provide water for drinking and other domestic purposes. These wells are managed by entrepreneurs who sell the water to residents, and distribute it as drinking water to households."

No one seems to ask why Lebanon never extended their water supply that already surrounds the camps into the camps themselves. And the people who clearly know about this don't seem to be very bothered by it.

There is a massive amount of anti-Israel reports published by NGOs and the media. New ones appear literally every day - the UN has a weekly newsletter listing them. Hardly any of them even mention human rights abuses against Palestinians outside those that are blamed on Israel.

Interestingly, whenever I mention a problem like this on Twitter, the Israel haters are so offended that they try to change the subject back to how Israel is the worst violator of human rights in the history of mankind.

This bias hurts Palestinians because they cannot even get basic media coverage of their very real suffering in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere. No one is interested in these issues because the giant NGO industry is fueled by antisemitism, and they actively discourage highlighting any problem that doesn't blame Israel.

No Jews, no news.

(h/t Irene)

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The Palestinian Authority has its own law to severely restrict all NGOs - and no one reports about it

Cover of PCHR's "Annual Reprot" [sic]

Remember the huge amount of outrage last year when Israel shut down the offices of seven PFLP-linked NGOs? It was condemned by the UN, political leaders and human rights groups.

Well, buried in the Palestinian Center of Human Rights 2022 annual report we see something that didn't generate a single headline in the West.

This year witnessed further restrictions, including the amendment to the non-profit companies’ regulation upon a decision issued by the Palestinian Cabinet, which imposed excessive restrictions on the work and funding of non-profit companies, under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

Issuance of the Non-Profit Companies Regulation No. (20) of 2022

The Palestinian Cabinet issued a new regulation on non-profit companies, which includes many restrictions on the work and funding of these companies, which is one of the forms of the right to freedom of association in Palestine. This regulation, which was published in the issue 194 of the Palestinian Gazette on 25 September 2022, included serious restrictions that threaten the existence of CSOs registered as non-profit companies.

The new regulation, which has replaced the old one in force since 2010 and the cabinet’s decision attached to it in 2016 concerning the funding of non-profit companies, came to add more restrictions on the right to form non-profit companies, as the old regulation included many restrictions. The regulation was issued under the pretext of fighting terrorism and money laundering.

More arbitrary measures were imposed by the authorities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on associations, threatening the associations’ right to exist, practice its activities freely, and obtain funding. Most of them fully violate the fundamental rights relevant to the freedom of association, including their right to existence, free performance of activities, receipt of funds and the right to privacy and independence. Also, increased restrictive measures are imposed on the associations in the Gaza Strip due to the double restrictions imposed by the two authorities in Gaza and the West Bank.

So the PA and Hamas are also restricting NGO activity. They are also claiming that they are doing this to fight "terrorism" which is as ironic as it gets.

The Palestinian law includes a provision that the NGOs must operate in line with the plan of action of the relevant Palestinian government ministries, meaning that the takes away all independence for the NGOs. There are many other onerous provisions.

But no one has a problem with this. I couldn't find any article in Western news media that discussed this topic exclusively.

Palestinian human rights violations are simply not reported. Because if they would be, then the entire lucrative industry of anti-Israel reporting would collapse.

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Demolitions of thousands of Arab family homes aren't reported on @CNN or the @NYTimes

From The New Arab, May 26:

Residents in the Egyptian town of Al-Arish have expressed anger over security forces demolishing their homes to make way for a new port in the Suez Canal.

In videos shared by activists online, men, women and children can be seen visibly distressed while protesting against the destruction of their homes in the city's Al-Mina district.

The Sinai Foundation for Human Rights NGO said that Egyptian security forces launched a campaign to demolish homes in Arish in March this year despite residents' protests, according to Al-Jazeera Mubasher.

The group's director, Ahmed Salem, also stated that at least 20,000 people are impacted by the ongoing home demolitions.

Many residents who gave up their homes had complained that they were not adequately compensated despite promises, while others were at risk of homelessness due to insufficient funds to rent other properties, the NGO added.

Additionally, many handed over ownership of their homes due to pressure from security forces, while a number of homes were destroyed before compensation was even offered, leaving many homeless.

It is truly a shame that these people don't have the fortune of having their homes bulldozed by Israel. If they had, there would be crowds of reporters, dozens of NGOs interviewing them, and UN resolutions condemning the destruction.

But their homes are being destroyed by Egypt, so the world doesn't really care.

Egypt has been destroying thousands of homes for years - and given lots of different reasons.

