Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

01/27 Link Pt2: The Holocaust started with words, not mass killings; Why a Kippah Generates Hate

From Ian:

Lessons for today International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorated today, is an occasion not just to reflect on the past but to marvel at the persistence and adaptability of Jew-hatred.
The day falls on the anniversary of the liberation by Soviet troops of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest German death camp. But Holocaust remembrance ceremonies – particularly in Europe – tend to focus as much on current events as on the horrors of Nazi genocide.
It is no secret that Jew-hatred is rampant in Europe.
The number of anti-Semitic incidents in London rose more than 60 percent during the 12-months ending November 15 over the same period a year earlier. Incidents in France were up 84 percent in the first quarter of 2015, compared to the same period in 2014.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke this week of the dangers of Jew-hatred, particularly among “youth [from] countries where hatred of Israel and Jews is widespread.”
A new book based on surveys of 724 French Jews called L’an prochain à Jérusalem? (“Next Year in Jerusalem?”) found the French-Jewish community is “living with a strong feeling of insecurity.” Sixty-three percent of those polled reported being insulted for being Jews, and more than half reported being subjected to anti-Semitic threats.
Europeans have struggled to combat anti-Semitism but have met with little success. Why? Part of the answer has to do with longstanding, deep-rooted anti-Semitism.

The Holocaust started with words, not mass killings

Today, against the new propaganda of hatred, our challenge is to harness the power of new communication technologies to empower pluralism and human dignity for all, to combat anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.
This new war for hearts and minds can be won only if we update and upgrade the tools of education, culture, science, and communication. Unesco was created 70 years ago for this purpose, and it leads a global programme for Holocaust education and genocide prevention, working with governments and teachers to instill this history in classrooms.
Bombs and bullets alone cannot defeat political poison. We must also win the battle of ideas. Schools, museums, and the media must help young people develop critical thinking skills.
Intellectuals, artists, and public figures must highlight the danger of indifference toward groups espousing intolerance and exclusion. Political leaders should encourage social integration and mutual understanding. This is how we can pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust — not only to lament the dead, but also to empower the living.
Sara Bloomfield is director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Irina Bokova is director general of Unesco.

Netanyahu: World must stand with Israel ‘not for our sake, for theirs’

Jews are again being targeted for being Jews, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of International Holocaust Memorial Day.
“Preserving the memory of the Holocaust is more important today than ever, for in this period of resurgent and sometimes violent anti-Semitism, it is commemorations like this that remind us all where the oldest and most enduring hatred can lead,” Netanyahu said in a statement released Tuesday evening.
“Around the world, Jewish communities are increasingly living in fear. We see anti-Semitism directed against individual Jews, and we also see this hatred directed against the collective Jew, against the Jewish state. Israel is targeted with the same slurs and the same libels that were leveled against the Jewish people since time immemorial.”
Netanyahu said that “Islamic extremists incorporate the most outrageous anti-Semitism into their murderous doctrines,” citing the Gaza Strip, Syria and Iran. He also criticized the “obsession with the Jews – the fixation on the Jewish state.”
He said the fact that there is an independent Jewish state means “we can protect ourselves and defend our freedom.”
“When a state like Iran and movements like Daesh (Islamic State] and Hamas openly declare their goal of committing another Holocaust, we will not let it happen,” Netanyahu concluded. “But Europe and the rest of the world must stand up together with us. Not for our sake, for theirs.”

Social media sites allow 80% of antisemitic content to be posted

From the Online Hate Prevention Institute:

A major new report prepared for the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism, “Measuring the Hate: The State of Antisemitism in Social Media”, highlights that not enough is being done to combat antisemitism in social media. The report, based on tracking over 2,000 items of antisemitism over the last 10 months, found that only 20% of the items were removed.

Breakdown of antisemitism by category

Traditional antisemitism made up almost half the sample and covered content such as conspiracy theories, racial slurs, and accusations such as the blood libel. The report also outlines where each type of antisemitism occurs, with content promoting violence against Jews far more likely to be found on Twitter (63% on Twitter, 23% on YouTube and 14% on Facebook), while content promoting Holocaust denial was more likely to be found on YouTube (44% YouTube, 38% Twitter, 18% Facebook).

