Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: nftp

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Monday, June 11, 2018

News you won't read in the @NYTimes: Israel investing $560 million in Arab areas of Jerusalem

From Israel Hayom last week:

The Israeli government on Thursday unveiled what it billed as a groundbreaking program to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in long-neglected Palestinian neighborhoods of east Jerusalem.

The "Leading Change" program aims to reduce the huge social gaps between the Arab and Jewish populations in the capital.

Palestinian neighborhoods suffer from poor infrastructure, neglect and subpar public services, and nearly 80% of the city's Palestinian families live in poverty.

The program will invest 2 billion shekels ($560 million) in three core areas: education, infrastructure, and helping Palestinian women enter the workforce. The funds will be spent on a variety of programs, including nine pilot projects in the coming five years, with the aim of attracting further government and private investment down the road.

Various government ministries, along with the Jerusalem Municipality, will carry out the program, which was launched at a ceremony at President Reuven Rivlin's official residence on Thursday.

Rivlin praised what he called "the most comprehensive attempt by the government to date to narrow the gaps and to develop the economy" of east Jerusalem, which has experienced "lost generations" over the decades.

Since this is exactly opposite of the worldwide meme of how Israel neglects its Arab population, this story will not be mentioned by the media.

Even Netanyahu's critics who call him a racist grudgingly admit that he has spent a lot of money helping the economy of the Arab sector in Israel.

However, there is some potential on this story being picked up by the Israel haters, where they will spin it to say that Israel is spending money in order to annex "East" Jerusalem.

Once that message gets out there, then international reporters will find an angle to report on this story while continuing to demonize Israel.

(h/t Yoel)

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Mahmoud Abbas' party celebrates their first female suicide bomber (update)

From the Fatah Facebook page:

This is Wafa Idris, the first female Palestinian suicide bomber, who detonated her backpack with a 22-pound bomb on January 28, 2002, killed an 80-year old Israeli Pinhas Tokatli and injured over 150 more.

Embed from Getty Images

Fatah celebrates Idris as a heroine, and the world continues to ignore the daily incitement and glorification of terror done by the "moderate" Palestinians.

Yesterday's New York Times had an op-ed celebrating the "non-violent resistance" of Palestinian activists, but of course no one asks these "non-violent" people if they support people like Wafa Idris or condemn her. Their answers wouldn't fit in with the image that the writers want to portray, and stories like this one of how Fatah explicitly celebrates the murder of an 81-year old amateur painter who was returning from buying supplies are simply not reported.

UPDATE: The official Palestinian Authority news agency Wafa has an article about the role of women in Palestinian society that mentions Idris (along with other female terrorists) as shining examples for women to follow. This is the voice of the PA, mirroring that of Fatah.

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Bahrain House of Representatives, and many organizations, condemn dancing Jews

The backlash from the videos of Jewish Americans dancing in Bahrain keeps snowballing.

A dozen "civil society" institutions condemned the dancing, saying:

The visit of this delegation was provocative and the accompanying dances to the music of Talmudic songs called for the establishment of the temple on the ruins of Al-Aqsa Mosque, in front of historic Bab Al Bahrain [square], and before that in the house of a businessman with a number of traders..This provocation caused a deep psychological wound and is blatantly opposed to Arab and Islamic values in support of our brothers the heroic Palestinian people against the arrogance of the Zionists and their obnoxious occupation of the land of Palestine violating all moral and human values.

The the Bahrain Council of Representatives sent out a series of tweets denouncing the event.

The House of Representatives expresses its rejection and condemnation of what was done with a number of traders and businessmen in the Kingdom of Bahrain from trying business and social normalization with the visiting US delegation. We stress the strong condemnation of the unacceptable behavior, which provoked and embarrassed the Bahraini street which supports the rights of the Palestinian people. The Hebrew dance and songs called for an alleged temple on the ruins of Al-Aqsa and they handed the [Bahrains] the Masonic logo. [This means a menorah - EoZ] The Council reiterated Bahrain's position of rejecting all forms of normalization, communications and establishing relationships with the rapist Israeli entity, and that any move and act opposed to Bahraini law, and the principles of the Bahraini people.

I reported the story and video about the Jewish delegation to Bahrain days before the media caught up. And no one else is reporting about the backlash yet either besides me.

Which is why you are a reader of EoZ.

Shabbat Shalom!

