Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 29, 2016

How to create an anti-Israel NGO (update)

EU Observer has an article about how the EU is biased - for Israel.

The piece is ridiculous, because its underlying assumption is that Israel is one of the world's worst violators of human rights. So, the author complains, there are no sanctions on Israel as there are for other countries - without mentioning that these are for things like selling arms to countries like Afghanistan and Sudan.

But perhaps more interesting than how the author twists facts is the author himself.

Martin Konecny heads the European Middle East Project (EuMEP), a Brussels-based NGO.

I had never heard of EuMEP, so I did a little research.

It has no logo.

It has no Facebook page.

It doesn't even have a Twitter account (although someone already had the @eumep account.)

It also does not have a functioning web page, even though the domain was registered nearly a year ago. Here is all that it says:

EuMEP is a new and independent project in Brussels that promotes a just and effective EU policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. EuMEP believes that the EU can and should use its leverage to induce respect for international law and help resolve the conflict. EuMEP combines analytical work and advocacy, working closely with a number of leading NGOs and experts. EuMEP supports security, freedom and dignity for all Israelis and Palestinians.

This of course means that it is meant to convince the EU to pressure Israel, and only Israel, to make unilateral concessions. No one says that Palestinians should be pressured to respect international law, even though they have violated more than their fair share and no one talks about it.

But what has EuMEP done? And who works for it?

I have not been able to find a single employee outside of Martin Konecny himself.

Yet as director of this invisible organization, Konecny has managed to get himself quoted as an expert in various articles about how important it is for the EU to act against Israel. He has also been used as an expert for meetings at the UN.

He also tweets implicitly anti-Israel cartoons:

Cartoon on NRC Handelsblad frontpage says 'Don't be afraid. He only bites Palestinians' pic.twitter.com/CoqKQVM80u
— Martin Konecny (@MartinKonecny) October 26, 2015

The DNS registration for the domain gives an address of Huidevettersstraat 165 in Brussels. The occupant at that address is an NGO called Broederlijk Delen, an anti-poverty organization that also supports "peaceful resistance" by Palestinians.

Even though EuMEP has no apparent staff, no presence and no output, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave it it $70,000 last year for "peacekeeping." And that's just the one funder I could find.

It proves the point that Bassem Eid made when he said that many will throw lots of money at any anti-Israel NGO. Especially when they try to hide their anti-Israel agenda with a message of "peace."

Konecny did not respond to my request for information about the organization.

UPDATE: Bob Knot uncovered that the cofounder of EuMEP is Martin Siepermann, who has a history of anti-Israel activities at The Rights Forum and Electronic Intifada.

UPDATE 2: This document that mentions 5 founders - some that are well-known anti-Israel activists - was discovered:

(h/t Rudi)

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Amnesty International cemented its reputation for anti-Israel bias with its 2015/2016 annual report.

Based on the number of mentions of countries in the report, Israel appears to Amnesty to be the second worst violator of human rights, besides Syria.

Here's how selected countries add up:

The fact is that the world trusts Amnesty to give an accurate portrayal of the relative severity of human rights abuses. And because of years of this kind of obscene anti-Israel bias from Amnesty and others, many in the world really believe that Israel is nearly as bad as Syria, and worse than every other country, in the area of human rights.

It is not even worth the time to disprove it. Those who actually believe that the Jewish state is this bad are either seriously lacking in basic fact checking abilities or they are de facto antisemitic. Even if you believe every one of Amnesty's charges against Israel, to compare the scale of Israel's alleged crimes against those of other countries - people killed by the authorities, amount of land taken, number of arrests, journalists detained, name your metric - Israel would not be close to the top for any of them. If you do a true comparison of how nations protecting their citizens under continuous attack protect human rights, Israel would be the best.

But we cannot trust Amnesty to actually give us facts and figures. We cannot ever expect Amnesty to offer context. That is not their stock in trade. They prefer baseless accusations, exaggeration, belief in the most outrageous and allegations and no sense of context or proportionality when they write their anti-Israel screeds.

Amnesty can do this because it is guilty of the crime it most often hurls at others - impunity. No one goes after them and when they are shown to be liars, they don't even acknowledge their errors let alone correct them.

Amnesty is not about human rights. It is about confirming the existing biases that its researchers have and then shoehorning the data to fit those biases. Their Middle East researchers made up their minds that Israel is evil long ago - now they spend all of their time pretending to prove it by fudging the facts.

And all the proof you need is in the chart above.

UPDATE: Fixed Hamas issue and added North Korea.

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Palestinians upset over PA thank you letter to Israel

Last week, Israel agreed to release some NIS 500 million to the Palestinian Authority.

PA finance minister Shukry Bishara wrote a note thanking his Israeli counterpart for helping with that as well as other agreements they made about Palestinian worker permits in Israel

I would like to express my profound appreciation for last Thursday's meeting. I hope that throughout our discussions, I have succeeded in conveying to you the gravity of the financial challenges that I have to deal with, and in consequence the need to find satisfactory resolution to the issues which are under discussion," Bishara wrote.

I left our meeting heartened that, owing to your leadership and understanding, we have reached a positive turning point and set the stage for new beginnings in the commercial relationship between Israel and ourselves. Although the accommodations that you have already agreed to fall short of what is actually required to resolve comprehensively the outstanding issues, yet I do believe they constitute a welcome and positive step forward.

There is a great deal of hard work ahead of us, and I personally look forward for continued dialogue and cooperation with you.