The report highlights significant variations in the responses of the social media companies to online antisemitism. More significantly, the response by each company was found to vary depending on the nature of the antisemitism.

Overall percent of items remaining online by platform over time

The best response rates came from Facebook where content promoting violence against Jews has a 75% chance of eventually being removed. The worst case was YouTube videos containing New Antisemitism, that is antisemitism related to the State of Israel, where only 4% has been removed after more than 10 months.

Here is the entire report.

MeasuriMeasuring the Hate: The State of Antisemitism in Social Mediang the Hate

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Boy Who Stabbed Cites UN Chief: 'Human Nature To React To Homework' (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Kfar Sava, January 27 - Inspired by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon's refusal to condemn Palestinian stabbing attacks on Israelis, a high school senior accused of attacking his teacher today also characterized his act as legitimate resistance, saying it is human nature to react to too much homework.

Amos Doker, 18, was arrested Tuesday after attempting to stab his mathematics instructor. Witnesses said the two had an altercation regarding the burden of assignments given to the students to complete outside class time, during which the senior pulled a kitchen knife from his book bag and lunged at her. The teacher, a 40-year-old from nearby Hod HaSharon who was not named in the police report, managed to move away in time and called for help, and several other students subdued the youth. When police arrived, the assailant loudly proclaimed his right to defend himself from unjust assignments.

"You control my life - you're occupying my world," accused the teen, addressing himself to all the adults present. "I have to resist by all possible means to assert my independence and individual sovereignty. Just ask the Secretary General of the UN! He says it's human nature to do this! You can't arrest me! Arrest her!" he yelled at police, gesturing to the teacher.

Eyewitnesses reported that as police bundled the suspect into a patrol car, he continued to proclaim his right to stab his teacher. "She's oppressing me with homework! She denies my freedom of movement and association! They all do! All the teachers and the principal too! I have no choice but to fight back with random violence! Ban Ki-Moon said so!" The rest of his words were muffled after the arresting officers shut the door.

The boy's attorney, Zehavi Gal-Un, blamed the Minister of Education for the incident. "Naftali Bennett and his right-wing minions continue to oppress the students of this country by making them complete onerous assignments and sit for brutal exams, and to what end?" he challenged. "It's not as if anyone is going to get a job in this economy. The students legitimately have no other option than resistance, and yes, sometimes there is no choice but violet resistance. The blame lies squarely in the lap of those who created this situation."

Ministry officials dismissed the accusation. "It is fundamentally bigoted to say the students have no choice," said a ministry spokesman. "Millions of students around the world face similar circumstances and for some reason do not go around stabbing people. Students have a choice in whether or not to attack faculty, and to act as if they have no volition is to remove their individuality and humanity."

At press time, this reporter was considering stabbing his managing editor for refusing the raise he'd requested.

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01/27 Link Pt1: The Last Chance for Peace Fantasy; 300 attackers are not 'lone'

From Ian:

David Horovitz: Rather than despair at the awfulness of it all

As we look at the fresh graves of Dafna Meir and Shlomit Krigman, we must insist on seeking the most effective means to prevent the unconscionable loss of more wonderful people
Dafna Meir and Shlomit Krigman. Two Israeli women — one a mother of six in her late 30s; the other about to turn 24, just setting out in life. Dafna, stabbed to death by a Palestinian teenager at her home in the settlement of Otniel on January 17. Shlomit, stabbed to death by two Palestinians near the grocery store at the settlement of Beit Horon, where she lived with her grandparents, on January 25.
Dafna and Shlomit, now buried one next to the other at Jerusalem’s Har Hamenuhot cemetery.
Dafna and Shlomit smile at us from our TV screens and news sites and newspapers — smile at us incongruously, immortalized in snapshots of unremarkable happiness, alongside the tearful features of the loved ones from whom they have been murderously torn.
Dafna could not have had an easy childhood. Adopted at age 13, she became a foster mother herself, raising two foster children along with her and husband Natan’s own four. Even from the superficial familiarity that Israel now has with the world Dafna and Natan built, this is plainly a wonderful family, warm and selfless, moral and generous. Natan invited an old friend to their shiva, a Palestinian who lives nearby and who, it so happens, is a distant relative of the despicable youth who murdered his wife. And the friend came, “with tears in his eyes,” said Natan.
Shlomit’s friends tell of an intellectually curious, quiet but determined young woman, a creative force, a voracious reader. Who knows what she would have gone on to achieve with her life?
This has to stop. This killing has to stop.

What would happen if Israel withdrew from the West Bank and ended the ‘siege’ of Gaza

Americans relate to Israel on shared values, and the occupation is undermining the long-term American commitment to Israel. They don’t know that the 3 billion per year American investment in Israel returns more vital intelligence and saved more American soldier lives than all of NATO combined.
If I were to council the next American President, I would recommend the following:
• Announce that American stands with the one and only democracy in the region, Israel, which is essential for American national security
• Publicly place the onus for the failure of a two-state solution primarily with the Palestinians who have repeatedly refused to sign an end-of -conflict resolution, or accept a Jewish state, as evidenced by their rejection of the Clinton and Olmert offers
• I would recommend that America stop considering the Palestinians victims, as much of their struggles are self-imposed, choosing ideology over economic independence
• Unless the Palestinians agree in advance to sign an end-of-conflict resolution with a demilitarized state, America will publicly state that it won’t push for anything more than a more sustainable ceasefire and ground-up economic development
• Ask Israel as a gesture and to affirm its rule of law, to uproot all illegal settlement outposts
• Israel as a gesture for the future time when the Palestinians are ready for a final deal, should limit their building over the Green line to the environs of the major settlement blocks
• Make clear that with ISIS just over the Jordan, Israel must for the foreseeable future control the security of the Jordan River Valley
• Demand transparency, an uncorrupt Palestine government ending incitement, and a preparation of Palestinians for their share of painful compromises.
Realistic? Actually yes! One of the reasons the peace process has failed is that almost nothing is ever asked of the Palestinians, and worse, no consequences are imposed for their rejection of every deal that allows Israel to exist. They need to see sticks as well as carrots to prompt them to come to the table and do more than take what they can and then walk out, as they have every single time so far.

The Last Chance for Peace Fantasy

That is why even Israeli left-wingers understand that while Abbas may actually be the most moderate imaginable Palestinian leader, that is a meaningless compliment. Given the fact that Palestinian public opinion remains stuck in a mindless cycle of rejectionism that views Israel’s existence as illegitimate and violence against Jews laudable, there’s simply no chance for him or anyone more or less moderate than Abbas to deliver any sort of a peace agreement. If even he, the man President Obama has called a “champion for peace,” can’t be persuaded to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders might be drawn, then hopes for peace must be put on hold until a sea change in Palestinian culture happens to make it possible.
Perhaps someday two states will be possible. But so long as Abbas is the best Israel can hope for, the overwhelming majority of Israelis will continue to believe that any withdrawals from the West Bank will merely result in a repetition of Ariel Sharon’s Gaza experiment that created a terrorist enclave for Hamas. Abbas’s last years in power aren’t a “last chance” because he has been as much of an obstacle to an agreement as his Hamas rivals.
As the Times of Israel’s David Horovitz notes in an important column today, this doesn’t mean nothing can be done to halt the bloodshed. Those that claim to be friends of Israel or the Palestinians and lovers of peace can do something. They can advocate for an end to the sort of incitement to murder that is routine in the Palestinian media controlled by Abbas and by the PA and its leadership. They can also stop pretending Abbas is a “last chance” and, finally, start holding him accountable for torpedoing peace. Until the remaining last-ditch members of the peace camp in the press and the foreign policy establishment start doing those two things, we shouldn’t take their advocacy for more pressure on Israel or the two-state solution seriously.

From The National (UAE):

Eight members of the militant group Hamas were missing Wednesday after the collapse of a tunnel in the Gaza Strip caused by rain and flooding, a security source said.

The tunnel collapsed overnight in the area of Jabalia in the north of the Palestinian enclave after several days of rainfall, the security source in the area said on condition of anonymity.

“The resistance tunnel collapsed last night due to the weather and flooding,” the source said, adding that the tunnel belonged to Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip.

“There were 11 resistance men inside. Three of them escaped in the first hour after the accident, but the security operation ... continues to search for the eight others.”

Al Hadath reports that the tunnel was in the north of Gaza, meaning that it was not a smuggling tunnel. Heavy rains caused the collapse. It adds:

The Ministry of Health in Gaza and did not declare the existence of injuries or deaths, but media sources confirmed the loss of eight people who were inside the tunnel out of 11 people.

Official sources in Gaza continue to keep quiet about the situation, announced the closure of the area and prevented journalists from filming.

Indeed, Hamas media had not mentioned this story until the last couple of hours, and now says that all 11 trapped men were saved, denying that anyone was taken to Shifa Hospital or any other details reported.

If it wasn't a smuggling tunnel, what kind of tunnel was it?

This might be the answer:

Residents of various Israeli communities along the southern border of the Gaza Strip have renewed complaints of reverberating, underground drilling sounds possibly linked to the construction of infiltration tunnels by Palestinian terrorists, Channel 10 reported Tuesday night.

The residents told the Israeli news channel that at first they believed the middle of the night excavation sounds were caused by rain storms that hit the country earlier this week, however when the sounds desisted at 4 a.m. they realized their source was not the precipitation.

One resident, Tzila Pitusi, said it felt as if someone was breaking into her home.

"We started hearing things like concrete cracking, we felt that the concrete was rising up. We heard booms and bangs from the kitchen," another local, Esther Naim, told Channel 10.

In light of the reported issue, the southern Eshkol Regional Council head Gadi Yarkoni called on the government to act quickly to remove the threat that could lead to the possible infiltration into Israel by Gazan terrorists.

According to the report, an IDF official responded to the complaints, saying that after examination it was determined that no underground tunnels existed in Israeli territory.

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The really insane thing about Ban Ki Moon's speech

Yes, it is outrageous that Ban Ki Moon essentially called terror attacks a natural result of "occupation," and Netanyahu was right in slamming him for it.

But that wasn't the strangest part of the speech.

The title of Ban Ki-Moon's talk was "Secretary-General's remarks to the Security Council on the Situation in the Middle East."

There were 52 paragraphs in the speech according to the official UN record.

Of those 52, three were about Lebanon. Two referred to Syria - one about refugees and one about the Golan.

The entire rest of the speech was about Israel and the Palestinians.

The Secretary General of the UN gives an overview of the Middle East without mentioning Syrian atrocities, without mentioning Iraqi instability, without even mentioning ISIS.

Nothing about Iran. Nothing about Saudi Arabia, which is killing more civilians in Yemen than Israel did in Gaza. Nothing about Egypt or Libya. Not a word about Kurds.

On the contrary - Ban Ki Moon implied that if only Israel would just give some more concessions, then the rest of the region would be inspired to make peace. "As the wider Middle East continues to be gripped by a relentless wave of extremist terror, Israelis and Palestinians have an opportunity to restore hope to a region torn apart by intolerance and cruelty."

The word "obsession" hardly does justice to the single-minded Israel fetish at the UN.

But, yes, we must also be angry at the Secretary General's justification for terror.

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It happens every year, and sure enough this year is no exception.

Whenever there are heavy rains and snow that flood Gaza, the Palestinians blame Israel for "opening dams" that don't exist.

Al Watan Voice, Palestine News Network, Al Resalah, Palestine Times and many other Arab media outlets are saying:

"Israeli" occupation forces on Saturday evening opened rainwater dams towards the agricultural lands in the east of Gaza. Local sources reported that the occupation is opening rainwater dams in different areas east of the city which resulted in the flooding of tens of dunums of agricultural land.

Every winter, the Israeli occupation authorities deliberately open dams near their border with the Gaza Strip.

I've been documenting these spurious claims since 2010.

Last year the official PA news agency went beyond blaming Israel for opening dams to claiming that Israel is actively pumping water into Gaza just to flood them.