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One of George Soros' grantees engages in Holocaust denial

A great catch from the Tayara Herzl blog based on a story I posted earlier:

Holocaust-denying articles have been popping up on El Badil, an Egyptian news site. But, as Elder of Ziyon notes:

Part one denies that Jews are a people altogether, claims that Ashkenazic Jews are Khazars,

Part two says that the Jews use the myth of being called “the chosen people” to manipulate the world to do their bidding.

Part three denies that Israel is the Promised Land, and says Jews have no particular historic attachment to the land.

Part four, published yesterday, denies the Holocaust, quoting famous Holocaust deniers like Fred Leuchter, David Irving and Ernst Zundel. It claims that “experts” like Leuchter proved that there couldn’t have been any gas chambers and that there were only 3 million Jews in Europe before World War II.

Wattan News, a Palestinian TV network, has been republishing these articles.
That last sentence is a real shocker. Wattan News, for those who don’t know, was just revealed to be one of the sites George Soros’s Arab Regional Office funds. In a March 2014 portfolio review, it was revealed that $405,000 was given to Wattan TV between 2012-2014 by Soros. That was over 15 percent of Wattan TV’s budget.

We can’t know for sure if Soros is still funding Wattan TV, as he did from 2012-2014, because that is when the last document regarding funding ends. But it is possible that Soros is funding a Holocaust-denying Palestinian news website, which would only further prove that he cares more about demonizing Israel than spreading facts.

Sure enough, Wattan is listed in the Open Society Foundation DCLeaks document as "an independent, non-profit Palestinian TV station that was established in 1996 by Palestinian civil society organizations. It is owned and operated by a consortium of NGOs- Medical Relief Society, Palestinian Hydrology Group, and Palestinian Relief Committee-and is governed by a board of directors in a transparent manner. " Its purpose is described as "to provide quality, public interest news and programming to Palestinian communities in the West Bank, Gaza, and in the Diaspora through TV and online platforms."

And we now know that this news and programming includes the worst kind of antisemitism including Holocaust denial.

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Macmillan geography textbook filled with anti-Israel lies: "Jews were first modern terrorists," Palestinian terror justified (updated)

Here are the first paragraphs of a section on terrorism written in the textbook World Regional Geography (with Subregions), 4th edition by Lydia Mihelic Pulsipher, Alex Pulsipher, and Conrad M. Goodwin, published by Macmillan:

This section seems to be gone from the 6th edition.

Seriously? The first modern terrorist attack in the Middle East was done by Jews? Whether the King David bombing - targeting a military headquarters - was terror is debatable, but it was by no means the first terror attack in the region. What was the 1929 massacres of Jewish civilians if not terrorism? What about the many terror attacks perpetrated by the Black Hand, the terror group founded by Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam in the late 1920s to kill Jews and the British in Palestine? (Outside the region, there were many terror groups in the 19th century, including in the Ottoman Empire and the US.)

But this passage is much worse than that. It justifies Palestinian terrorism and Arab aggression (saying that Israel provoked each war - yes, I guess that if breathing is provocation, this may be true.)

It says that Israel was created on "Palestinian lands," a falsehood that is seen throughout the textbook as the headline on this page shows:

They were "Palestinian" lands? What contemporaneous source from before 1948 ever referred them to them that way? (The book makes the same claim in several other places, like page 49, and most egregiously on page 38 where the claim is that the land "belonged to Palestinians," which is false in every sense.) (These claims don't seem to be in the 6th edition. Instead, the newer edition refers to the territories Israel gained in 1967 as "Palestinian lands" rather than lands controlled by Jordan and Egypt.)

The outrageous lies don't end there. The caption beneath the maps on page above says that it was the "Jewish settlers" who didn't agree to the 1947 UN partition plan, and they started a war themselves - exactly 180 degrees from the truth. (The 6th edition has the identical caption under the map, although the text is more accurate.)

Another section, filled with the usual anti-Israel propaganda, claims that "thousands of Palestinians have been displaced" by Jewish settlements. This is another absolute lie, the vast majority of Jewish communities did not displace a single person, and in the rare cases that they did, it was because the land belongs to Jews either to begin with or via purchase.

There is plenty of other bias to be seen in that page, such as the bizarre opinion that Israel "negated" its withdrawal from Gaza by imposing a blockade - without mentioning Hamas or rockets.

This section is verbatim in the 6th edition as well.

The separation barrier's purpose to stop terror attacks isn't mentioned, the authors make it appear that the barrier was built to grab land (without mentioning the any settlements that are on the east side of the fence.)

Also, as far as I can tell, the figure of 30,000 farmers separated from their land is fiction. The best number I can glean is that there are a total of about 120,000 Palestinians who work in agriculture in both the West Bank and Gaza, the idea that such a high percentage happen to farm on lands that happen to be divided by a fence is simply incredible. I would love to know the source for this.