Lastly, I would appreciate if you would extend my thanks to General Yoav Mordechai for his participation and constructive role during our meeting.

I look forward to seeing you again in the not too distant future.

With warm regards,

Shukry Bishara

Naturally, this letter - which uses fairly standard diplomatic language - is making many Palestinians upset.

One major complaint is the idea of thanking Israel for releasing money that (they believe) should have been given to the PA long ago anyway. Israel has withheld money for various reasons including non-payment of electricity bills and Palestinian reneging on promises not to unilaterally join international organizations.

But the main complaint is that the letter is addressed to Kahlon in Jerusalem, State of Israel.

I don't think the reason is because they want to see Jerusalem become an international city.

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Who knew? Israel is a potato export powerhouse

Israel is one of the top ten countries in exporting potatoes (2014 numbers)

Netherlands: US$905.9 million (21.7% of total raw potatoes exports)
France: $519.4 million (12.4%)
Germany: $334.8 million (8%)
Egypt: $326.8 million (7.8%)
China: $272 million (6.5%)
United States: $200.1 million (4.8%)
Canada: $198.2 million (4.7%)
Belgium: $197.6 million (4.7%)
United Kingdom: $144.9 million (3.5%)
Israel: $129.5 million (3.1%)

And that amount increased by 56% since 2010.

This is sort of amazing. Tiny Isrsel exports two thirds the amount of potatoes as the US?

And Israel exports 3.1% of the world's potatoes when it only takes up about 0.006% of the earth's surface?

Who knew?

BDSers did! They seem to have noticed this before anyone else.

I really should pay more attention to their webpages, they have lots of great news!

(H/t Birone)

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02/28 Links: Obama’s BDS Bill Stand Hurts Peace; Playground at Beit El comes under sniper fire

From Ian:

Obama’s BDS Bill Stand Hurts Peace

Last week, President Obama reluctantly signed into law a trade bill passed by Congress earlier this month that effectively banned U.S. cooperation with entities that support the BDS — boycott, divestment, sanctions — movement that targets Israel. But in his signing statement, he made clear that he would order the government not to enforce the will with respect to BDS campaigns that might target Israeli economic activity in the territories it has controlled since June 1967. He said this was consistent with longstanding U.S. policy on settlements. While the passage of the measure is to be applauded, there were three clear problems with the president’s stand from the point of view of support for Israel and the quest for peace.
The first is that he makes no distinction between isolated West Bank settlements and the blocs of communities that even he has at times conceded would remain part of Israel if a peace agreement were ever to be reached.
The second is that he also fails to draw any distinction between the disputed West Bank and Jerusalem. Though Obama is right that all of his predecessors did not recognize Israel’s control of a united Jerusalem, he, alone, has sought to treat the Jewish neighborhoods built in part of the city that were illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967 as if they were hilltop settlements in isolated areas of the West Bank. In doing so, he has encouraged Palestinians and many of their foreign cheerleaders to believe that Israel’s ancient capital can be re-divided and that the hundreds of thousands of Jews who live in neighborhoods built in the last half-century will be forced out of their homes. Treating those neighborhoods like settlements is not only unrealistic, it alienates most Israelis who rightly view all of the Jewish sections of their capital as part of Israel.
The third is that treating boycotts of Jews in the West Bank and Jerusalem — about which the administration is presumably neutral or perhaps in favor — as somehow different from waging economic warfare against the state of Israel is a dangerous road to go down to. It is true that the U.S. recognizes some territory as Israeli and some not, but in term of boycotts; this is a distinction without a difference. It is also a standard that is not applied to other countries where unresolved territorial disputes linger, such as those of Morocco in the former Spanish Sahara. As it happens, neither the Palestinians nor the Islamist terrorists of ISIS or of Hamas, Hezbollah and their Iranian paymasters recognize any such distinction. Iran will pay a bounty to the families of terrorists who kill Jews inside pre-1967 Israel just as readily as they will to one slaughtered in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Palestinians honor the Arab who shot up a Tel Aviv café in January just as readily as they do those who shoot, stab, stone or incinerate Jews in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Let’s be clear that one doesn’t have to be a fan of West Bank settlements or Israel’s current government to understand that even selective boycotts of Jews in the territories are an attempt to undermine the entire Jewish state, wreck its economy and aid those committing violence against it.
Most important, BDS campaigns of any sort do nothing to advance peace.

Who said ‘occupied’?

A month ago I hosted the management of V15 [the US funded "anyone but Bibi" campaign] or, as it is known by its new name, “Our Way,” in Efrat. As I sometimes do with such get-togethers, I also introduced them to “a representative of our neighbors,” i.e. residents of the neighboring villages, to speak about their “vision” and the reality from their perspective. Not from the standpoint of the media, not from their “non-elected leadership,” but rather directly from them. Regularly, these representatives say that they believe in co-existence.
During this particular visit, one of our neighbors expressed an opinion that shocked the management of “Our Way.”
“By you, your democracy puts a prime minister and president in jail, by us, the president puts the democracy in jail. We don’t want independence, we want to be part of your democracy!” V15 and “Our Way,” who advocate two states for two nations, were shocked upon hearing this statement and went back home with quite a lot to think about. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upon declaring in his Bar Ilan speech that he advocates a two-state solution brought upon himself a considerable amount of criticism from the Right and since that time he has reluctantly repeated this statement, but with the attached reservation that “there is nobody to talk to.” It turns out that also opposition leader Isaac Herzog has started to internalize that there is no one to talk to. Yesterday, it was the chancellor of Germany that learned the lyrics to “there is no one to talk to.”
Last week Gadi Taub published an article under the headline “Why would they let us leave?” He tells about a conversation with a Palestinian journalist that surprised him. The journalist said to him, “Why do you think that we’ll let you leave the territories? Who will watch over us?” It seems that Taub was also shocked upon hearing this. Since in the past I was a student of Taub’s, I allow myself to believe in his sincerity.