Some idiots hate Israel so much that they claim that since Israel does have a few tiny limans (mini-dams to create oases) and reservoirs in communities near Gaza (as I'd pointed out years before) that anyone pointing out that there are no dams with the capability of being opened towards Gaza is just an evil hasbarist. Since Gazans claim it, it must be true and Israelis are all liars.

But no less an organization than Al Jazeera issued a correction last year after they quoted one of the may dam accusations:

Proving that Al Jazeera is just another Zionist media outlet.

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01/26 Links Pt2: Brendan O’Neill: The violence of the Safe Space; EU decision contradicts Oslo Accords

From Ian:

Brendan O’Neill: The violence of the Safe Space

Consider some recent examples from Britain, where students have built what they call Safe Spaces but which look to me more like Unsafe Spaces for those judged to hold the wrong views or to have the wrong attitudes.
Last week at King’s College London, a meeting of pro-Israel students was invaded by anti-Israel activists. They smashed windows, set off a fire alarm, threw chairs around. They chanted “Nazis!” at the attendees of the meeting. Oh, the irony of activists shutting down a meeting of largely Jewish students while shouting “Nazis”: a serious self-awareness failure.
A key justification given by student radicals for shouting down pro-Israel meetings is that such events are “offensive” or “distressing” to certain students. That is, they violate the Safe Space. So in the name of maintaining safety on campus, certain events can be violently interrupted. It’s Orwellian: war is peace, freedom is slavery, violence is safety.
On two campuses in Britain — Cambridge and Goldsmith’s — feminist students have burnt the literature of far-left groups whom they accuse of rape apologism and of contributing to a hostile climate for female students. That is, these far-left groups make women feel unsafe and therefore their pamphlets must be publicly burnt. The use of fascistic menace to make students feel comfortable — the Orwellianism continues.
At a London university last year, the Iranian secularist Maryam Namazie was harassed by members of the Islamic Society who shouted at her: “You are violating our Safe Space!”

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: What Is Richard Branson’s Problem With Israel?

Other “elders” in Branson’s organization include the notoriously anti-Israel, antisemitic Bishop Desmond Tutu, whom I have also met on several occasions, including at the Oxford Union. Tutu is a supporter of the BDS movement, calling for an economic and cultural boycott of Israel. His bigoted views have surfaced with statements such as, “The Jewish lobby is powerful — very powerful,” while accusing Jews of “an arrogance — the arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support.” Tutu has stated that Zionism has “very many parallels with racism,” and has accused the Jewish state of subjecting the Palestinians to “Israeli Apartheid.” He believes that the Palestinians are suffering more than the Jews did during the Holocaust, stating that “the gas chambers” had made for “a neater death” for the Jews.
Clearly such views are not just a moral abomination but represent a deplorable and uncleansable stain on the reputation of a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Is this what Richard Branson had in mind when he stated in an interview, “And obviously after the Second World War, the world had enormous sympathy for the Jewish people. Over a number of decades, that sympathy has been lost…”?
I believe in my heart that Branson is a good and charitable man. So why say these things about the Jews?
Branson also tapped the corrupt former head of the UN, Kofi Annan, the same man who overruled UN General Romeo Dallaire in April 1994 and ordered him not to use his UN forces to disarm the Hutus in Rwanda and prevent them from hacking to death 800,000 Tutsis. Annan in the past declared that Saddam Hussein was a man he could do business with, and then sat down to smoke expensive cigars with the Butcher of Baghdad. He also declared himself “deeply moved” by the death of arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat and ordered the UN flag flown at half mast.
Also included in Branson’s Elders group is the man Kofi Annan appointed as United Nations special representative for Afghanistan and Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi. During Brahimi’s assignment he criticized Israel’s violence and suppression of Palestinians and called Israel “the big poison in the region.”

