Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

May you be inscribed in the Book of Life (Forest Rain)

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are called the High Holy Days. They are more holy days, than holidays, a time for introspection more than a time of celebration.

The Jewish tradition says that every year God reviews the lives of all of humanity and decides what will happen in each life in the year to come. God decrees life or death for each person, inscribing all who will live in the Book of Life.

On Rosh Hashanah Jews wish each other a happy holiday and good year to come. It is a commandment to be happy during the holiday, a must. It would be highly presumptuous to even suggest the possibility of a happy year. Happiness for the whole year?! That’s too far-fetched and very possibly not what would be the best for you. God’s plan for an individual can even be painful so you couldn’t call the experience “happy” but it still can be “good”.

In the time between the New Year and Yom Kippur the traditional blessing is “May you be inscribed in the Book of Life.” The exact translation of the Hebrew reflects Jewish cynicism (and negative experiences throughout our history) saying “May your name be well written, all the way, in the Book of Life” and basically expresses the sentiment: “I hope you don’t die next year.”

It’s kinda funny and terrible at the same time.

Cultures around the world have different New Year traditions, ways to celebrate and times of the year that are considered “New Year.” I don’t think there is any culture that marks the New Year with the same level of introspection about the year that passed and the upcoming year, in the same way Jews do. How many people do you know who truly reflect on the quality of their lives, what they have contributed to their fellow man and the possibility of dying in the upcoming year?

Jewish tradition says that before being right with God people have to be right with each other. During the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur individuals reflect on their actions during the past year and ask forgiveness from people they may have hurt during the previous year. People ask God to forgive their sins AFTER humans forgive each other for hurting each other. This is a very different emphasis than that of other religions and cultures. Religious figures, God or prayers do not have the power to absolve Jews from their sins. Healing can occur only when the individual takes personal responsibility for previous wrong actions and asking forgiveness from the person that was wronged.

Jews don’t need to be good just to other Jews; we believe that it is crucial to be good to all people, everywhere, to provide help where it is needed, to right wrongs wherever possible, to make life better.

I am proud that Israel upholds these ideals throughout the year, providing humanitarian aid around the world as well as innovations that affect the lives of people everywhere – everything from agricultural inventions that provide food and clean water in third world countries to the modern day conveniences people in the western world no longer know how to live without. One of the most disparaged nations on earth, we probably provide the most to people worldwide (this is absolutely true when Israeli & Jewish contributions to humanity are calculated per capita).

Our country is not perfect. No one is perfect. But we try damn hard. We argue all year long about the right way to do things and about how to be better. We demand compassion for our elderly, for the sick, for the strangers amongst us, for our enemies and the people of other countries. Each year we take note of our nation’s accomplishments and find that we have fallen short. As long as there are those amongst us that are suffering, that are not being taken care of properly, we have not done enough.

Each year we consider what is wrong and in the next year we try to do better.

Surrounded by enemies who openly declare their desire to see our destruction, weighed down by “friends” who use a lot of the same terminology and slogans as our enemies, it is difficult to know what will be in the year to come.

Who amongst us will die, simply because we are Jews?

Friends and family, colleagues and strangers will die from old age, disease and accidents. Others will die because we are who we are.

Happy thoughts for the new year, right?

Realistic ones.

On Sunday two Israelis were murdered simply because they were Jews. The family of the terrorist had a huge celebration, happy that he died killing Jews. People from abroad wrote me saying that it is our fault, Israelis deserve to be attacked and why can’t we all just work things out with a nice discussion? Nice.

This is our reality and yet we refuse to be other than what we are. We do our best to do the right thing for each other, for our nation and for the world. We will continue to do so, whether others recognize this or not, whether this is appreciated or not.

This year I pray that my friends and family, people I know and people I do not know will be inscribed in the Book of Life. May the people around the world not have to experience the suffering we have experienced.

A happy year would be wonderful but a good year, one we learn from, grow and become better as a result… that would suffice.

Gmar hatima tova! May you be inscribed in the Book of Life!