Playground at Beit El settlement comes under sniper fire

A children’s playground at the West Bank settlement of Beit El was hit by sniper fire Saturday night. No one was injured in the attack.
According to Channel 10 television, the gunfire is believed to have come from the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Jalazoun. The IDF launched a search in an effort to track down those responsible.
The incident came a day after a Palestinian teenager was shot dead as he tried to stab Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint close to the settlement. Palestinian sources later said that the youth had American citizenship, and named him as 17-year-old as Mahmoud Muhammad Shaalan, a resident of the village of Deir Daboun, north of Ramallah.

In a January 18, piece for the Guardian entitled EU adopts resolution criticising Israeli settlement activity by Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem and Jennifer Rankin in Brussels, we read:

The European Union has unanimously adopted a tough resolution criticising Israeli settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territories, despite fierce efforts by Israel to persuade some EU members to block it.

The resolution was agreed by the EU foreign affairs council on Monday after Greece, one of five countries Israel had hoped would block acceptance of the resolution, backed down following a weekend of wrangling and pressure from Palestinian officials and other European diplomats.

Europe seems intent upon making itself more and more irrelevant to the Jewish State of Israel, as well as to the Jewish people as a whole. The EU's open-door policy for Arab-Muslim migrants in the millions is contributing to the evacuation of many Jews throughout Britain and the continent. The reason for this is because of the amazingly high level of violently-inclined Arab-Muslim anti-Semitism as expressed in the streets of Malmö or Paris or any number of European cities today.

The problem is not merely that Europe is importing perhaps millions of Middle Easterners and North Africans onto the continent, but that huge percentages of these folk also happen to despise the Jewish people and tend to have no desire to integrate into liberal European society. They also tend to have an outright hatred for Gay people and a belief in the inferiority, and servitude, of women. We all know this, of course, but few decision-makers in Europe honestly seem to care or find it in their political best interests to publicly acknowledge this cultural reality.

What makes it so much worse, of course, is the inclination among those European decision-makers to isolate and reprimand the Jewish state as a kind-of unique evil. Of all the countries in the world, it is little democratic Israel that gets singled out by the EU and various European governments for sanction and continual reprimand because Jews actually dare to live in Judea and Samaria, the land that Jewish people come from.

The resolution emphasised that EU agreements with Israel applied only to the State of Israel within the pre-1967 border, adding that the “EU must unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. This does not constitute a boycott of Israel, which the EU strongly opposes”.

This is a lie, of course.

Not only does the EU not strongly oppose the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction the State of Israel (BDS) it absolutely encourages that political movement via efforts such as this one. What the EU is telling the world - much to the happiness of Islamists everywhere - is that Jewish people have no right to purchase housing on historically Jewish land..

There is an irony in the fact that while western Europe has flung open its doors for Arabs to come and live wherever they want, the western European elite wrinkle their noses at the whif of Jews building housing for themselves on the land that Jewish people have lived upon for something close to four-thousand years.

Furthermore, by sanctioning the Jews of Judea and Samaria - which Jordan dubbed "West Bank" for the purpose of erasing Jewish history and thereby undermining Jewish claims to their own homeland - the EU encourages violence toward European Jewry by those very same immigrants who often tend to despise Jews for religious reasons to begin with.

When the EU adopts resolutions such as the one above it sends a very clear message not only to the great Arab-Muslim majority in the Middle East, but to the Arab-Muslim minority in Europe, that it is open-season on Jews.

Hinting that further measures may be in the pipeline, it continued: “The EU will continue to closely monitor developments on the ground and their broader implications and will consider further action in order to protect the viability of the two-state solution, which is constantly eroded by new facts on the ground.”

The two-state solution is dead for the very simple reason that the Arab powers, including the Palestinian Authority, never wanted it to begin with. The tendency among Europeans to blame the Jews for Arab behavior is a measure of European dislike of Jews, in general.

It certainly has nothing to do with Israeli-Jewish intransigence on the question of a 23rd Arab state because the Jewish people have acknowledged their readiness to give away their heartland for peace since the Peel Commission of 1937. The reason that there is no peace between the Arab majority and the Jewish minority in that part of the world, despite the fact that Israel treats its Arab citizenry far better than does the rest of the Arab-Muslim world, is because of Koranic forbiddance.

So, can you blame Jewish people for wanting to leave Europe? Were I a European Jew I would be pondering every possibility for relocation to Israel, North America, or Australia.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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Saudi cleric: Selfies cause cancer

From MEMRI:

Saudi cleric Sheikh Sa’d Al-Ateeq said in his fatwa show on the Saudi Ahwaz TV channel that when people post pictures of themselves and their children on social media platforms, they risk becoming afflicted with diseases, including cancer. Sheikh Al-Ateeq warned that people might print these pictures and apply sorcery to them, causing those photographed to fall ill. The show aired on February 3, 2016.

Here are screenshots of Al Ateeq so you can print them out and practice your sorcery skills on them.

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Amnesty report praises antisemitic, pro-violence organization

Amnesty International has issued another one-sided anti-Israel report accusing the Jewish state of "arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions" by closing off and adding checkpoint to areas of Hebron where Arabs have been stabbing Jews.

Obviously, the mere murder and attempted murder of Jews is not enough of a reason to take any measures to protect them, since Amnesty does not seem to believe that Jews (especially Jews who choose to live in Judea and Aamaria) have any human rights.

Yes, even though there have been over 20 violent attacks resulting in injuries and at least four deaths in the area of Hebron since October (Amnesty only counts one,) Amnesty believes that it is "arbitrary punishment" to limit access to the specific areas where Jews are being attacked.

Amnesty claims that the closing of stores along Shuhada Street - where there had been several attacks on Jews - collectively punishes "tens of thousands" of Palestinians in Hebron. Yet Shuhada Street is only a tiny part of the Jewish part of Hebron, most of which is closed to all Jews. Is that collective punishment for Jews? Obviously not from Amnesty's point of view. Jews have no rights.

One part of the report praises an NGO called Youth Against Settlements:

Alongside the recent restrictions on movement in the centre of Hebron, human rights defenders – Palestinian, Israeli and international – have come under renewed pressure from Israeli forces and settlers. The area of the closed military zone extends to a house in Tel Rumeida owned by Issa Amro, a human rights defender and director of Youth Against Settlements, a Palestinian activist group committed to non-violence. The house functions as the group’s headquarters and an education centre, but is now only accessible to Issa Amro, as he is the legal owner.

Is Youth Against Settlements really committed to human rights and non-violence?

Here are photos from their Facebook page glorifying stone throwing and shooting projectiles:

Here the organization calls explicitly for its "non-violent youth" to attend a violent demonstration:

And here they reproduce a poster with fake Talmud quotes using a generic Jew (taken from a wedding photographer page) as the embodiment of evil.

This is pure antisemitism from an organization that Amnesty regards as "non-violent" and pro-human rights.

Amnesty actually timed this report to coincide with Youth Against Settlements' annual Open Shuhada Street campaign, showing that Amnesty is in a real sense partnering with an organization that supports violence and Jew-hatred.

Way to go, Amnesty!

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U of Kent: You are allowed to spread antisemitism if you are an award winning journalist

In late January, Amira Hass gave a speech at the University of Kent where she accuses the "Elders of Zion" - a group of Jews - to have planned the eternal subjugation of Arabs in the territories:

And I ask myself did the Elders of Zion really sit together at the beginning of the Seventies and then during the nineties, and plan, and have all these military orders, all these changes? I believe that they knew for sure that they don’t want to give back the land and in the Nineties, my conclusion is that they wanted to do everything possible to stop(?) the two state solution.

So this Haaretz writer went down to the depths of classic antisemitic conspiracy theories and used it at a university lecture.

People naturally complained. And the university response is almost as sickening as the original statement.

Asked to clarify the University’s position and what action will now be taken to prevent the use of further antisemitic rhetoric at the University under the guise of political discourse about Israel, David Powell, Head of the Office of the Vice Chancellor told us to confirm that no action would be taken, writing:

“A debate may doubtless be had about the precise point that Ms Hass may have been making in her own presentation but we would note that she is a bona fide (and award winning) journalist working for a respected Israeli newspaper.”

There you go! If you are a "bona fide" and award wining journalist, you cannot be possibly say anything that is too offensive for college audiences!

It's a get out of jail card for antisemites!

Antisemitic conspiracy theories are not to be shunned, as long as they are promulgated by someone who is famous. Hass' fame allows antisemitism to rise from something that is reprehensible into something that can be legitimately debated.

That is exactly what Kent University is saying.

As far as this new guidance that being an award winning journalist may say whatever he or she wants on campus without consequence, I wonder if that rule applies to all forms of bigotry, or only one specific kind?

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02/27 Links: Remembering Ilan Halimi, 10 Years Later; SFSU’s Partnership with Pal. Terror Uni

From Ian:

SFSU’s Deafening Silence on Partnership with Palestinian University

According to Matthew Levitt, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, An-Najah is known for “terrorist recruitment, indoctrination and radicalization of students,” particularly those associated with the Hamas-affiliated Islamic Bloc. Likewise, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) notes that An-Najah’s student council “glorifies suicide bombings and propagandizes for jihad against Israel.” An-Najah put off its 2015 student elections indefinitely for fear of a Hamas victory.
An-Najah’s June 2014 graduation ceremony featured banners paying tribute to Hamas leaders and graduates posing for a picture, holding up three fingers to represent three Israeli teens kidnapped by Hamas, the terrorist act that ignited the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict. An-Najah students are notorious for having constructed a gruesome replica of the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria Jerusalem suicide bombing.
While Abdulhadi’s allusion to steering these radical students away from violence and towards democratic activism may be admirable, the fact remains that a student exchange program with this university could pose a significant security risk. And Abdulhadi doesn’t plan to stop there. In a 2014 interview, she pledged to further such collaboration:
[I]t’s not going to be exclusive to two Palestinian universities; we plan to connect with other universities in Palestine and elsewhere in the Arab world as well as in Muslim majority countries.
When asked by email to confirm the MOU with An-Najah and to comment on potential security concerns, SFSU President Leslie Wong did not respond. Indeed, SFSU has remained remarkably quiet on the subject, other than defending Abdulhadi from allegations of improper use of university funds with a controversial 2014 “Academic and Labor Delegation to Palestine” for the purpose of meeting with An-Najah and Bir Zeit representatives to cultivate the MOU (and, in the process, individuals affiliated with U.S. State Department-designated terrorist organizations).
If, as Abdulhadi boasts, the alliance with An-Najah is such an impressive accomplishment, what accounts for SFSU’s reticence? Could it be that President Wong is less than eager to publicize SFSU’s relationship with a Palestinian university that is a hotbed of radicalization, particularly given SFSU’s own troubled history of anti-Israel extremism? In a matter of this gravity, silence from SFSU’s administration is not an option.

Top Dems Outraged Over Obama Efforts to Ignore Pro-Israel Provisions

Leading Democrats are taking aim at the Obama administration for its opposition to newly passed legislation that aims to bolster the U.S.-Israel economic relationship and combat boycotts of Israel, according to a statement issued this week.
The Obama administration announced that it opposes portions of a bipartisan trade bill that would strengthen economic ties between the U.S. and Israel and force trade partners to sever ties with backers of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, an anti-Israel movement that seeks to economically isolate the Jewish state.
President Barack Obama issued a rare statement opposing the bill’s pro-Israel language this week, claiming that it sought to legitimize Israeli settlements. Obama stated that he would not enforce the pro-Israel provisions as a result of his personal disagreement with the policies.
The statement prompted top Democrats to break with the president.
The fracture between these Democrats and the administration comes amid White House support for efforts to label Jewish-made goods produced in disputed areas of Israel. These efforts have been described as anti-Semitic by Israel’s government.
“While the Obama Administration has reiterated its opposition to boycotts, divestment campaigns, and sanctions targeting the State of Israel, it has mischaracterized the TPA and Customs bill provisions as making a U.S. policy statement about Israeli settlements,” Sens. Harry Reid (D., Nev.), Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), Ben Cardin (D., Md.), Michael Bennet (D., Colo.), and Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) said in a joint statement released Thursday.
The senators accused the Obama administration of lying about the pro-Israel bill and pushing a false narrative in efforts to oppose it.

Speaker Ryan: Congress Will Fight Obama Efforts to Ignore Pro-Israel Law

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) told the Washington Free Beacon on Friday that Congress will fight against an Obama administration decision to not enforce portions of a new bill aimed at strengthening the U.S.-Israel economic relationship and combating boycotts on the Jewish state.
Ryan’s statement comes in response to a White House effort to waive portions of a new bipartisan trade bill that would boost U.S.-Israel economic ties and fight against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which seeks to economically isolate Israel.
Top Democrats recently broke with the White House’s position on the bill, accusing it of lying about its pro-Israel provisions. These Democrats—including Sens. Harry Reid (Nev.), Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Ben Cardin (Md.), Michael Bennet (Colo.), and Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.)—demanded that the president follow the law as Congress wrote it.
Ryan agreed with his colleagues across the aisle, telling the Free Beacon that congressional leaders will use their oversight authority to ensure that the pro-Israel measures are upheld.

02/26 Links Pt2: Kontorovich: Obama’s conflation and obfuscation about Israeli settlement boycotts

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Obama signs Israel anti-boycott provisions into law, settlements and all

Congress recently passed the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015. The massive trade and customs bill contains, inter alia, provisions designed to oppose boycotts and similar economic warfare against Israel. Yesterday, President Obama signed the bill into law.
While signing it, he made a statement, objecting to parts of the law that oppose boycotts of Jewish Israeli enterprises in the West Bank and Golan Heights. (The law’s anti-boycott protections apply to “Israel” and “Israeli-controlled territories.”)
The actual effect of the signing statement, however, is nil. It does not in any way limit the reach or finality of the law. Indeed, the statement does not even purport that parts of the law are unconstitutional or unenforceable. Nor could the president easily have done so: Congress in passing the law used core Article I powers that the president cannot unilaterally restrict — in particular, the powers to regulate foreign commerce and the federal courts.
Thus after Obama’s signature, the provisions of the law that apply to Israeli-controlled territory are as much binding legislation as the rest of the bill.

Eugene Kontorovich: Obama’s conflation and obfuscation about Israeli settlement boycotts

President Obama signed into law this week important measures opposing boycotts of Israel. While signing the law, he complained about its application to “Israeli-controlled territories.” He claimed the provisions were “contrary to longstanding bipartisan United States policy, including with regard to the treatment of settlements.”
In a previous post, I explained how the signing statement does not change, or purport to change, the binding legal force of the law. But it is more important as a political statement, and as such it is wrong on the facts. The law does not, as he complained, “conflat[e]” settlements with Israel proper. Indeed, it distinguishes sharply between them. The law speaks of two distinct areas: “Israel” and “Israeli-controlled territories.” That means that those “ territories” are something different from “Israel” — precisely the position of the administration. To be sure, the law opposes boycotts of both areas, but that is not conflating them, any more than opposing terrorism, or the use of foreign armed force, against both areas would be conflating them.
Rather, the law treats Israel and the settlements as distinct. However, in terms of certain foreign commerce issues, it applies the same legislative approach. Obama’s definition of conflation means that Congress is prohibited from enacting the same foreign commerce legislation for these two areas because the president does not like it on policy grounds — an absolutely unheard-of limitation on the foreign commerce power. Indeed, Congress has already given the same customs treatment to both, and otherwise applied identical rules to both, without any complaints about conflation.
The real conflation here is on the part of the White House — and J Street and Peace Now, which provided its talking points. They have conflated opposition to settlements with openness to using boycotts against them.

Oberlin Professor Claims Israel Was Behind 9/11, ISIS, Charlie Hebdo Attack

A professor at Oberlin College, one of the most prestigious institutes of higher education in the country, has written and shared a series of Facebook posts claiming that Jews or Israelis control much of the world and are responsible for the 9/11 and Charlie Hebdo attacks and the rise of ISIS.
Joy Karega, an assistant professor of Rhetoric and Composition, shared a graphic shortly after the Charlie Hebdo shooting last year of an ISIS terrorist pulling off a mask resembling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The terrorist has a tattoo with a Star of David and the acronym “JSIL” – presumably a Jewish version of ISIL/ISIS. The picture includes graphic text implying that the murder of cartoonists was a “false flag” conspiracy designed to stop French support for Palestinians. In the accompanying status, Karega wrote, “This ain’t even hard. They unleashed Mossad on France and it’s clear why.” The Mossad is Israel’s national intelligence agency.
She wrote the same day that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to the massive free-speech rally in Paris “uninvited and of course he went even when he was asked by Pres. Hollande (France) not to come. Netanyahu wanted to bend Hollande and French governmental officials over one more time in public just in case the message wasn’t received via Massod [sic] and the ‘attacks’ they orchestrated in Paris.” She neglected to mention that Netanayhu was in Paris to honor four Jews who were killed in a terror attack in a kosher supermarket that same week. Karega also wrote in November that ISIS was not really Islamic, but rather “a CIA and Mossad operation, and there’s too much information out here for the general public not to know this.”

Anti-Zionist Max Blumenthal jeered at Toronto event

A sold-out evening headlined by controversial Jewish anti-Israel activist Max Blumenthal went ahead as scheduled on Wednesday evening in Toronto, despite drawing heavy condemnation from Canada’s organized Jewish community.
He spoke to upwards of 500 guests at an event titled “Embattled Truths: Reporting on Gaza with Max Blumenthal.” It was organized by PEN Canada — a charity which advocates for free expression and other basic rights for writers — and hosted at the Toronto Reference Library in honor of Freedom to Read Week in Canada.
The talk, which featured a question and answer period, was marred by constant heckling and jeering from more than a dozen protestors who attended, most of whom from the far-right Jewish Defense League of Canada.
Blumenthal addressed the controversy surrounding his appearance, saying that pro-Israel groups attempt to make an example of him.

The Tower has an article that refers to a fascinating 2011 piece by Joel Fishman that shows that the idea of "Zionism is racism" started before "occupation" and was created by the Soviets specifically to fight against any UN resolutions against antisemitism.

Some relevant parts:

Many assume that UN Resolution 3379, equating Zionism with racism, originated in 1975. In March 1964, however, this analogy appeared in discussions that took place at the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities (a part of the Third Committee that dealt with social, humanitarian, and cultural matters).6 During these deliberations, Israel was outmaneuvered and never recovered the ground it lost. Yohanan Manor, former director-general of the Jewish Agency’s Information Department, capably recounted how this happened in his pioneering monograph, To Right a Wrong. Nonetheless, the subject needs to be revisited. What happened in 1964 and 1965 represents an essential piece of the story and therefore merits a careful second look.

In March 1964, the US, which was motivated by the needs of domestic politics, namely the presidential election campaign between Lyndon B. Johnson and Barry Goldwater, proposed that the Third Committee of the UN recognize antisemitism as a form of racism, along with apartheid and Nazism.8 For its part, the Soviet Union was determined to prevent any discussion of the subject, not the least because the Soviets were antisemites. As a matter of official state policy, the Soviet Union used antisemitism to discriminate against, intimidate, and persecute Soviet Jewry. Seeking to remove the subject from the agenda, the representatives of the USSR at the UN warned the US that if the Americans did not drop the matter, they would submit their own amendment condemning Zionism and Nazism. In October 1965, when the final draft of the convention prepared by the Commission on Human Rights again came under discussion in the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities, the US and Brazil introduced an amendment to condemn antisemitism. In turn, the Soviet Union called for the condemnation of “antisemitism, Zionism, Nazism, neoNazism, and all forms of the policy and ideology of colonialism, national and race-hatred, and exclusiveness and shall take action as appropriate for the speedy eradication of those misanthropic ideas and practices in the territories subject to their jurisdiction.” At this point, the delegates of Greece and Hungary proposed an amendment that broke the impasse by moving to drop all reference to any 77 Joel Fishman specific kind of discrimination. This proposal was accepted, and effectively the matter was dropped, despite an unsuccessful effort in 1967 to revive the issue.

Dr. Meir Rosenne, who served as consul of Israel in New York from 1961 to 1967, delivered an important address in 1984 at a World Zionist Organization Information Department seminar held at the US State Department. Later, in 1987, Judge Hadassa Ben Itto went on record with a solid interview. These first-person sources are valuable not only because of the facts they contain but also because the individuals who gave them possessed a broad perspective and understood the importance of this episode. Each of these accounts conveys a sense of the contemporary mood. In view of their significance, they are cited at length. Ambassador Rosenne explained:

Among my duties at the time was to serve as Israel’s observer in New York at various United Nations deliberations on human rights. In the context of human rights, our chief concern then was the plight of Soviet Jewry— which, I must insist, remains a high priority for us.