US rapper downplays Holocaust, suggests listeners read David Irving

A US rapper on Monday attempted to downplay the Nazi genocide, implicate US President Barack Obama in a Jewish conspiracy and suggest his listeners research infamous Holocaust denier David Irving after posting a song to his website, British based Internet publication The Jewish Chronicle reported Tuesday.
Bobby Ray Simmons Jr., better known as B.o.B., who has number one singles in both the US and UK, released his new song dubbed 'Flatlines,' in which he states: "Stalin was way worse than Hitler, that's why the POTUS (President of the United States) gotta wear a Kipper."
B.o.B. goes on to rhyme: "They nervous, but before you try to curve it, do your research on David Irving."
Irving is a notorious Holocaust denier and British historian who was was jailed in Austria in 2006.
The chart-topping recording artist also took umbrage with scientific claims concerning the spherical shape of the globe, posting dozens tweets claiming that the earth was in fact flat, and suggested renown astrophysicist Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson was being paid to maintain the lie crafted by the Department of Defense and NASA.

From TOI:

The Israeli cabinet on Sunday unanimously approved the appointment of an Arab woman, attorney Mariam Kabha, as national commissioner for equal employment opportunities within the Economy Ministry.

“This is an appointment with high symbolic and practical importance. We have two major missions in the field of employment – to increase employment among Arab women and ultra-Orthodox men. This appointment will serve to achieve a national goal. Mariam Kabha is capable and deserving, and I wish her success,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Sunday’s appointment makes Kabha the highest ranking Arab female in the civil service, business website Globes reported.

A search committee headed by Amit Lang, director general of the Economy Ministry, had been searching for a replacement for attorney Tziona Koenig-Yair, who served in the position for the past seven years.

Kabha was chosen for the position from among 60 candidates.

All posters in the series can be seen here.

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1001 Inventions is a travelling exhibit of 1001 scientific inventions and discoveries allegedly made in the Islamic world down the ages. Much hyped, and praised by various political leaders as well as Prince Charles, it has been on temporary display at a range of the world’s most prestigious science museums, including the National Geographic Museum in London and the Science Museum in the same city, the New York Hall of Science, and the California Science Center (where it was opened by Hillary Clinton). Since 2005 some 150,000,000 people around the world have viewed it.

Apart from the so-called “Arabic numerals” in universal use today (including the supremely important device of the zero, unknown to the Greeks and Romans), that Muslims produced any significant invention or discovery must surprise the average visitor to the exhibit. The total of 1001, a number that evokes the like number of fantasies comprising The Arabian Nights, such as Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, must astound, and suitably impress, them. (I know it has impressed and delighted anti-Israel leftists, who’ve triumphantly trumpeted the inventions on social media.)

However, “Arabic numerals” were actually invented in India around 500 AD (or CE if you will), before Mohammed was born and well before he made his impact. There seems to be a much stronger claim to be made about the Islamic origin of algebra, a term coined by the great Baghdad-based mathematician Al-Khwarizmi around 800 AD; nevertheless, there are indications that this remarkable man of Persian family may have been of Zoroastrian background.

Beyond this, however, even the most erudite of visitors to the exhibit must surely have been hard-pressed to name a single invention or discovery made by a Muslim scholar or inventor before viewing that collection of 1001.

Although there are over one billion Muslims in the world, only three Muslims have won a Nobel Prize for science – a Pakistani, an Egyptian American, and a Turk. By contrast, over 150 Jews have done so. Virtually all of the world’s greatest inventions – from the telescope, the microscope, and the steam engine to the computer – were created by Europeans or persons of European descent outside Europe, especially in the United States. It’s safe to say that 95 per cent of the world’s significant inventions of the last 1000 years were devised by such persons, with nearly all the rest originating in China (including gunpowder).

The Islamic contribution to the list of great inventions is in all likelihood very strictly limited.

So how does one go about putting together an exhibit of 1001 Muslim inventions? The blunt answer is “by sleight of hand,” as many reviewers of this farcical exhibit have in effect pointed out [see some examples cited at the end of this account https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1001_Inventions].

The exhibit claims that Muslims invented the camera. This, of course, is pure malarkey. The first photograph was taken about 1826 by the Frenchman Nicéphore Niépce. By “camera” the exhibit means a camera obscura, a box with a hole in it on which an image is projected. But even here the exhibit tells whoppers, since the camera obscura was known to the ancient Chinese and Greeks, and was described by Aristotle and Euclid.

Visitors to the exhibit learn that “the first person who tried to fly” was Abbas ibn Firnas, who “leapt from the minaret of the Great Mosque in Cordoba” with some kind of primitive kite-like glider. Yet the concept of human flight had occurred to the ancient Greeks, as seen in their legend of Icarus, who tried the same thing 2000 years earlier than ibn Firnas with unfortunate results.

And so on.

These tales about Islamic inventions are reminiscent, of course, of similar claims made under Stalin as to how Russians invented everything, from the airplane to baseball.

The exhibit was accompanied by a propagandistic film “produced in association with the Jameel Foundation” starring the great actor Sir Ben Kingsley (who is not a Muslim though of part-Muslim descent). (There’s a copy on YouTube marked “Not for Reproduction”.) Presumably Sir Ben, who plays a magical Muslim inventor wowing a group of British schoolchildren with his insights into the wonders wrought by “Muslim civilisation,” doesn’t work for free, and this raises the question of just who paid for an exhibit which toured the world. Its website [http://www.1001inventions.com/] includes a long list of “partners and collaborators,” including the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, Saudi Arabia; the Abu Dhabi Education Council; and the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science. Who actually signed the cheques remains, however, opaque.

An even more basis question is: Why is this codswallop of an exhibit, with its obvious political agenda, displayed by any reputable institution?

Political correctness?

Or does money talk?

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01/26 Links Pt1: Stop the incitement, stop the killing; PA TV: Knife attacks are not terror

From Ian:

David Horovitz: Stop the incitement, stop the killing

Op-ed: Relentless Palestinian extremism has now even managed to persuade the center-left opposition that Israeli readiness for compromise is insufficient. What’s needed is a unified effort to stop the Palestinians filling their people’s heads with murderous hostility
Meanwhile, the Fatah hierarchy he heads has been openly encouraging attacks on Israelis, and the Hamas terror group with which he seeks to partner in government is again plotting suicide bombings, developing more sophisticated rockets, and digging tunnels under the Gaza-Israel border ahead of its next planned war.
Abbas may well be deploying his forces to keep a lid on clashes in the West Bank, but he’s presiding over an ongoing, strategic demonizing of Israel and Israelis — via his education system, political and spiritual leadership and mainstream and social media — that positively guarantees Palestinian violence and terrorism. So effective is this process that, nowadays, when a young Palestinian has a row at home, feels depressed, or wants to make a name for him or herself, the default response is to grab a knife and go kill the nearest vulnerable Jew.
And so, last week, we buried Dafna Meir.
And today, we buried Shlomit Krigman.
Israel paid for Abbas’s last ostensible readiness for peace talks, in 2013-14, with the release of dozens of killers and other Palestinian terrorists from our jails. Prior to that, in 2008, Abbas spurned Ehud Olmert’s extraordinary readiness to give him everything he purportedly sought: We were gone from Gaza, and Olmert offered to leave the West Bank — with one-for-one land swaps — and to divide Jerusalem, including relinquishing sovereignty in the Old City. If that wasn’t good enough for Abbas, then obviously nothing we can offer will be.
While the United States and much of the international community refuse to internalize this, the simple, bleak fact is that everything Arafat, Abbas and Hamas have done since the collapse of the Bill Clinton-hosted Camp David 2000 attempt at forging a deal has persuaded Israelis that they dare not relinquish territory to the Palestinians, despite the imperative to separate in order to maintain a Jewish, democratic Israel.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Is Abbas Losing Control?

If Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas loses control of his Fatah faction, who gets to comfort him? Could it be his erstwhile rivals in Hamas?
Abbas seems firm in his refusal to pave the way for the emergence of a new leadership in the West Bank. A split within Fatah in the West Bank seems the inevitable result. Gaza's Fatah leaders are furious with Abbas. The deepening divisions among Fatah could drive Fatah cadres in the Gaza Strip into the open arms of Hamas.
"The talk about Fatah-Hamas reconciliation is nothing but a smokescreen to conceal the growing discontent with President Abbas's autocratic rule." — Palestinian official.
Fatah is Israel's purported "peace partner" -- the faction spearheading efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state. Decision-makers in the U.S. and Europe might wish to keep abreast of the solvency of Abbas's Fatah faction when they consider the wisdom of the two-state solution.

Israeli woman murdered in Beit Horon terrorist attack

A 24-year-old Israeli woman was stabbed to death by two Palestinian terrorists on Monday evening outside a minimarket in the community of Beit Horon, located on Route 443 in Samaria between Modiin and Jerusalem.
Shlomit Krigman died on Tuesday morning at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem. She had been brought there in critical condition following the attack.
Krigman was laid to rest on Tuesday afternoon at the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem.
A statement released by the Beit Horon community said, "Shlomit was loved and well-known. She did her national service with Bnei Akiva in Beit Horon and during the past year she lived with her grandfather and grandmother in the community."
A second Israeli woman, age 58, was also wounded in the attack and was transported to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem in moderate but stable condition.
The two terrorists, both male, were shot dead outside the minimarket by a security guard who sprinted to the scene after being alerted to the attack.

‘Gentle’ and ‘kind’ stabbing victim Shlomit Krigman laid to rest

Hundreds of people on Tuesday attended the funeral of 23-year-old Shlomit Krigman, who sustained serious injuries during a stabbing attack in the West Bank settlement of Beit Horon Monday and died of her wounds Tuesday morning.
Krigman was buried at Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul cemetery, in a plot near that of Dafna Meir, an Israeli mother of six stabbed to death in her home in Otniel last week.
Speaking at the ceremony, which was closed to the press, Krigman’s teacher remembered her for her “great curiosity” and gentle demeanor.
“She was open to the world and had great curiosity,” said Eitan Bnaya, one of Krigman’s teachers at the Ariel University, according to the Ynet news website. “She was interested in many areas. Everything got cut off in a single moment, a young woman whose life was ended.”
Bnaya said that Krigman, an industrial design student, was an “amazing, quiet and kind person” and “very interesting.”

Times of Israel and JSpacenews reports:

An Israeli Holocaust survivor may be the world’s oldest man at 112, Guinness World Records confirmed Thursday, providing he can find the documents to prove it.

Yisrael Kristal’s family say he was born in Poland on September 15, 1903, three months before the Wright brothers took the first airplane flight.

He lived in the country until the Nazi occupation during World War II, when he was eventually sent to the Auschwitz death camp.

Robert Young, senior consultant for gerontology at Guinness World Records, confirmed that if proven, he would become the oldest man currently on record.

To do so, however, Kristal would have to produce documents from the early years of his life. Currently, the family have said the oldest document they have is from his wedding aged 25.

“We have standard rules and it would be unfair on other people if we bent the rules,” Young told AFP, while expressing sympathy for Kristal’s circumstances.

Born on Sept. 15, 1903, in the town of Zarnow, Kristal moved to Lodz in 1920 to work in his family’s candy business. He continued operating the business after the Nazis forced the city’s Jews into a ghetto, where Kristal’s two children died. In 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz, where his wife, whom he had married at age 25, was killed.

In 1950, he moved to Haifa with his second wife and their son, working again as a confectioner.

Kristal’s daughter Shula Kuperstoch told The Jerusalem Post that he has been religiously observant his whole life and continues to lay tefillin each morning.

“The Holocaust did not affect his beliefs,” Kuperstoch said. “He believes he was saved because that’s what God wanted. He is not an angry person, he is not someone who seeks to an accounting, he believes everything has a reason in the world.”

TOI concludes:

The previous oldest man, Yasutaro Koide of Japan, died on Tuesday at the age of 112.

The oldest living woman, at 116 years old, is Susannah Mushatt Jones, who was born on July 6, 1899.

Jeanne Louise Calment, who died in 1997, was the oldest verified person ever — passing away in France aged 122 years and 164 days.

Not according to the Palestinians.

Last week Arab media reported that the oldest person in the world had just died - and he was 127 years old.

Haj Recep Toum was supposedly born in 1885 in Jabalya, Gaza and his grandchildren claim to have his birth certificate.

He also claims to have married one of his relatives who died only ten years ago, which may mean that he had the longest marriage in history as well.

Somehow that information hasn't made it to the folks at Guinness.

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