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10/11 Links Pt1: Hamas suicide bus bombing in foiled; The sickness of narrative thinking

From Ian:

Shin Bet foils Hamas suicide bus bombing in Jerusalem

An East Jerusalem man was indicted Tuesday for planning to carry out a suicide bombing on a bus in the capital, officials said.
On September 9, the Shin Bet security service arrested alleged Hamas operative Muhammad Fuaz Ibrahim Julani, a resident of the Shuafat refugee camp, a few days before he planned to carry out his attack, the agency said.
Over the past few months, Julani, 22, had been planning to carry out a terror attack on behalf of Hamas, the Shin Bet said.
In September, he told an accomplice he planned to carry out the suicide bombing as “this is the way of God,” according to the indictment.
The Hamas terror group’s operatives in the Gaza Strip had been in contact with Julani through the internet in order to plan the bombing and had also encouraged him to recruit other people to carry out attacks, according to the indictment filed against him Tuesday in the Jerusalem District Court.
“This investigation reiterates and highlights the unrelenting effort by Hamas operatives in the Gaza Strip to instigate severe terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank,” the Shin Bet said in a statement.

BBC headlines for same story differ according to target audiences

While failing to accurately describe it as terrorism, the BBC News website’s English language report on the attack in Jerusalem on October 9th did make it clear to audiences that the perpetrator was a “Palestinian gunman” in both the headline and the opening paragraph.

In contrast, the headline selected for the BBC’s Arabic language report on the same incident failed to provide visitors to the BBC Arabic website with any information concerning the identity of the attacker.
The headline reads “Two Israelis killed and 6 wounded in shooting in Jerusalem”. The report’s opening paragraph reads:
“The Israeli police said that two Israelis were killed and six others injured as a result of shooting near the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem.”

Ben-Dror Yemini: The sickness of narrative thinking

In recent years, the truth has fallen casualty to storytelling; the Palestinian narrative of the Nakba must not override the truth that the Arab armies came to try and destroy Israel in its inception, and must not infantilize the Arab population by not holding them accountable for their actions.
A severe disease has stricken the institutes of knowledge, media, and academia in Israel. It's the disease of narrative thinking. There is no longer and truth, no historic facts. We are living in a new world. Instead of serious research aimed at finding the truth, the world now sees reality through different stories, with each community, group, people, and country having its own.
Case in point, the claims made by MK Ayman Odeh (leader of the Joint List party) following the death of former president Shimon Peres. According to Odeh, the "Palestinians of 1948" (how Israeli-Arabs define themselves), who experienced the "Nakba," are victims of the Zionist enterprise, of which Peres is a main representative. So why should the victim come to the criminal's funeral?
And so, things should be made clear: There was indeed a Nakba. There was a disaster. Crimes were committed during the Independence War, whose victims were local Arab people. And those who would deny this are at least as bad as MK Odeh and his "narrative." We need to acknowledge this not in order to identify with the victims on a human level (not that this is unimportant), but because these are facts.
The thing is, MK Odeh ignores the fact that the Arab leadership of that period, to which he is a successor, mad it unequivocally clear: Not only are we not interested in compromise and in a division of lands, we plan on conducting a massacre.

Since 2008, Hamas has been pretending - in English - that it only targets Israeli soldiers, and is against killing civilians in Israel.

In an interview at the time, Hamas' English-language spokesman, Abu Obaida, said, "There is no justification for targeting civilians. It is against Islam to deliberately kill unarmed civilians during jihad. In addition, our doctrine is to target the enemies army, security services, and support apparatus. But it is known that Zionist society is a militarized society. Service in the army is mandatory; and reserve duty continues past the age of 40. Our determined stance is that unarmed persons on both sides of the conflict should be left out of the fighting. However, we will not accept giving the enemy a free hand against our civilians."

In Arabic, of course, posters inciting murdering Jews and celebrating their deaths are pervasive.

Now, Hamas' "political wing" has admitted supporting murdering Israeli Jews in English as well on its hamas.ps website:

Chairman of Hamas political bureau Khaled Meshaal has called the family of Misbah Abu Subeih, the 40-year-old Palestinian who carried out a resistance attack in Jerusalem yesterday, offering the Movement’s condolences to the family and praising the courage of the late martyr.

“Palestinians are proud of this hero who sacrificed his life and blood to defend his people and the holy Aqsa Mosque,” Meshaal said.

He reaffirmed Hamas’s position that resistance remains the chosen road toward the liberation of Palestine.

“Our resistance shall persist until the land and sanctities are liberated, the prisoners are freed and the refugees are back to their homeland.” He stated.

In a separate phone call, Deputy Chairman of Hamas political bureau Ismail Haniya said that Abu Subeih set a model for the generations to follow.

“He was a staunch defender of Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque both in his life and his death,” Haniya said.

Hezbollah's political wing also cheered the murderous rampage in Jerusalem. That "political wing" is still not considered a terror group by the EU or UK.

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This is an update my Yom Kippur message of previous years.

I unconditionally forgive anyone who may have wronged me during this year, and I ask forgiveness for anyone I may have wronged as well.

Specifically (as enumerated in previous years, based on the list from The Muqata a few years back):

-If you sent me email and I didn't reply, or didn't get back to you in a timely fashion -- I apologize.
-If you sent me a story and I decided not to publish it or worse, didn't give you a hat tip for the story -- I'm sorry. I'm also sorry if I didn't acknowledge the tip (especially Irene and Ronald, who send me lots.) I sometimes get multiple tips for the same story and I usually credit the first one I saw, which is not always the earliest. And I cannot publish all the stories I am sent, although I try to place appropriate ones in the linkdumps, or tweet them.
-If you requested help from me and I wasn't able to provide it -- I'm sorry.
-I apologize if I posted without the proper attribution, with the wrong attribution, or without attribution at all.
-I'm sorry that I don't give hat tips on things I tweet.
-If I didn't thank you for a donation, I'm very, very sorry.
-I'm sorry if I didn't give the proper respect to my co-bloggers Ian, Mike, Daphne, PoT, Vic, Varda and Forest Rain. They are all great. (UPDATE: sorry, I forgot Petra! I need to ask forgiveness from her next year...)
-I'm sorry if any of my posts offended you personally.
-If I forgot to send you the perks for donating at Patreon - I'm sorry, and hope to do it soon!
- For all the initiatives I started and didn't complete - I'm sorry. I hope to do better next year.
- Please forgive me if I wrote disparaging things about you.
- I'm sorry for not always scrubbing spam from the comments as quickly as I would like.
- I'm sorry if things got published in the comments that violated my comments policy but that I missed.

May this be a year of life, peace, prosperity, happiness and security.

I wish all of my readers who observe Yom Kippur an easy and meaningful fast.

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Zahir Ammar is a Labour Councillor in Glossop, Derbyshire, UK, according to his Twitter account.

I cannot find any mention of him outside that, and his Twitter account is only two weeks old, so it is possible this is all a scam, but here are two of his latest tweets:

This is a variant of the 2007 quote by Muhammad Nimr Al-Zaghmout, head of the Islamic Palestinian Council in Lebanon, where he said, "The Prophet of Allah has promised us that the Jews will gather in Palestine, and that the Muslims will fight them, and totally kill them. Even the stone and the tree will say: 'Oh Muslims, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.' You might tell me that I am relying on supernatural hadiths. I believe this is not supernatural but is the core of our belief."

Along with his pro-Labour and pro-Corbyn tweets, Ammar also sprinkles in death threats:

But don't accuse him of being anything but liberal and tolerant. His anticipation of massacring millions of Jews comes from a good place.

(h/t Georgia)

UPDATE: It looks like a fake account. The photo is of Asad Dandia, a Brooklyn College student and cofounder of a group called Muslims Giving Back. (h/t Bob Knot)

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Syria hosts lecture on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

The "Syrian Higher People's Committee for Arab support of the Palestinian people and resistance to the Zionist project" held a lecture in the Al Assad National Library in Damascus in late September.

The topic was "The Arab national project in the face of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Sabra and Shatila massacre model."

The lecturer said that "the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are the most dangerous protocols in the present age because they contain dangerous laws aimed at provoking wars in the world and control" to include the fragmentation of the Arab world into statelets and to stir up unrest, for example, "the crimes committed by Zionism against Arabs and Palestinians for more than six decades."

The official Syrian SANA news agency site that carried this story - proving that the Syrian government supports antisemitism - is not visible from some countries, but you can see the article here.

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10/10 Links Pt2: Palestinian refugee camps: Facts, myths, & illusions; Goodbye, Barack

From Ian:

Palestinian refugee camps: Facts, myths, & illusions

Why has this festering wound of deprivation and suffering perpetuated and grown? Why haven’t Arab host nations closed the camps and integrated the Palestinians into their own populations? And why, indeed, are there still refugee camps in areas ruled by the Palestinian Authority? Accountability lies not with Israel, but with Palestinian leaders and Arab States.
The same is true of the origins of the refugee exodus. In 1947, the UN Partition Plan proposed two independent states. Israel accepted, but Palestinian leaders, whose state would include the West Bank and Gaza, rejected the proposal. How many Palestinian refugees would there be had the Palestinians accepted this offer of statehood? Zero.
In 1948, Israel declared statehood. The next day Israel was attacked on all sides by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. Those nations failed in their quest to destroy Israel, and the war they launched caused an exodus of Palestinian refugees. How many Palestinian refugees would there be had the Arab nations not attacked Israel in 1948? Zero.
There is an oft-repeated but false narrative that Israel “expelled” the Palestinians from their homes in 1948. In fact, at Israel’s founding Prime Minister David Ben Gurion proclaimed that all Arab inhabitants were invited to stay “on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions.” Many Palestinians left, implored to do so by the same Arab leaders who were bent on destroying Israel. A handful were expelled during the war. But, the Palestinian Arabs who took up Ben Gurion’s offer to stay in Israel are today (along with their descendants) among the 1.8 million Arab citizens who are part of a thriving and diverse democracy.
Notably, former Syrian Prime Minister Haled al Azm stated in his memoirs: “Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the UN to resolve on their return.”
Solutions to the problem have been routinely rejected by Palestinian leaders. In 2000, the Camp David accords offered Palestinians another opportunity for statehood. The offer included 97% of the occupied territories, additional land swaps, and $30 billion in compensation for the refugees. But, the proposal also required recognition of Israel’s right to exist in peace. Yasser Arafat rejected it.

Ben-Dror Yemini: How to deal with the next Gaza-bound flotilla

The Gaza-bound flotilla received international media coverage, especially when Roger Waters joined the party and announced that Pink Floyd was reuniting for a special performance for the boat’s passengers. What did we gain from that, asked my friend, who was listening to foreign media reports. Instead of taking over the boat and reminding the world of the Gaza blockade, which turns into a siege when translated into foreign languages, Israel could have acted differently. Why confront a small group of women and turn them into heroes? We could have turned them into what they really are: Useful idiots.
Want to enter Gaza? Go right ahead. We’ll even equip you with medicine and tomato boxes. It’s true that hundreds of Israeli trucks transfer goods into the strip every day, but if you want more – be our guest.
We could have taken the same opportunity to do other things. For example, to equip them with an official letter from the Israeli government, something that would be photographed well on the media. A letter adorned with arabesques in dozens of languages. And if Israel were smart, not only would it not have prevented media coverage, it would have invited a distinguished delegation of journalists from around the world to cover the delivery of the letter.
And what would be the content? Well, the following things should have been written: “The State of Israel wants prosperity and welfare for the strip’s residents. For that purpose, Hamas is required to accept the simple formula of demilitarization in exchange for reconstruction. Instead of investing in tunnels of death, instead of investing in the production of rockets directed at innocent civilians, it is possible to turn over a new leaf of cooperation, of economic investments, of project building. Israel is not interested in a blockade.

Vic Rosenthal: Goodbye, Barack

At last, after eight long years during which Barack Obama a) applied almost unrelenting pressure on Israel, much more obsessively than anything else he did, and b) taught us the painful truth about American liberal Jews – that for them, Israel is just another foreign country – he is leaving the White House. What comes next could be better or worse, but who here won’t be happy to see his particularly offensive brand of hypocrisy and hostility disappear?
But the game isn’t over until January 20, and soon there will be nothing to restrain him from acting on his obsession.
Last Wednesday, the State Department issued a press release in which it “strongly condemn[ed]” Israel’s plan to build 98 homes inside an existing settlement in order to house families that will be displaced by the demolition of another settlement, which has been ordered by Israel’s Supreme Court.
“Strongly condemn” is language normally used for terrorism or, for example, Russian and Syrian air strikes on hospitals in which dozens of civilians die.
The State Department claimed that Israel was violating its assurances to the US that it would not build “new settlements.” Israeli officials called the statement “disproportionate” and argued that it was neither a “new settlement” nor an obstacle to peace.
Administration lackeys like the New York Times and J Street echoed the criticism. The Times, in language that could have been (and probably was) written by NSC staffer and Obama confidant Ben Rhodes, blasted Israel and called for a Security Council resolution to “set guidelines” for Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. An administration official said that “the White House boiled with anger” (more Rhodesian rhetoric) over Israel’s plan.

Arab film producers' union blames "Jewish lobby" for JASTA legislation

I've mentioned how Saudi media covered the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) passed by Congress.

For some reason the Egypt-based General Union of Arab Producers decided that they must weigh in on the issue as well.

Like the Saudis, they blame the Jews.

But for a completely different reason.

The producers at first expressed reluctance for an artistic union to get involved in a political issue like this. But that didn't last. After declaring that even many Americans agree that the Saudis had nothing to do with 9/11, they said:

We emphasize that there are a number of members of Congress who are working for the interests of the "Jewish lobby", which aims to form "a new Middle East..." And this Zionist lobby in the United States is aimed at causing unrest in Saudi Arabia that will cause the collapse of the Saudi state .. followed by the Gulf states until the "new Middle East" scheme is completed, putting the Gulf states are in crises like Syria, Libya and Iraq.

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Jewish Voice for Peace is right: Miko Peled is a worthy BDS advocate (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

Petra Marquardt-Bigman

There can be no doubt: the Orwellian-named “Jewish Voice for Peace” (JVP) did the right thing when they quickly backtracked and issued an abject apology for condemning Miko Peled just because he had accused Israel of causing antisemitism. After all, Peled is a popular anti-Israel activist and an ardent BDS advocate, and I’m really glad that JVP rushed to re-embrace him as one of their own. As I have long argued, “antisemitism is not a bug, but a feature of BDS,” and Miko Peled’s odious views and associations make him an excellent case study.

In a somewhat lengthy post on “Miko Peled’s big anti-Semitism problem,” I recently documented that any group or movement that was serious about opposing antisemitism would want nothing whatsoever to do with Peled. But of course, neither JVP nor most other groups and individuals devoted to anti-Israel activism can afford to do without the antisemitism that is all but inevitable if your goal is to demonize the world’s only Jewish state in order to justify its elimination for the sake of the establishment of yet another Arab-Muslim state.Just like other prominent anti-Israel activists – e.g. Max Blumenthal or Ali Abunimah – Peled has a penchant for comparing Israel to Nazi Germany; he also likes to downplay the threats Israel faces from Iran’s mullah regime and Islamist terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Peled has even teamed up with the aspiring suicide bomber and notorious Hamas apologist Azzam Tamimi to have his book promoted, and to promote one of Tamimi’s books on Hamas in turn. (If you’re lucky enough to never have heard of Azzam Tamimi, you can watch him deliver a hate-convulsed rant at a rally for the annual Iranian-sponsored Quds Day, where he called for the eradication of the “cancer” that is Israel.)

The collaboration with Tamimi has apparently paid off handsomely for Peled: it just so happened that a mutual friend of Tamimi and Peled in Gaza translated Peled’s book to Arabic, and Tamimi promptly invited Peled to his TV show to promote the new Arabic edition. One can only hope that Peled’s book will get the publicity it deserves and be prominently displayed at book fairs in Arab capitals alongside popular fare like the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and similar offerings.

Indeed, this is the kind of company Peled himself seeks out. For the past year, he has been a regular contributor to the American Herald Tribune (AHT) – a site that often features the utterly deranged conspiracy theories peddled by its “editor in chief” Anthony Hall as well as other AHT contributors such as the fairly well-known anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist Kevin Barrett. Barrett reportedly thinks that the “Holocaust controversy” is “a legitimate topic of historical debate;” similarly, Hall apparently once declared that a book presenting the Holocaust as a myth requires a “very dramatic re-looking at what happened in Europe in World War 2.” Just a few months ago, Hall explained in a short You Tube clip “why he supports open debate on the Holocaust;” there is also another version showing Hall and two other people airing their obscene views on the same topic, and this clip elicited some enthusiastic comments from fellow holocaust deniers. These clips were posted by “CODOH - Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust;” the offerings at this channel also promote the hard work of dedicated Holocaust deniers, such as “Curated Lies: The Auschwitz Museum’s Misrepresentations, Distortions and Deceptions.”

As it happens, Hall has occasionally found the work of JVP useful.

Hall may soon be able to devote himself full-time to Holocaust denial and the various conspiracy theories he likes to promote in his rambling AHT columns. Shockingly enough, he has so far been indulged by the University of Lethbridge, Canada, where he has been a professor for more than 25 years. But according to a recent report by The Algemeiner, Hall has now been asked to resign; another recent report indicates that he has been suspended.

The fact that Peled has been a regular contributor to a site where Hall serves as editor in chief is a vivid illustration of the swamp from which BDS draws support. And there are of course many other cases where just a little bit of research will reveal similarly unsavory associations – whether it’s Max Blumenthal being cheered wherever there are Jew-haters, Ali Abunimah getting an award from an openly antisemitic Islamist “news” outfit, or Stanford professor Palumbo-Liu promoting a site with offerings that are arguably even more offensive than those on Hall’s AHT.

Even if JVP had not backtracked so quickly from its condemnation of Peled, it would have meant very little: the antisemitism that infests the BDS movement is so pervasive that rooting it out would inevitably lead to the collapse of BDS.

Last but not least, here’s a quick update on Peled’s current activities: it seems he is currently visiting Israel and the West Bank – for him it’s of course all “Palestine” – and he has been meeting with old friends like the notorious Tamimis of Nabi Saleh. According to Bassem Tamimi, they are apparently planning some kind of “conference” in November. Just a day before Peled visited his “brother” Bassem Tamimi, Bassem’s wife Nariman posted a heartfelt “happy birthday” for Nizar Tamimi, a nephew of Bassem who is a convicted murderer and the husband of Sbarro massacre mastermind Ahlam Tamimi. No wonder Peled feels so close to them.

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10/10 Links Pt1: Danon to UN: Why don't you ask PA to condemn terror attack?; Europe exported ISIS jihadism as it once did Nazism

From Ian:

‘We had so many plans together, a home, children,’ weeps wife of murdered cop

Hundreds of mourners joined family and fellow officers at the funeral of a 29-year-old cop killed in Sunday’s deadly shooting attack in Jerusalem.
First Sergeant Yosef Kirma was laid to rest at around 6 p.m. Sunday at the capital’s Mount Herzl cemetery.
Kirma’s father Uzi eulogized his son. “Yossi, you were my friend. Now you are no longer with us any more. How is it possible to continue? What will I do now?” he said. “How can I move on from here? I love you so much.”
Kirma married in April. His wife Noy lamented their short time together. “We had so many plans together, a home, children, and you always supported my career. You loved me always, unconditionally, even more than I loved myself,” she said. “My Yossi, look how many people came just for you. You are my light and my heart.”
Chief Superintendent Meir Namir, Kirma’s commander in the elite tactical response unit Yasam in the Jerusalem Police, said Sunday’s attack “will be seared in the hearts of the policemen of the unit. Yossi was made of the stuff of the heroes of Israel. Now we salute you for the final time.”

Danon to UN: Why don't you ask PA to condemn terror attack?

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, penned a letter to the UN Security Council, calling upon that body to demand the Palestinian Authority condemn the murder of Yosef Kirma and Levana Malichi in Jerusalem on Sunday.
In his letter, Danon noted the numerous expressions of joy and celebrations by Arabs in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria following the terror attack. He also included photographs documenting the celebrations. In some cases, Arab residents were seen handing out candy and waving pictures of the terrorist.
Danon argued that the Security Council must “demand that the Palestinian Authority immediately halt the incitement [against Israel] and strongly condemn the murders in Jerusalem.”
“The time has come,” he added, “for the international community to explicitly and unconditionally declare that support for terror or aid to terrorists is unacceptable, and that it will demand from Palestinian Authority leaders to accept this. The Palestinian Authority’s silence following these chilling murders and the subsequent disgusting celebrations is deafening.”
“In the streets of Gaza they are celebrating a murderous terror attack against innocents, and are praising the lowly murderer. These celebrations and the support for terror are the real impediment to peace, and the primary cause of the terror attacks and the murder of Levana Malichi and Yossi Kirma. In Gaza a generation of children is being raised on hate and violence.”

Egypt loves the Jews whom they ethnically cleansed

The latest example of how Egypt has been showing a recent fascination with Jews, now that there are fewer than 10 Jews left in the entire country, comes from an article in Al Ahram about the historic Ben Ezra synagogue in old Cairo.

This is the synagogue that housed the famous Cairo Geniza, one of the most important historic Jewish archives ever discovered.

Tradition says that the synagogue was built on the spot that Moses was found by Pharaoh's daughter.

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This Haaretz op-ed from Benny Morris is a must-read, since Morris is considered the godfather of Israeli revisionist historians and is quoted so often by Israel's detractors.

Since it is behind a paywall, here is the entire article.

At the bottom of his piece last week “Netanyahu, this is what ethnic cleansing really looks like,” Prof. Daniel Blatman is described as a “historian.” In that case, Blatman betrayed his profession when he attributed to me things I have never claimed and distorted the events of the 1948 war.

First, throughout the article Blatman ignores the basic fact that the Palestinians were the ones who started the war when they rejected the UN compromise plan and embarked on hostile acts in which 1,800 Jews were killed between November 1947 and mid-May 1948. (In that, by the way, the Jews differ from the Serbs, who started the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and did in fact carry out ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and elsewhere).

Regarding the second stage of the 1948 war, Blatman claims that the Arab countries invaded prestate Israel in order to rescue their Palestinian brothers from the ethnic cleansing that the Jews had launched, and that most of them attacked the new State of Israel in order to do this. During this alleged cleansing “over 400,000” Arabs – who according to Blatman made up over half the Palestinian Arab population – were expelled from their homes and forced to flee by May 14. (Actually, there were about 1.2 million to 1.3 million Arabs in the country at the time.)

The real number of those who fled and were forced to flee was apparently smaller, but more importantly, the Arab countries attacked the State of Israel largely to harm it, if not to destroy it. The fact is, their leaders threatened to invade even before the UN resolution was passed on November 29, 1947, and before a single Arab had been uprooted from his home. And they continued to threaten an invasion in the following months, until May 1948.

It wasn’t the tragedy of the Palestinians that motivated the Arab countries during their invasion. The truth is, the flight and expulsion of the Arabs from their homes in prestate Israel, especially from early April until May 14, 1948 (in that connection the capture of Jaffa, Tiberias and Haifa, and the Deir Yassin massacre have always been mentioned), fostered extremism among the Arab populations surrounding prestate Israel and were one reason Arab leaders decided to invade on the eve of May 15.
But more important factors influenced the Arab leaders in their decision; for example, Jordan’s King Abdullah wanted to expand his country’s borders, the Egyptian king wanted to deny the Jordanian king major territorial achievements, and the leaders of Syria, Iraq and Egypt feared the reaction at home if they did not invade. Concern for the welfare of the Arabs in prestate Israel was not the main motive for the Arab invasion.

According to Blatman, I claimed that “over half a year before the Arab invasion began” the leaders of the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Eretz Israel, aspired to expand the country’s borders beyond those decided on in the UN General Assembly resolution, “and to minimize the number” of Arabs who would remain in the Jewish state.

This is nonsense, a distortion of my words and of history. Of course, leaders in a country’s early years are interested in enlarging the country’s territory, but there’s a big difference between personal and political aspirations.

In political terms, the Yishuv’s leaders aspired to enlarge the area of the state in the making only beginning around March-April 1948, not starting in November 1947. And this happened only after four months of Arab combat against the Yishuv, which was staging a strategic defense. And it happened only after the Arab leaders stated clearly morning, noon and night that they intended to attack the Jewish state when the British left.

Regarding minimizing the number of Arabs, at no stage of the 1948 war was there a decision by the leadership of the Yishuv or the state to “expel the Arabs” – neither in the Jewish Agency nor in the Israeli government; neither in the Haganah General Staff nor in the Israel Defense Forces General Staff. Nor did any important party in the Yishuv, including the Revisionists, adopt such a policy in its platform.

It’s true that in the 1930s and early ‘40s David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann supported the transfer of Arabs from the area of the future Jewish state. But later they supported the UN decision, whose plan left more than 400,000 Arabs in place.

It’s also true that from a certain point during the war, Ben-Gurion let his officers understand that it was preferable for as few Arabs as possible to remain in the new country, but he never gave them an order “to expel the Arabs.” (In July 1948 he even decided against the expulsion of the Arabs of Nazareth, while he halfheartedly ordered the expulsion of the Arabs of Lod and Ramle.)

The atmosphere of transfer that prevailed in the country beginning in April 1948 was never translated into official policy – which is why there were officers who expelled Arabs and others who didn’t. Neither group was reprimanded or punished.

In the end, in 1948 about 160,000 Arabs remained in Israeli territory – a fifth of the population. Over the decades, this number has grown to 1.6 million. (This month their leaders decided not to attend the funeral of Shimon Peres, who tried to promote a compromise based on a two-state solution.)

If Blatman reads my books he’ll learn that already on March 24, 1948, Israel Galili, Ben-Gurion’s deputy in the future Defense Ministry and the head of the Haganah, ordered all the Haganah brigades not to uproot Arabs from the territory of the designated Jewish state. Things did change in early April due to the Yishuv’s shaky condition and the impending Arab invasion. But there was no overall expulsion policy – here they expelled people, there they didn’t, and for the most part the Arabs simply fled.

It’s true that in mid-1948 the new State of Israel adopted a policy of preventing the return of refugees – the same refugees who months and weeks earlier had tried to destroy the state in the making. But I still consider this policy logical and just.

I don’t accept the definition “ethnic cleansing” for what the Jews in prestate Israel did in 1948. (If you consider Lod and Ramle, maybe we can talk about partial ethnic cleansing.) And certainly there was no ethnic cleansing that was “one of the most successful of the 20th century,” as Blatman puts it.

On the contrary.

In the end, 160,000 Arabs remained in Israeli territory, and not all those who tried to return from Arab countries after 1948 were expelled, as Blatman claims. Many were expelled, and many somehow returned, were allowed to stay and became citizens of the Jewish state.

Incidentally, Arab countries carried out ethnic cleansing and uprooted all the Jews, down to the last one, from any territory they captured in 1948 – for example, the Jordanians in Gush Etzion and Jerusalem’s Old City, and the Syrians in Masada, Sha’ar Hagolan and Mishmar Hayarden. The Jews, on the other hand, left Arabs in place in Haifa and Jaffa, and in the villages along the country’s main traffic arteries – the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway and the Tel Aviv-Haifa highway – a fact that does not conform with the claim of “successful” ethnic cleansing.

Regarding the current preoccupation with the subject, it’s absurd, to put it mildly, to claim that uprooting Jewish communities from the West Bank is “ethnic cleansing,” but there is logic to the presence of Jews in Arab areas, just as Arabs live in the Jewish state. In today’s circumstances, the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria is an obstacle to a possible peace between us and the Palestinians. I have always opposed this enterprise, because a division into two states for two peoples is the just and logical solution.

Unfortunately, Benjamin Netanyahu is right when he says the main obstacle to peace is the unwillingness of the Arabs on both sides of the Green Line to agree to a compromise based on two states for two peoples, and their rejection of the legitimacy of the Zionist enterprise and the State of Israel.