One of the UN organs—the Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities—after weeks of bitter debate and negotiation drafted a “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.”
That forgotten episode ironically has a serious impact on the subsequent evolution of world opinion and international law regarding Israel and Zionism. This is how it happened.
Early in the discussions [c. March 1965], the Sub-Comission quickly agreed to adopt a special Article condemning apartheid as a form of racism as [were] Nazism and neo-Nazism.
Because the Holocaust was still fresh in the minds of human rights advocates—and also because of an appalling worldwide epidemic of antisemitic incidents in the early 1960s—the American representative [Marietta Peabody Tree] during the debate in the Human Rights Commission proposed the explicit condemnation of antisemitism in this draft UN Convention.
The Soviet representative, staunchly supported by the other East European experts, countered this move by submitting an amendment that would have added the word “Zionism” to the list of forms of racism to be condemned.
This gave rise to a bitter discussion that culminated in a compromise, to wit: References to all specific forms of racism (except apartheid) were to be dropped from the draft.
The very same exercise was repeated later that year [October 1965] in the Third Committee (the Social Committee) of the UN General Assembly.
With this clever tactic, the USSR for the first time injected its own ideology and propaganda on Zionism and Judaism onto a world stage. In this, Moscow won a double victory:
(1) It prevented the explicit definition of antisemitism as a form of racism— and thus succeeded in downgrading the moral, political, and symbolic weight that a condemnation of Jew-hatred would have carried throughout the world.
(2) It established the precedent for linking Zionism with Nazism, which led to the overwhelming adoption by the UN General Assembly, eleven years later, of the resolution that equated Zionism with racism [UNGA Resolution 3379 of November 10, 1975]. It is essential to remember this history and to keep the record straight: In 1975 it was certainly the Arab states that took the initiative with this resolution. But it is the Soviet Union that is the source of this evil doctrine.

Judge Ben Itto also witnessed this episode. ...In a 1987 interview, Ben Itto recounted the facts

...The Russians know that they are anti-Semites, and emphatically didn’t want antisemitism specifically pinpointed, “because they too would have to join that club of racists before the world.”
The Russians wanted not even the merest mention of antisemitism, but they wanted to accomplish this goal without having to vote on the issue. So they latched onto the idea as a technical maneuver of insisting that if antisemitism was named as a form of racism, then Zionism must also be listed as a form of racism.
…. Behind the scenes the Russians did not at all seriously argue the proposition that Zionism is racism—“it was almost a joke. They said that they were only suggesting the idea to get the Americans off their antisemitism kick.” Clearly, she says, at first the Russians knew full well that the idea that Zionism is racism is an indefensible proposition.

Here we see a direct, intentional link between the origins of calling Israel racist and unapologetic antisemitism.

(h/t Daled Amos)

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02/26 Links Pt1: Hamas is to blame for Gaza's terrible state; U.S., EU Fund PA Torture

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemini: Hamas is to blame for Gaza's terrible state, not Israel

The residents of the Gaza Strip – which has a 40 percent unemployment rate, hundreds of thousands of restless youth, no electricity during most of the daylight hours, polluted water that does not always flow, and a tightening blockade that has lasted for years – are indeed a powder keg.
It's enough to read the latest UN report, from September 2015, which says that the Strip will not be suitable for human habitation within five years. This is not propaganda. It is a realistic prediction. One should listen carefully to the head of IDF Intelligence, Maj.-Gen. Herzl Halevi, who has been warning of this grim reality. The only relief comes in the form of hundreds of supply trucks that arrive daily from Israel. This is the last barrier that prevents hunger.
Don’t say its Israel’s fault. Because the day Israel left Gaza was supposed to be a turning point. For the first time in history, the Palestinians got independence and sovereignty over territory.
Egypt and Jordan, which controlled the Gaza Strip and West Bank, respectively, from 1949 to 1967, never dreamed of giving the Palestinians independence. An independent Gaza Strip was an opportunity for change. They could have become a model of welfare and prosperity. They could have sent a message to the whole world - and particularly Israel - that they can be trusted, that they can take responsibility for their destiny, that they were choosing a growth industry. This did not happen. They chose the industry of death and hate.

Khaled Abu Toameh: U.S., Europe Fund Torture by Palestinian Authority

A report by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor documented 1,391 cases of Palestinians arbitrarily arrested by the two Palestinian parties, Fatah and Hamas, in 2015.
Systematic torture in Palestinian prisons in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was documented in the report -- at least 179 cases of torture in Palestinian Authority (PA) prisons in 2015.
The PA security forces are trained and funded by several Western countries, including the US. This establishes a direct line between these Western donors and the arbitrary arrests, torture and human rights violations that have become the norm in PA-controlled prisons and detention centers.
The report also revealed that the Palestinian Authority regularly disobeys court orders by refusing to release detainees, showing contempt for its courts and judges.
Before our eyes, two police states are being built: one in the West Bank and a second in the Gaza Strip -- in the face of talk by international parties of establishing an independent Palestinian state. But the last thing the Palestinians need is another police state.

JPost Editorial: Cameron’s slip

Admittedly, Cameron and his Conservatives do not have an easy time maintaining an overtly pro-Israel policy in the face of such a hostile political and international environment, which is hyper-critical of Israel while ignoring atrocities perpetrated by other countries.
But we would have expected more of Cameron.
Does the British prime minister truly hope that Jerusalem is “maintained the way it was in the past”? When the holy city was under Jordanian rule, Jewish places of worship were left in ruins; access to the Western Wall was denied to Jews; basic religious rights were trampled.
Obviously, that is not what Cameron longs for.
It is also not clear what Cameron is referring to when he talks of “what is happening in Jerusalem.” Apparently it is not the knifings, the vehicular attacks and the shootings being carried out by Palestinians. Nor is it the economic progress, the freedom and the cultural flourishing of the city since it came under Israeli control.
Jewish building, apparently, is the only obstacle to peace.
Cameron is a true friend of Israel. That’s why it is so frustrating to discover that even people like him have been affected by the unceasing campaign against Israel.
We hope the British prime minister returns to his old self soon and that his comments on east Jerusalem were just a slip.

Israeli flag moved to avoid offending an Arab

This video was posted at the Shehab News Agency, and I don't know where it was taken originally. it looks like a cafeteria on a college campus somewhere in the northern US.

Apparently, the cafeteria placed up the flags of many nations on its windows, and an Algerian was upset that Israel's flag was next to that of his country. So he complained to management, which quickly swapped Israel's flag with that of Canada, saying all the time that they fully understand why he was upset at the terrible idea of Algeria's flag being next to Israel's.

There is something seriously wrong when those offended by the existence of the Jewish state are treated with the same deference and respect as for those who are offended by racism or sexism.

The issue isn't to avoid offense. The issue is to fight for what it right. And too many people today, especially on campus, cannot tell the difference.

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"Justice for Omar Nayef Zayed" - yup, he got it all right

Fantastic news. From Times of Israel:

A fugitive Palestinian terrorist wanted by Israel was murdered in Bulgaria Friday morning, Palestinian media reported, in a killing some Palestinians have ascribed to the Jewish state, though Jerusalem denied involvement.

Omar Nayef Zayed, 51, was found dead in the yard of the Palestinian Embassy in Sofia. Bulgarian radio reported that he had fallen from the fourth floor.

A senior Palestinian Authority official said that Nayef “was discovered with serious torso injuries and died before emergency services arrived,” official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. PA officials said they were investigating the circumstances of his death.

Zayed, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) had been living in Bulgaria for the past 20 years. In 1986 he was convicted in the murder of yeshiva student Eliyahu Amedi — whom he stabbed to death in Jerusalem’s Old City — along with two other Palestinian assailants. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Four years after beginning his sentence, Zayed began a hunger strike and was moved to a Bethlehem hospital facility, from which he managed to escape. He fled to Bulgaria in 1994 and married a local woman with whom he had three children.

In December of 2015, Israel submitted a request to Bulgarian authorities to extradite him. Late last year Bulgarian authorities agreed to examine the Israeli request but a December 14 hearing was postponed because Nayef was not at his address, the Bulgarian interior ministry said.

He had fled to the Palestinian Embassy to seek sanctuary there, and had been staying there ever since.

Israel Radio quoted “a security source” as saying that “Israel has no interest in striking at an elderly terrorist, especially if it involves danger or committing resources.”

YNet adds:

According to Palestinian sources, after receiving Israel's extradition request for Zayed, Bulgarian authorities sought to arrest him for 72 hours in order to deliberate on the request, but he escaped to the embassy before they could get to him.

Bulgarian authorities then set Zayed an ultimatum to force him out of the embassy, but he refused. Meanwhile, Israel was holding a quiet dialogue with Sofia in an effort to bring the affair to an end.

Palestinian Ambassador to Bulgaria Ahmad Madbough set Zayed an ultimatum of his own, giving him 24 hours to turn himself in to Bulgarian authorities - to no avail.

Bulgarian news websites reported that at 7:35am Friday, emergency services received a call to the embassy for a man seeking urgent medical treatment after a "violent incident." Zayed, who was found at the embassy's outside garden with critical injuries to his upper body, was rushed to a local hospital in Sofia, where was declared dead.

The Palestinian deputy foreign minister, Tayseer Jaradat, said Zayed was not killed from the shooting in his direction, while PFLP claimed he was shot in the head. One of the reports in Bulgarian media claimed Zayed was pushed to his death from the fourth floor of the building. The Palestinian ambassador granted access to investigators.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned "in the strongest terms this heinous crime," and instructed a commission of inquiry to go to Bulgaria to uncover the circumstances of what happened.

While Abbas avoided pointing the finger at Israel, PFLP and the head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club and former minister Issa Karaka, did blame Israel for Zayed's death.

It's safe to assume, however, that the Palestinian claim the Mossad is behind Zayed's death is baseless. Israel would not dare get entangled with an assassination after filing an official request for his extradition, and certainly not while Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov is in Israel on a work trip, during which he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin.

Sources involved in the affair said "there is no connection to Israel." They claimed it was more likely that Zayed angered Palestinian or local authorities.

Israel's Foreign Ministry said in response: "Israel did ask for the extradition of Zayed, who is a fugitive, but we heard the news of his murder in the media."

It seems unlikely that the Mossad did this, which means he was either killed by a Palestinian in the embassy or he committed suicide.

Either way, this is awesome.

While he was holed up in the embassy, Palestinian organization Samidoun went all out to support the murderer. One of its leaders wrote an article in Electronic Intifada trying to argue that the murderer was a "political prisoner" and as such did not deserve to be incarcerated. After all, he only killed a Jew "settler" which isn't a crime according to them, but a heroic act.

There was a rally in front of the Bulgarian embassy in London calling for his release. Four people attended:

Another interesting tactic they used, that out side can learn from, was to project their demands on the side of the BBC building:

But in the end, the haters demanded "justice" for Zayed.

And that is exactly what they got.

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