Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, October 21, 2016

It's official: Palestinian justice system considers Jews worse than dogs

A court in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip issued a prison sentence of three months to two young men who tortured and killed a dog.

The two men were arrested 15 days ago on charges of killing a dog after video of the crime spread on social networking sites.

The incident was widely reported in Arabic media, with the news reports calling the crime "heinous" and "disgusting."

Those are words that one never sees in Arabic to describe any attacks on Jews.

On the contrary, those who murdered Jews (or even attempted to murder Jews) are considered heroes. They get salaries in prison and automatic jobs when they are released.

So by any measure, dogs - which are generally reviled in popular Muslim culture - are infinitely better than Jews.

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William Booth in the Washington Post writes a heartwarming story:

The gathering wasn’t exactly unprecedented. Jewish settlers and their Palestinian neighbors have met quietly before, many times. But not like this. This meeting, this was rare.

The settlement of Efrat is a bedroom community of 10,000 affluent Jews, including many Americans, a few miles south of Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The residents of Efrat live the good life in a growing hilltop community that the United States considers illegal and an obstacle to peace.

The Efrat mayor, Oded Revivi, who is also a colonel in the Israeli army reserve, invited Palestinians from surrounding villages to come to his house and celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, when the faithful gather in palm-roofed huts, a remembrance of the 40 years of wandering landless in the desert back in the time of Moses.

A couple dozen Palestinians accepted the mayor’s invitation this week to share brownies, grapes, cookies, apples and coffee, alongside 30 Israeli settlers. This was a first.

The idea? The sides were here to talk, perhaps even to bond — no matter if the dynamic was a little awkward and asymmetrical.

Everyone was very polite. A Palestinian farmer sat next to an Israeli diplomat. They live a mile and a world apart. A rabbi from the settlement broke bread with a Palestinian stone mason. Guests shook hands, took selfies, patted one another on the back. Both sides seemed a little stunned to be together celebrating a Jewish holiday.

The Palestinians spoke decent to fluent Hebrew. The settlers didn’t speak much Arabic.

One Palestinian stood and told the guests that he didn’t want to see the West Bank “turn into Syria.”

Another said he didn’t like “being lumped together with the terrorists.”

Everyone talked about peace. Nobody really talked about one state or two states. They didn’t mention Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Some Palestinian guests felt comfortable enough to complain out loud about how they are treated. Some Israelis mentioned the wave of Palestinian stabbing attacks against them.

There were some remarkable moments.

Ahmad Mousa, 58, a contractor from the neighboring Palestinian village of Wadi Al Nis, said, “We consider ourselves part of the family, part of the people of Efrat.”

You do not hear that much in the West Bank, at least not in public, with smartphone cameras rolling.

He said, “Seventy percent of our village works in Efrat. They treat us very well and we are very good to them, too.”

Noman Othman, 41, a construction worker from Wadi Al Nis, said this was his first time as a guest in a home in the settlement, although he had worked here for years, building houses.

“This is good,” he said. “Our relationship is evolving.”

Asked whether he bore any grudge against the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, now home to 400,000 settlers, which the Obama administration has condemned as “an obstacle to peace,” Othman said nope. He didn’t have any problem with Efrat.

If there was a Palestinian state someday, a dream Palestinians say is growing more distant, Othman said the Jews in Efrat “should stay on their land.”

He saw it this way: “These are their houses. They bought them with their own money. We should have no problem living together — if there is peace.”

Ali Musa, 49, came from the village of Al Khader. He told the gathering: “I came for a reason. I came to talk about our relationship, between you and us.”

He reminded his hosts that there is a locked yellow gate that blocks the entrance to his village, a closure enforced by Israeli security forces. “That gate should be removed,” Musa said.

He added: “And that racist sign? That should also be removed. It’s outrageous. It prevents our Jewish friends from visiting us.”

Musa was referring to the large red signs posted across the West Bank warning Israelis in capital letters that it is against the law and “dangerous to your lives” to enter “Area A,” cities and villages under full control of the Palestinian Authority.

The mayor gave a short speech. “Some people say there will be one state, some say two states,” Revivi said. “As neighbors, we are already living together.”

Revivi hailed the men who came to his home as “true men, courageous men.”

“I know there were men I invited and they did not come,” he said, “because this takes initiative and courage.”

But in Palestinian media, this story was treated as a catastrophe.

As soon as this story was reported, the deputy governor of Bethlehem Mohammed Taha promised an investigation and possible arrests for this crime of meeting Jews who live in Judea. Taha said he will initiate legal proceedings against the participants, saying it is not the culture and education of Palestinians to visit these Jews, it is a "dangerous and unacceptable phenomenon," and he will follow up on the matter with Palestinian security services and factions.

Indeed, that is what happened:

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) security forces arrested three Palestinian Arabs from the Gush Etzion area who “dared” to visit the sukkah of Oded Revivi, mayor of the town of Efrat.

Channel 2 News reported on Thursday evening that the Arabs who were arrested were questioned over allegations they met with "baby-killers", an apparent reference to General Nitzan Alon, the head of the IDF's Operations Directorate, and the Shai District Police Commander, who were also guests in the same sukkah.

Revivi said on Thursday evening, “Yesterday we sat in the sukkah - Jews and Muslims. We ate, drank and talked about common themes and our hope for a better neighborhood and for peace. Today the PA summoned some of the Muslim guests for questioning.

“All those who pressure the Israeli government to enter a peace process with the Palestinian Authority should be reminded that they behave in a way that does the opposite of encouraging peace with their Jewish neighbors,” continued Revivi. “An authority which names squares after suicide bombers and summons for questioning citizens who drink coffee and talk about peace with their Jewish neighbors is not one that promotes peace.

“I salute my neighbors who were not afraid to come to our sukkah yesterday, to talk about peace, who asked to be photographed and to show the world that they are brave enough to stand up for peace,” he stressed.

I hope that the Washington Post publishes a follow-up. The arrests are just as important a story as the meeting was.

(h/t YMedad)

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10/20 Link Pt2: Refocusing the battle against BDS; Twitter’s ‘Juggernaut of Bigotry’

From Ian:

Daniel Gordis: A Dose of Nuance: Still time to reimagine

Yom Kippur ended with Ne’ila, which symbolizes the closing of the gates of repentance.
Interestingly, Jewish tradition has long asserted that the gates do not quite creak entirely shut as the sun sets on the holiest day of the year. The period of repentance extends, said our sages, through the last day of Succot. It is as if they were desperate to remind us that even when we think it is too late to change, too late to rethink, too late to reimagine ourselves, it is not. There is still time, even if it is ebbing.
Their surprising extension of the days of repentance is an important reminder for each of us. Who has truly done all the work of reimagining ourselves by the end of Yom Kippur? The question is no less relevant to us as a people and a nation. Are we sanguine about the state of this country? About what we will bequeath to our children? We would have to be foolish or blind not to be worried.
The value of worry, though, is that we believe that change is possible. The meaning of repentance is that we recognize the past, yet focus on the future.
That embrace of the future was what always animated the best of Zionism. Was there reason to think, in 1897 when Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress, that the world would ever endorse the idea of a Jewish state? Half a century later, with Polish Jewry destroyed and the British still forbidding Jewish immigration to Palestine, what were the chances that we would ever be able to declare Independence? When hundreds of thousands of Jews poured into a newly established and impoverished state, who could have thought that we would survive, that our fledgling economy would somehow manage? With all our challenges, we still need to repair. We have what we have and are who we are because Judaism – and Zionism – are committed to looking to the future. The past teaches us, informs us, shapes us and admonishes us, but it does not define us. Ours is a tradition that embraces the future – what it can be and what we can make happen.

Refocusing the battle against BDS

A number of European institutions as well have condemned BDS. The Paris City Council adopted two resolutions condemning attempts to boycott Israel. One of the resolutions says the City of Paris “opposes publicly all attempts to isolate Israel from the collective of nations.” In the UK, the British Cabinet Office released a statement saying that under government rules local authorities and public-sector organizations in Britain are banned from boycotting Israeli suppliers and that violators could face severe penalties. The statement added that such boycotts "undermine good community relations, poisoning and polarizing debate, weakening integration and fueling anti-Semitism.
The anti-Semitic character of BDS has not only been identified and stressed by the State of Israel, Jewish individuals and Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the American Jewish Congress. Senator Chuck Schumer from New York also recently called the BDS campaign anti-Semitic.
Hillary Clinton and Republicans John Kasich, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, US Senator Cory Booker, a group of Latin American and Caribbean lawmakers, as well as then British Justice Minister Michael Gove, and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have all condemned the BDS movement as anti-Semitic.
Much of the criticism of BDS, however, does not stress its anti-Semitic character.
One interesting exception concerns the student council of Leipzig University in Germany. The student council voted “to condemn the anti-Semitic BDS campaign,” and is “against anti-Semitic measures such as disinviting Israeli academics.” The vote against BDS was a response to a campus event featuring Lori Allen, a professor from the University of London who supports academic boycotts of Israel and justifies terrorism against the Jewish state.
In 2015 the German Green parliamentarian Volker Beck stated “There is no doubt of the anti-Semitic motivation within the spectrum of the BDS campaign. BDS aims essentially against Jewish Israelis and is therefore anti-Semitic. Whoever aggressively boycotts Israeli goods and people, should also be viewed as anti-Semitic by the federal government.” The German government refused to accept this at the time, claiming that there was no definition of anti-Semitism. Since then, the IHRA definition was accepted, which required the German government’s agreement. Now Beck’s proposal for Germany to view BDS as anti-Semitic merits another try.

Michael Lumish: The Hypocrisy of San Francisco State University President, Leslie Wong

In a recent piece, I noted that right-wing provocateur, David Horowitz, recently set his sights on San Francisco State University.
He and his people did so as part of a larger campaign to rile up political discussion concerning the connection between anti-Zionism and increasing levels of Jew hatred on American university campuses.
SFSU, like many universities around the United States, promotes three types of racism. These are humanitarian racism, anti-white racism, and anti-Semitic anti-Zionism.
In response, Horowitz sent some little ideological ninjas onto that campus at night - just before the biggest rainstorm San Francisco has had in almost a year - and plastered the area with various posters pointing out that targeting Jews for death, as Hamas does, is not very nice and that, perhaps, SFSU should not support it.
But support it, it does.
One of Horowitz's posters features professor Rabab Abdulhadi with text reading, “a leader of the Hamas BDS campaign; collaborator with terrorists; San Francisco State professor.”

YNet reports:

The Shin Bet arrested four individuals last month suspected of planning to carry out a large scale terror attack in an events hall in Be’er Sheva and kidnapping an IDF soldier, it was cleared for publication Thursday.

According to the indictment issued against the four, they planned to throw grenades into a crowd of dancers celebrating at the Narnia events hall and to use weapons they would hide in trash cans ahead of the attack before fleeing the scene. They also considered detonating pipe bombs concealed under the dining tables.

Moreover, they began accumulating funds to perpetrate a separate attack involving the abduction of an IDF soldier from the city's central bus station who they intended to kill and use his remains to solicit concessions from Israel.

During the investigation of the four conspirators, one of whom is a resident of the bedouin town of Tel as-Sabi in the Negev and the other three illegal aliens from Gaza, interrogators discovered that the planned attack was the brainchild of the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad organization.

The suspects, two of whom worked in the events hall which they intended to strike, carefully plotted their attack as they collected information about their target.

The ringleader of the suspects, all of whom were arrested on September 21 by the the Shin Bet in cooperation with the Negev Police Central Unit, was identified as Mahmoud Yusuf Hasin Abu-Taha from Khan Yunis in southern Gaza who had entered Israel via the Erez Crossing for commercial purposes.

He was recruited into the cell by Wael Abu-Taha, a senior official in the Islamic Jihad movement who lives in Gaza, when the latter asked him to establish a military infrastructure and coordinate a terror attack.

In May, Mahmoud and Wael presided over plans for the attack’s execution in the hall and, to that end, checked a number of entrances to the complex. It was decided that Shafik would enable the attackers to enter, including Mahmoud who was also scheduled to work on the day marked for the bloodletting.

Israel allows thousands of Gazans to enter Israel every month as merchants. This story shows that not only do some of them stay in Israel, but they even get jobs!

Doesn't Israel check that everyone who leaves Gaza returns? Why didn't the events hall do a basic background check of the terrorist workers and check their names against a list of known suspects?

This story is much scarier than the headline. It points to a basic failure in Israel defending itself.

If Israel responds by tightening up on who can leave Gaza for commercial purposes, then this attempted terror attack will hurt ordinary Gazans. Yet no Arab can ever be found to publicly denounce the selfish stupidity of Islamic Jihad in trying to subvert a humanitarian gesture into a terror attack. On the contrary - most Palestinian Arabs consistently say they support specific terror attacks after the fact.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

The UNESCO resolution which referred to Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem by their Muslim names alone that passed this week made me think that we – the State of Israel – are taking the wrong path, at least if the destination is to survive and thrive.

The implication of the resolution is to deny the connection of the Jewish people to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. Despite our attachment to them, the resolution suggests that the sites ‘belong’ to Islam.

I am not going to discuss the historical or archaeological evidence, or the religious traditions in Judaism, Christianity or even Islam that the resolution contradicts. Rather, I am concerned with the political implications; what we can learn from it about our position in the world and our possible diplomatic and even military strategies.

There are 58 nations on UNESCO’s board, and 56 of them voted. Six opposed the resolution: Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, The Netherlands, United Kingdom and United States. 23 voted in favor, and 27 abstained (Mexico changed its vote before the final approval from in favor to abstain). All the Muslim-majority nations that voted were in favor except Chad and Guinea, which abstained. To Israel’s chagrin, the ‘advanced’ European nations of France, Italy and Spain abstained on a resolution which many saw as an expression of pure Jew-hatred.

Despite the recent improvement in relations between Israel and Egypt, including military cooperation, Egypt not only voted for the resolution but was also one of the seven Arab nations that proposed it. And apparently Israel’s ties with Russia did not carry over to this arena, where Russia too voted for it.

In April, UNESCO passed a very similar resolution. The same six countries voted against it, but then there were 33 in favor and only seven abstentions. The changed votes were probably due to feverish lobbying by Israel, possibly with some help from friendly countries. I am not sure why there was less public indignation in April – probably because the vote was so unbalanced as to be embarrassing.

What are the lessons to be learned from this?

One is that while we might be successful in cooperating with some Muslim nations in limited ways on limited issues, there is unlikely to be an ideological breakthrough. Where the legitimacy of a Jewish state on ‘Muslim land’ (which happens to include all of our country) is concerned, there can be no compromise, even if there might be pragmatic – and temporary – acceptance. The day that Egypt will not be poisoned by Jew-hatred is far off.

Another is that, at least in the international forums associated with the UN, we can’t win. It is not paranoia to say that there they are “all against us” with only a few exceptions (and those exceptions are not guaranteed). This does not augur well for the expected UN Security Council resolution that is expected to be proposed to outlaw Israeli settlements across the Green Line.

We can also note the degree of cynicism – or perhaps extreme anti-Zionism or even Jew-hatred – that would cause a country like France, Spain or Italy, with their Christian traditions, to in essence deny the connection between the Jewish people and the historical Temple. From where do they believe Jesus threw out the money-changers? A mosque, some 600 years prior to Mohammed? It is not as though they were not aware of the implications of abstaining – our diplomats made sure that they did understand.

All this is just more evidence, as if more is needed, against the strategy of accommodation, the idea that if Israel would be a good “world citizen,” then its conflicts will end. Ha’aretz, in a typical editorial following the vote, said that improving Israel’s standing in the world will require “meaningful steps to moderate the occupation and serious negotiations to establish Palestine.” Really? Do you think that any such “steps” short of total surrender will satisfy the Muslim world, which almost unanimously believes that Jews have no rights to any land in the Middle East? We allowed Hamas to “establish Palestine” in Gaza, and the result is plain to see.

Yes, we need a better-organized Foreign Ministry, better direct diplomacy and better hasbara. But those things will not change the basic dimensions of the problem, which can be defined as follows: they are (more or less) all against us, and the reason is that we are Jews in a world where we are a tiny minority, non-Muslims in a Muslim region; we are considered “European colonialists” despite our truly indigenous status and the fact that half of us are not from Europe; and we are nationalists in a world where nationalism is only permitted to “people of color.”

Trying to convince the world that this isn’t so, especially through international institutions where Sudan, for example, has the same vote as the US or the UK, is not a workable strategy. Trying to be a good citizen isn’t enough, because what they want we can’t afford to give (as Ayaan Hirsi Ali is reported to have said “even if you give them Jerusalem, there will be no peace”).

But trying to do these impossible things not only fails, it has a negative impact. Begging the world to recognize that Jerusalem belongs to us implies that we aren’t strong enough to hold onto it. Keeping Jews from praying on the Temple Mount implies that it is not ours at all.

The only strategy that might succeed is one that calls for the exercise of power. We should use our power – and we have more economic, political and military power now than at any time in the past – to hurt our enemies and help our friends. A straightforward application of power is the best way to achieve our security and other goals, as well as to “improve our image” in the only way that counts: to make our friends trust us and our enemies fear us.

We are not doing this when, as the strongest military power in the region, we allow Hezbollah to establish deterrence that constrains our actions. We are not doing this when, as a sovereign state, we allow our foreign enemies to pump millions of dollars into subversive organizations here, or to interfere in our elections. And we are not doing it when we allow Muslims more rights on the Temple Mount than Jews.

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10/20 Link Pt1: Archaeologists find battle site where Romans breached Jerusalem walls

From Ian:

Archaeologists find battle site where Romans breached Jerusalem walls

Israeli archaeologists found the site of a fierce battle where the Roman army bombarded and breached the walls of Jerusalem before conquering the city and destroying the Second Temple almost 2,000 years ago, officials said Thursday.
They said that the discovery, made last winter during an excavation of a construction site for the new campus of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design outside the Old City, also finally confirmed the description of the wall that was breached provided by the historian Josephus Flavius.
During the dig, the archaeologists found the remains of a tower surrounded by scores of stones and boulders fired by Roman catapults at the Jewish forces guarding the wall, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement.
“This is a fascinating testimony of the intensive bombardment by the Roman army, led by Titus, on their way to conquering the city and destroying the Second Temple,” the statement said.
“The bombardment was intended to attack the sentries guarding the wall and provide cover for the Roman forces so they could approach the wall with battering rams and thereby breach the city’s defenses,” it said.
The part of the wall that was breached was known as the Third Wall. It was found in the area of modern Jerusalem known as the Russian Compound. According to accounts by Josephus, this part of the wall was designed to protect a new quarter of the city that developed outside the other two existing walls.

Israel’s antiquities chief compares UNESCO to Islamic State

The director of the Israel Antiquities Authority on Wednesday slammed UNESCO for its resolution on Jerusalem holy sites, comparing the UN cultural body to Islamic State jihadists.
Speaking at the opening of the new IAA headquarters in Jerusalem, director Yisrael Hasson said the resolution adopted last week and confirmed on Tuesday put the UN organization in the same league as IS jihadists who have destroyed and looted hundreds of archaeological sites in Syria and Iraq to fund their “caliphate.”
“Around us, world heritage treasures are being destroyed… They murdered Syrian archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad, who tried to protect heritage,” Hasson said recalling the 82-year-old retired head of antiquities in Palmyra who was beheaded by IS militants last year.
IS overran Palmyra — a UNESCO world heritage site known as the “Pearl of the Desert” — in May 2015 and used its ancient amphitheater for public executions.
The extremist group blew up temples and tower tombs as part of it campaign against pre-Islamic monuments it considers “blasphemous.”
“And recently UNESCO in essence joined this system of destruction by diplomatic means. This is essentially the same action by a diplomatic course,” Hasson said. (h/t Yoel)

Erasing the West

The UNESCO vote seems clearly a response to the expansionist, jihadist aspirations of members of the OIC who sponsored it: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan.
Some analysts consider a vote to abstain to be a victory for Israel, but for Spain, Greece, France, Sweden, Slovenia, and Italy it was blatant appeasement and fear of their own often-violent Muslim minorities: "Please, please, don't blow up our capital cities. We will reject Jewish and Christian history and pretend Jesus chased the money changers from the steps of Montmartre."
UNESCO's Director General Irina Bokova had already announced her opposition to the resolution, a position for which she received death threats.
Having demonstrable historical fact, such as Jewish patrimony on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, subject to the whims of the UN, in which, as the late Abba Eban said, Arabs could muster a majority to decide the sun rises in the West, is not a positive proposition.
The question remains how to convince nations in the West to stand for themselves in the face of Islamists committed to replacing them.

What assumptions do you make about your country?

This past week I caught myself making a dramatic assumption about my country, Israel.

I was watching the news about Hurricane Matthew with Tal, Lenny’s eldest son (18 years old). We saw images from the US, mostly of flooding. Pity for the people whose homes were damaged welled up inside me. As difficult as that situation was, it was the images from Haiti that took my breath away, giving new meaning to the word “devastation”. It looked like the winds had peeled the homes from the ground, spun them around in the air and flung the pieces in every direction.

Quietly Tal asked, “We sent them aid, right?”

“We must have” I answered. “If we haven’t done so yet, we’ll send help soon.”

What an assumption! We both recognized people in desperate need and automatically assumed that our country, tiny Israel, would send Haiti help from half way around the world.

It doesn’t matter that we are far away.

It doesn’t matter that the people of Haiti aren’t Jewish. Our nation doesn’t have much of a connection to theirs. It’s not a location Israelis tend to frequent. Israel doesn’t even have a resident embassy in Haiti.

It doesn’t matter that other countries are bigger and richer than we are and would find it easier to cope with the unexpected expense.

Or that we have too many of our own problems: threats on our borders, threats of terrorism, diplomatic terrorism (like that of the recent UNESCO resolution denying the connection between the Temple Mount and the Jewish people) and all of the internal social issues Israel struggles with every day. The issues Israel must handle would overwhelm most nations but that doesn’t matter.

The people of Haiti are in worse condition than we are and they need help.

Tal and I knew that Israel went to help the people of Haiti in 2010, following the earthquake that reduced much of their country to rubble.

For us it was automatic to assume Israel would go again. It is the right thing to do. That’s what we always do. Of course that is what would happen.

Following the news in the next few days I didn’t hear anything about Israel sending aid. There was nothing on TV, I didn’t hear anything on the radio. The lack of news seemed so strange, I decided to look it up on the internet. There, I found the answer –

Israel had never left Haiti. We didn’t need to send aid because we were already there.

“As soon as the rain stopped, we came out and started contacting people we work with to understand the scale and the needs. We started arranging supplies and distributions, as many people have left without a shelter” reported Natalie Revesz, IsraAID’s country director based in Port-Au-Prince. The aid provided includes emergency supplies, food, clean water, and basic hygiene items.

Only two months ago, MASHAV, the Israel Foreign Ministry’s agency for international development cooperation, sent a new shipment of medical supplies to re-equip the trauma unit it established in one of Haiti’s main government hospitals three years ago.

That made more sense.

There was no fuss on the news because it was obvious. Why make a fuss? Of course we would help.

That is my Israel, a country I can assume the best of and be correct.

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Der Tagesspiegel reports about a Palestinian arts and culture festival in Berlin last month that used public funds to glorify terrorists and to call Israel an "apartheid regime."

Approximately two weeks ago on Saturday, on the penultimate day of the festival, during an event about Palestinian prisoners in Israel not only was solidarity called for with the prisoners, but their violent acts were approved. It was a big priority of the festival organizers to raise awareness of the situation of Palestinian prisoners, said Nadija Samour, a lecturer of the event. "Almost every Palestinian family has a relative in prison - we want to remind people during our event also about the struggles that they have behind bars and to continue to fight for them."

Not even armed attacks by Palestinians against Israelis did Samour condemn - on the contrary: "I do not care why these people are in prison, I don't ask this question," she said. The Palestinian resistance is a "legitimate response" to the Israeli "apartheid regime" against the Arab minority population for decades: In the creation of Israel, the Palestinians have suffered "ethnic cleansing" of their country and since then suffer from "Israel racism " every day.

Samour's incitement against the Jewish state was not anomalous during the festival. Already a few days before Israel was defamed during a panel discussion as an "apartheid state" and "colonialist entity." The event was moderated by Anna-Esther Younes, one of the curators of the festival. Younes described a one-sided picture of the Middle East conflict - with Israel's government as a colonialist racist regime, and Palestinian were the only "victims." The terror of Islamist groups such as Hamas was out of bounds for discussion.

The event was made possible by public funds. The festival was financed with EUR 100,000 by the Capital Cultural Fund and 45 000 other euro came from the division for cross-promotion by the Senate Chancellery-Cultural Affairs,

(h/t Petra)

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Islamic Jihad builds a military tower in Gaza that can see Judean mountains

Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades built an observation tower in Gaza to try to intimidate the IDF and to encourage supporters.

The tower is 16 meters (50 feet) tall and covered in some sort of cloth to hide its underlying architecture.

It was built 300 meters from the Gaza border, apparently on farmland.

The group says that one can see the "Hebron mountains" from the top of the tower.

The tower is named after a Hebron terrorist, Zia Talameh, who apparently accidentally killed himself while trying to throw a homemade bomb at IDF soldiers last year.

The poster on the top of the tower shows the terrorist with the words "We will not forget - We will not forgive" in Arabic and Hebrew.

Closeups of the tower show that it looks more makeshift than most sukkot are.

At the same time, Islamic Jihad terror leaders promised that "we are trying to develop our potential to surprise the enemy in more painful ways."

One way was by introducing a hashtag on social media yesterday with the words "Jihad renewed our deliverance." It is part of a media campaign ahead of Islamic Jihad's 29th anniversary coming up in the coming weeks.

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Actual headline: "Thousands of Jews desecrating Al Buraq" (the Kotel)

Autotranslated headline from Qudsn.ps:

If you think that Muslims ever accepted Jews having control of the Western Wall, this should set you straight.

And the entire state of Israel is viewed similarly.

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It's really taking a long time for the Jews to take over "Haram/Al Aqsa"

From the statements of Ahmed Zaki Pasha in a British white paper on the holy sites of Jerusalem, December 1930, discussing why Jews have no right to put chairs or tables at the Western Wall:

(f) The real intentions of the Jews.
The aim of the Jewish agitation is not merely to obtain seats for the aged and invalids to rest on. In reality, what we have to deal with here is a Zionistic movement that has in view the securing of advantages for the Jews to which they have no right. In spite of all their statements to the contrary, the real aim of the Zionists is to obtain possession of the Haram-esh-Sherif.

From Electronic Intifada, Sunday:

It is almost like most Arabs have been following the same antisemitic script for nearly a hundred years, isn't it?

And yet the world never seems to catch on!

By the way, there is an irony to Hamas' celebrating the UNESCO resolution. In that same white paper, the Muslim representatives prefaced their claims with "Moslems state that all contentions relative to Moslem sacred places should be dealt with only by competent bodies as prescribed by the Sharia Law. Other bodies can have no jurisdiction whatever by the Sharia Law. Other bodies can have no jurisdiction whatever on these places."

In other words, if the infidels say that an area is Muslim, that is cause for celebration, but if they say it isn't, it is meaningless.

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10/19 Links Pt2: Hillary’s ‘foreign intervention’ hypocrisy; Israel’s envoy to call on UN to end funding for B’Tselem

From Ian:

Hillary’s ‘foreign intervention’ hypocrisy

Even more striking was her shock and awe about foreign powers attempting to influence the upcoming US election.
As a former member of the Obama administration, she ought to know a thing or two about such a practice. Yes, her pals in the White House and State Department invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in a concerted campaign to prevent the re-election last year of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They did this by funneling “grant” money to a far-Left, pro-Palestinian NGO called OneVoice.
A Senate investigation revealed that the activities and political leanings of OneVoice were well-known. In addition, as the Washington Free Beacon reported in July, a senior State Department official admitted that he had deleted several e-mail exchanges pertaining to the administration’s coordination with OneVoice, whose grants and oversight were done by then-US Consul General in Jerusalem Michael Ratney.
“It is completely unacceptable that US taxpayer dollars were used to build a political campaign infrastructure that was deployed…against the leader of our closest ally in the Middle East,” said Sen. Rob Portman, who chaired the subcommittee that investigated the fiasco.
Not to worry, though. Private money from Hillary’s billionaire friends, such as the virulently anti-Israel George Soros, was also spent on the effort to keep Netanyahu from winning the election. Another organization, established specifically for this purpose, was V-15 (victory 2015).
Founded by an Israeli named Nimrod Dweck, V-15 hired US consulting firm “270 Strategies” – comprised, as World Net Daily reported – mostly of former top staffers for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Dweck told WND that it was OneVoice that persuaded him to hire the firm.
The attempt to topple Netanyahu by bolstering the Israeli Left failed abysmally, much to the dismay of Obama and cohort Democrats. But theirs was a blatant example of foreign intervention in the election process of another country.
I guess Hillary thinks that’s ok, as long as it’s her team running the interference.

JPost Editorial: What is B’Tselem?

Nevertheless, B’Tselem showed its true face over the weekend when its executive director Hagai El-Ad appeared before the UN Security Council to call for the UN to take action against Israel’s settlements. This was just the latest example of how B’Tselem and many other organizations have long ago moved from being human rights groups to organizations engaged in blatant political advocacy.
B’Tselem was not just trying to educate Israelis with the hope that they would change their policies from within, but rather the organization was aiding – even initiating – international efforts to pressure Israel to adopt policies rejected by Israelis repeatedly in democratic elections.
“With every breath they take, Palestinians are breathing in occupation,” El-Ad told the special UN Security Council session titled “Illegal Israeli Settlements: Obstacles to Peace and the Two-State Solution.” He claimed that “ever-present” settlers live in a first-world community “that exists only for them.”
Israel, El-Ad added, used the peace process “to buy time” to establish facts on the ground for the settlements.
“The UN Security Council must act and the time is now,” he concluded.
While some of El-Ad’s claims bear validity, he crossed the line that separates the operations of an impartial guardian of human rights from a political advocacy group that openly calls on the international community to take unilateral steps against Israel.
His appeal to the Security Council reflects a position that rejects direct negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis in favor of international intervention to coerce Israel into relinquishing control over the West Bank, even if this means a potential severe deterioration in the country’s security.
Human rights should transcend politics, and Israel, like other democracies, appreciates criticism and gets plenty of it domestically and internationally. But organizations like need to decide what they are. It seems B’Tselem has made up its mind.

Israel’s envoy to call on UN to end funding for B’Tselem

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations said he intends Wednesday to demand that the global body end its funding for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem after it called on the UN to act against Israel over its settlement policies.
Danny Danon is set to address the UN Security Council during a special meeting on the Middle East, in which he plans to bring up the UN bodies that are among B’Tselem’s funders, and argue that the funding prevents the group from giving reliably objective reports to the UN.
B’Tselem and its director, Hagai El-Ad, were taken to task by Israeli officials for participating on Friday in a session of the UN Security Council, during which El-Ad criticized Israeli settlement policy.
“In the year 2016, three UN bodies gave money to fund B’Tselem,” Danon said in a statement. “It is no coincidence that exactly that organization was invited to speak before the UN in order to harm Israel.”
His implication seemed to be that the UN bodies involved already taken a clear stand against Israel and its settlements.

US ‘troubled’ by attacks on Israeli rights group B’Tselem

A US official on Monday defended Israeli human rights group B’Tselem as the organization came under fierce criticism in Israel, saying Washington valued the information it provided about the situation in the West Bank and that free speech must be protected, Haaretz reported.
B’Tselem was slammed in Israel for its participation Friday in a session of the UN Security Council, in which the NGO’s director criticized Israeli settlement policy.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that the organization had joined the “chorus of mudslinging” against Israel and denounced it as “shoddy and unhinged.” He threatened to advance a law to block national service volunteers from working with the organization, even as the group pointed out that it only had one such volunteer annually, and the position was currently vacant.
Zionist Union MK Itzik Shmuli said the group was helping to advance “the libel and demonization of Israel.” A Labor party activist even lodged a police complaint for alleged treason by the organization.

Study Links Climate Change With Lack Of Israel-Arab Resolution (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Gothenburg, October 19 - A team of scientists at the University of Gothenburg have found what they claim constitutes a firm causative connection between the ongoing Israeli-Arab conflict and the documented rise in global temperatures over the last 150 years.

Researchers studying the data related to both phenomena write in an article in the upcoming issue of Climate magazine that the steady rise in global average annual temperatures features eerie parallels with the advent of political Zionism and the efforts of the Arab population of the Holy Land to resist that movement.

Lead author Dr. Sheen Nuyakleem described in an interview the myriad links between the ongoing conflict and climate change. "It begins with the temperature changes matching the increasing intensity of the Arab-Israeli conflict, of course," he explained. "But we also found that if you massage the data just so, each time the pre-Israel Jewish community managed to defend itself, and each time the established state successfully thwarted attempts to wipe it off the map, the pace of temperature increase rose. It's almost as if this conflict really does lie at the core of every major problem facing civilization."

That assumption, which governs much of Europe's and the US's diplomatic policies, formed the basis of the research. "Science has some axioms, and this one has proved robust in the field of diplomacy, so we figured we'd adopt it as well," continued Dr. Nuyakleem. "Simplicity is always a goal in the scientific method, so reducing the problem of climate change to a function of Israel's continued existence and security provides an elegant solution to two messy challenges facing the world today."

Other scientists were quick to point out that the study did not suggest any specific remedies to be adopted in light of the new findings. "This was purely a research effort," insisted Professor Emeritus George Galloway of Bradford University, who was not involved in the study. "Policy decisions are the province of the politicians, and I am sure they will wait for duplication and confirmation of these conclusions in further studies before rushing to fix both problems once and for all with some drastic measure aimed at ending Israel's existence, no matter how compelling those solutions might seem."

'More than compelling," he mused. "Bloody obvious, come to think of it. Do you think any further study is actually necessary? I mean, this is rock-solid stuff. [Labour Party chief Jeremy] Corbyn might want to have a look at it. He's very science-minded, you know?"

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10/19 Links Pt1: A victory in self-deception; Fatah Prepares for War with Israel

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemini: A victory in self-deception

The Palestinian ‘narrative’ has scored another victory, this time at UNESCO. But it’s not a victory; it’s actually a defeat. The addiction to lies does not change reality or solve any problem—it pushes away the chance for reconciliation or peace.
Dr. Omar Jaara of An-Najah University appeared on Palestinian television four years ago and said that Moses had led the Muslims out of Egypt and that the subsequent Israeli conquest of the land was “the first case of a Palestinian liberation through an armed struggle.” He attributed the battle between David and Goliath to the Palestinians as well.
For a moment, it seemed like a satire program, but it was completely serious. “This is our logic, and this is our culture,” Jaara explained in the interview, which was recorded by Palestinian Media Watch.
Four years have passed and the historian is celebrating. The Palestinian “narrative” has scored another victory, this time at UNESCO. Allegedly, this not just a victory but an overwhelming victory: Although Brazil and Mexico expressed reservations over the resolution on Tuesday, there was no new vote, and the decision remained unchanged. The Palestinians even managed to convince Christian countries, as Israeli diplomat George Deek tweeted, to adopt a resolution which means that “Jesus was a liar.”
There is no big surprise here. After all, we are living in the era of narratives, which is the post-factual era. It possible that in a year or two, UNESCO or another international organization will adopt a resolution confirming Jaara’s narrative about the Exodus from Egypt.

PMW: Abbas' Antisemitic advisor's duplicity

Abbas' Antisemitic advisor's duplicity: With Israeli President last week, he is for: "eradication of religious hatred"
Yet to Palestinians he preaches religious hatred: Jews represent "evil," "falsehood," "the devils," and "the satans" and Israel is "Satan's project" [Official PA TV, Oct. 23, 2015]
Earlier this month, Israel's president Reuven Rivlin met with Mahmoud Abbas' Advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, at a meeting with Israeli rabbis and Palestinian religious leaders. [The New York Times, Oct. 13, 2016]
The meeting was "intended, according to organizers, to forge a joint effort against religious violence, and to promote peace and coexistence," the New York Times wrote, citing a statement released by the participants:
"We believe the deliberate killing of or attempt to kill innocents is terrorism, whether it is committed by Muslims, Jews or others. In this spirit, we encourage all our people to work for a just peace, mutual respect for human life and for the status quo on the holy sites, and the eradication of religious hatred." [The New York Times, Oct. 13, 2016]
This example of Al-Habbash participating in a "co-existence" event with Israelis and presenting himself as a peace-seeking moderate is typical of the Palestinian Authority leadership's duplicity. To his Palestinian audience, Al-Habbash does not ever try to "eradicate religious hatred," but just the opposite. He promotes religious hatred and even preached that according to Islam it's prohibited to recognize Israel's existence of even a millimeter of land.
In addition to being Abbas' advisor, Mahmoud Al-Habbash serves as the PA's Supreme Shari'ah Judge and Chairman of the Supreme Council for Shari'ah Justice.

Abbas advisor: "Jerusalem... and the [Western Wall]... are all purely Islamic"

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Fatah Prepares for War with Israel

"We have pledged to prepare an army of fighters by devoting our full abilities and energies to consolidate the option of armed struggle as the only means to liberate Palestine." — The armed wing of Fatah, Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Martyr Nidal Al-Amoudi Division.
The international community continues to perceive Fatah as the "moderate" Palestinian party with whom Israel should make peace. Yet Fatah is far from a single united bloc; many groups within the faction continue to seek the "liberation of Palestine" through armed struggle. Moreover, neither Abbas nor any of his senior Fatah loyalists have repudiated the war-set Fatah militias. Crucially, many of these Fatah militiamen continue to receive salaries from the Palestinian Authority.
These Fatah gunmen who are preparing for war with Israel are indirectly receiving their salaries from Western donors, including the US and many EU countries, who fund the Palestinian Authority.
These groups believe that they represent the real Fatah, the one that never recognized Israel's right to exist and holds on to armed struggle as the only way to "liberate Palestine." They are not breakaway groups. That is why they continue to operate under the name of Fatah.
Fatah is a two-faced hydra; one face tells the English-speaking international community what it wants to hear, namely, that it supports a two-state solution and seeks a peaceful settlement to the conflict with Israel, while the other tells the truth: it is committed to an armed struggle and the "liberation of Palestine," and is even preparing for war with Israel.

Dr. Moustafa El Leddawi, a former Hamas leader in Lebanon and Syria, has written offensive and antisemitic screeds before. He said that Jesus was the first "Palestinian fedayeen (freedom fighter)" and that, in contrast, the Jewish messiah is supposed to be a "terrorist."

And he has referred to the medieval blood libel as fact.

Leddawi has done it again, this time in the context of Sukkot rather than Passover.

He writes in a Libyan news site that while Jews celebrate and rejoice during the holiday, Palestinians are "tortured and persecuted."

Not only that, but Jewish joy during a holiday is dependent on making Palestinian lives miserable, according to Leddawi. The Jews "rejoice at their sorrows and dance on their wounds," he writes.

Muslims who object to Jewish celebrations, we are told, are either killed or arrested.

He concludes:

It is odd how glad these Jews are at the sorrows of others, and how they build their happiness on the misery of their neighbors, and how they accept for themselves joy while others are tortured and persecuted, and suffer and suffer - but this is not surprising. In history, while they were in Europe, they kidnapped Christian children and pierced them and gathered their blood in pots, and then made their holiday pie, to rejoice with their children, and eat the [Christians]. This is their joy on the blood of innocent children, and they are not strangers to building their happiness on the misery of others.

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