Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Major Italian university hosts anti-Israel session at conference

The University of Turin is holding a conference about the Middle East called "From Caliphate to Caliphate: The Middle East from the Sykes-Picot Treaty to violent jihadism."

The third session of the conference was dedicated to Palestinian issues, and the only people who presented were known anti-Israel activists.

Diana Carminati, former professor of European Studies at the University of Turin, spoke on "The Contemporary Israeli project of settler-colonialism and the destruction of the Palestinian economy." She mentioned the tunnels being used to smuggle goods, but not a word about weapons.

Enrico Bartolomei of the University of Macerata spoke. He is also a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and has written of "Israeli apartheid" and is against any peace process, saying, "Any political solution must aim at decolonization of historic Palestine, rather than a supposed (peace process) or the construction of statehood or national authorities."

Two other known anti-Israel, pro-BDS professors speaking were Marzia Casolari and Michelguglielmo Towers, who has said that Hamas has a "high degree of pragmatism."

Literature at the conference included materials calling Gaza an "open air prison" and describing Operation Protective Edge as a" macabre spectacle of death and destruction on a large scale." Very scientific.

Conference organizer Marzia Casolari, Professor of History at the university, emphasized that the rabid pro-Palestinian positions of the speakers would not affect the "scientific rigor" of the seminar. Rector Gianmaria Ajani defended the conference and said any criticism was "specious", say that a conference is "not a talk show where they offer a seat to any political position."

I am told by someone who attended that there were also accusations of Jews raping Arabs in 1948 mentioned at the conference.

The good news is that only 25 people - including media.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

I had the good fortune to meet Tuvia Tenenbom, author of Catch the Jew and I Sleep in Hitler’s Room the other night.

He’s writing a book about America. I haven’t read it since he hasn’t finished it, but I think I can safely say that it is going to be a painful experience, because what he found isn’t pretty. To compress it into a single sentence, the American experiment of creating unity from diversity is crashing and burning.

One thing he noted was a recent explosion of hatred against Israel and Jews, coming from both the left and the right. I think he’s quite correct.

Let’s dispose of the red herring that anti-Zionism and Jew-hatred are different. Oh, they are different concepts, but the group that hates Israel generally hates Jews, and vice versa. A distinction without a difference. And that especially includes Jewish anti-Zionists.

It’s only natural that someone who dislikes Jews would dislike a Jewish state. And objecting to the Jewish state’s stubborn refusal to lie down and die despite the world’s protestations that the tiny enclave of Jewish sovereignty is unacceptable, just naturally leads a person to wonder what it is about these Jews that makes them so stubborn.

Stubborn is what they are, refusing the True Religion (whether Christianity or Islam) for millennia. Refusing to return to Europe after the Holocaust, and demanding – demanding – to be allowed to enter the land that had been promised to them by the international establishment, not to mention other promises from a higher authority, despite the inconvenience for His Majesty’s government. Refusing to give up the idea of a Jewish state and return to a Diaspora in which their existence would be conditional on the whims of the non-Jewish majority.

Jew hatred is sweeping the world again today, even, as Tenenbom noted, the US. The US is especially interesting, because it is the home to about half the world’s Jews. With the exception of the 10% of American Jews that are Orthodox, many of them – especially the younger ones – are embarrassed by Jewish stubbornness and believe that their liberal morality compels them to join with the ‘oppressed Palestinians’ and help them to end the Jewish state. In fact, they lead the anti-Zionist crusade there, even in Jewish organizations like Hillel.

But we have to excuse them. They are far from the action, they don’t have the facts, they are subjected to a constant bombardment of anti-Zionism in their media and from their government, their teachers, their peers and even liberal synagogues. In the universities they are intimidated by Muslim students and hard-left faculty, while receiving little or no support from administrators when faced with anti-Jewish racism. And as Diaspora Jews, they need to ‘go along to get along’ as Jews learned for centuries under Christian and Muslim rule.

On the other hand, we don’t have to excuse Israelis, even the highest IDF officers, when they react to the waves of Jew-hatred like Diaspora Jews. The recent remarks of Maj. Gen. Yair Golan were not only explicitly political – and therefore broke IDF rules – but by drawing a comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany, validated the most hateful anti-Zionists for whom such comparisons are stock in trade.

In part, he was referring to an incident in which a young soldier, Sgt. Elor Azaria, shot and killed an already ‘neutralized’ Palestinian who had just stabbed another soldier, and to the outpouring of public support for Azaria as the Army tries him for manslaughter. Azaria is accused of violating the IDF’s principle of ‘purity of arms,’ which forbids harming prisoners of war, although he argues that he believed the terrorist had a suicide vest on. Whether or not he was justified, his action was as different from Nazi genocide as day from night.

What motivated Golan to make such a comparison? You’d have to ask him, but I think he is harkening to a typically European, non-Jewish, even Christian morality, in which love for all humanity, including enemies, is the highest value. Tribalism is the first step to Nazism. Possibly he believed that if he just beat his country up enough, the ones that hate us would realize that we are human after all.

This is Diaspora thinking. Nothing we do will ever be enough for the anti-Zionists. Their irrational hatred is not our problem and we can’t solve it for them. Psychiatrist and historian Kenneth Levin called the belief that we can fix things by accepting the criticism of those who hate us and being better according to their principles the ‘Oslo Syndrome’. As the expression suggests, it is pathological.

The Diaspora Jew is used to being powerless, so he has to beg the non-Jewish authorities to protect his community. Of course, the more we abase ourselves before them, the more they hold us in contempt. An analogy today would be an Israeli leader begging Obama to protect Israel from Iran. How did that work out for us?

Diaspora Jews worry a lot. What will the goyim think? Don’t make the goyim mad. Flatter them, pretend that we believe that they don’t hate us, and they will pretend in return. Maybe.

It is becoming harder and harder for us to pretend. And they aren’t hiding their feelings so much either. When an anonymous Obama Administration official called our Prime Minister “a chickenshit,” the statement barely made sense. Literally, the official was calling Netanyahu a coward because he didn’t attack Iran when the US pressured him not to do so. But the emotional message was as clear as a slap in the face. Take that, Jew.

And how did our PM respond to the contempt poured on him from the White House? “The friendship between the US and Israel is stronger than ever,” and “my Congress speech [was] not intended to show disrespect to Obama or the office that he holds,” said Netanyahu in his best Diaspora diction.

But Israel isn’t powerless and doesn’t have to play this game, especially since the goyim have problems of their own. The West is losing in its battle with Islam and the forces of chaos. The Roman Empire may have taken hundreds of years to collapse, but today’s West will go down much more quickly.

For Israel to survive the ensuing cataclysm, we have to become a successful Middle Eastern nation instead of trying to be an outpost of Western power and Western morality. And that implies that we will have to defeat our enemies decisively, not pull our punches for fear of the reaction of the hypocritical Western powers. We will need to make alliances with Arab countries and others like India and China, not with the increasingly anti-Zionist US, the traditionally anti-Jewish Europe, or our bitter enemies, the PLO.

We need to implement a truly Jewish moral system which is suitable for survival in the Middle East, and not adopt the European Christian one (which the Europeans and Americans themselves fail to live up to while trying to impose it on us). This doesn’t mean that we ought to behave like Bashar al-Assad, but it does mean that – for example – the life of a Palestinian terrorist must be counted as worth infinitely less than that of a Jew.

Mostly, we need to stop thinking like Diaspora Jews. Western leaders increasingly can’t and won’t help us, and we don’t live or die by their favor.

Our leaders need to come to understand this. The Israeli in the street – most of whom want Elor Azaria freed – already does.

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05/19 Links Pt1: Israel, Gaza and "Proportionality"; An Israeli Echo Chamber? Haaretz and the Iran Deal

From Ian:

EgyptAir crash debris reportedly found as officials consider terrorism

A Cairo-bound EgyptAir flight that went down in the Mediterranean Sea with 66 aboard early Thursday hours after departing from Paris zig-zagged sharply before plunging, according to aviation officials, who said terrorism was a more likely cause of the crash than technical failure.
Government officials from France, Greece and Egypt spoke at separate news conferences even as boats and ships from several countries were scouring the waters off of the Greek island of Karpathos, near where a witness reported seeing a fireball in the sky.
Ships on the scene included the British missile cruiser HMS Defender, and a Russian ship was also reportedly nearing the suspected debris field.
By midday Thursday, an Egyptian plane spotted two orange items believed to be from the missing plane, a Greek military official told The Associated Press.
The official said the items were found 230 miles south-southeast of the island of Crete but still within the Egyptian air traffic control area. One of the items was oblong, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with regulations.
Two other floating objects, colored white and red, were spotted in the same area, Greek defense sources told Reuters.

PMW: Fatah responds to PMW's bulletin, reiterates that it honors murderer of 24

Palestinian Media Watch reported yesterday that Abbas' political party Fatah had honored Japanese terrorist Kozo Okamoto for his part in the terror attack in Israel's airport in 1972, in which 24 civilians were killed and 70 were injured. Fatah's response to PMW's report was to immediately issue two follow-up posts, "in response to the Israeli media."
In the new posts, Fatah reiterated that it views the murderer of 24 as a hero, and added that if Israelis wants peace they must leave what Fatah calls "our land", the term it usually uses to mean all of Israel. As PMW has reported, PA policy is to deny Israel's right to exist on any part of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas himself calls all of Israel an "occupation."
The following are today's Fatah Facebook posts in response to PMW's exposure that Fatah glorified the murderer of 24:
"Responding to the Israeli media (i.e., PMW report):
44 years since the operation in the [Israeli] Lod Airport. Blessings to the Japanese fighter, the comrade Kozo Okamoto, hero of the operation (i.e., terror attack that killed 24 and injured 70) at the Lod airport.
The Fatah Movement is proud of all who have joined its ranks and the ranks of the Palestinian revolution for the freedom of the Palestinian people. We are proud of every fighter who has joined our mighty revolution. If Israel wants peace, it should get out of our land and we'll live in peace, for it [Israel] is the last occupation in the world." [Official Fatah Facebook page, May 18, 2016]

Belgium declines Israeli teens’ aid request after parents killed in museum attack

Belgium has turned down a request for financial assistance from the daughters of an Israeli couple killed in a 2014 attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels.

Mira and Emmanuel Riva were on vacation and touring the museum in May when Mehdi Nemmouche, a Frenchman who French authorities believe left for Syria via Belgium to fight with jihadists in 2012 before returning to Europe, opened fire on museum visitors and staff.
Along with the Rivas, a French volunteer at the museum and a Belgian employee were killed in the attack.
The Riva teens, who live in Tel Aviv, filed an application for the assistance 10 months after the attack. They applied for the usual allocation of 15,000 euros, or about $17,000, which is generally provided without question, according to French-language news reports.

The Washington Post reported Monday:

Jordan and Israel have launched a pilot project that is so small and simultaneously so ambitious that it tells the story.

For the past six months, very quietly, Israel has been allowing Jordanians to cross the border to its Red Sea resort to work minimum-wage jobs at hotels.

The first 700 of 1,500 have started.

So far, nothing bad has happened.

“The Jordanians need work, and we need workers,” said the head of the Eilat Hotel Association, Shabtai Shay.

Getting the Jordanians work permits to cross the border from Aqaba to Eilat took three years of negotiations with 10 Israeli ministries, he said.

“It was mission impossible,” Shay said.

On the Israeli side, there were concerns about security, vetting, the checkpoint, unions, the hours and how Israeli tourists would feel about being attended — even behind the scenes — by service workers who were Muslims from the Hashemite kingdom.

Talkbacks to an article about this in Jordan's Ammon News were mixed. While some bemoaned the "normalization" and how low they have sunk to have to work in Israel (whose minimum wage is higher than the average Jordanian salary.)

But others have been more practical,

One said that the workers want a dignified life and not to have to beg for sustenance, and they should take the best option for their livelihoods rather than worry about people who insult them and have no other solutions.

Another said that he had a degree in physical therapy but had to work in Gulf hotels because of a shortage of jobs in Jordan, so the workers should not be criticized.

While there are a lot of very noisy Arabs who are quick to loudly criticize everything that has anything to do with Israel, there has always been a silent majority who care far more about raising their families in dignity than about theoretical problems with Jews in the Middle East. Unfortunately we hardly ever hear from them - even though they are the keys to real peace.

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Egyptian media continues publishing antisemitic conspiracy theories

I reported earlier this month that Egypt's most popular newspaper, Al Ahram, published an antisemitic article by Ali Gad claiming that the Talmud contains plans for Jewish world domination.

It turns out that the article was the first of a series. Part two was last week, saying that Judaism wants to destroy ethics and all other religions.

Part 3 was just published. In this article, Ali Gad brings more evidence to his theories. He quotes from a book called Talmudic Blueprints about how Jews are taking over the world.

Here's is the cover of this scholarly tome.

The entire PDF of the book is here, scanned from a copy in the Portland State University Library.

The book mentions that Jews aren't doing all the heavy work on world domination themselves, they manipulate other groups like the Masons to do their dirty work.

Ali Gad then quotes from another crazed Arabic conspiracy theory book called Secret World Government.

These bizarre theories are simply normal discourse for a major Arab newspaper.

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Vijay Prashad is professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of 18 books, and a member of the advisory board of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

He is also a provable liar.

He writes in Alternet:

Hamas does not “deny” Israel’s right to exist. Its Charter, written during the First Intifada in 1987, bears the marks of the moment. But it does not define Hamas’ politics, for which a reading of its 2006 election manifesto gives a much clearer picture. In a 2009 interview with the New York Times, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal “urged outsiders to ignore the Hamas charter,” for, in Meshal’s words, “We are shaped by our experiences.” What is the Hamas position, the Times’ reporters asked Meshal? “We are with a state on the 1967 borders, based on a long-term truce. This includes East Jerusalem, the dismantling of settlements and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees.” Nothing here is outside the international consensus. Israel is not denied by Meshal, the leader of Hamas.

If one reads the rest of the same New York Times article, which the scholar doesn't bother linking to, it says

Apart from the time restriction and the refusal to accept Israel’s existence, Mr. Meshal’s terms approximate the Arab League peace plan and what the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas says it is seeking.

Let's forget about the dozens of examples that I have gathered since then showing that Hamas considers all of Israel "occupied" and that it's goal is Israel's destruction.

Let's look at Khaled Meshal's own words since the deceptive 2009 NYT interview.

First of all, Palestine – from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, from its north to its south – is our land, our right, and our homeland. There will be no relinquishing or forsaking even an inch or small part of it.

Second, Palestine was, continues to be, and will remain Arab and Islamic. It belongs to the Arab and the Islamic world. Palestine belongs to us and to nobody else. This is the Palestine which we know and in which we believe.

Third, since Palestine belongs to us, and is the land of Arabism and Islam, we must never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation of it. The occupation is illegitimate, and therefore, Israel is illegitimate, and will remain so throughout the passage of time. Palestine belongs to us, not to the Zionists.
[...]
The liberation of Palestine – all of Palestine – is a duty, a right, a goal, and a purpose. It is the responsibility of the Palestinian people, as well as of the Arab and Islamic nation.

Fifth, Jihad and armed resistance are the proper and true path to liberation and to the restoration of our rights, along with all other forms of struggle – through politics, through diplomacy, through the masses, and through legal channels. All these forms of struggle, however, are worthless without resistance.
[...]
Politics are born from the womb of resistance. The true statesman is born from the womb of the rifle and the missile.

That's as explicit a rejection of Israel's right to exist as words can convey. The whole speech is here:

No doubt Professor Prashad knows this, and he knows he is lying. So he is yet another academic fraud.

(The rest of his article could be fisked just as thoroughly, but once Prashad is exposed as a liar, really, what's the point?)

(h/t YMedad)

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05/18 Links Pt2: Why does UNESCO Insist On Rewriting Israel’s History?; Palestinian Museum of Non-History

From Ian:

Alan M. Dershowitz: A Visit to the Old and New Hells of Europe Provides a Reminder of Israel's Importance

I just returned from a week-long journey through Hell! It began with a visit to the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps in Poland, as a participant of the March of the Living, following a conference commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Nuremberg Laws and the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials. My week was consumed with recurring evidence of the worst crime ever perpetrated by human beings on other human beings – the Holocaust.
I traveled from the death camps to several small Polish towns from which my grandparents emigrated well before the Holocaust, leaving behind relatives and friends. During the course of my travels, I discovered the fate of two of my relatives. Hanna Deresiewicz (an original spelling of my family name) was a 16-year-old girl living in the small town of Pilzno when the Nazis arrived; she was separated from her siblings and parents. "The soldiers took several of the most beautiful Jewish girls for sex, and then killed them. [Among those] taken [was] Hanna Deresiewicz, 16."
Another relative named Polek Dereshowitz, served as an "orderly" to the Commandant of Auschwitz when he was 15. He was suspended "from the ringbolts in his office because a flea had been found on one of his dogs." He was later gassed.
This is not the first time I have visited Nazi death camps. I was fully familiar with the statistical evidence of how six million Jews were systematically murdered. I was also familiar with how the Nazi death machine searched out Jews in the furthest corners of Nazi occupied Europe, even as far as the island of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea, and transported them to Auschwitz to gas them. I also knew that this was the only time in human history when people were brought from far distances to camps designed for one purpose only – to kill every possible Jew they could, find no matter where they lived. And I knew that because this was part of a planned genocide of the Jewish People, it was most important to kill every child, woman and man capable of producing future Jews.

Phyllis Chesler: Israel--not Apartheid; Islam--Nothing but Apartheid

Israel has long been accused of being an apartheid nation state--and a state involved in "ethnic cleansing."
Pure propaganda! This is a brazen Big Lie.
The largest practitioner of both gender and religious apartheid in the world is Islam or Islamism.
Religious apartheid exists when the dominant state religion allows no other religion to exist and flourish. For example, Muslim countries do not allow churches to be built, Christian insignia to be displayed; Muslim mobs and governments destroy existing churches or convert them into mosques.
Today, living Christians are persecuted, tortured and murdered in the name of Islam all across the Muslim world. Oddly, on April 16th of this year, (for the second time) the Pope offered no solace and no asylum to persecuted Christian; he publicly offered to take in a symbolic number of Muslim refugees into the Vatican.

The Mottle Wolfe Show [Podcast]: Palestinian Museum of Non-History

The new $24 million Palestinian Museum of Art History and Culture opened today in Israel. Like the subject matter of the Museum, the space is completely empty of exhibitions. Also an Election 2016 update, Trump starting to trounce Hillary.

Saeb Erekat keeps showing his hypocrisy

PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat writes in Wafa:

It is time for Israelis to confront reality: when the Zionists came to Palestine, there were another people living here. Over 100 years ago, a Zionist mission was sent to Palestine and their report acknowledged this fact: "The bride is beautiful but she is married to another man." And this: soon plans to displace Palestine's population were unveiled.

The "bride is beautiful" quote is fiction.

And where were these supposed plans to forcibly displace Arabs in Zionist writings?

"Palestinians are Arabs who immigrated to Israel. We Jews fended off the attacks by seven Arab armies in self-defense." These declarations deny the very existence of the Palestinian people, continue to justify the atrocities committed against us, and deny Palestinian refugees' legitimate right of return.

Well, they are also true (actually five armies.) I'm not clear how the fact that Arab armies invaded Israel denies the existence of the Palestinian people. But the fact that there was no distinctive Palestinian people before 1948 is tough to deny. I've looked for evidence of distinctive customs, cuisines and other artifacts for years and have found nothing; the closest was some goods like Nablus soap or Bethlehem costumes that were not "Palestinian" but local specialties.

The hypocrisy is that while Erekat says that Israel denies the existence of the Palestinian people today - which is certainly does not - Erekat denies the existence of the Jewish people. The basic anti-Zionist argument is that Jews are not a people, but merely a religion, which flies in the face of thousands of years of history. Yet Erekat and the PLO explicitly deny this fact.

Pot, meet kettle.

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France Delays Mideast Peace Conference Amid Double Standard Shortage (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Paris, May 18 - French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Marc Ayrault announced today that his country would postpone the Middle East peace conference originally scheduled for the end of this month, to allow for the manufacture and delivery of a sufficient quantity of double standards to apply to Israel.

Ayrault told reporters at a press conference this morning that the conference would take place not beginning May 30, as originally planned, but several weeks later, a delay that would give producers enough time to supply the European, American, and Arab participant nations with the number of double standards they are accustomed to applying to Israel, but of which inventories had been running low. The depletion of the double standards, said the minister, occurred because of improper oversight of double standard stockpiles, a factor that allowed almost anyone to seize and apply double standards with little or no oversight.

"We have had media outlets and international organizations making profligate use of double standards for Israel, seemingly without regard for the quantity of such resources available to the rest of us," he explained. "On top of the everyday bias against Israel's legitimacy or concerns, we had UNESCO denying Jewish history, the EU funding illegal Palestinian construction in areas under Israeli control as per Oslo - while condemning Israel for building homes - the hypocritical singling out of Israel as practicing torture - and that was just over the last couple of weeks. Add to that tendentious media coverage and the ongoing use of a unique, cynical, inhumane definition of 'refugee' only for Palestinians, and it's no wonder we're running low."

Additionally, say experts, the divergent treatment of terrorism targeting Europeans and terrorism targeting Israelis and Jews has strained the double standards inventory in Western Europe, and the bodies that normally produce the double standards have been focused more recently on dusting off and refurbishing old double standards for reuse, while stocks of more up-to-date double standards continued to be depleted by human rights organizations spilling ink and paper over alleged Israeli violations while making more sparing mention of far more horrific abuses among Israel's neighbors and adversaries.

"We said we were delaying the conference to enable Secretary Kerry to participate," said Ayrault. "That is because Mr. Kerry has promised to bring with him a new shipment of double standards, but he needed more than a couple of weeks to put it together. I'm especially excited to see what he can provide in terms of accusing Netanyahu of meddling in US politics, while funding efforts to oust Netanyahu's party from power.

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05/18 Links Pt1: The Anti-Israel Poisoning Starts Young; The ‘peace process’ did not fail — the Palestinian Authority did

From Ian:

Victory, not 'disaster'

When the Palestinians speak about the "Nakba" and present themselves as victims and the Jewish Independence War as "ethnic cleansing," it's important to remember these facts. There is no doubt that they experienced a disaster. Losing a war is a disaster. When it is an all-out war, the disaster of losing is experienced in kind. But they are 100 percent responsible for their disaster, and they have only themselves to blame, just as the Germans cannot go and complain to the countries that defeated them in World War II.
There is nothing more repugnant than the "Nakbaism" in our midst, among Jews and Israelis. This attitude can be clearly seen at the Nakba festivals that take place at Israeli universities, though its most extreme expression was the pilgrimage to Nesher made by Joint Arab List Knesset members to visit the grave of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam. Qassam preached the destruction of the Jewish yishuv in Israel and set up gangs that took part in the Arab revolt from 1936-1939. It is no coincidence that Hamas' military wing -- which carries out suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israeli citizens -- was named after him. It is no coincidence that the very rockets fired by Hamas in its war crimes against Israel were named after him. There is no mistaking the essence of expressing solidarity with him on this day.
May 15, 1948, the day that is increasingly becoming known as "Nakba Day," is one of the greatest days in the history of humanity -- the day that the greatest injustice in history was ended; the day of the great victory of justice. It is not a day of disaster. It is not a day of injustice. And there is no room for the feelings of guilt that some among us seek to cultivate.

NO2BDS: Almost a million people lost everything when Israel declared independence

Micah Lakin Avni: The Anti-Israel Poisoning Starts Young

Wall Street Journal - May 17, 2016
My father, Richard Lakin, a 76-year-old retired elementary-school principal from Connecticut, was on a bus in Jerusalem last October when two young Palestinian men boarded and began shooting and stabbing passengers indiscriminately. Two passengers were killed that awful day and 16 injured, including my father. Despite the efforts of first responders and the nurses and doctors at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, my father died two weeks later. He had been shot in the head and stabbed multiple times in the head, face, chest and stomach.
Over the past seven months I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand what would cause two educated Palestinian men in their early 20s to board a public bus and butcher a group of innocent civilians, many of them senior citizens. I’m sorry to report that the Palestinian reaction to the attack has led me to believe that the “peace process” is more one-sided than ever.
My father grew up a fighter for civil rights in America. He took those values with him in 1984 when he emigrated to Jerusalem, where he taught English to Arabs and Jews. He was a kind, gentle-hearted man who dedicated his life to education and promoting peaceful coexistence.
Yet Palestinian newspapers praised Baha Alyan, one of the terrorists who murdered my father, as a “martyr and intellectual.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has met with the families of the attackers and praised them as “martyrs.” A Palestinian scout leader said Baha Alyan, who was shot and killed by a security guard before he could kill more innocent passengers, was “an example for every scout.”
Muhammad Alyan, the father of Baha Alyan, has been invited to speak at Palestinian schools and universities about his son the “martyr.” He recently spoke to children at Jabel Mukaber Elementary School in East Jerusalem, about a half a mile from where my father lived. Tragically, many Palestinian children, perhaps most, are still taught to honor terrorists and fight for the destruction of Israel.
All of this would break my father’s heart. In 2007 he published a book called “Teaching as an Act of Love” summarizing his life’s work and educational philosophy. The message of his book is that every child is a miracle that should be nurtured with love. After Baha Alyan’s father visited Jabel Mukaber Elementary School, I asked school officials if I could come and share my father’s message of peace and coexistence. My offer was rejected.

Helping Palestinians But Not Peace

The tragic plight of the Palestinians is a staple of modern journalism and, to some extent, the attention paid to the subject is justified. The Palestinians are caught in a century-old conflict in which their national beliefs seem to have left them no option but to carry in with a self-destructive struggle. But though their position is far from ideal, they are the beneficiaries of the sort of international attention that the poor and/or downtrodden caught in equally difficult circumstances might envy. That attention — driven in no small measure by antagonism against Israel and the Jews — has resulted in endless billions being poured into the West Bank and Gaza by foreign donors. But what is generally not known is how much help the Palestinians get by the people so many of them revile: Jews.
As the New York Times reported on Sunday, much the funds for a new project to bring solar polar to Palestinian farmers in the West Bank comes from American Jews. But the Palestinians were very clear about the kind of aid they would accept. They’d accept money from the Jews but only as long as they could prove all those involved in the project had no ties to Jewish settlements in the West Bank. That means that the Jewish National Fund wasn’t welcome to participate even if it was itself a primary funder of an Israeli organization that is also helping the solar project.
Confused? So are those involved if they think their efforts will do much to resolve the conflict, so long as they are catering to Arab sensitivities about which Jews are worthy of helping their struggling communities.
The project is providing $100,000 worth of solar panels that are being provided to 45 farm families in the Jordan Valley village of Auja. Reportedly, this is the first time that a substantial project is being funded by Jews and Muslims in the United States and is being implemented by Israeli and Palestinian members of a technical team. Given the demonstrated inability of the Palestinian Authority that governs Auja to provide services to its people, it is much needed. It’s also being lauded as an example of how such efforts can build a spirit of coexistence between Arabs and Jews that can serve as a foundation for peace.

The official Fatah Facebook page has a tribute to the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre, where three members of the Japanese Red Army recruited by the PFLP-EO attacked Lod airport, killing 26 people and injuring 80 others.

Their post says "44 years since the Lod Airport operation (26 dead and 80 wounded) .. a thousand greetings to the Japanese warrior comrade Kozo Okamoto, champion of the Lod Airport operation."

Okamoto was released in a prisoner swap and now lives in Lebanon.

While Fatah often mentions terror attacks around their anniversaries, usually they are Fatah terror attacks. In this case they are not celebrating their own murderous history, but all terror attacks as long as Israelis were the targets.

Again, Fatah is led by that moderate terrorist supporter, Mahmoud Abbas.

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Orange Telecom, Nissan, Uber, Marriott sponsoring antisemitic Lebanese singer

I mentioned that Majida el-Roumy, the popular Lebanese singer who openly expresses antisemitic views, is no longer the Goodwill Ambassador for the UN's FAO.

But her concert this week is sponsored by some brands that might not want to be associated with Jew-hatred.

Orange's CEO famously expressed his desire to get out of the Israeli market, and soon after did exactly that, and although they still maintain investments in Israel they do not use the Orange name, apparently out of fear of Arab boycotts.

People might want to email or tweet to Nissan, Orange, Marriott and Uber and ask them why they are sponsoring someone who publicly claims that Jews are plotting world domination.

The Egyptian Tourism Ministry is also a sponsor.

(h/t Shawarma News)

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