What is clear is that the authors have an anti-Israel bias in this textbook, and that many of the facts that they are teaching students are simply lies.

The main author is roundly criticized by her students for her intolerance for other opinions and her liberal/socialist, anti-American stance.

The book was published by WH Freeman which is owned by Macmillan. You can contact Macmillan Education at this webpage.

(h/t @nevillechmbrln)

UPDATE: I got a copy of the 6th edition, which removed some of the examples here but kept others, annotated in the post.

UPDATE 2: See my detailed discussion of the 6th edition.

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In a largely good article, the NYT can't resist throwing in some anti-Israel lies

Diaa Hadid in the New York Times has written some surprisingly good articles in recent weeks. Earlier this week she wrote one about how Israeli doctors, through the Save a Child's Heart program, saved the life of an Afghan boy in Pakistan with a heart defect.

I've written about SACH in the past and even visited them. It is a great organization that is happy to help whenever it can. It is not political and does only good.

For the most part, Hadid's article is positive, describing how the child, Yehia, managed to get to Israel and be helped. She give background on the organization:

Yehia — whose father spoke on the condition that the family name not be published for fear of a backlash if it became known he had taken the boy to Israel for treatment — is the first Afghan treated by Save a Child’s Heart in its 20 years of operations. About half the charity’s 4,000 patients have been Palestinian; 200 others were children from Iraq and Syria, and the roster includes patients from Tanzania, Ethiopia and Moldova.

But she cannot resist finding someone to accuse the dedicated doctors of SACH of "med-washing:"

Tony Laurance, head of a group called Medical Aid for Palestine, said that while providing children “world-class surgery” was “an unequivocal good,” it should not obscure the broader impact of Israeli policies on medical care for Palestinians. Gaza hospitals are perennially short of medicine, equipment and well-trained staff because of Israeli restrictions on travel and trade, and many Gaza residents struggle to get exit permits for care outside the territory.

“What gets up my nose,” Mr. Laurance said, “is that it presents an image of Israel that betrays the reality.”

Israeli doctors saving Muslim lives "gets up his nose" because it "betrays reality"? Laurance is saying that positive articles about Israel must not be published because they blunt the impact of the unrelenting anti-Israel propaganda that he and his organization pushes.

Laurance's idea of "reality" is that Gaza suffers shortages of medicine and equipment because of Israeli policies, a statement that Hadid does not check. It is unequivocally false. While a tiny percentage of medical equipment going into Gaza may be delayed because it could be considered dual-use, if it is legitimate it gets through. And there are no restrictions on medicines altogether. Teh medicine restrictions are because of infighting between Hamas and Fatah, plus Hamas stealing aid. It has nothing to do with Israel.

Laurance lied, and Hadid allowed the lie to be published unchallenged in the New York Times.

Even his statement about "many Gaza residents struggle to get exit permits " is skewed. I have no doubt that there is paperwork to complete and approvals involved, but they are traveling to another country - the restrictions are not any worse than with most international travel. Beyond that, Mr. Laurance conveniently decides not to say a word about that other country that borders Gaza, an Arab country, that refuses virtually all patients from entering. Which calls into question the true interest he has in Medical Aid for Palestinians (the actual name of the organization) - how much of it is altruistic and how much is political?

There was no reason to include his mini-diatribe in the article, and in fact it is a jarring departure from the tone of the rest of the article. But what is worse is that the casual reader would think that the NYT agrees that Israel restricts medical aid to Gaza.

(h/t EBoZ)

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Mahmoud Abbas forges agreement with war criminal Omar al-Bashir

Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, is the only sitting head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court, on five counts of crimes against humanity (murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape.)

This week, the government of Mahmoud Abbas, in its weekly cabinet meeting, announced:

The Council welcomed the agreement between Mr. President, Mahmoud Abbas, and his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Bashir, on the establishment of a joint ministerial committee between the two countries. Four agreements were signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs with Sudanese officials: a political consultation agreement, a convention on the Joint Ministerial Committee, a protocol of political consultation and the Convention on General Education and the Convention on Cultural and Academic Cooperation in the field of higher education between the two countries, stressing that these signed agreements will lead to the strengthening of relations and increasing cooperation between the two countries for the benefit of the two brotherly peoples.

For some reason this wasn't considered to be newsworthy.

Even the "human rights" NGOs who are agitating to have Bashir arrested have nothing bad to say about Mahmoud Abbas treating him like a respected head of state.

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