These are said to be so Egypt can build new ports. In 2022, the reason was for Egypt to build new shopping malls and entertainment centers. From 2013-2021 the official reason was for security in the North Sinai.

No one is questioning those reasons. After all.....the Egyptian government isn't Jewish.

(h/t Andrew)

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This two year old Palestinian boy was brutally murdered. There will be no mention of it in the NYT or by NGOs.

There was a heinous crime in Gaza this weekend.

A two and a half year old child, Mustafa Nahed Muhammad Saqr, was drowned in a barrel of water.

His stepmother admitted to the murder. She was jealous that she couldn't have children of her own so she decided to murder her husband's child to avoid that feeling of shame. It was a twist on honor killing.

There were reports in Gaza media on Friday when it appeared to be an accidental drowning, but now that the mother has confessed, instead of showing more interest in the story, Palestinian media has become mostly silent. I only saw this mentioned in a couple of relatively independent but obscure sites.

Which makes this a double honor crime - one the murder itself, and the other by Palestinian media not wanting to cover a horrific murder because it makes them look bad, and it detracts from the narrative that Israel is the only source of evil in the region.

As of this writing, Defence for Children International Palestine has not mentioned this murder. Chances are they won't. Because they aren't trying to defend Palestinian children's lives - their entire purpose is to demonize Israel.

Western media showed intense interest in the accidental killing of Mohammed Tamimi, who was about the same age as Mustafa when he died last week. Social media erupted with memes and photos of the child, alive and dead. But only the most extreme anti-Israel activists accused Israel of deliberate murder.

Here we have a deliberate murder of a Palestinian child, and Western media will shun the story, a week after they eagerly embraced a story of a Palestinian child tragically but mistakenly killed by Israel.

By any objective standard, the murder of Mustafa is a much more important story.

But there are no objective standards when it comes to media coverage of Palestinians.

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This week's memes, posters, cartoons

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Another Palestinian killed in clashes - but no one cares about him. Here's why.

Another Palestinian has been shot dead during clashes.

Although this happened last week, it is barely mentioned in Palestinian or international media. His name is not published in lists of Palestinians killed this year. In fact, his name has not been published at all.

Because it happened in Lebanon.

One person was killed and several others wounded in overnight clashes in south Lebanon's restive Ain al-Helweh Palestinian refugee camp, a Palestinian official said Thursday.

The clashes pitted members of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement against Islamist groups in the camp, located near the coastal city of Sidon, said senior Fatah official Mounir Makdah.

"One person was killed and seven wounded," he told AFP, adding that "all Palestinian forces are working to put an end" to the violence.

Clashes between rival groups are common in Ain al-Helweh, which is home to more than 54,000 registered Palestinian refugees who have been joined in recent years by thousands of Palestinians fleeing the conflict in Syria.

An AFP correspondent said shooting had mostly subsided around dawn but that sporadic gunfire could still be heard later in the morning.

The situation remained tense and armed men deployed to the streets of the camp, while schools run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, were closed.

By long-standing convention, the Lebanese army does not enter Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, leaving the factions themselves to handle security.

So here we have an area completely controlled by Palestinians, effectively a micro Palestinian state, and where they regularly shoot each other.

Imagine what a Palestinian state would be like!

Not only has the victim not been identified in the media, but also which faction shot him. All those details are not important when Israel isn't involved.

Here's video of what they camp sounded like during the clashes:

As of today, UNRWA schools and health clinics in the camp remain closed because of the tension. The media doesn't seem too upset over that, either. And the UNRWA Twitter feed hasn't mentioned a word.

It is almost like a conspiracy of silence when Jews aren't involved.

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The UN reluctantly admits that Gazans have more freedom of movement than before Hamas takeover

From the UN's OCHA:

The number of exit permits for [Gaza] workers and traders issued by Israeli authorities increased from just over 10,000 in January 2022 to more than 18,000 in November 2022. This has allowed more exits of people compared with any time since the early 2000s. At the same time, the Egyptian authorities allowed more exits than any time since 2014.

This is an understatement. The number of Gazans allowed to cross into and Israel and back more than doubled between 2021 and 2022, and it was by far the most since Hamas took over Gaza.

Less authorized goods were brought in through Israel and more were imported through Egypt. Goods exiting through either border increased and, for the first time, exceeded the pre-blockade annual figures.

There are more Gaza exports than there were before the Hamas takeover of Gaza!

These are the exports (ignore the caption, this is for both Erez and Rafah crossings):

Israel is clearly trying to help the Gaza economy.

When Israel acts the opposite of the narrative (which says they are starving Gazans in their open-air prison), suddenly the news media loses all interest in reporting about movement and exports from Gaza.

Remember when the UN said Gaza was going to be uninhabitable by...2020?

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When do charges of "cultural appropriation" cross the line into antisemitism?

Palestinian Arabs falsely complaining that Israeli Jews are "culturally appropriating" their cuisine have become so common that they are almost a cliche.

But at least some of these accusations cross the line from absurd into antisemitism.

Here's an article this past weekend from L'Orient Today by Emmanuel Haddad:

After hummus, falafel and so many other flagship dishes of Palestinian and Levantine cuisine, knefeh nabulsi is the latest victim of appropriation by Israel.

This delicious dessert, which originated in Nablus and is named after the main ingredient — nabulsi cheese — has been incorporated into a more-than-dubious recipe developed by Pizza Hut Israel.

For Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan, the affront is threefold: "First against the knefeh, then against pizza... And then, against the taste!"

The flavor is as off-putting as it is bitter for Salma Serry, historian of Near Eastern cuisine. The Israeli pizza-knefeh fits perfectly into the definition of appropriation she offers on Sufra Kitchen, the online platform she created to decolonize regional cuisines:

"Appropriation [is the] inappropriate adoption of a group's food without giving it credit, especially for commercial gain. Example: Israeli restaurants profiting from falafel, knefeh or hummus without mentioning their original culture."

The word "inappropriate" in that definition does some heavy lifting here. The USA has lots of restaurants that serve pizza or tacos; is it cultural appropriation to mention them without the prefixes "Italian" or "Mexican?" Apparently, only in Israel, and only for Jews, is cooking food from surrounding countries considered a crime without mentioning their origin - and in the case of foods from Arab countries, the origin in often murky and hardly ever "Palestinian. "

The Israeli Pizza Hut chain never once claimed that "knafeh pizza" is an Israeli food. On the contrary, when they introduced the dish last month, their press release said, “Pizza Hut recognized the unrealized potential of this irresistible Middle Eastern food, and decided to make its own version.”

And Pizza Hut is not calling it "knafeh" but "knafeh pizza." It is a (perhaps bizarre) combination of the two, but no one claims it is authentic knafeh - or authentic pizza, for that matter.

The article goes on:

Salma Serry says she often hears denials of this culinary appropriation, defended as the natural spread of cuisine among different communities.

"Of course, food is meant to be shared. But when there is active violence that takes away a group's cultural identity and denies its heritage, its land and the food it produces while manipulating its history, then it becomes problematic,” she said. “In the specific case of Palestine, it's not about sharing; it's about taking and not giving back."

This is simply not true. Israeli chefs and cookbook writers happily describe where Israeli cuisine comes from. No one is "stealing" anything. Read Janna Gur's "A Short Introduction to Israeli Food" preface to her cookbook Shuk where she concisely describes the Israeli food scene's influences, from dozens of ethnic cultures in the Israeli melting pot but also from the neighboring Palestinians. Yes, sometimes non-experts will lazily say that some Arab dishes are Israeli, but they mean that they are popular in Israel: no one says that they originate there, unless they really do, as in the case of falafel in pita. Similarly, there was much angst when Haaretz once said that shawarma is "Israeli street food" - yet it is, just as much ss pizza is American street food.

Here's a 1949 advertisement for a Tel Aviv restaurant selling "oriental food."

No Israeli ever claimed hummus was natively Israeli.

The real irony is that Palestinians are the ones who have culturally appropriated Middle East foods. They really have claimed to have invented most popular Levantine foods like hummus and falafel, and here they claim to have created knafeh. They may have invented knafeh nabulsi, which uses cheese made in Nablus, but knafeh itself has much murkier origins.

Why does no one accuse Palestinians of cultural appropriation for claiming foods that were invented elsewhere?

Because they are not Jews.

There are two reasons that articles like this descend from simple lies into antisemitism.

One is that they are saying that while every nation's cuisine is an amalgam from many places, only Israeli Jews are accused of "theft" - even though Israeli foodies freely admit and eagerly explain where all their dishes originate.

The other is that these articles deny the or even existence of Mizrahi Jews on the Israeli food scene, even though they are the primary source.

The L'Orient article includes this falsehood:

For chef Kattan, the case of hummus is emblematic of the broader problem:

"It was the very first dish appropriated by the Israelis as early as 1948. Originally, the Zionist project was marked by European-style colonialism that denied the Arabness of Palestine and its land. But when they went to eat at the homes of Palestinians who survived the Nakba — during which 580 Palestinian villages were razed to the ground — they said to themselves, ‘This chickpea puree is not bad!’”

Jews in the Middle East have been eating hummus for centuries. This is a Palestinian chef erasing hundreds of years of Jewish history, and claiming that Jews have no right to be in the region.

Here is a Palestine Post article about the popularity of falafel among Palestinian Jews in 1940 - and it interestingly describes the uniquely Israeli version of falafel in pita even then. The writer interviews a Jew who was born in Yemen, went to Egypt and brought his falafel skills to Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street.

These articles invariably downplay the role of Mizrahi Jews in bringing with them the bulk of what is now called Israeli cuisine.

Yes, that is antisemitism.

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War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. "Human rights defenders" want Jews to be killed.

Salah Hammouri, who was deported to France today, is a terrorist.

There is no doubt about that. He has admitted it.

While newspapers say that he denied having anything to do with a plot to assassinate Israel's Sephardic chief rabbi, and that he was even a member of the PFLP, he admitted to the plot in his plea bargain. Moreover, he essentially admitted to and justified the plot in this PFLP website, no longer online, from 2011, which also calls him a member of the group ("comrade.")

Moreover, this PFLP website listed him as one of their members, #8, who participated in a hunger strike only this past September (autotranslated):

But this would-be assassin is labeled a "human rights defender" by the UN, by the International Federation of Human Rights, and Amnesty International.

Which can only mean one of two things. Either these "human rights" organizations consider murdering Jewish Israelis to be a human right, or they don't believe that Jews in Israel are human to begin with.

Either way, calling Hammouri a "human rights defender" proves that the term "human rights" has lost all meaning, and indeed means the opposite of its original definition.

In this, they agree with the PFLP itself, which makes that equation between murdering Jews and "human rights' explicit, as one of their officials said ten years ago:

We reaffirm our commitment to our goals, principles, and inalienable Palestinian national rights. Some of which have been recognized and approved by international norms, principles, agreements, resolutions, international law and human rights. The first of these rights is the right of the Palestinian people to resist the occupation by all means and methods.

Every Palestinian understands "all means and methods" to include terrorism against civilians.

"Human rights organizations'" defense of Hammouri indicates that they agree.

(h/t GnasherJew)

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

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No one cares about dead Palestinian children if Jews cannot be blamed

Sham Bilal Abdullah Hamdan

Do you recognize this photo of a baby girl in Gaza? Of course not - her murder was barely reported.

Arabic websites are screaming about the death of Jana Zakarneh, 16, who was killed during a firefight when IDF troops were shooting at armed terrorists on rooftops, where she was watching the fighting and taking photos.

Here is a photo of the IDF she sent to a friend before her death, apparently from the roof of her building. It is possible that the IDF thought she was a spotter. It is possible that she was a spotter. (h/t Abu Ali Express)

The photo and timestamp shows that the unlikely and contradictory explanations that her family told reporters for her going to the roof (she went without her phone to check out the fighting, she went to get her cat, she was only on the roof for a few minutes) are lies.

Nevertheless, Palestinian media is up in arms about what they are calling a cold blooded execution.

So their media must really care about their children, right?

Except they don't.

On Saturday night, someone broke into the house of a family in the Bir al-Naja neighborhood in Gaza. He assaulted a mother and, according to sources, tossed a four month old baby, Sham Bilal Abdullah Hamdan, out of the third story window, killing her. Gaza police are investigating.

Most Palestinian Arabic media didn't even publish this horrific story. One of the few that did, Ultrapal, has complained that most Palestinian media doesn't report on the many murders that take place in the territories.

Of course, this post is the first time this story is being published in English - even though it happened more than two days ago, the crime is particularly heinous, and the victim is a beautiful baby girl, all elements of a notable story.

The two incidents prove once again that Palestinian media, and international media, don't care about Palestinian children who are killed - even under the most horrific circumstance - unless their deaths can be blamed on Jews.

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

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Scratch Palestinian history, reveal antisemitism

The PLO tweeted:

As with everything else in Palestinian history, look beneath the surface and find antisemitism.

The Catholic Advance wrote about this conference:

Moslems and Christians - but no Jews. The Palestinians claim that Jews at the time were an equal minority but Jews were not invited to supposedly Palestinian nationalist conferences.

And notice that the resolutions are ultimately about attacking the Zionist community, not about promoting Palestinian nationalism.

Also notice:

The Catholic Advance, as we will see later, clearly didn't think that Jews have any business living in Palestine. The Jewish Agency allowed women to vote way before 1929, but they don't count.

The Women's Congress was scheduled right before the All-Palestine Arab Congress, which featured this: