Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Dam!

Ma'an "reported" on Friday:

The Gaza government's Disaster Response Committee announced late Friday that Israeli authorities had opened up dams just east of the Gaza Strip, flooding numerous residential areas in nearby villages within the coastal territory.

Committee chairman Yasser Shanti said in a press conference that Israeli authorities had opened up dams just to the east of the border with the Gaza Strip earlier in the day.

He warned that residential areas within the Gaza Valley would be flooding within the coming hours.

And look at that - they did get flooded, just as he predicted! The torrential rains had little to do with the Gazans being under up to 2 meters of water - it was all from Israel keeping huge amounts of water in storage in the Negev, just waiting for the right time to flood Gaza! (Which, coincidentally, happens during rainstorms.)

Iran's PressTV reported the dam story as well, as multiple Gazans told the tall tale:

Followers of this blog may remember that there was flooding in Gaza during a huge rainstorm in 2010, and they blamed Israel opening up a dam then as well.

I looked hard to find any dam between southern Israel (which is, of course, desert) and Gaza. Finally, I found it.

In 2001, a reservoir in Nahal Oz burst, and it did cause some flooding in Gaza. NGO Al Mezan said that the 2010 flooding was caused by the same "dam" that was opened by Israel in 2001, just to make Gazans' lives miserable.

And the "dam" story seemed to grow from there from a simple lie to a complex web of lies.

(h/t Asher)

Gaza woes open the floodgate of anti-Israel lies

Ma'an writes:

The Gaza Strip has been without a functioning power plant since the beginning of November, when the plant ran out of diesel fuel as a result of the tightening of a seven-year-long blockade imposed on the territory by Israel with Egyptian support.

The plant didn't run out of fuel because of any Israeli blockade. It ran out because Hamas refused to pay the going rates according to existing agreements with the PA. They chose to let their people suffer instead.

The plant itself was only reopened last year after it was targeted by an Israeli airstrike in the 2006 assault on the Strip.

Ma'an has been writing this in other articles as well. It is completely false. The power plant has been running since December 2007.

In another Ma'an article:

UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness said that large regions of the Gaza Strip are a "disaster area" and called on the world community to lift the Israeli blockade in order to allow recovery efforts to proceed, in a statement sent to Ma'an.

The Kerem Shalom crossing has never - not once - hit its capacity of allowing goods and aid into Gaza. Most days it is only at about half of what it can handle. If the closure was causing the problems in Gaza, wouldn't we be seeing Kerem Shalom over capacity?

Israel used to limit a lot of goods into Gaza. That ended over four years ago - since then, any goods that could not be used against Israel militarily have been allowed in. But anti-Israel organizations like UNRWA like to lie to pressure Israel.

12/14 Links: Lawrence Summers: Academic boycott is “anti-Semitism in effect", UNSC Condemns Snowstorm

From Ian:

Lawrence Summers: Academic boycott of Israel is “anti-Semitism in effect”
Here is the Summers interview with Charlie Rose specifically on the ASA boycott resolution (full interview here, segment starts at 35:00)):

This particular academic boycott is much worse, it is much worse because the idea that of all the countries in the world that might be thought to have human rights abuses, that might be thought to have inappropriate foreign policies, that might be thought to be doing things wrong, the idea that there’s only one that is worthy of boycott, and that is Israel, one of the very few countries whose neighbors regularly vow its annihilation, that that would be the one chosen, is I think beyond outrageous as a suggestion….
Charlie, I said some time ago with respect to a similar set of efforts, that I regarded them as being anti-Semitic in their effect if not necessarily in their intent. And I think that’s the right thing to say about singling out Israel.
If there was an academic boycott against a whole set of countries that stunted their populations in some way, I would oppose that because I think academic boycotts are abhorrent, but the choice of only Israel at a moment when Israel faces this kind of existential threat I think takes how wrong this is to a different level.
My hope would be that responsible university leaders will become very reluctant to see their universities’ funds used to finance faculty membership and faculty travel to an association that is showing itself not to be a scholarly association bur really more of a political tool.

Jerusalem snow: UN Security Council to convene emergency session (satire)

Speaking from Ramallah the Palestinian Authority's leading cleric Sheikh Mohammed Luni Jihad asserted that the Israelis created the snowstorm specifically to punish the Palestinians and in particular to destroy the Al Asqa Mosque. While some climate scientists have disputed certain aspects of the Sheikh's claim, there is universal agreement that this kind of freak snowstorm is due to man-made global warming which is caused mainly by the Zionist control of all the world's natural resources. Al Gore and David Cameron both confirmed that the 'science was settled' for this.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon was quick to agree to the special security council session, stating that there was no greater tragedy in the world today than the sufferings of the Palestinians, and that the snowstorm was a 'disproportionate response' by the Israelis to recent 'minor' provocations. The latter reference was to the totally harmless past time of Arab youths in Jerusalem to stone Jewish women and children (which in some cases does not even lead to death or serious injury). US Secretary of State John Kerry warned the Israelis that if the snow storm was allowed to continue - and hence deprive the Palestinian youths of the opportunity to stone Jews - then he would personally support a third intifada. Fortunately the Arab youths have already found inventive ways to express their frustrations in the snow.

Caroline Glick: Pollard and an American Jewish renaissance

Pollard’s case is meaningful because it is hard.
It isn’t easy to defend Pollard. He betrayed the US government.
But the government’s disproportionate and unjust treatment of him owes entirely to the fact that he is an American Jew. Until he receives justice, no American Jew can be certain that his or her constitutional right to equal protection under the law will be respected. Defending Pollard means defending Jewish rights. And defending Jewish rights also involves communal identification in a deep and significant way.
..
Finally, Pollard’s case is a good case to take up as a communal cause because there is every reason to believe that such communal action can succeed. As Esther Pollard wrote in The Jerusalem Post this week, during the White House Hanukka party, Obama said that clemency for Pollard is “under consideration.”
Nothing breeds success like success. A successful American Jewish campaign to secure Pollard’s release could serve as a building block to a communal revitalization and renaissance. That is, the worst act of governmental discrimination carried out against the American Jewish community could serve as the basis for a renewal of the community at a key moment in its history.

The connection between Swedish aid and Palestinian media antisemitism

Why Sweden continues to provide aid to the MDC is still a mystery. In Sidas report for 2010- 2012 and many times before it is stressed that there is no impact on developing the free democratic media that Sweden wants to create in the PA and Gaza. Sida has even been advised to end the support to the MDC.
Sida claims it wants media to help building a democratic and peaceful society. However as long as the antisemitism and the glorification of terror exist in the Palestinian media, the media will always remain undemocratic and undeveloped and can not build a peaceful society.

Unsubstantiated BBC claim re-promoted in follow-up story

On December 4th the BBC News website published a follow-up to a story it featured last July concerning an Iraqi man who was marooned at Almaty airport after he tried to enter Kazakhstan without a visa.
The latest story links back to the original article by the BBC’s Central Asia correspondent Rayhan Demytrie in which the unsubstantiated and apparently gratuitous claim that “Israel won’t allow him to travel to the Palestinian territories” still appears.
In the follow-up story, Mohammed al Bahish’s Iraqi origins are completely erased and he is curiously portrayed solely as “Palestinian”.

Into The Fray: Wacko in Washington

Blueprint for a horrific future
There is much that has been left unsaid about the disastrous direction in which US foreign policy is headed. But even from the abbreviated critique that has been laid out above, one thing clearly emerges.
The agenda being aggressively advanced by Obama and Kerry is founded on myth and/or malice.
It is prolonging the conflict by propagating and perpetuating pernicious fictions and falsehoods.
History will prove it to be a blueprint for a horrific future – for Jews and Muslims alike.

PA Formally Refuses to Recognize Jewish State

Abbas' rejection of US Secretary of State John Kerry's proposals in Ramallah Thursday night came after similar remarks to a public radio station earlier in the night. The PA source confirmed Friday that Abbas "has rejected the ideas" presented by Kerry.
The source also revealed that Abbas had given Kerry a letter on "Palestinian red lines," which include his "refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state."

EU to Offer Massive Aid Package to Israel, Palestinians if Peace Deal Reached

The package—spearheaded by the foreign ministers of Germany, U.K., France, Spain, and Italy—is reportedly worth billions of euros and would include incentives such as increased access to the EU market, closer cultural and scientific ties, facilitation of trade and investment, promotion of business-to-business relations, enhanced political dialogue, and security cooperation, Haaretz reported.
But according to Maariv, the EU’s resolution on the package also called Jewish construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem an “obstacle to peace” and expressed “deep concern with regard to incitement, violent incidents in the occupied territories, house demolitions and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza.”

French town honors killer of US, Israeli diplomats

A majority of aldermen in the city council of Bagnolet east of the French capital voted on Wednesday to make the Lebanese citizen Georges Ibrahim Abdallah an honorary resident, calling him a “communist activist” and “political prisoner” who “belongs to the resistance movement of Lebanon, his country,” French media reported Friday.
Abdallah, a founder of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction, was captured in 1984. A French court sentenced him in 1987 to life in prison for “complicity in the assassinations” in 1982 of Charles R. Ray, a US military attaché serving in Paris, and Yacov Bar-Simantov, a second counsellor at the Israeli embassy in Paris.

Israel-Bashers Let the Bedouin Rot

Let there be no mistake about the fact that Israel’s leftist foes don’t give a damn about the Bedouin. Bringing water, sewage, electricity and educational services to camps that can stretch out for miles in places throughout the desert is impossible. While most of the existing Bedouin towns can be left in place, the most far-flung need to be consolidated if the people who live there are not going to be left in shacks with no connections to the country’s first-world economy. Connecting them to the grid means some have to move.
Much like the descendants of the 1948 Palestinian refugees, the Bedouin only serve a purpose to Israel-bashers if they can be portrayed as victims of the Zionists. They don’t care that the main purpose of the Prawer-Begin plan was to help the Bedouin. Those who claim to demonstrate on their behalf have done nothing for either group. Indeed, the more miserable their existence, the better they like it. Any deprivation faced by this population is fine, so long as it serves to make the Israelis look like exploiters. The crocodile tears they shed for the Bedouin will be swiftly forgotten as they move on to other issues and Israelis who argued about it will similarly push them to the back of the national agenda.

Jury Withholds Winners of Badil’s “Al-Awada” Caricature Contest

Palestinian NGO Badil announced that the “jury decided to withhold” the winners of the “Best Caricature” category in this year’s “Al-Awada Awards” contest. In previous years, awards were given to blatantly antisemitic submissions.
On May 5, 2010, Badil awarded second place in the category and a $600 monetary prize to a blatantly antisemitic cartoon, featuring a grotesque caricature of a Jewish man standing over dying Arab child and holding a pitchfork dripping with blood. The man is standing on a platform inscribed with “1948” and the Star of David, labeling the establishment of Israel as murderous and evil.

Stand With US: Palestinian Leaders Glorify Violence

Raining on Hamas’s parade

It is hard to grasp the monumental change that Hamas has undergone since it celebrated its 25th anniversary a year ago. Then, the head of the political bureau of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal, came to the Gaza Strip in order to mark the “great victory” over Israel in Pillar of Defense. Almost a half a million people went out to greet him during the main ceremony.
But a lot has happened since then: Hamas’s Muslim Brotherhood allies were forced out of power, the Egyptian army managed to close most of the tunnels between the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza, and Hamas was officially designated a terrorist organization by Egypt — at least according to the indictment against ousted Egyptian president Mohammad Morsi, whose trial begins soon. (The exact charge against Morsi is “cooperation with the terror organization Hamas.”)

Former U.S. Embassy In Iran Turned Into Anti-American Museum

The former U.S. embassy in Iran has been turned in an anti-American museum, CBS reported Friday.
The embassy, famously seized in the Iranian Revolution of 1979, is now known by hardliners as the “nest of spies.” A mural lining the staircase shows the shows the hardliners’ “deep-seated paranoia and animosity towards America,” said CBS correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.
But while hardliners still view the Unite States as their main enemy, Palmer says, millions want to move past the “clumsy anti-Americanism for a more constructive future.”

Iran arrests man accused of spying for Britain's MI6

Iranian intelligence authorities have arrested a man on charges of spying for Britain's MI6, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Saturday.
The head of the Kerman region's revolutionary court, Dadkhoda Salari, told the agency the suspect made contact with British agents 11 times in recent months, inside and outside the country.
According to Salari, the suspect has admitted his guilt and he is currently on trial.

UK police arrest 3 soccer fans over anti-Semitic tweets

Police said two men, aged 22 and 24, were arrested Thursday in London and in Wiltshire, Reuters reported Friday. A third man, 48, man was arrested at his home in Canning Town in London last week on suspicion of inciting racial hatred.
An investigation was triggered following a soccer match on Oct. 6 by complaints about tweets that referred to Hitler and the gas chambers in connection to a match between Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United.

Wiesenthal Center Calls for Najwa Karam to be Fired From ‘Arabs Got Talent’ Show

The call comes following the revelation on Thursday that entertainment mogul Simon Cowell’s Syco television empire which created and licenses the ‘Got Talent’ show format, is investigating comments made by Karam last year in which she praised Adolf Hitler.
“She should be fired and everyone in the Arab world should know why,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of SWC said. “Veneration of what the Nazis did is widespread in that part of the world. It is shorthand for hatred of Israel and the Jewish people.”

Poland to honor partisan who warned about Holocaust

Poland’s parliament named 2014 the Year of Jan Karski, honoring the man who alerted the allies about the Holocaust.
Last week’s unanimous vote in the Sejm marked the centennial of Karski’s birth.
Karski, who is not Jewish, was born in Lodz in 1914 and was a courier for the Polish resistance during World War II.
He infiltrated the Warsaw Ghetto and the Izbica transit camp and was among the first to relay first-hand news of the Holocaust to the West.

Israeli start-up seeks to end roaming charges

An Israeli startup is trying to combat a common fear for international travelers: getting socked with hundreds or thousands of dollars in unexpected roaming charges for using cellphones away from home.
Cell Buddy aims to turn any smartphone into a local one. Travelers can choose from an array of calling and data plans with carriers in dozens of countries. As a result, they pay local rates — not the pricey fees charged by their wireless carriers at home.

"Arab governments gave more for Sandy relief than for Gaza floods"

Palestine Today has an angry article about how Arab governments have abandoned Gaza.

The author states that in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy on the East Coast of the US last year, Bahrain donated $5 million, Saudi Arabia $250 million, Kuwait $500m, Qatar and the UAE $100m each. (Most of these numbers seem to be somewhat true, although many were pledges and it is unclear if they were ever paid.)

According to the article, the Arab world has decided to abandon Gaza, mostly because of Hamas' Islamist roots and connections with the Muslim Brotherhood which Gulf states are afraid of in their own countries.

Yet there is still an irony there that Gulf states that have so much oil are not giving it to Gaza during the current crisis. The article, of course, doesn't note Hamas' role in the fuel shortages in Gaza, nor that Hamas reportedly refused a deal which would have brought Qatar oil to Gaza via Israel.

Meanwhile, Israel will transfer enough fuel to Gaza tomorrow to allow the power plant to re-open:

Following discussions between COGAT and the International aid agencies operating in Gaza, the transfer of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing will continue tomorrow. This includes 1.2 million liters of gas: 800,000 liters of diesel fuel for transportation, and 400,000 liters of diesel fuel for the Gaza power station, and another 200 tons of household gas. The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories maintains ongoing coordination with the Palestinian Authority.

Last night #Israel facilitated access of special pumps to #Gaza in order to deal with flooding. pic.twitter.com/blsSpRSp7j
— Peter Lerner (@LTCPeterLerner) December 14, 2013

Arab sources note that Kerem Shalom will be open for 12 hours a day this coming week to ensure that all the aid that is requested can get transferred.

Yes, Israel is helping Gaza more than the Arabs are. And everyone knows that the Arabs will not ever publicly thank Israel for this, they will not tone down their rhetoric, they will not move a millimeter from their position that Israel is hell bent on ethnically cleansing them.

Israel doesn't help Gazans because of PR. It doesn't help Gazans because of goodwill. It doesn't help Gazans because NGOs claim that Israel is still "occupying" Gaza. Israel helps Gazans because it is the right thing to do, and it does it despite the hate that Arabs have for Israel.

12/13 Links Pt2: The legal case for Judea and Samaria, EU official defends paying Palestinians not to work

From Ian:

The legal case for Judea and Samaria

If we were to make a gross generalization, the world has adopted the Palestinian narrative as it relates to the legal status of the territories. Even those who negotiate on behalf of the State of Israel, men and women who officially adhere to the party line that Judea and Samaria, the cradle of Jewish civilization and peoplehood, is not occupied territory, have long ceased to make this statement publicly, just as they haven't even bothered to make use of a long list of legal and historical arguments that support this position.
While it may seem that this train has long left the station, we were surprised to suddenly learn that for months now a counterattack has been waged over "the historical, legal truth." This is a campaign that is being waged by hundreds of jurists from Israel and abroad who aren't making do with the usual "rights of our forefathers" or "Zionism" rejoinders which are now devoid of currency in the international arena and the High Court of Justice.

Why Israel is boycotted

The attempts to boycott Israel or mark its products, interfere in its ancient geography or mark it as racist, fascist or Nazi are the current political expression of Israel's ancient characterization as "a nation that dwells alone." The return to Zion is the Jewish nation's return to history, to life as a sovereign people in its ancient homeland. Calls for boycott were made even before the establishment of the state. While these calls came from the extremist factions at the time, they moved toward the center as the years went by, particularly after 1967. That was when we came back to the cradle of our nationhood, to the historical places most closely connected with our identity. Most important, we came back to Jerusalem, which is also linked with the identity of the world's nations. The fight against Israel -- which is a fight against history's law of the return to Zion -- is evidence of how hard it is for Israel's opponents to deal with the Jews' return to life after having been in a state of living death for so long. That is why we and our products are marked, why the badge of shame is being placed upon us once again, why we are being isolated and boycotted. This is our adversaries' way of saying: "You are not one of us."

EU shows it’s unhappy to fund divided, dysfunctional Palestinians

But stopping funding for Gaza may just be a prelude to much broader measures. European officials have been mulling the possibility of cutting funding to the PA altogether if talks between Israel and the Palestinians fail to bring about tangible results. This is a possibility not all officials like mentioning; some prefer to present the cup half full: Europe will significantly increase funding if talks succeed, one diplomat said.
A key word in the new European report is “conditionality.” Europe feels it has been doling out billions of euros in aid to the Palestinian Authority with no mechanism of checking its impact or benefit. That, it seems, is about to change; Europe will demand more accountability from the Palestinian Authority and stop treating the Fatah-Hamas schism as a temporary situation.

Idiotic EU official defends paying Palestinians not to work
The story was widely reported and brought the following letter to the editor of The Financial Times, from an EU official:

Sir, While I appreciate the welcome coverage given to the vital work being done by the EU in Palestine, your report “Brussels criticised for paying Gaza civil servants who no longer work” (December 11) is misleading. Indeed, it would have been useful to remind your readers that the existence of the Palestinian Authority, and its ability to provide basic services to its citizens, is a precondition for a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This has been the cornerstone of EU policy on the conflict, fully supported by all member states. In this context, the European Commission and the member states have considered it vital that the Palestinian Authority is able to support its workers in the West Bank and in Gaza as a key element of a future Palestinian state.

Jerusalem slams Dutch water company’s ‘self-righteous hypocrisy’

Israel on Thursday condemned the “self-righteous hypocrisy” of Dutch government-owned water company Vitens, after it emerged that the company still cooperates with the water authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. On Tuesday, Vitens had announced it would cease working with Israel’s national water supplier Mekorot because it provides water to Jewish communities in the West Bank.
“This only confirms yet again that Vitens’ move regarding Mekorot is heavily tainted with self-righteous hypocrisy and has nothing to do with international law,” the spokesperson of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Yigal Palmor, told The Times of Israel Thursday. “Cowardly caving in to pressure by radicals and extremists will only encourage more iniquitous actions, and Vitens’s verbose moralizing will bring them more of this kind.”

Government shelves Prawer Plan on Bedouin settlement

The controversial Prawer Plan to solve the issue of unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev will be scrapped, one of the bill’s chief architects announced Thursday.
Former minister Benny Begin, who worked on the bill with Ehud Prawer, head of policy planning in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, told reporters at a press conference that “the prime minister accepted my advice to delay bringing the Bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev to a Knesset vote.”

Another missed opportunity

All of this would be acceptable if nixing the law actually served the interests of one side. But this is not the case. Most of the Bedouin who hope for economic and social advancement understand that Begin-Prawer's land settlement could have solved their problem. But in the Arab sector a pattern of behavior has been established where nothing reasonable or effective can be undertaken if it involves cooperating with Jews.

After CounterPunch Interview ADL Accuses Roger Waters of ‘Conspiratorial Anti-Semitism’

After formerly defending rock star Roger Waters from charges of anti-Semitism, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has concluded that the former Pink Floyd bassist is an anti-Semite.
The latest stance from the ADL follows the publication by CounterPunch magazine of an interview with Waters in which he compared Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, and referred to the “Jewish lobby” as the reason why so few celebrities have joined the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

Roger Waters: The professional liar

The BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement is the most prominent anti-Israel movement in the West. It is neither a peace movement nor an anti-occupation movement. It is a movement that supports the destruction of the State of Israel in order to establish a single state in its stead. The BDS movement’s leaders declare this openly and publicly. Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame has in recent years become one of BDS’s most important and celebrated spokespeople. Waters gives frequent interviews to explain his position. It is important to pay attention to what he says in order to expose how this industry of lies works.

The anti-Semitic stench of Pink Floyd

I’ve read some heavy-duty attacks on Israel and Jews in my time, but they pale beside the anti-Semitic diatribe recently offered by Roger Waters, Pink Floyd’s co-founder and former front man. In an interview with CounterPunch online magazine, Waters experienced a Jew-hating colonic where he purged himself of all the racist refuse that had accumulated in his putrid system and clearly required release.

Good people opposing academic boycott of Israel

I don’t know what the outcome will be regarding the proposal by the American Studies Association to boycott Israeli academic institutions. The membership voting ends December 15.
While the proposal took pro-Israel and/or pro-Academic Freedom academics by surprise, it was years in the making by devoted the BDS activists who now run the ASA and some other academic associations.
The vote will not be the end. Pro-Israel and/or pro-Academic Freedom academics and groups will need to assess how to oppose the mob rule that increasingly determines the very thing that should not be subjected to mob rule, academic freedom.

American Studies Association purges their Facebook page of critical comments

If you visit the site today (at least as of this morning) you will see that it has been cleansed of every posting relevant to the boycott posted yesterday (December 11).
Under normal circumstances, I’d take solace in the notion of hypocrisy being the complement vice pays to virtue. But what are we to make of an organization that, in attempting to shut down inquiry with their Israeli colleagues is ready to first shut it down among its own members while simultaneously sending out e-mails urging people to participate in “discussion and healthy debate”?

The Disinformation Age

Around the time the Newseum announced it would put members of a designated terrorist organization on the Journalism Memorial Wall, we learned that Ahmed Haidar, an employee of al-Manar, was already there. It's unclear when he was so honored. What is clear is that the Newseum knows al-Manar is owned by Hezbollah -- and that both are designated terrorist entities.
As with the al-Aqsa employees, it is not certain that Haidar ever actually contributed to any journalistic products whatsoever. In its designation of al-Manar, the U.S. Treasury Department noted that some of those on the organization's payroll are "engaged in pre-operational surveillance for Hezballah operations under cover of employment by al-Manar."
In other words, "just because you carry a camera and a notebook doesn't make you a journalist."

A Tour of New York Times Editorializing

A brief CAMERA video documents a number of recent examples of anti-Israel editorializing in the supposedly impartial New York Times news pages.

Modern day Nazi salute sweeping Europe, expert warns

A neo-Nazi gesture, regarded by anti-Semitism researchers as a modern day Nazi salute, is rapidly spreading among anti-Semites in Europe and is being used by individuals to fly under the radar of strict anti-hate speech laws in parts of the continent.
The “quenellle” signal, extending one’s right hand toward the ground while the left hand grasps the shoulder, was devised by Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, a controversial French comedian who has been condemned in court several times for anti-Semitic remarks.

Simon Cowell’s Syco Investigating Lebanese ‘Arabs Got Talent’ Judge Who Admires Hitler’s ‘Persuasive’ Speeches

The Lebanese host of ‘Arabs Got Talent,’ an international franchise of Simon Cowell’s Syco television empire, is in hot water with the UK parent company for saying how much she admired the public speaking abilities of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, in an interview on Lebanese MTV, the UK’s Jewish News reported on Thursday.
Lebanese singer Najwa Karam, who has sold 50 million records and was the Arab face of the L’Oreal cosmetics line until last year, when asked on the Arabic-language interview program ‘Talk of the Town,’ in an episode aired on June 28, 2012, if she could choose attributes from six famous men to create the “ideal man” the first idea to pop into Karam’s head was Hitler’s “persuasive” speaking ability.

Romanian FM: ‘Burn kike’ song merits prosecution

Romania’s foreign minister has called on his country’s judiciary to prosecute the parties responsible for the airing of a Christmas carol about burning Jews.
Titus Corlatean made the statement Thursday following international uproar over the public broadcasters TVR3’s television transmission last week of a song by the Dor Transilvan ensemble, which celebrated the Holocaust.

Pakistani Blogger Calls For Reform In Textbooks:

Recently, Pakistani blogger Bakhtawar Bilal Soofi examined the influence of school textbooks on young children in Pakistan and they subtle ways in which they come to imbue negative ideas about other religions and communities.[1]
Soofi, whose blog post titled "An Intolerant Educational System Made Me Indifferent To The Death Of Non-Muslims" was published on the website of The Express Tribune daily, suggested ways to inculcate pluralistic thinking among Pakistani youth.

IDF Blog: 5 Technologies that Keep the IDF on the Cutting Edge

Groundbreaking technologies are advancing the IDF’s capabilities and eliminating threats. With these advanced tools in the hands of its soldiers, the IDF protects the people of Israel.
In a major speech last October, IDF Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz described the wide-ranging threats facing Israel in the near future. According to the Chief of Staff, the IDF could be forced to contend with anything from missile strikes on military sites to large-scale battles and cyber attacks that would paralyze Israel’s infrastructure.

A Clean Tech Air Force By 2033: That’s the IAF’s Green Goal

In the past two years, the Israel Air Force has been undergoing a huge change for the greener, and is using clean technology from around the world to become a net-zero-energy air force by the year 2033.
With the dramatic increases in the prices of gas, water and electricity in the past few years, coupled with military budget cuts, the Israel Air Force has been doing everything possible to switch over to systems that will bring significant energy savings over the next few years and into the future.

States hope to repeat Mass.-Israel tech success

Overall, job growth at the Israeli companies grew five times faster than the state’s overall employment growth rate from 2010 to 2012. Over that period, revenue at Israeli-founded companies in the state grew three times faster than in the Massachusetts economy overall, with revenue growth double that of the state’s most important IT and professional services sectors, including life sciences, the study showed.
The data explains the rush of US states to set up deals with Israel, organizing partnerships with government and academic institutions. The study identified 16 governors and nine mayors who have conducted trade missions to Israel since 2010, all of them touting their state as the best destination for Israeli start-ups seeking to expand to the US.

Part 2: The Church of Ireland Library's 115-Year-Old Photographic Treasure

We present here Part 2 from the Church of Ireland Library's photographic collection of pictures taken by David Brown in 1897.

IDF helping West Bank, Gaza Arabs during storm

From the IDF:

As a result of the weather and a request by representatives of the United Nations to the head of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Major General Eitan Dangot, the Kerem Shalom Border Crossing was opened specially this morning in order to transfer gas for home heating. Additionally, as the day goes on, four water pumps will be transferred to the Gaza Strip due to heavy flooding.

The additional activities at the Kerem Shalom Border Crossing, as well as the transfer of additional water pumps is being made possible by the COGAT, the Ministry of Defense and the company Mekorot, in coordination with UN agencies.

COGAT is in communications with the Palestinian Authority and the international community, updating them on the situation. The IDF emphasizes that Israel will do everything that is necessary to assist the civilian populations in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria, with an emphasis on providing electricity to the power plant in Gaza.

Furthermore, COGAT has opened a shared Israeli-Palestinian situation room with the goal of assisting civilians in distress in Judea and Samaria, with an emphasis on transportation and electricity.

Kerem Shalom is normally closed on Fridays.

The pumps for Gaza are being paid for by the PA.

The flooding in Gaza is serious:

12/13 Links Pt1: The Neo-Mandate Solution, Palestinian refugees - a reality check

From Ian:

Barry Rubin: Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Neo-Mandate Solution

For example, is the U.S. air force going to bomb a building in Gaza that is an open headquarter for Gaza rocket and terrorist attacks? Will it aggressively go after foreign fighters, even if those foreign fighters have attacked Americans? Will it send them to Guantanamo Bay? Will it respond to criticism in the UN? May I point out that U.S. counterterrorism policy has not been very aggressive of late.
Think about Benghazi.
The United States will then have two choices:
1. The U.S. helps Israel, albeit with constant opposition, and alienates the Arab and Iranian and Turkish world.
2. The United States will gradually get tired of the burden and walk away from it.
In other words, Israel would not benefit from what can only be called "ObamaStrategicCare."
If you like it, no matter what you've heard, you can keep your strategic patron or plan, you can keep your ally (Obama), and you'll save money. No one will be able to take that away from you. (h/t NormanF)

Israelis and Palestinians Don’t Share Kerry’s Optimism on Peace Talks

While U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry returned from his Middle East trip last week with an optimistic message, following his latest attempt to foster progress in Israel-Palestinian peace talks and the presentation of a security proposal to both sides, Israelis and Palestinians aren’t sharing his positive outlook.
From Dec. 4-6, Kerry accompanied in Jerusalem and Ramallah by retired four-star Marine Gen. John Allen, the former U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Allen presented Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas with what Kerry and the State Department have carefully described as only “some thoughts” on the resolution of security issues that have been obstructing progress in negotiations.

Open letter to Secretary of State John Kerry

Dear Mr. Secretary of State,
We don’t know each other personally, but in my position as assistant to the IDF chief of General Staff, I have been closely following your every move. When you met, as a senator, with Bashar Assad in Damascus, I was flabbergasted when you proclaimed that this was a great opportunity to make peace with Syria’s modern and moderate leader.
Over the past few months, I’ve been listening very closely to your speeches and statements about events in the Middle East and what actions you think Israel should take. I would like to describe to you a slightly different reality, one which I’ve experienced through the various senior IDF positions I’ve held, through the military reserve duty which I still actively carry out and from living with my family in Beit Horon, a community situated between Jerusalem and Modi’in (you’d probably call it a West Bank settlement) where we have been living alongside Palestinian neighbors for many years.

Abbas Rejects Israeli Security Presence in the Jordan Valley

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has said that if Israel insists on maintaining security presence in the Jordan Valley, there will not be a peace agreement.
Abbas added in the interview that all the Israeli “settlements” are located on “Palestinian land” and must be evicted in order for an agreement to be signed. He added that the PA leadership would agree to extend the current talks by one month, if serious progress is made during the nine-month period that was allocated by the Americans for the talks.

The Palestinian refugees -- a reality check

According to an August 1971 Ford Foundation report, by 1950 the majority of the Palestinian refugees began evacuating the camps and non-refugees moved in to benefit from UNRWA's services. For example, half of the population in the Jalazone refugee camp, near Ramallah, settled there after 1950.
A November 17, 2003 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office documented that less than 33% of registered Palestinian refugees live in refugee camps.

Palestinian teen killer of IDF soldier indicted

A 16-year-old Palestinian was indicted on Thursday for the stabbing death of IDF soldier Eden Atias a month ago.
Hussein Sharif Rawarda, a resident of the West Bank city of Jenin, stands accused of stabbing 19-year-old Atias multiple times in the neck on November 13. The attack took place on a bus in the northern town of Afula.

Baby Avigail's Attackers Charged

The indictment states that the seven youths attacked the car in which toddler Avigail Ben-Tzion was travelling, along with her mother and siblings, in a brutal attack on November 28.
Avigail suffered serious head injuries and was admitted to Jerusalem's Hadassa Ein Kerem hospital. She was discharged three days later after her condition improved, and is currently recovering at home.

Exclusive: Israeli, Palestinian officials to coordinate civilian emergency responses

Israeli and Palestinian officials held a meeting in Hebron this week, the first of its kind, to improve joint coordination in responding to civilian emergencies such as fires and accidents, and to figure out ways to protect the local environment together.
The understandings reached by the participants found expression already on Thursday, when two Palestinian bulldozers joined Israeli bulldozers in clearing routes 36 and 60 after a heavy snow storm blocked the two roads that serve Palestinian and Israeli drivers.

Palestinians slam Guatemalan president for visiting east Jerusalem

PLO Executive Committee member Saeb Erekat expressed “strong dissatisfaction with the response given by the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry regarding complaints made by the State of Palestine on the issue,” according to a statement issued by the PLO.
“We will not accept any attempt to legitimize Israel’s occupation policies, particularly in East Jerusalem,” Erekat was quoted as saying.

Egypt destroys Hamas arms depots in Sinai

The weapons depots constituted the Islamist group’s logistic rear front, and the Egyptians reportedly also shut down arms workshops in Sheikh Zuweid which produced arms for Hamas.
Near those workshops, Hamas also operated firing ranges for testing rockets in the months before the Egyptian campaign, the officials said.

US Poll: 84% Think Iran Stalling to Build Nukes

Obama's move is in contradiction to the public will expressed in the poll, which revealed 77% of Americans support the ongoing 6 month negotiations "while imposing sanctions and increas[ing] financial pressure and sanctions." In fact, only 14% said they would vote for a senator that would reduce pressure on Iran during negotiations.
Furthermore, the poll discovered that there is deep-seated distrust over the intentions of the Iranian regime. Only 7% trust the Iranian claim that their nuclear program is peaceful.

US hits firms over Iran as sanctions debate goes on

The United States targeted more than two dozen companies and people on Thursday for evading sanctions against Iran, an effort by the Obama administration to show it will enforce existing law even as it presses Congress to hold off on additional measures while world powers pursue a comprehensive nuclear deal with Tehran.
The action freezes the US assets of firms in Panama, Singapore, Ukraine and elsewhere for maintaining covert business with Iran’s national tanker company. Other companies involved directly in the proliferation of material useful for weapons of mass destruction also were blacklisted from the US market. American citizens are banned from any transactions with the listed individuals and firms.

Iran halts nuclear talks for ‘consultations’

“The Iranian negotiators interrupted the talks with the P5+1 [Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany] for consultations in Tehran,” the Islamic Republic New Agency (IRNA) reported Friday.
AFP reported Friday that the decision to halt the talks came hours after Washington blacklisted a dozen overseas companies and individuals for evading US sanctions on Iran.

UN panel: Sanctions against Iran must be enforced despite Geneva deal

Australia's UN Ambassador Gary Quinlan told the 15-nation Security Council that a Nov. 24 interim deal between Iran and six world powers, which offers Iran limited sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program, did not affect countries' legal obligations to implement UN measures.
"The Security Council measures ... remain in effect; and States have an obligation to implement them duly," Quinlan said in his latest 90-day report. "It is only by a Security Council decision that these measures can be modified or terminated, and, until then, member states are obligated to enforce them."

Iran Insists on Delivery of S-300 Defense System From Russia

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Tehran will not drop its 2007 deal with Moscow to pay $800 million for the Russian-made S-300 air defense system missile shield, semi-official state news agency FARS reported on Thursday.
The deal was formally scrapped in 2010 by then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, “who was unilaterally expanding on sanctions against Iran imposed by the UN Security Council,” in the words of FARS. Iran filed a $4 billion lawsuit against Russia in the international arbitration court in Geneva, which is still pending.

Wife of Pastor Imprisoned in Iran Says U.S. Government Abandoned Her Husband

Naghmeh Abedini told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that she was dismayed after learning that her husband’s imprisonment was not raised during the recent nuclear negotiations between Iran, the United States, and other world powers.
Saeed Abedini was detained last year for starting Christian house churches in Iran and was later sentenced to eight years in prison for “undermining the national security of Iran.”

Final UN report confirms chemical weapons used multiple times in Syria

Chemical weapons were likely used in five out of seven attacks investigated by UN experts in Syria, where a 2 1/2-year civil war has killed more than 100,000 people, according to the final report of a UN inquiry published on Thursday.
The UN investigators said the deadly nerve agent sarin was likely used in four of the incidents, in one case on a large scale.
The report noted that in several cases the victims included government soldiers and civilians, though it was not always possible to establish with certainty any direct links between the attacks, the victims and the alleged sites of the incidents.

Al Qaeda Pushes Kurdish Population Transfer in Syria

The Syrian human rights organization Al Masrad reports that Al Qaeda affiliated Da'ash (the Islamic state in Iraq in Syria) fighters are expelling Kurdish families from their homes in a number of north Syrian communities, settling families of the organization's fighters in their stead.
According to eye witnesses, Da'ash fighters gave the families short notice to abandon their homes, leaving many of them without a roof over their heads and in difficult conditions.

Sharia Law Less Prominent, But Still in Egypt’s Draft Constitution

The draft constitution eliminates the 2012 Muslim Brotherhood constitution’s Article 219, which defined aspects of Sharia law on which legislation could be based. Article 219 and other aspects of the 2012 constitution led many liberal and Christian leaders to boycott the Muslim Brotherhood government, culminating in popular protests and the military’s ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.
Nevertheless, remaining in the new draft constitution is Article 2, which states that the principles of Sharia “the main source of legislation.”

Massive Explosion Rocks Egyptian Police Camp

On Thursday an Egyptian security forces camp in Ismailiya, near the Sinai Peninsula, was targeted by a massive explosion, leaving at least 35 policemen injured. Officials told Al Jazeera the bombing was followed by gunshots.
Ismailiya and the surrounding Sinai areas have witnessed regular attacks on police and military. In October, another security headquarters was attacked in Ismailiya, leaving 5 soldiers dead.

Haaretz (Hebrew) reports that the University of Haifa considered, and rejected, giving an honorary doctorate to Professor Robert Aumann, who won the Nobel prize in economics in 2005.

The reason? Because his political views are too right-wing!

Aumann is a supporter of the basic human rights of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria, and he is against dividing Jerusalem.

The committee discussing who to give honorary degrees to considered Aumann but rejected him because his political opinions "do not reflect the values of the university."

This apparently puts him beyond the pale from the progressive Haifa University leadership who have no problem inviting anti-Israel activists to speak on campus. It has also granted honorary degrees to far left activists like Shulamit Aloni, who defended Jimmy Carter calling Israel an "apartheid" state. At the time the university praised her for having "values entrenched in the University of Haifa ethos."

The University has also banned playing Israel's national anthem at its law school graduation ceremony, presumably because it mentions that Israel is a Jewish state.

The "big tent" we hear so much about apparently only has a door open to the Left.

(h/t Steven Plaut)

Mahmoud Abbas says "no" to BDS in South Africa

From The Star (SA), courtesy of Electronic Intifada (I could not find this online):

The BDS crowd is, predictably, furious.

Abbas’ comments conflict “with the Palestinian national consensus that has strongly supported BDS against Israel since 2005,” Omar Barghouti told The Electronic Intifada.

A founder of the BDS movement, Barghouti emphasized that he was commenting in a personal capacity.

“There is no Palestinian political party, trade union, NGO [nongovernmental organization] network or mass organization that does not strongly support BDS. Any Palestinian official who lacks a democratic mandate and any real public support, therefore, cannot claim to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people when it comes to deciding our strategies of resistance to Israel’s regime of occupation, colonization and apartheid,” Barghouti said.

The truth is, as usual, the exact opposite of anything that comes out of Barghouti's mouth.

It is true that Abbas' words are a little suspect because under existing agreements with Israel he is not allowed to push any boycott of Israel within the Green Line. However, even his call to boycott settlements have been roundly ignored by his own people.

Abbas tried to ban any Arab from buying goods from Jewish-owned stories in the territories - and failed. His economic minister threatened PA residents by saying that their license plates were being recorded when they visit Jewish-owned shops. They kept coming to shop and work there.

The number of Palestinian Arabs employed by Israel and by Jews in Judea and Samaria has reached new highs - over 100,000 altogether.

Even in Gaza, storekeepers and shoppers don't boycott Israeli candies and ice cream - they advertise them prominently in their markets!

The funniest part of Barghouti's furious response is that he is saying that Abbas doesn't represent Palestinian Arabs because he lacks a democratic mandate. Yet who elected Barghouti to anything, ever? He is a self-defined leader of a group whose goals he himself flouts.

And the actions of ordinary Palestinian Arabs, day in and day out, show that they do not support any boycott of Israel. Like Barghouti himself and all the other BDS hypocrites, people decide what is best for themselves and resist being told what to do by others. It is easy for these hypocrites to insist that others boycott goods and services but they themselves have no compunctions to ignore their own call to BDS when it is convenient to them.

(h/t Lawrence)

Al Quds University to offer course on "hate speech"; Brandeis looks to re-engage

Al Quds University is in full firefighting mode.

From their website:

Al-Quds University, the Arab University in East Jerusalem, whose mission is the encouragement of an open and pluralistic cultural climate for its students, has come under criticism recently especially from some American Jewish sources, for the holding of an anti-Israeli para-military rally on its campus by one of the student groups. Countless articles and blogs from those sources have since accused the University (as well as its President, Sari Nusseibeh) of being tolerant of Nazi and Fascist views. Various Jewish-sponsored Schools in the United States with whom Al-Quds University has been building bridges over the past two decades have decided to cut their ties with the University as a result of the incident and its aftermath.

In the same spirit of bridge-building that has guided the University over the past two decades, Al-Quds University has decided to hold a special English-speaking summer course June/July 2014 to discuss ways of combating hate-speech and racism, with special emphasis on some of its gruesome consequences, such as wars, ethnic cleansing and genocide, for both its students as well as for a limited number of students from the United States and Europe. The University will invite prominent experts to deliver lectures in this course, and will extend an invitation to its critics, including the President of Brandeis, Dr. Frederick Lawrence, to participate. The University will be consulting with Professor Yair Auron from the Open University of Israel – a foremost scholar on genocide- to help prepare the curriculum for the course. It is hoped that such a course will sensitize all concerned –including the university community- to the fine line to be drawn between freedom of speech and the dehumanization of ‘the other’, especially in inflammable situations as those that exist in the region. Education experts will also be invited to discuss current school curricula in both Israeli and Palestinian schools.

The University therefore hereby asks of interested students from abroad who wish to take this course to correspond with Ms Rawan Dajani ( protocol@alquds.edu) to receive preliminary information about the course (travel, accommodation, fees, etc.), together with an application form, which has to be filled and received by 28th of February 2014 at the latest. A full announcement for the course will be made at that date.

Why is the course only going to be offered in English?

The bigger issue is that Al Quds is creating this course not to improve its own community but to make itself look better for the West. The fact is that it still allows Islamic Jihad and Hamas student groups to be accepted and supported like a book club or a Christian club might be. Offering the course for Westerners who already agree that hate speech is bad doesn't help things one bit, except for PR.

The discussion of current school curricula in Israeli schools sounds like an attempt to say that Israeli school textbooks are as bigoted as Arab textbooks are - which is provably false.

Meanwhile, Brandeis commissioned a study:

A Report to the Brandeis Community on the Events of November 2013 Involving Brandeis University and Al Quds University

December 9, 2013

Daniel Terris

Director, International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life

Susan S. Lanser

Professor of Comparative Literature, English, and Women’s and Gender Studies and

Head, Division of Humanities

Daniel Kryder

Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Politics

This document offers five principal findings, which we summarize here and explain at
length in the “Conclusions” section below:

1. The November 5 rally included glorifying portrayals of hatred and violence that
are antithetical to the institutional values of both Brandeis University and Al< Quds University.

2. Al Quds University officials responded promptly and appropriately to the November 5 rally by communicating to both internal and external constituencies that the rally violated university policies and principles.

3. While we understand the reasons why many people were disturbed or offended by Sari Nusseibeh’s November 17 letter to his student community, the letter expressed neither intolerance nor hatred.

4. Al Quds University is playing a courageous frontline role in working for peace by engaging those minority factions in its midst that hold extreme attitudes.

5. Given the active role that the AlQuds University administration took in response to the event, and given the university’s enduring and vital work in promoting cross cultural understanding and peace, we call on Brandeis University to resume and indeed redouble its commitment to this scholarly partnership.

And who are the people who Brandeis chose to pen this study - Daniel Terris, Susan S. Lanser and Daniel Kryder?

Why, they just happen - by pure coincidence - to be three of the recipients of the Bronfman Brandeis-Israel Research Collaboration grant earlier this year!

A collaboration between three Brandeisians and three members of the faculty and administration at Al-Quds University, in Jerusalem, to research the kinds of curricular and pedagogical frameworks that are most effective at fostering civic engagement in developing democratic societies. Collaborators include Daniel T. Kryder, associate professor of politics; Susan S. Lanser, professor of English, women’s and gender studies, and comparative literature; Daniel Terris, Brandeis director of the existing Brandeis-Al Quds Partnership; Khuloud Khayyat Dajani, Al-Quds director of the partnership, Awad Mansour, chair of Al-Qud’s Department of Political Science and Imad Abu Kishek, executive vice president of Al-Quds.

Nah, no conflict of interest there at all!

(h/t Bob Knot)

A pro-settler Miley Cyrus video spoof

This is not something you see everyday, from Orit Arfa:

From the YouTube page:

Miley Cyrus raised eyebrows and tongues with her hyper-sexual performance of her hit "We Can't Stop" at the MTV Video Music Awards. But concerned Jewish parents need not fear! A new video take on Miley's song has channeled her defiant spirit towards a worthy cause: defending Jewish rights to live and thrive in the land of Israel. Jews can't stop building, loving, praying, doing what we want in their land, in their homes. Too quote Miley, "Only God can Judge ya. Forget the haters, cuz Somebody loves ya."

Lyrics:
It's our LAND we can BUILD where we want
It's our LAND we can PRAY WHERE we want
It's our LAND we can LIVE HOW we want
We can BE who we want
MAKE PEACE IF we want

Bare land and Jewish bodies everywhere
Rockets through the air but who cares?
Cause we came to build our home now
But somebody might get stoned now

If they wants Jews to leave home
Can I get a hell no
Cause we gonna fight all night
Till we get our birthright, alright

So la da di da di, we like to BE FREE
Dance in Tel Aviv
LIVIN' however we want
This is our home
This is our rules
And we can't stop
And we won't stop
Can't you see it's we who own the LAND
Can't you see it's we who TAKE A STAND
And we can't stop
And we won't stop
We BUILD things
Things don't BUILD we
We don't STEAL nothing from nobody

It's our LAND we can BUILD WHERE we want
It's our LAND we can PRAY WHERE we want
It's our LAND we can LIVE HOW we want
We can GIVE WHAT we want
MAKE PEACE if we want

To my home guys here with the big guns
Savin' Jews from gettin' all beat up
Remember only God can judge ya
Forget the haters cause somebody loves ya
And everyone in line to make peace
Trying to get a Nobel for peace
We all so fed up here
Getting fed up here, yeah, yeah

So la da di da di, we like to BE FREE
Dancing with Miley
LIVING however we want
This is our home
This is our rules
And we can't stop
And we won't stop
Can't you see it's we who own the LAND
Can't you see it we who TAKE A STAND
And we can't stop
And we won't stop
We BUILD things
Things don't BUILD we
Don't take nothing from JOHN KERRY

It's our LAND we can BUILD WHERE we want
It's our LAND we can PRAY WHERE we want
It's our LAND we can LIVE HOW we want
We can GIVE WHAT we want
MAKE PEACE if we want

It's our LAND we BUILD what we want to
It's our HOME we can LIVE HOW we want to
It's our song we can sing if we want to
It's my mouth I can PRAY what I want to
Yea, Yea, Yeah

And we can't stop
And we won't stop
Can't you see it's we who own the LAND
Can't you see it we who TOOK A STAND
And we can't stop
And we won't stop
We BUILD things
Things don't BUILD we
We don't STEAL nothing from nobody
Yea, Yea, Yea

12/12 Links Pt2: Peace Now and the facade of democratic debate, Falk Calls for ‘Legitimacy War’ against Israel

From Ian:

Gerald Steinberg: Peace Now and the facade of democratic debate

Peace Now and its allies, which use the label but not the values of the “liberal progressive Left,” have long ignored this demonization and political warfare targeting Israel. In their black vs. white political world, complex images that are presented by Einat Wilf, who entered the Knesset as a member of the Labor Party and promotes a two-state framework while denouncing the demonization campaigns, are perceived as outside the discourse. Similarly NGO Monitor, whose research played a central role in convincing Judge Goldstone to acknowledge the false foundation of his UN “report,” is attacked and defamed as a dangerous enemy.

Why so many students love the pro-Palestinian movement

Having often watched young pro-Palestinian activists yell their prescribed chants and ditties outside Ecostream, and flashing “V for Victory” signs, I am reminded again of how often it seems “cool” to be a pro-Palestinian activist among some students in colleges and universities around the world.
Why?
With the younger members of the BDS, it appears as if the protest is all fun and games to them, and there have been several occasions when they really have no idea what they are supposed to be doing outside the Ecostream store, even the ones who have been indoctrinated by their activist parents. Some of them do understand what they are protesting against, but some do not, and others have, on occasions, whispered across to our group, asking us what this protest is all about! (One girl thought she was at an “anti-war” rally. I truly wonder if she expected to see “Ban the Bomb” icons!)

Student Leader Wants to Decapitate ‘All Who Support the IDF’

Can the SFSU environment be considered a safe one with a student leader – let’s say that again, a student leader! - who has already posed making threats while caressing a knife, and is now calling for the beheading of IDF soldiers and anyone who supports them? Surely any “dialogue with student groups and counseling resources” is a tack already taken, one revealed to be insufficient.
Will SFSU make clear that threats against its population will not be tolerated? The SFSU administration is already on notice. Any action taken after someone is already harmed will not be defensible.

Richard Falk Calls for ‘Legitimacy War’ against Israel

In a new interview, Richard Falk, the UN Human Rights Council’s permanent investigator on “Israel’s violations of international law,” explained the strategy of his “legitimacy war” against Israel—but complained that UN Watch “complicated my task.”
According to Falk, “extremely defamatory attacks by UN Watch”—which he described as “an ultra-Zionist, ultra-Israeli organization”—succeeded in getting him “attacked” by the American ambassadors in New York and Geneva, “and by the UN Secretary-General, actually, on a couple of occasions.”

IsraellyCool: Roger Waters Receives Seal Of Approval From David Duke

Mazal tov to Roger Waters for making it to antisemite David Duke’s website, for his choice words against Rabbis and the “Jewish lobby.”

Does American Studies Association have guts to boycott Cornell too?

Regardless of any alleged military involvement, Technion would be covered by the ASA boycott resolution.
To be consistent and intellectually honest, if the ASA boycott resolution passes the membership, must ASA not also boycott the Cornell-Technion joint campus? And since the joint campus will draw resources, faculty, staff and students from Cornell’s Ithaca campus, wouldn’t the boycott of necessity have to include the greater Cornell University?
Picking on Israel is easy for tenured radicals. It comes at no professional cost, particularly for organizations and academics not in the sciences.

Preserve the truth of the Holocaust

One of the manifestations of modern Holocaust denial involves a new narrative-oriented discourse that seeks to create a new perception. To further this end, the deniers use unimportant facts that are fed to the public and give rise to new narratives. For example, the Polish historian who heads the State Museum at Majdanek claims that the death camp was never used for large-scale, deliberate extermination of the Jews with gas. He insists that Majdanek was a concentration and labor camp where Jews and Poles died because of the various hardships of the ongoing war all around them. The Poles were quick to embrace this narrative, because it expunges a large part of their collective record, a record marred by their decision not to lift a finger when the camp was active.
Until recently, such claims would have been dismissed out of hand. But during the recent "renovations" in the museum, the plaques that detailed the activity of gas chambers in a certain area were removed. Instead, the signs now indicate the area was used to do the laundry. Similarly, the explanations in a certain section of the museum where gas chambers were used now say they were built only in 1943, when the camp no longer had Jews. Such examples lead directly to the denial of any extermination activity in the chamber. Those who visit the "renovated" museum, among them many Israelis, learn about this new narrative without even talking about how the changes in the museum attempted to change reality. Auschwitz-Birkenau has seen similar "modifications," although those are more subtle.

Anne Frank tree cutting destroyed in Germany

A sapling that came from the tree that stood outside the hiding place of Anne Frank in Amsterdam was cut down and stolen in Frankfurt, German police said.
The cutting was planted in 2008 outside Frankfurt’s Anne Frank School, named after the world-famous Jewish teenage diarist who was born in the German city in 1929 and murdered during the Holocaust in 1945 after her family was caught hiding in the Nazi-occupied Dutch capital, where they had moved to escape persecution in Germany.

Biden announces effort to help Holocaust survivors

The Obama administration is working to help Holocaust survivors in the United States, many of them living in poverty, by coordinating assistance, working with aid groups and using diplomatic means to help recover property confiscated during the Nazi era.
Vice President Joe Biden announced the effort this week in a speech to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The administration says 100,000 Holocaust survivors are in the United States, and 25 percent live below the poverty level.

Bavaria Retracts Reprint Plans for Mein Kampf

In 2012, Bavaria announced plans to publish an annotated version with historians' commentary in 2016, citing "academic" purposes and to help "demystify" the text. While Bavaria’s finance minister Markus Soeder made clear at the time that the book is full of "nonsense" that had "catastrophic consequences," he still advocated that the text be reprinted, as long as it would not be used to "incite hatred."
However, this week, reacting to complaints from Holocaust survivors, the government of state premier Horst Seehofer redacted the announcement.
Bavaria stated instead that the "seditious" book must stay off the market and warned that any publishers who print it will face criminal charges -- a move that was praised by Jewish groups.

Romanian state TV airs Christmas carol about burning Jews

TVR3 Verde, a television channel for rural communities, presented the carol on December 5 during its maiden transmission.
Sung by the Dor Transilvan ensemble, it featured the lyrics: “The kikes, damn kikes, Holy God would not leave the kike alive, neither in heaven nor on earth, only in the chimney as smoke, this is what the kike is good for, to make kike smoke through the chimney on the street.”
In a statement, TVR3 (Romanian Public Television Channel 3) distanced itself from the broadcast, saying it did not select the carol but only broadcast songs that were chosen and compiled by the Center for Preservation and Promotion of Traditional Culture, which belongs to the eastern county of Cluj.

Esther Pollard: Pollard’s Nightmare

In a Kafkaesque nightmare, Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison, without benefit of trial, in violation of a plea agreement. Now, nearly three decades later, he is kept in chains by being denied access to his full sentencing file. His only remaining hope is presidential clemency.
A recent op-ed in The Jerusalem Post declares that President Barack Obama will never pardon Jonathan.
However, a pardon is not what Jonathan is seeking. He is seeking commutation of his sentence to the 28 years he has already served. Unlike a pardon which exonerates the offender, commutation merely corrects the sentence. Among those American officials who have first-hand knowledge of the case there is consensus that Jonathan’s sentence is grossly disproportionate. Even former heads of the CIA and the FBI have joined the calls for commutation.

Ex-UN envoy Richardson calls for Pollard’s release

Bill Richardson, the former UN ambassador known for his efforts to release American captives overseas, called on President Obama to free Jonathan Pollard immediately.
In a Dec. 10 letter to Obama, whom he endorsed after dropping out of the 2008 presidential race, Richardson noted that an increasing number of figures involved in government when Pollard was given a 1987 life sentence for spying for Israel now believe his sentence should be commuted.

BBC picks up Israel’s ‘Hostages’ — in Hebrew

BBC4 has announced its Saturday night programming lineup will include Israeli drama, Hostages. And while many Israeli TV shows have been acquired by global television channels, this is the first time the original series will be aired abroad in Hebrew.
Hostages is a 10-part thriller about the family of a surgeon who are taken hostage in order to coerce the doctor to assassinate the president on the operating table.

Daily Mail Travel Editor Endorses Israeli-Style Airport Security

Frank Barrett, Sunday Travel Editor for the UK’s Daily Mail, lauded the Israeli airline for its no-nonsense approach to airport security in a recent op-ed.
“El Al security experts scoff at the way that other countries think they can deal with terrorism merely by introducing the likes of full body scanners or getting people to take their shoes off,” Barrett wrote. Travelers with other airlines literally spend hours standing in line waiting to be examined by a machine, and Barrett thinks this is time that could be better spent. “The only sure way of dealing with the threat is to talk to every passenger,” he wrote.

A helping Internet hand for shoppers, via Israeli tech

In a rare move for an American company, New York-based LivePerson dual-listed itself on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in 2011 after having been traded on NASDAQ since 2000.
The TASE listing is more than the result of LivePerson’s acquisition of several Israeli companies, according to company CEO Robert LoCascio. “About half of our employees are located in Israel, and all of our research and development is being done in Israel,” LoCascio said. “We now have 400 people working at our Israel R&D center.”

Israel Set to Become Full CERN Member

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is set to vote to admit Israel to full membership in the organization, making it the first non-European member of the group. Israel has been a provisional member of the group for the past two years.
CERN's current main activity is the administration and experimentation work of a particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, located on the Swiss-French border. As a member country, Israel could send scientists and conduct experiments at the accelerator. As a member, Israel would also approve new experiments and the construction of new accelerators.

Katie Couric Hosts Event that Raises $1 Million for Magen David Adom

Television journalist Katie Couric, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor headlined a Dec. 9 dinner in Manhattan that raised $1 million for Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s national emergency response, ambulance, and blood services organization.

Snow in Jerusalem -- Pictures We Presented in Winters Past

Strong rain, winds and snow storms are hitting the Middle East this week. And snow is falling today in Jerusalem, the Golan and parts of the Galilee.
We present here pictures of snow in Jerusalem taken early in the 20th century and found in the Library of Congress collection.

The CIA's Secret Arabists - and their 1950s anti-Israel organization

From the WSJ:

Book Review: 'America's Great Game,' by Hugh Wilford

by Michael Doran

Kim Philby, the British turncoat who spied for the Soviet Union, described Kermit Roosevelt as "a courteous, soft-spoken Easterner with impeccable social connections, well-educated rather than intellectual, pleasant and unassuming as host and guest." Theodore Roosevelt's grandson, Philby thought, was "the last person that you would expect to be up to the neck in dirty tricks."

Roosevelt, who headed the CIA's Middle East division in the Eisenhower administration, is best remembered today for engineering the coup that toppled Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. But in "America's Great Game," Hugh Wilford reminds us that Roosevelt was also deeply involved in the Arab world. Indeed, he was the agency's foremost "Arabist." The term usually refers to State Department regional experts who were the intellectual, and often biological, descendants of American missionaries in the Arab lands. These officials were fiercely anti-Zionist, convinced that American support for Israel was a strategic blunder of the first order. This was because, as Mr. Wilford writes, they believed "in the overriding importance of American-Arab, and Christian-Muslim, relations."

The book examines the role of CIA Arabists by tracing the careers of Roosevelt and two of his comrades: his cousin Archie and Miles Copeland, an Alabama jazz musician who, like many in the early CIA, wound up at the agency through his work in its wartime precursor, the Office of Strategic Services.

The author, a historian at California State University, Long Beach, makes deft use of declassified government documents. He also draws on the personal papers and memoirs of CIA agents and their associates, sources that until now have remained almost entirely untapped. We learn, for example, that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles often ran important diplomatic missions through Roosevelt rather than normal State Department channels. But the most important of the Arabists' efforts was the attempt, in Eisenhower's first term, to turn Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's charismatic strongman, into a strategic partner—a gambit that failed miserably.

I noted a number of years ago that Time magazine (as well as other mainstream media) fawned over Nasser as the greatest hope for coming generations, "with the lithe grace of a big, handsome All-America fullback" who had "a row of regular, white teeth and a brilliant, easy smile" who really wanted to push Egypt towards democracy. It never occurred to me that the CIA might have arranged the interview!

Who needs PR firms?

...The Middle East in the 1950s offered surprising opportunities for such men. Kim was, for instance, the motive force behind the 1951 founding of the American Friends of the Middle East. Seemingly a private outfit dedicated to citizen diplomacy, it was actually a CIA front that sought to weaken support for the Jewish state in the U.S. You read that right: The CIA created an early counterbalance to the pro-Israel lobby, promoting an anti-Zionist reading of the region until 1967, when the radical magazine Ramparts exposed agency funding to domestic organizations.

The Roosevelt cousins, Copeland and other leading Arabists believed that a century of American missionary activity had paved the way for a Pax Americana in the region—if only the Israelis could be sidelined. The early Eisenhower administration was their heyday. Eisenhower and Dulles gave such professionals in the State Department and the CIA carte blanche. But the Arabists' massive efforts notwithstanding, Nasser drifted into the Soviet orbit and began spreading nationalist revolt throughout the region.

Why? In answering this question, Mr. Wilford rehashes the conventional wisdom, which holds that, despite its generally pro-Arab stance—including taking Egypt's side against Britain, France and Israel in the 1956 Suez Crisis—the U.S. under the Eisenhower administration still followed in the footsteps of empire and maligned the Arabs. The author might have questioned the core assumptions of the Arabists: Was sidelining Israel really the best way to create a Mideast Pax Americana? Would anti-Western Arabs led by Nasser ever have proved reliable U.S. allies?

But this criticism is a quibble. Mr. Wilford is a careful historian, with no Middle Eastern ax to grind. The main goal of "America's Great Game" is to shed light on the role of the CIA in the Middle East. It succeeds magnificently.

Mr. Doran, who served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense in 2007-08, is a senior fellow of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He is writing a book on Eisenhower and the Middle East.

Looking for "American Friends of the Middle East" in old newspaper clippings gives one a sense of déjà vu - they sound a lot like J-Street today. See this 1956 article in the Tuscaloosa News:

And this from the New York Times, October 11, 1955 again sounds just like the purportedly "pro-Israel-pro-peace" groups of today that are anything but:

The only differences are that, today, the groups saying this nonsense are headed by Jews. And in the 1950s, everyone was smart enough to realize that any such group saying they were "pro-Israel" and "worried about anti-semitism" was spouting self-serving garbage.

Unfortunately, today's Jews are not quite as bright as they were sixty years ago.

The CIA might have created the group, but who funded it? According to this book - the Saudis!