Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, July 14, 2017

Erev Shabbat open thread

Sometimes, by Friday afternoon, I run out of steam.

Talk amongst yourselves and have a Shabbat Shalom!

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07/14 Links Pt1: Two Druze Police officers killed in Temple Mount terror attack; Amnesty Stands Up for ISIS

From Ian:

Two Druze Police officers killed in Temple Mount terror attack

Two police officers were murdered on Friday morning in a terrorist shooting attack on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and a third was lightly wounded.
The officers have been identified as Command Sergeant Major Hayil Satawi and Command Sergeant Major Kamil Shanaan.

Satawi, 30, lives in the northern Druze town of Maghar, served his mandatory service in the Border Police and became a career patrol officer in the Temple Mount Unit. He left behind his wife (Arin) and a three-week-old son, as well as his parents and three siblings.
Shanaan, 22, lives in the northern Druze town of Hurfeish, and has served as a career police officer since his enlistment seven months ago as a patrol officer on the Temple Mount and in the Old City's police unit. He is the son of former Labor party member
Shachiv Shanaan. He left behind one brother and three sisters.

Both officers were critically injured and transferred to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, where the doctors were forced to declare their deaths. The officer who was lightly injured was transferred to Shaarei Zedek Hospital, with shrapnel in his hands and neck.
The funeral of Satawi will be held in Maghar at 4:00p.m. Shanaan's funeral will be held in Hurfeish at 6:00p.m.
Initial investigations showed that three terrorists descended the Temple Mount after prayers armed with weapons and walked towards the Old City's Lions Gate. Seeing the police officers, the terrorists fired, then ran back towards the mosques on the Temple Mount.
Police officers chased them and eliminated the terrorists during a shootout. The terrorists were found to have two pistols and a rifle.

Haiel Sitawe, 30, and Kamil Shnaan, 22, named as officers slain at Temple Mount

Speaking to the press soon after the attack, Israel Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich said: “This was a tough morning for the police. We have two people killed, officers, who paid the dearest price in this battle.”
Sitawe, 30, hailed from the town of Maghar, a mostly Druze and Arab city in northern Israel.
Shnaan, 22, was from the Druze village of Hurfeish, also in northern Israel.
Sitawe joined the Border Police as part of his mandatory national service. He joined the Israel Police in 2012 and had served in the unit responsible for securing the Temple Mount ever since.
He leaves behind a wife, Irin, a three-week-old son, his parents and three brothers.
Shnaan joined the police directly after high school. He decided to stay on the police force seven months ago, signing on as a career officer.
He was the youngest son of a former Labor Party Knesset member, Shachiv Shnaan. His engagement party to his girlfriend was to be held next week.
Shnaan leaves behind his parents, one brother and three sisters.
Both Shnaan and Sitawe were posthumously promoted to the rank of master sergeant.

VIDEO: Dramatic new footage emerges of Temple Mount attack

Israel Police have released dramatic new footage of the Temple Mount attack that killed two police officers on Friday.
The video, released on Friday afternoon, shows two of the three attackers, armed with guns, approaching a male police officer and shooting him in the back.
The slain officers were named as Hail Stawi, 30, from Maghar and Kamil Shanan, 22, from Hurfeish, both in northern Israel.
The attackers were identified by the Shin Bet as 29-year-old Muhammad Ahmad Mahmoud Jabarin, Muhammad Ahmed Fadel Jabarin 19, and Muhammad Hamed 'Abd al-Latif Jabarin, 19, from Umm el-Fahm in northern Israel.

'Neutralized' terrorist stands up and is eliminated

'Neutralized' terrorist stands back up to continue shooting policemen and is eliminated before he can fire.

The truth about the "Mughrabi quarter" that Israel leveled in 1967

JCPA has a good article about the slum that Israel razed right after the Six Day War in order to create a plaza for worshipers.

Aerial photo of Jerusalem’s Mughrabi quarter taken by the Graf Zeppelin, 1931. Yellow outline (added) shows the Western Wall prayer area. Note the labyrinth Jewish worshippers had to traverse to get to the small alleyway for prayer at the Western Wall. (Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen)1

Articles published by Reuters and the New Yorker on June 6, 2017, and June 9, 2017, respectively, described the demolition of the Mughrabi, or Moroccan, Quarter of Jerusalem and the eviction of the approximately 650 Arab inhabitants which took place on June 10, 1967, three days after Jerusalem’s reunification.
...These articles blame Israel for the demise of the Mughrabi Quarter when, in reality, there is evidence showing that, prior to the 1967 war and before Israel’s taking control of east Jerusalem, the neighborhood’s days were numbered. Together with the adjacent Jewish Quarter, which had been demolished by the Jordanians, both quarters were nothing more than decaying slums built on rubble. According to Israel’s then-ambassador to the UN, Yosef Tekoah, the Mughrabi Quarter was decrepit, suffering from conditions which “no modern civilized government or municipal administration would have tolerated.”5 Reuters itself describes it as “ramshackle.”

During the 1948-1967 period, Jewish access to the shrine was totally banned; but the pre-1948 situation was hardly tolerable for Jewish worshippers. After navigating through a labyrinth of potentially dangerous, narrow alleyways, Jews wishing to pray at the Wall found themselves in a cramped area of approximately 120 square meters.15 (In contrast, the Al Aqsa complex on the Temple Mount covers 144,000 square meters.) Visitors in the pre-1948 era encountered broken stones, sewage, animals (and the refuse they left behind), and Mughrabi Quarter residents who “had a tendency to harass Jewish worshipers.”16
Immediately after the 1967 war, Jerusalem’s Mayor Teddy Kollek saw that the area near the Western Wall could not contain the tens of thousands of visitors expected for the June 13, 1967, Shavuot holiday. Kollek and military officers gave the order to demolish the area.17 The “first job was to demolish a toilet that was built up against the Western Wall,” according to Haaretz. “You come to a place like this, and you see a stench in the wall,” one worker reported. “We were surprised by it.”18
From a legal standpoint, the demolition of the Mughrabi Quarter and relocation of its inhabitants was justified and necessary by any acceptable standard to ensure public safety and security and to provide tens of thousands of worshippers with a safe, sanitary passage to Judaism’s most holy site, and sufficient public space to worship there.

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Only a few years ago, Hamas was riding high. Hamas leaders traveled around the world acting as, and being treated as, heads of state.

Those days must seem like a dream to them now.

This week the Saudi ambassador to Algeria, Sami bin Abdullah Saleh, called Hamas a terror group and accused its leadership of spending their people's money in five-star hotels in Qatar.

Of course, he is no pacifist. He said that the PLO is the only group with the "right to resistance."

Saleh said this in a televised interview on Algerian TV.

Algerians on social media reacted angrily, defending Hamas.

Hamas reacted more with bewilderment than anger, saying that they had "deep regret and disapproval" about the statements, saying their terror attacks were "legitimate resistance against the Zionist occupation."

"We are surprised with these statements from the Saudi ambassador to the heart of Algeria, a lover of the Palestinian cause and the people of Palestine and the capital of a million martyrs. We call on our brothers in Saudi Arabia to stop these abusive statements by the kingdom considering its history and attitudes towards the question of Palestine and the legitimate rights of our people."

Hamas leadership is smart enough not to burn bridges. After all, they know how quickly fortunes can turn in the Middle East.

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Fatah's reaction to Temple Mount events

This morning, three Israeli Arabs emerged from the Temple Mount where two of them took a selfie (and posted it on Facebook,) shot and killed two Israeli police officers outside Lion's Gate and then ran to the Temple Mount. Police gave chase and shot them dead, one of them dramatically after he played dead and then jumped up and tried to stab them.

In response, Israel closed the Temple Mount to all, the first time that Friday Muslim prayers were banned on the site since 1967.

Here is the autotranslated reaction from Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party:

Fatah appeals to our people: go to the Al Aqsa mosque!

Israeli occupation and systematic Israeli policy to thin out down our people in Palestine and in Jerusalem specifically and to prevent the believers from freely reaching places of worship, and the repeated incursions by settlers into the al-Aqsa Mosque.. that is the origin of the disease. It is the beginning of a cycle of violence that does not stop, which inevitably leads to what we are witnessing in successive episodes of killing the Palestinian men in cold blood without taking into account the sanctity of the place and for the sanctity of life.

The Palestinian position must be morally superior to the occupier, and our people must search for the best ways to defend their land and holy sites, to avoid being dragged into the comfortable circle of Israel. Apart from everything that happened, what is required of our people goes beyond entering into confrontations with the occupier costing us a lot of blood. Without yielding even with what is being paid of the price. What is needed is to mobilize people, especially in Jerusalem, to defend the city and its sanctities and not to leave Israel unique to our people there. [not leave Jerusalem a Jewish-only city - EoZ] The position of Fateh must be officially supported with popular resistance and not to push our youth to search for alternatives who already know that they are fighting an unequal battle with the Israeli killing machine ..

We appeal to the people of our people to come today to the al-Aqsa Mosque and to establish prayer and to break the Israeli siege aimed at changing and character of the holy city..
The masses of our steadfast people! Get to the Aqsa mosque!

This is the first time I recall seeing a public announcement from Fatah explicitly looking for non-violent responses. I would guess that Fatah is sensitive to the effect that videos and transcripts of their incitement has been having on the West and Israel has (finally) been using them to great effect to point out the real source of the problem.

Nevertheless, the statement blames peaceful Israeli actions like allowing Jews to visit the Temple Mount, and the reaction of closing the area today, as part of a "cycle of violence." Those actions aren't violent, and Fatah is characterizing them as such to give justification to the murderers and terrorists. Similarly, they are saying that Israel killed the murderers "in cold blood" which is also incitement.

Also it is worth noting that Fatah, nominally a secular party, is urging the politicizing of a supposedly holy place and to use prayer as resistance, not as...prayer.

Furthermore, Fatah posted the selfie that the murderers took at their "holy spot" prior to their murder spree, and referred to them as "the martyrs of Al Aqsa Mosque."

The reactions from Fatah's fans on Facebook are uniformly happy at the attack.

❤
Your morning in heaven the most beautiful ❤❤❤
To the gardens of bliss with the prophets and friends and the martyrs and the good of those companions
You are the honor of this nation and its living conscience because our Arab nation has died of its conscience and gave up its honor to the mercy of God and the heaven that you are
To the gardens of bliss with the prophets and friends and the martyrs and the good of those companions
Glory martyrs
God has mercy on the martyrs
Glory and immortality of the righteous martyrs
To everlasting gardens.
God have mercy on them make their resting place
God have mercy on them
To the gardens of paradise.
Heroes of heroes for you, most of all.
God have mercy on them
God's mercy on your pure souls and to heaven zmrạ
God have mercy on them
May God have mercy on them and accept them martyrs in paradise higher
God have mercy on them
God have mercy on them

No one, ever, criticizes these sorts of terror attacks.

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Tunisians argue over planned performance by Zionist Tunisian Jew

From Jeune Afrique (July 5, translated):

The participation of Michel Boujenah, Franco-Tunisian humorist, actor and director, at the International Festival of Carthage, has aroused various reactions in the country. A fringe of civil society as well as the UGTT, the main trade union in Tunisia, have called for the cancellation of the show. They blame the comedian for his assumed position in favor of Israel.

"I am very happy because, since the revolution, I have not played. I went there very often, but not to perform," Michel Boujenah announced on the show "On n'es couchés" on June 17, 2017, on France 2 , about his gig at the International Festival of Carthage. His show is scheduled for July 19, 2017... The arrival of Michel Boujenah indeed arouses hostile reactions within Tunisian society . At issue: the pro-Zionist and pro-Israel positions held by the artist.

Interviewed by Radio Mosaïque FM on June 24, 2017 on the controversy surrounding the humorist, Carthage Festival Director Mokhtar Rassaa defended himself by reminding us that Michel Boujenah was above all a Tunisian artist who never hurt his country, which on the contrary often supported him in the international media. "He is a Jew, he has an attachment to Israel, just as we Muslims have an attachment to Mecca ... It is neither a great Zionist nor a leader of Zionism! "he explained.

However, the director of the festival did not convince part of the civil society. Following the interview, a campaign calling for the cancellation of the show was launched by the Tunisian subsidiary of the international campaign "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" (BDS), which is working to exert economic pressure on Israel to defend the Palestinian cause. An open letter was sent to the Minister of Culture Mokhtar Rassaa on 26 June 2016.

"We do not want a Zionist, whatever their nationality, on our stages and in our festivals! Michel Boujenah is known as one of the greatest Zionist Franco-Tunisian figures who has always defended Israel, its wars and its army," says the BDS.

Moreover, the campaign considers the show to be unconstitutional. The preamble of the Tunisian Constitution commits itself to defend the right of peoples to self-determination and to combat all forms of occupation and racism. "Zionism" being "the worst form of racism and colonialism of the modern era", the State must prohibit a cultural manifestation of this type, according to the signatories.

The General Labor Union (UGTT) also called on the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, in a communiqué issued on 4 July 2017, to cancel Michel Boujenah's show. Once again, the "Zionist" positions of the comedian are the motivations behind this appeal, with the communiqué mentioning the "artistic futility and lack of content in his shows". The UGTT recommends instead to the Ministry of Cultural Affairs to favor the Tunisian shows "in this context of economic crisis".

The government also ended up speaking on this matter. In a statement issued on Wednesday, July 5, 2017,it recalled that "in accordance with the values of the revolution of January 14", it can not intervene in the choice of programming of the Festival of Carthage. It also confirms Tunisia's "unconditional support" for the Palestinian cause.

However, the ministry said it wanted to conduct consultations "with civil society and the people involved" in order to make a decision in the direction of "national interest".

Many Tunisians disapprove of this campaign against the artist, as the president of the Tunisian Association for the Support of Minorities (ATSM), Yamina Thabet, and the director Moncef Dhouib.

So far, the show is still on and Michel Boujenah's performance is still being advertised.

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07/13 Links Pt2: Canadian Agency Tells Distributors To Stop Selling Israeli Wines; The Left’s Inversion of Anti-Semitism

From Ian:

Ben Shapiro: How the Dems can lose 2018

Democrats, meanwhile, are moving hard to the left. When former Clinton adviser Mark Penn wrote an op-ed for The New York Times calling for Democrats to move back to the center, he was roundly excoriated by the leading thinkers in the Democratic Party. He was an emissary of the past; he had to embrace the new vision of the leftist future. That leftist future involved radical tax increases, fully nationalized health care, and — most of all — the divisive politics of intersectionality. Sens. Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) may own the policy side of the Democratic coalition, but the heart of the Democratic coalition lies in polarization by race, sex and sexual orientation. Forget a cohesive national message that appeals to Americans regardless of tribal identity: The new Democratic Party cares only about uniting disparate identity factions under the banner of opposing Republicanism.
The clearest evidence for that alliance of convenience came earlier this month, when Democratic darling and Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour was caught on tape promoting “jihad” against Trump. Sarsour said that the sort of “jihad” she liked was “a word of truth in front of a tyrant or leader.” But she deliberately used the word “jihad” because of its ambiguity, not in spite of it: Sarsour has stated that pro-Israel women cannot be feminists; she supports the imposition of “Shariah law” in Muslim countries; she has stated of dissident and female genital mutilation victim Ayaan Hirsi Ali that she wishes she could take her “vagina away”; she has long associated with the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood; she opened her “jihad” speech by thanking Siraj Wajjah, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who has repeatedly advocated for a violent form of “jihad.”
Democrats rushed to her defense nonetheless, hoping to preserve the intersectional concerns that animate their base. Never mind that Sarsour is no ally to LGBT rights, or that she blames “Zionists” for her problems. She represents an important constituency for Democrats, and so she must be protected. More than that, she speaks anti-Trumpese fluently, and thus is an important figure for Democrats.
This isn’t rare on the left anymore. Much of the Democratic establishment supported Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a longtime Nation of Islam acolyte who spent years defending that group’s most extreme anti-Semitic rhetoric — a man so radical that he openly associated with the Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, which recently labeled Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) an “Israel Firster.”

Nonie Darwish: The Islamic View of "Feminism"

Sarsour apparently identifies as a feminist. Sarsour's kind of feminism, however, embraces the most oppressive legal system, especially for women: Islamic religious law, Sharia. Sarsour's feminism is supposedly for empowering women, but it twists logic in a way similar to how Muslim preachers do when they claim that beating one's wife is a husband's way of honoring her.
Pro-Sharia feminism is a perverted kind of feminism that could not care less about the well-being of oppressed Muslim women. Sarsour's logic concerning women does not differ much from that of Suad Saleh, an Egyptian female Islamic cleric, who recently justified on Egyptian TV the doctrine of intentional humiliation and rape of captured women in Islam. Saleh said, "One of the purposes of raping captured enemy women and young girls was to humiliate and disgrace them and that is permissible under Islamic law." There was not even a peep in Egypt's civil society about such a statement.
Here is an Australian Muslim woman calling beatings by husbands a "blessing from Allah".
Muslim feminists seem to think that they must defend Sharia and "Allah" before any other consideration -- including women. Musdah Mulia, a Muslim professor, who also claims to be a feminist, maintains that Islam is a religion of equality. She has said, "blame Muslims, not Islam, for gender inequity." Muslim anthropologist Ziba Mir-Mosseini has argued "The problem [for women in Islam] has never been with the text (the Koran), but with the context." That means, presumably, that the problem is everyone's fault except for the sources themselves: Islam, the Koran and Sharia.
The reason Islamic feminism has been perverted is because over centuries it had to conform to Islamic law, Sharia, which regulates to a fare-thee-well all behavior of women, men and children. Many Muslims, however, seem to be in denial that the main goal of Sharia is to promote life under the bondage of Sharia as good and healthy. Sharia therefore becomes a convoluted way of coercing people to adapt to tyranny.

Linda Sarsour declares legal Jihad on people who “defame my character”

Linda Sarsour is a controversial public figure, to put it mildly.
We have covered her here, including:

her embrace (both verbally, politically, and physically — see Featured Image) of convicted terrorist murderer and immigration fraudster Rasmea Odeh;

her organizing of the Women’s March movement;

her tweet saying that Female Genital Mutilation victim Ayaan Hirsi Ali should have her vagina taken away;

her “little lie” at an appearance regarding the tweet, in which she implied the Hirsi Ali tweet may never have happened, which included a racially-based attack on the white student asking the question;

her involvement with the anti-Israel movement, where she has appeared with Keith Ellison;

her fiery speech at an event organized by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam;

her tweet that the “definition of courage” is a very young Palestinian child throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers;

her public fight with Courtney Love, who called Sarsour a “Fraud”, “Vile disgrace to women and all mankind”;

and her demand that Zionist women (who constitute the overwhelming majority of Jewish women) not be permitted in the feminist movement.

Sarsour was all over the news recently when she called for “Jihad” against Trump. Many people construed that as some form of call to religious war or violence — something understandable given the common current usage of the term by Islamic terrorists and extremists.
Sarsour took offense to that accusation in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post, Islamophobes are attacking me because I’m their worst nightmare:

Here is an excerpt from a blistering Knesset speech by deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely to Arab members of the Knesset yesterday:

From her press release:

In a highly charged debate that developed in the plenum tonight (Wednesday) in the framework of a motion on the subject of UNESCO's decision on Hebron and the Cave of the Patriarchs, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely responded on behalf of the government to the Arab Knesset members, by presenting two books: one being the Bible and the second "A History of the Palestinian People: From Ancient Times to the Modern Era," by Assaf Voll.

Deputy Minister Hotovely said: "What is happening here is a process of stealing Jewish history on the part of the Palestinians via international forums. I recommend to UNESCO and to the Arab Knesset members to read these two books, the Bible which tells the story of the Jewish people, and Assaf Voll's new bestseller, "A History of the Palestinian People: From Ancient Times to the Modern Era." It will captivate you because it is empty, because the Palestinians don't have kings and they don't have heritage sites. The Palestinians are appropriating Jewish heritage sites and displacing them just as they are are trying to change the Western Wall into an Islamic site and just like they are attempting to sever the connection of the Jews to the Temple Mount. "

It is a shame that so few Jews nowadays speak so clearly about Jewish heritage in Israel and how the Palestinians are the ones who have the fake history.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

The poster reads “99% reject illegal immigration. Don’t let Soros have the last laugh,” while the graffiti says “stinking Jew.”

On September 16, 1992, George Soros made $1 billion in one fell swoop by shorting the British Pound. The British government spent £3.3 billion of taxpayer’s money trying to prop it up, to no avail. Interest rates were raised by 5%, but still nobody wanted pounds. The currency fell 20% overnight. Did you have your savings in Sterling? Tough.

George Soros is also a “progressive” (although it wasn’t so progressive to rip off all those British working people), and viciously anti-Zionist. He donates very large sums to left-wing organizations all over the world, including many that advocate BDS against Israel. Soros and groups connected to him have given millions to J Street, the phony “pro-Israel” lobbying group in the US.

Indeed, the Soros contribution to anti-Israel incitement is probably exceeded only by what comes from European governments, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

But Soros has other leftist causes as well. According to PM Viktor Orbán’s government in Soros’ native Hungary, he “funds civil society groups and liberal associations in Hungary with the purpose of “settling a million migrants” in the country.” And they have responded with a campaign of posters and billboards that show a grinning Soros with legends like “Don’t let Soros have the last laugh.”

Anti-Zionist Soros does not practice Judaism, and neither did his Jewish parents, who changed their name from “Schwartz.” But he’s a Jew. Just ask Hitler. Or, apparently, any number of Jew-hating Hungarians who have been writing anti-Jewish slogans on the posters and billboards.

Such delicious irony. Hungary’s atavistic Jew-haters teach the rich, assimilated turncoat the ultimate lesson: despite his money and despite his support for those who want to destroy the Jewish homeland, a Jew is always a Jew!

There’s more. Hungary’s major Jewish organization asked the government to remove the advertisements, saying that “the billboard campaign, while not openly anti-Semitic, can still very much unleash uncontrolled anti-Semitic and other feelings.” They appealed to Israel’s ambassador, Yossi Amrani, who agreed with them and wrote a letter asking the regime to take them down. However, the next day, Israel’s Foreign Ministry walked it back with the following clarification:

Israel deplores any expression of antisemitism in any country and stands with Jewish communities everywhere in confronting this hatred. This was the sole purpose of the statement issued by Israel’s ambassador to Hungary. In no way was the statement meant to delegitimize criticism of George Soros, who continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments by funding organizations that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself.

News reports are not clear about whether the ambassador failed to clear his letter with the Ministry in advance, or if he did and more senior officials had second thoughts.

Orbán has been criticized by some Israeli politicians for praising the anti-Jewish WWII Hungarian leader, Miklós Horthy. And like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon, there is always a short path from any unpleasantness to PM Netanyahu, who was blasted by Meretz MK Zahava Gal-on for supposedly encouraging neo-Nazis.

Soros is facing pushback from some of the more nationalistic regimes in Eastern Europe for his activities. But it’s hard to avoid thinking that although some of it is political, there is also an ethnic aspect.

Soros himself said the campaign used “antisemitic imagery.” Although there is nothing intrinsically antisemitic about the picture, I think that the choice of the identifiably Jewish Soros – already a symbol for Jew-haters of the sinister Jewish banker– as the literal poster boy for the anti-immigration campaign was intended to arouse anti-Jewish sentiments (as it did). After all, there are doubtless numerous non-Jewish pro-immigration Hungarians whose pictures could have been used. I have a highly developed radar for this stuff, and it is beeping loudly right now. I don’t think Orbán should be given a pass.

On the other hand, should the Jewish state ride to the defense of one who has spent years and millions of dollars in an effort to facilitate its destruction? One who rejects Judaism but is nevertheless the target of Jew-hatred?

Perhaps unfortunately in the case of Soros, I think it must. Because if Soros is a stinking Jew then so am I and so are all of the Jewish people. Nobody enjoys vilifying a Jewish antisemite like Soros more than I do, but the response from the Foreign Ministry misses the mark by a mile. Let me rewrite it for them:

George Soros, who continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments by funding organizations that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself, is an enemy of the Jewish people and deserves the harshest criticism. Nevertheless, a campaign that deliberately plays on anti-Jewish sentiments to promote a political cause, even a good cause, also promotes Jew-hatred and is therefore unacceptable. The government of Israel considers this campaign an impediment to our relationship and there will be consequences if it is not ended.

I understand the importance of maintaining good relations with governments like Orbán’s, and indeed I believe that nationalism is a positive force, maybe the only force that can save Europe from what appears to be a rapidly-approaching disaster.

But “never again” not only means that we won’t allow another mass murder of Jews. It also means that we won’t ignore or accept, not even a little bit, the insinuation of anti-Jewish themes into public discourse.

So if you want Israel’s support, then knock it off.

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07/13 Links Pt1: Israel Should Just Leave The UN!; What would YOU do with $1.1 billion? The PA's spending priorities

From Ian:

Edwin Black: Taxpayer Support for Palestinian Terrorist Salaries Becoming Impossible to Defend

The issue of government subsidies for Palestinian terrorist salaries is again in the international spotlight. What began in November 2013, as a barely believable revelation — that taxpayers in Great Britain, the US, and other Western nations were bankrolling terrorist salaries — has now become a universally-acknowledged, impossible-to-deny, and impossible-to-defend embarrassment for governments.
For years, officials dissembled and dodged when the question came up. After a period of silent disbelief, the mainstream media now openly confirms the salaries and routinely refers to the program with ipso factuality. Political challengers on both sides of the Atlantic stridently demand that incumbents terminate foreign aid that amounts to taxpayer-incentivized terrorism. A recent in-depth study in Israel calculates that all terror incentives and rewards paid by the Palestinian Authority over the past four years total a mind-numbing one billion dollars.
As more citizens are victimized in Great Britain, Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere, Western donor governments find their financial involvement with the Palestinian Authority terrorist salary program increasingly indefensible.
Whether things might be changing is anyone’s guess.
Intense public pushback and the spread of terrorism, from “something over in Israel” to atrocities in leading European and American cities, have cracked entrenched governmental refusals to stop the financing. But it has been a long road.
In November 2013, revelations first leapt into global headlines that convicted Palestinian terrorists were receiving monthly salaries paid by the Palestinian Authority using foreign donor funds. The Palestinian “Law of the Prisoner” openly rewards those convicted of even the most heinous attacks with generous monthly “salaries” and phantom jobs with automatic advancement in the PA government.
The salaries increase on a sliding scale. The more carnage inflicted, the longer the prisoner sentence, the higher the salary. Terrorists receiving a five-year sentence are granted just a few hundred dollars each month. The bloodiest murderers are paid as much $3,000 monthly. Checks are sent directly to the prisoner, who appoints a power of attorney to distribute the funds.

Palestinian Arab incitement to terror: hundreds of millions of wasted dollars and what they might have achieved

Here's a very visual and moving response to the issues we raised in yesterday's post "11-Jul-17: Incitement to terror: Sometimes it really is all about the money"
There's an especially clear background article about this we recommend highly: "The Department of Pay-for-Slay | How the Palestinian Authority not only incites terrorist murder—but supports it with U.S. tax dollars" [Feith and Gerber, Commentary Magazine, March 15, 2017]
Every cent of the money wasted on inciting young Palestinian Arabs to more and more acts of terror is money provided as foreign aid by Western governments to the perennially insolvent Mahmoud Abbas regime. This is a morality tale with catastrophic dimensions to it.

What would YOU do with $1.1 billion? The Palestinian Authority's spending priorities are shocking.

Palestinian Prisoners' club chairman: Prisoners receive salaries "exactly... [like] me and you"

Senate Panel Weighs Bill to Cut U.S. Funding to Palestinians over Payments to Terrorists

With momentum growing in Congress to support legislation that could cut U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority over its payments to convicted terrorists and their families, a senior White House official told Fox News that the administration won’t reward terrorism.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard testimony Wednesday on a bill known as the Taylor Force Act in hopes of bringing it forward and out of committee. It is named for Taylor Force, a 28-year-old graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and Army veteran who was fatally stabbed by a Palestinian terrorist last year as he walked with friends in Tel Aviv on a tour of Israel.
While the White House official would not say if President Donald Trump would sign the bill if it reached his desk, he warned that the U.S. “is not wedded to a deal at all costs.”
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told the committee that the idea of U.S. tax money going to the Palestinian Authority had to be painful to Force’s parents.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who sponsored a similar bill in 2014 that didn’t make it past committee, said there’s no use “nibbling around the edges.”

"Electronic Intifada is a Zionist front site" say Palestinian officials

Elaph has a hilarious article that claims that anonymous Palestinian Authority officials are claiming that the hate site Electronic Intifada is really being funded by far-right Zionist organizations.

EI has been openly critical of the PA, which is one of their issues. Beyond that, since Ali Abunimah supports a single binational (meaning Arab) state in the entire area, they say that this is just like what Naftali Bennett wants.

"Organizers of the site push the idea of one state in favor of the Jews, to fue the conflict for hundreds of years to come," says the article.

They say that the news has reached the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington that Zionist groups fund the site.

This is great stuff!

(Sorry, forgot who to hat tip)

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Tom Friedman's fact-free column includes an antisemitic trope

Yesterday we were treated to another Thomas Friedman column in the New York Times where he repeats his fact-free memes, ignoring reality in the face of his world class expertise in fantasy:

Netanyahu is setting himself up to be a pivotal figure in Jewish history — the leader who burned the bridges to a two-state solution and to the Jewish diaspora at the same time.

... It worked perfectly to deflect the U.S. president from pressing the relevant questions: “Bibi, you win every debate, but meanwhile every day the separation of Israel from the Palestinians grows less likely, putting Israel on a ‘slippery slope toward apartheid,’ as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak recently warned. Where is your map? What are you going to do with 420,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank? Where is your imagination for how to reverse this trend that will inevitably lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish democratic state?”

Friedman's favorite newspaper, Haaretz, only last month revealed exactly how far Netanyahu was willing to go for a two-state solution. It answered every question Friedman asks, in detail. It was Abbas who refused both the Israeli and American draft peace frameworks.

But that contradicts what Friedman knows in his heart. So he must ignore evidence and facts.

Note also that Friedman knows that he cannot actually argue with Netanyahu by saying Bibi wins every debate. Obviously, what Friedman knows in his heart is more important than actually being able to argue it effectively.

It gets worse:

I won’t waste much time on Bibi’s deft manipulation of President Trump to shift all the blame onto the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas for the absence of progress in the peace process. Bibi masterfully distracted Trump with a shiny object — a video of extreme statements by Abbas (with no mention of extremist actions by Israeli settlers).

Let's assume that some "settlers" really do perform extreme actions. Friedman is postulating two things that are, simply, stupid:

1) The actual antisemitic and pro-terror statements of the political head of the Palestinians are not as important than the actions of people who are acting against the laws of the State of Israel.

2) Israel must provide a balanced view of itself to the world, showing both its good and bad sides when engaging in diplomacy. This is a unique requirement not demanded of any other nation on the planet.

It's even worse. Friedman, although obviously not an antisemite, is engaging in antisemitic tropes. This paragraph comes very close to saying that the Jews control the White House. Undoubtedly that was not his intention but there is very little difference between him saying Netanyahu is manipulating Trump and antisemites saying Jews control Washington.

Jews are very sensitive to antisemitism. Yet no one seems to be upset at Friedman's statement here. The ADL is never going to issue a statement against someone they agree with so often. This statement of Friedman's in the most prestigious US newspaper is arguably far worse than the many topics that engage people's time (like websites that fail to list Israel in their list of countries or retailers that resell anti-Israel T-shirts.)

He gets a pass because he is a superstar to liberal American Jews and because his statement is as much about Bibi's diplomatic skill as it is about Trump's supposed naivete.

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UAE foreign minister and philosemite Gargash

This is by far the funniest story coming out of the Middle East in recent months:

United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash has accused Qatari broadcast network Al Jazeera of promoting antisemitism, supporting terrorist groups, and incitement to violence.

Gargash made the remarks in a letter written Sunday and made public Wednesday on the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation's website.

The four-page letter was addressed to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, as a rebuttal to the UN Special Rapporteur's statement on June 30, that recent demands to close Al Jazeera breached rights of freedom of expression.

Gargash defended demands to close the network by explaining that, "Freedom of expression cannot be used to justify and shield the promotion of extremist narratives."

The letter itself, which is on the official UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, says:

I have noted with dismay your spokesperson’s press briefing on 30 June, and the statement of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression on 28 June, pertaining to “the demand that Qatar close the Al Jazeera network”. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight examples of Al Jazeera’s ongoing editorial support for terrorist groups, as well as cases of incitement to violence, on-air promotion of sectarianism by Al Jazeera journalists, and the promotion of anti-Semitism in its programs.

...Finally, Al Jazeera has promoted anti-Semitic violence in its programming. It has given a television show (Sharia and Life) to the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf AlQaradawi, and has broadcasted his sermons. He has described the Holocaust as “divine punishment” during which “Hitler… put [the Jews] in their place.” [8]

The letter includes this footnote, showing that this Arab nation seems to rely on MEMRI for its translations:

[8] ‘Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: Allah imposed Hitler upon the Jews to punish them –“Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers”’, Middle East Media Research Institute TV Monitor Project, Clip No. 2005 (28 January 2009), https://www.memri.org/tv/sheik-yousuf-al-qaradhawi-allah-imposed-hitler-upon-jews-punishthem-allah-willing-next-time-will. Additionally, on 9 January 2009, Qaradawi said he wanted to address the “treacherous Jews”, and said “Oh Allah, take this profligate, cunning, arrogant band of people… do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one”: ‘Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi on Al-Jazeera Incites Against Jews, Arab Regimes, and the U.S.; Calls on Muslims to Boycott Starbucks and Others; Says “Oh Allah, Take This Oppressive, Jewish, Zionist Band of People... And Kill Them, Down to the Very Last One”’, Middle East Media Research Institute TV Monitor Project, Special Dispatch No. 2183 (29 January 2009), https://www.memri.org/reports/sheikh-yousef-al-qaradhawi-al-jazeera-incites-against-jews-arab-regimes-and-uscalls-muslims.

Suddenly, a leading Arab Gulf state is a defender of the Jews!

The total number of Jews who live in the UAE is approximately zero.

Every year, it holds a book fair which features explicit antisemitism:

The anti-Semitic books for sale at the fair were listed alongside mainstream books in various categories. For example, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was listed in the “Political Science” category. Among the other anti-Semitic books featured at the fair were:

Blood for The Pie of Zion (The Jewish District) by Najib Al Gailany. This novel tells a story of a Christian priest from Damascus who was abducted by the Jews in order to use his blood for Jewish rituals. The story details how Jews danced and celebrated while Rabbis drain the blood of the elderly catholic priest. The book was listed in the “Novels” category and sold for 15 AED, or approximately $4.

The Jews and the Secret Movements in the Crusades by Baha Al-Amir. The book, which suggests that the Jews played a role in the Crusades, includes an introduction in which the author claims that “God the almighty declares in his statement to the people that all wars were started by Jews.” The book was listed in the “International Affairs” category and sold for 50 AED (approximately $14).

Human Sacrifices and Talmudic Slaughtering by Jews and Pagans by Fathi Muhammad Zughbi. The book was listed in the “Faith” category and sold for 83 AED (approximately $23).

Mein Kampf by Adolf Hilter. This book was listed in the “General knowledge” category and sold for 20 AED (approximately $5).

The fair provided several grants and awards in various fields of literature. In the past, it reportedly gave a grant to Gilad Atzmon to translate his anti-Semitic book “The Wandering Who,” into Arabic.

UAE newspapers have compared Israeli actions to the Holocaust and accused Israel's founders of imitating Hitler.

As recently as this year, editorial cartoons in UAE media depict Israelis as hook-nosed stereotypical Jews.

The UAE is not as antsemitic as other Arab countries but it has never fought antisemitism in its own borders. But suddenly, it finds it convenient to pretend to love the Jews when it is politically expedient.

To the UN, another institution that promotes antisemitism under the guise of being "pro-Palestinian."

We truly live in interesting times.

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Haaretz, via German news agency, blames Israel for Gaza power crisis

This unbelievably biased article was published in Haaretz and written by DPA, the German news agency:

The Gaza Strip's only operating power plant was turned off late Wednesday due to a severe shortage of fuel, leaving the coastal enclave in a complete blackout, local officials said.

Officials at the Hamas-run power corporation said they had turned off the last operating turbine at the plant in southern Gaza city.

The Gaza Strip, with more than two million people, has been suffering from an energy crisis since mid-April due to a dispute over taxes between the Islamist Hamas movement, which rules the enclave, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Gaza has been under a tight Israeli blockade since Hamas' violent takeover of the coastal enclave a decade ago and residents have been subjected to persistent blackouts.

Since April, Gaza's power station has not been generating any megawatts, while Israel has reduced the amount of power it supplies to the Gaza Strip. Power lines built to supply electricity from Egypt have been damaged amid heavy fighting in the Sinai region.

Two weeks ago, Egypt shipped around 4 million liters of fuel to operate the power plant - but it was not enough to resolve the worsening crisis.

The article doesn't say that the Palestinian Authority refuses to pay Israel for the electricity. Israel hasn't restricted fuel to Gaza for many years but the article implies that fuel is part of Israel's blockade - it isn't.

And if the article would also mention the PA's refusal to pay for medicine and to allow most patients to leave, that would add context that they don't want the readers to know.

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07/12 Links Pt2: Scottish BDS protest Radiohead, promote Holocaust denial; Jews protest play about Toulouse killer

From Ian:

UAE slams Al-Jazeera for anti-Semitism over imam’s sermons

A top UAE official on Wednesday accused Qatari broadcast giant Al-Jazeera of anti-Semitism, discrimination and inciting religious hate, in a rebuttal to UN accusations of attacking freedom of expression.
The United Nations has warned that demands that Qatar close Al-Jazeera by a rival Saudi Arabian-led alliance, which includes the UAE, violate basic freedoms.
The United Arab Emirates’ state minister for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, hit back in a letter to UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein.
In it, Gargash wrote that Al-Jazeera had “promoted anti-Semitic violence by broadcasting sermons by the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi.”
Qaradawi, he added, had “praised Hitler, described the Holocaust as ‘divine punishment,’ and called on Allah to ‘take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people… and kill them, down to the very last one.'”
The letter was published in a statement from the UAE National Media Council.

French Jews protest play about Toulouse killer

Leaders of France’s Jewish community and relatives of the murderer of four Jews in Toulouse protested the staging of a play on his life at the prestigious Avignon theater festival.
The play, titled “I Love Death as You Love Life,” which premiered last week at the Festival of Avignon in southern France, is about the last three hours in the life of Mohammed Merah, the Islamist who in 2012 murdered three French soldiers before also executing three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse, Myriam Monsonégo, and brothers Arié and Gabriel Sandler, along with the boys’ father, Yonathan Sandler.
Ariel Goldmann, a vice president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities and spokesperson for the SPCJ communal security unit, called the play “a disgrace and an ignominy” in a statement Wednesday that he co-authored with three other notable members of his community.
The play is an “enterprise of justification being falsely presented under the alibi of artistic expression,” added Goldman in his letter, which was cosigned by Patrick Klugman, Elie Korchia and Jacques Gauthier-Gaujoux.
But the Algerian playwright Mohamed Kacimi, who authored the play, defended it as “anything but a justification or rehabilitation of Merah” but rather as “an interrogation about a monster created by society.”

David Collier: Scottish BDS in Glasgow who protest Radiohead promote Holocaust denial

‘There’s no antisemitism ‘ere guv’. We are just humanitarians who want to protest the Radiohead gig in Israel.
Just four days ago, on the 7th July, a few Scottish anti-Israel activists set out to protest the fact Radiohead are going to perform in Israel. As usual, this BDS activity is noisy and makes local and industry press. Here is an image of the protestors in Scotland.
Let’s play a game called “how many Holocaust deniers can you spot”? It is only a group of about twenty. The person who posted the images, Jolanta Hadzic appears to be the one in the green top. This is one of Jolanta Hadzic’s posts: