Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, August 11, 2017

Third holiest site news: Al Aqsa "popcorn" ad used to sell mobile services

Palestinian mobile phone provider Jawwal has a promotion on a new service plan, which it is promoting using this graphic:

Yes, that is the Dome of the Rock - which most Palestinians use as symbolism for the Al Aqsa Mosque, their supposedly holy site.

Although the promotion has been out for at least a few days, I have not seen a single negative word about placing the supposedly third holiest site in Islam on a popcorn cup to sell mobile minutes.

I guess the Palestinian definition of "holy" is a bit different than others'. I cannot imagine the Kaaba in Saudi Arabia being used in such a fashion.

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Members of Congress get briefed on how evil Israel is by Palestinian Authority PM (update)

Ma'an reports that PA prime minister Dr. Rami al-Hamdallah, on Thursday at his office in Ramallah, a delegation from the US Senate, "where he briefed them on the latest political developments and violations of the occupation."

He also asked for Congress to give the PA more money.

We know that there are two Congressional delegations in Israel this week, both Republican and Democratic. There are 18 Democrats and 33 Republicans.

The head of the Democratic Party contingent is Rep. Steny Hoyer, and if I am not mistaken, he is the one with the grey hair on the right in this photo with the PA prime minister in Ramallah.

It looks to me like only the Democratic members of Congress made an official visit to Ramallah. (The 33 Republicans wouldn't have fit in the room!)

UPDATE: Naftali Bennett's media advisor Aaron Kalman tweeted to me that the Republicans also met with Hamdallah in a separate meeting.

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08/10 Links Pt2: Palestinian 'taught to hate Israel' turns Zionist; The murky world of the Aleppo Codex

From Ian:

Did Benny Morris Change His Views on Alleged Zionist Ethnic Cleansing Plan?

At the beginning of the previous decade, some of his positions began to evolve. Correcting a Mistake was the name of his 2000 book. The most publicized revision concerned the current political question: are the Arabs ready to accept the existence of a Jewish state in any borders? In a response to Blatman about a year ago, Morris wrote:
As for my change of opinion, it changed during the 1990s about only one thing – the Palestinians’ willingness to make peace with us. At the beginning of the decade, I thought maybe something had changed in the Palestinian national movement and they were willing to recognize reality and arrive at a compromise of two states for two peoples.
But in 2000, after Yasser Arafat’s “no” at Camp David (which was backed by his successor Mahmoud Abbas), and in light of the second intifada and the nature of that intifada, I realized they weren’t interested in peace. Unfortunately, the situation hasn’t changed since.
Another change in Morris' position, articulated in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (2003), concerned the history of the 1948 war. According to Morris, he adjusted his view in light of new access to archival material which wasn't available when he wrote his original book:
Birth Revisited describes many more atrocities and expulsions than were recorded in the original version of the book. But, at the same time, a far greater proportion of the 700,000 Arab refugees were ordered or advised by their fellow Arabs to abandon their homes than I had previously registered. It is clear from the new documentation that the Palestinian leadership in principle opposed the Arab flight from December 1947 to April 1948, while at the same time encouraging or ordering a great many villages to send away their women, children and old folk, to be out of harm's way. Whole villages, especially in the Jewish- dominated coastal plain, were also ordered to evacuate. There is no doubt that, throughout, the departure of dependents lowered the morale of the remaining males and paved the way for their eventual departure as well.
Contrary to Daniel Blatman's assertions, there was no revolutionary change in Morris' position regarding the general picture of the Palestinian "Nakba." Evolutions in his views over the years, which occurred, he said, due to new revelations and a new assessment of the Arabs' intentions, did not touch on his assessments about the source of the Palestinian refugee problem. Perhaps his detractors attack him precisely because he is a renowned historian who doesn’t hesitate to "correct a mistake" even if the correction is in favor of the Israeli side; who doesn’t wholeheartedly adopt the Palestinian narrative; and who dares to express views that deviate from what is customary in the radical left.
Morris Comments
This writer asked Morris whether this piece accurately reflects his views over the years. Morris responded (CAMERA's translation from Hebrew):
Your description is completely accurate.
But I would add another thing- that Israel, as an agreed government policy, prevented the return of those who became refugees. That decision was made at government meetings in April, August and September 1948 (that is, already when only half of the refugees became refugees).
The word 'refugees' is problematic- because two-thirds of the refugees have moved to another place in the land of Israel (the West Bank, Gaza) and only a third left Mandatory Palestine (a refugee is usually defined as one who left his country).

Palestinian 'taught to hate Israel' turns Zionist

A Palestinian woman, who is also the niece of one of the founders of the Fatah movement, recently stated her unequivocal disapproval of terror attacks carried out by Palestinians against Israelis, citing violent education as the root cause of the phenomenon’s continuation.
Sandra Solomon, a Palestinian born in Ramallah who converted to Christianity more than ten years ago and became a supporter of Israel, condemned the recent Halamish attack in which a terrorist broke into a home and killed three members of the Salomon family.
“The Palestinian terrorist who murdered a family on Friday evening in Halamish; where did he get the idea to enter a home and kill the people who were in there?” asked Solomon. “The young Palestinians who carry out attacks are already murdered from a psychological point of view by the education that is given to them.”
The 39-year-old Solomon, originally called Fida, is the niece of a Fatah official Sahar Habash who was a close confidant of Palestinian Authority Yasser Arafat.
“As a child, I was brought up to hate Israel,” she admitted during a visit to Israel. “The most important thing to us was the liberation of the Al-Aqsa mosque, the liberation of Jerusalem and the destruction of the State of Israel.
“We watched the second intifada on television” she said as she recalled her childhood between Jordan and Saudi Arabia. “After every big terror attack—including when children were killed—candy was given out. The education that was given to me was that only Palestinians are the victims, that they are oppressed in this conflict and that the Zionists are the occupying criminals who took the land for themselves.”
The life changes Solomon underwent and her decision to turn away from the culture of hate instilled within her didn’t take place overnight.

Jezebel: Evidence of Rasmea Odeh guilt “counter to a feminist understanding of rape culture”

A coalition of the usual leftist-Islamist suspects is getting ready to give Rasmea Odeh a big farewell party in Chicago on August 12, 2017.
It’s a farewell party because just a few days later, on August 17, 2017, Rasmea will be sentenced in federal court in Detroit after a guilty plea to immigration fraud. By her plea agreement, Rasmea will be deported and will lose her U.S. citizenship, but will not serve any further jail time.
This farewell party is part of the continuing attempt to turn Rasmea into a social justice hero, as I documented in September 2015, The Sickening Deification of Rasmea Odeh.
Rasmea, readers will recall, failed to disclose on her immigration applications her 1970 conviction and imprisonment in Israel for a 1969 supermarket bombing that killed two Hebrew University students, Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner.

Yemeni Jews arriving in Israel in 2016

Arab media, looking for more crimes to ascribe to Qatar, has found one: the report that Qatar helped hundreds of Yemeni Jews escape their country in 2013.

The fleeing Jews allegedly went to Qatar first and from there flew to Israel according to Lebanese media at the time.

Arab newspapers have the story today, and this op-ed explains why it is a big deal: It shows that Qatar is helping Israel and hurting Palestinians by allowing Jews from Arab countries to move to Israel. The writer says that Qatar falsely claims to defend Arabism but in fact is helping Israel at the expense of Yemen and Palestinians.

And, yes, the writer says that by doing this, Qatar has sold its honor.

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Tuesday’s news contained a particularly infuriating although totally predictable report to add to my collection of “things that show why coexistence is impossible.” It seems that Israel is required by the 1994 Paris Protocol to the Oslo Accords to grant permission to ‘qualified’ Palestinian tour guides to work in Israel. Tour companies hire them because they cost about half as much as an Israeli tour guide, or in some cases if the company wants to provide a ‘balanced’ tour in which both the Israeli and Arab narratives are honored.

So what happens is that Palestinian guides take naïve foreigners to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and explain that the lessons to be learned there are that today’s Israelis treat Palestinians the way the Nazis treated them; that Israel was founded because of Western guilt over the Holocaust; and that Palestinians are victims of genocide (despite the fact that their number has tripled since 1970).

Then they go to the Old City where they tell their clients that the Jews have no history in Jerusalem, and that whether or not there was a Jewish Temple there is “controversial.” They explain that there was a Palestinian civilization in existence for hundreds or even thousands of years, until colonialist Jews came along and dispossessed, expelled and occupied them.

This is yet another small but significant way that the Palestinian Arabs chip away at historical reality and promote their narrative – an untrue story that they believe with absolute sincerity.

They believe that the Jewish state is entirely illegitimate and has no moral or legal authority to arrest or imprison Palestinian murderers, who are not terrorists or criminals but political prisoners or prisoners of war, and that it is appropriate to treat them as heroes and for the Palestinian Authority to pay pensions to their families.

And they believe that the occupation narrative justifies any form of ‘resistance’ including the murder of Jews, whom they call “settlers” (even if they live in Tel Aviv). They even believe that like James Bond, they have a license to kill, granted to them by international law!

But it isn’t merely a belief about historical facts or international law or human rights or who was here first or whether Arab refugees fled voluntarily in 1948 or were kicked out (both happened). There is an overwhelmingly powerful emotional content in the narrative. It places a massive weight of humiliation and shame on the shoulders of the Palestinian Arabs, whom the entire world knows were defeated in war, expelled and subjugated – by Jews, of all people!

Every argument is used to prove that the Jews didn’t do it themselves – that they had the Western world on their side and the money of international Jewry behind them, that the Arab nations betrayed the Palestinians, and so on. But excuses don’t cut it. The only thing that can lift the burden of the narrative from the Palestinian man is the blood of the Jews who humiliated him.

The narrative is independent of the religious imperative that drives pious Muslims to murder infidels who infest a land that was once and therefore must forever be, Muslim. It is independent of the fury born of shame felt by a Muslim who has to submit to even the slightest restraints on his right to worship (like metal detectors, or temporary closures or age restrictions at the Temple Mount) imposed by Jews. But the intense shame and rage it generates fit neatly alongside the religious humiliation felt by Muslim Palestinians.

If you sat down and tried to invent a way to prolong a conflict forever, you couldn’t do better than the Palestinian narrative. It is the narrative that justified the way the Arab nations that hosted the 1948 refugees forced them into refugee camps and refused to allow them to integrate into their societies. Even the Palestinian Authority, which they claim is actually the “State of Palestine,” refuses to end their refugee status! It is the narrative that fuels the rejection of any kind of “normalization” process that might help make it possible for Jews and Arabs to live side by side in the future. It is the narrative that insists that only the “return” of the descendents of the 1948 refugees to “their homes” – that is, the expulsion of the Jewish people from the Land of Israel – can even begin to correct what they view as the moral inversion of 1948.

Some Zionists say that there is no Palestinian people, that they are just a bunch of Arabs whose ancestors migrated into the land in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. And it is correct that few of them have any long-term history here, and that they don’t have a distinct language or religion.

But I would not agree that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people. If the Jewish people are “the people of the book,” the Palestinians are the people of the narrative. The narrative, and the always simmering and sometimes boiling conflict with the Jews, made a people out of them just as the journey through the desert finished the work of creating the Jewish people.

The Palestinian identity today rests entirely on their narrative and their opposition to us, even their hatred of us. If the Jewish people disappeared tomorrow, there would be no Palestinians, just Arabs.

And this is why the conflict will not be ended by a peace agreement, a compromise of some kind, another partition or even a gradual reconciliation. An end to the conflict would mean an end to Palestinian identity, something which they will not give up voluntarily. It’s all they have.

The narrative feeds on itself and only grows stronger with conflict and time; and the stronger it is, the more conflict there is. There is only one way for it to end: one side must win and the other must lose.

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08/10 Links Pt1: Hanan Ashrawi: Queen of delusion; Palestinians Try to Make Jerusalem ‘Judenrein’

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Queen of delusion

According to PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi, Israel holds the Palestinian people captive, denying its historical rights and the imperative to get real about peace. Her weekly diatribe happened to coincide with Jordanian King Abdullah’s first visit to Ramallah in five years, which demonstrated that the rest of the Arab world could not care less about history.
The telegenic Ashrawi is often trotted out for a public display of the kinder, gentler Palestinian nationalist, but in fact she is a protégé of the late Columbia University scholar and anti-Zionist Edward Said. As the holder of a PhD in medieval and comparative literature from the University of Virginia, she might be expected to be a voice of cultural enlightenment, if not reasonableness.
However, in accordance with the Palestinian tradition of never failing to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, she instead pushes antisemitic tropes masked as anti-Zionism.
Google lists more than a few sites of “famous Ashrawi quotes” that illustrate her consistent misrepresentation of fact in aid of the establishment of a Palestinian state. She began her deluded efforts with a breathtaking statement about the some 800,000 Jews who fled persecution from Muslim countries for refuge in the new State of Israel.
In Ashrawi’s historical analysis, these Jews were only “emigrants,” who had left their ancestral homes voluntarily.
Jews lived happily among their Muslim neighbors and were brought to Israel to usurp “ancestral” Palestinian lands as part of a plot by “Zionists.”

Shmuley Boteach: Palestinians Try to Make Jerusalem ‘Judenrein’

One reason the Taylor Force Act is so vital is that it would send a message to Abbas that the United States, at least (sadly, the rest of the world has not seen the light), will no longer put up with his doublespeak. He may dress in a suit but his actions mirror his fatigue-wearing predecessor.
Equally important is moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. The president must fulfill this campaign promise to send another message to the Palestinians — namely, that Jerusalem will remain the indivisible capital of Israel.
For those unaware of history and misled by claims that East Jerusalem is “Arab” and therefore should belong to the Palestinians, I would point out that before 1865 the entire population of Jerusalem lived behind the Old City walls in East Jerusalem. When the UN voted to partition Palestine, a thriving Jewish community was living the eastern part of Jerusalem, which contains many important Jewish sites, including the City of David, the Temple Mount, and of course the Western Wall. This is also the home of Hebrew University and the original Hadassah Hospital. The only time this area of Jerusalem was exclusively Arab was between 1949 and 1967, when the Jews were forcibly expelled under Jordan occupation, a time when the Western Wall was desecrated and Jews of course were barred from prayer.
I will always remain hopeful that a solution can be found that will allow Jews and Palestinians to live together peacefully. One-sided compromises, such as those made during the Oslo period, only embolden the Palestinians to believe they can “liberate” all of “Palestine,” which includes Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem – East and West.
I feel sorry for the many thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who want nothing more than to live their lives in peace, and would gladly compromise to achieve independence. Alas, unlike Israel, the PA is not a democracy and the people remain hostages of their radical leaders. It is hard to envision peace so long as Palestinians are taught to hate in their schools, encouraged to become martyrs by their preachers and media, and rewarded for murder by their leaders.
Regardless of these provocations, Jews will not be driven from their capital or their homeland. Jerusalem will never again be Judenrein.

PA: Israel 'falsifying' Jerusalem's history

The Palestinian Authority (PA) government, headed by Rami Hamdallah, on Tuesday warned against Israel's “escalating policy” following UNESCO's recent resolutions recognizing the Muslim right to the Temple Mount and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron, while ignoring the Jewish connection to those sites.
An official statement released after a meeting in Ramallah said that celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the "occupation" of Jerusalem included a light and sound show in Silwan which, the statement claimed, was based on "falsification of the historical narrative of the Holy City."
The statement further claimed that Israel is re-implementing a policy of removing Arab residents from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, including a decision to evict several families over a claim that the building in which they live belonged to a Jewish family before 1948.
The PA government noted that the escalation of the Israeli government’s “settlement” activity requires the immediate intervention of the international community in order to put an end to it and requires international protection for the Palestinian people and its holy sites and serious action by the Arab and Islamic nation.

Waqf condemns Al Aqsa mosque being used as weapons depot. (Just kidding!)

Israel closed the Temple Mount for less than 48 hours after terrorists used weapons that were hidden there to kill two Israeli soldiers. During that time the police searched the complex for more weapons, and it found knives, chains, clubs and other materials.

Today, the Waqf issued a preliminary assessment of that search - a search that originally spawned rumors that religious Jews were ransacking the area and setting it up for a third Temple.

Reluctantly, the Waqf concluded that there is no evidence that the Israeli police actually took anything. Historical records and manuscripts were left intact.

But it is outraged anyway that there was damage done in the course of the search.

For example, lockers at the mosque were opened and their locks smashed:

These actions, the Waqf says, "constitutes a flagrant violation of the sanctity of the mosque and the sanctity of its facilities."

Using the mosque as a weapons depot isn't a violation of the sanctity of the mosque. Searching for those weapons - is.

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The American Center in Jerusalem (19 Keren HaYesod St) is a section of the Office of Public Affairs of the US Embassy in Israel. It is "an information resource as well as an educational and cultural center with a range of activities aimed at the Israeli public. The Center strives to initiate and strengthen bonds between Israelis and the United States, and to promote understanding of U.S. policies, society, values, and culture."

This office is part of the US Embassy, not the Jerusalem consulate. Its webpages are in the US Embassy website. Its Facebook page says "The American Center in Jerusalem is part of the U.S. Embassy's Office of Public Affairs."

Which means that, for many years (since at least 2009, here's a 2011 event) the US Embassy in Israel has had an official presence in Jerusalem, essentially recognizing Jerusalem as part of Israel. It celebrates Jewish holidays, and Yom Haatzmaut, something you won't see at the Jerusalem consulate.
If an official office of the US Embassy has been in Jerusalem for so long without any problem, why would moving the embassy altogether be an issue? The recognition is already there, at least for the parts of Jerusalem to the west of the Green Line, which is where any embassy would be anyway.

(h/t Irene)

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Davis, CA residents protest Imam Shahin hate speech

Last month MEMRI published several transcripts of hate speech by Imam Ammar Shahin at the Islamic Center of Davis (ICD) in Davis, California, where he explicitly called for the genocide of all Jews. These included these words from July 14::

Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews....Oh Allah, show us the wonders of Your ability that you inflict upon them. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon them. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon those who wish ill upon [the Al-Aqsa] Mosque. Oh Allah, keep them preoccupied with one another, and make a deterrent example out of them. Oh Allah, count them one by one and destroy them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them. Oh Allah, destroy them and do not spare their young or their elderly. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon those who occupy Palestine. Oh Allah, show us the wonders of Your ability that you inflict upon them. Oh Allah, turn Jerusalem and Palestine into a graveyard for the Jews.

And on July 21:

Oh Allah, support the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the rest of the Muslim lands. Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews. Oh Allah, destroy those who closed the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon them, and the wonders of Your ability. Oh Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them.
[...]
Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Oh Allah, make this happen by our hands. Let us play a part in this. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds.

After California members of Congress issued a condemnation, the Islamic Center of Davis released a non-apology apology filled with lies that is no longer on their website. The "apology" says

The sermon was about the theological virtues of one of Islam’s holiest sites, Al-Aqsa Mosque. He also addressed the recent horrific events including the illegal closure, occupation, and attacks against Al-Aqsa Mosque, in addition to the killing and injuring of Muslim worshipers, including the wounding of the Imam of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the prevention of worship and the call to prayer at the Mosque. Specifically, the Imam was referring to individuals that are contributing to this oppression.Imam Shahin and the ICD reject any attempt to blame all Jews for Israel’s policies just like we reject the attempts to blame all Muslims for the acts of fringe groups. In reality, Jews around the world are on the front lines speaking out and protesting Israel's repressive policies against Palestinians.
MEMRI, an extremist agenda driven organization that supports Israel's occupation of Palestinian land, and other Islamophobic news organizations, accused Imam Shahin of anti-Semitism, quoting edited, mistranslated, passages of the sermon out of context.
If the sermon was misconstrued, we sincerely apologize to anyone offended. We will continue our commitment to interfaith and community harmony.

Afterwards, when the outcry remained, Shahin issued a somewhat stronger statement of apology - but he didn't repudiate his words in any way. “To the Jewish community here in Davis and beyond, I say this deeply: I am deeply sorry for the pain I have caused.”

Essentially he said: Sorry you were hurt. But I still believe every word I said.

The organized Jewish community seemed to accept his apology at face value, even though the initial outrageous fake apology proves that he was only engaging in PR and does not in any way disagree with his very explicit antisemitic words that were documented in great detail.

A grassroots group formed in Davis and held a silent vigil last night.

Here was the announcement sent via email:

As most of you know by now, Imam Ammar Shahin of the Davis Islamic Center preached a hate-filled sermon on Friday July 14 and also on July 21, in which he (quoting a Hadith) called for the annihilation of Jews. "Oh Allah, make this happen by our hands," asking for his followers to participate in the slaughter "Oh Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them.".and referred to "the filth of the Jews".
Shahin's supporters initially doubled-down and made excuses for the translated sermon, an "apology" was later issued, and some elected officials and Muslim and Jewish leaders held a closed joint press conference in which speeches were made, including an "apology" by Imam Shahin for the "pain" he caused. At no time was there any retraction or denunciation of the words quoted from the Hadith (the same words that are in the Hamas Charter which call for the murder of our Jewish friends, families and children). Neither was there any call for the Imam to be fired. Equally disturbing is the fact that no member of the DIC's board of directors, nor its congregants, have come out asking for his resignation.
No Christian, Jewish, or Muslim clergy who preaches murder of any minority group should be tolerated. Such speech leads to violence and murder. It simply has no place in a civilized society.
We need to do more to bring awareness to our community of this despicable and dangerous man. Imam Shahin has NOT said he was wrong to have made his statements (just that he was sorry for causing "pain"---as if he did not know beforehand). Nor has he said he will stop preaching such vile ideas!
THEREFORE WE ARE HAVING A PEACEFUL VIGIL WITH SIGNS. NO SPEAKERS. NO MEGAPHONES. MAKING A STRONG STATEMENT WITH OUR PRESENCE AND SIGNS.

The protesters were purposefully spread out so that drivers would see them, which unfortunately does not make for good photos of the protest, but some 60 people participated, including many Christians.

I am told that many people of Davis had not been aware of the events happening in their own town and that they were shocked when they heard the details.

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08/09 Links Pt2: Preaching violence from the pulpit; The Olympics Should Investigate Iran

From Ian:

Clifford D. May: Preaching violence from the pulpit

Imagine if an American priest, minister or rabbi were to call for Muslims to be annihilated. It would be a scandal and it would spark a nationwide controversy over Islamophobia, hate speech and incitement to violence. So why is that not the case when an imam calls for the annihilation of Jews?
On July 21, Ammar Shahin, the Egyptian-born imam at the Islamic Center of Davis (ICD) and an instructor at the Zidni Islamic Institute, both in California, preached from his pulpit: "The Prophet Muhammad says that the time will come, the Last Hour will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews. ... O Allah, liberate Al-Aqsa mosque from the filth of the Jews. ... O Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them. ... O Allah, make this happen by our hands. Let us play a part in this."
A video of the sermon was released by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that for almost two decades has provided access to primary source materials from the Muslim world, translating such materials from Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and other languages.
Stories soon appeared in the Israeli press and right-of-center American news outlets such as Breitbart, The Washington Times, The Washington Free Beacon, The Blaze and Fox News. Left-of-center outlets, also known as mainstream media, apparently saw nothing to report.
The ICD put out a press release calling MEMRI "an extremist agenda driven organization" and claiming that Shahin's sermon had been "mistranslated" and taken "out of context." The imam told a local television reporter that it was "very sad to hear that people are taking your words and they are twisting it around."
In response, MEMRI pointed out that it had posted the sermon uncut and unedited. There could be no question about the accuracy of the translation. The prayer had referred specifically to "the Jews" -- not Israelis or Zionists. MEMRI also translated a sermon from July 14 in which Shahin "made similar statements."

Stabbing attack thwarted near Cave of the Patriarchs

A stabbing attack was thwarted this evening (Wednesday) near the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron.
An Arab approached a Border Police checkpoint near the holy site in a suspicious manner. He stopped several feet from the police before calling out to them. The officers then noticed that he was holding a knife.
The police pointed their weapons at the man and ordered him to drop the knife and surrender. The suspect complied and the situation was resolved without violence.
The suspect a 25 year old resident of Hevron, is being interrogated by police.

'What if Paris attacker was treated like those who attack Jews?'

Amid outrage in France over a suspected terrorist attack against police officers, the CRIF umbrella group of French Jews suggested the incident highlights indifference to anti-Semitic violence.
CRIF on Wednesday posted on Facebook a tongue-in-cheek statement, questioning whether authorities would place under psychiatric evaluation a suspect who fled after ramming six police officers with his car in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret. Two officers sustained serious injuries and the rest suffered moderate ones in the Wednesday morning attack.
“What do you think, should this insane person be put in a psych ward while we contemplate the reasons for his actions?” CRIF posted in French on Facebook about the attacker in Levallois-Perret.
It was a provocative reference to the handling by authorities and the media of the slaying of a Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, in April by a Muslim man who was sent to observation as per his insanity plea even though he has no record of mental illness. He shouted about Allah while killing Halimi, his neighbor, whose daughter he allegedly once called a “dirty Jewess.”
CRIF has campaigned vigorously for the inclusion of an aggravated element of a hate crime into the murder indictment against Halimi’s killer, Kobili Traore. The judiciary’s omission of this element is a “cover up” of the anti-Semitic character of the crime, CRIF President Francis Kalifat has said.

Through the years, I've had my ups and downs with Bibi. I did not like him at all when revelations came out about his extramarital affairs so long ago, in 1993. I thought: How can I trust him with my beloved country when he can't even be faithful to his wife?

Simplistic? Maybe. I was younger then. But from my feminist purview, it really was that simple. Fidelity is fidelity. And I wanted someone who would stand by the country, no matter what.

But I found myself wanting to like him as time went on. Wanting to, and not quite sure I did or could like him.

Sure, he's urbane and eloquent, a brilliant orator. But Bibi has done so many awful things during his career, and flip-flopped on so many important issues it's impossible to turn a blind eye to it all. I laid out many of his misdeeds in a 2013 blog called I Want to Like Bibi:

· He talked reciprocity and gave away Hebron

· He left the government over Disengagement, then voted for it four times

· He criticized Oslo, then gave the Bar Ilan speech

· He's the leader of the Greater Israel party, but froze building in Judea and Samaria

· He wrote a book laying out the reasons terrorists should not be used as bargaining chips, then released over one thousand terrorists with blood on their hands for one Gilad Shalit

· He commissioned the Edmond Levy Report, but didn't bring the commission's recommendations before the Knesset

· He apologized to Turkey for the Mavi Marmara incident, though Israel was the party that was wronged

· He talked the good talk about Iran, but took no real action to apprehend its nuclear ambitions (could he have?)

It's four years since I enumerated all the times Netanyahu waffled and betrayed the country, his fellow Jews. Since that time, there's a lot more. But there's also more in his favor. The way he stared down the UN, for instance.

Masterful.

The way he stayed dignified through 8 years of Obama nastiness, without once losing it. At least not in public. (I couldn't have done it.)

But then there was the time Bibi suppressed crucial military testimony in the Bank of China lawsuit. This was a lawsuit against the bank involving more than 20 families of American victims of terrorist attacks that took place in Israel from 2003-2008, including the families of those murdered in the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva massacre. Shurat HaDin, the Israel Law Center, had initiated the proceedings with the support of the Israeli government, with the knowledge the bank had handled the accounts of senior Hamas officials. Hamas had claimed responsibility for the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva massacre. My friend's son was murdered in that massacre. He was fourteen years old (HY"D).

Avraham David Moses, HY"D, with his little brothers.

It was untenable, unbearable. An agony. But most of all, heartbreaking.

And now, of course, the problem is the way Netanyahu caved on the issue of those metal detectors on the Temple Mount. Everyone knows Bibi let terror win and no one knows why. (Yes. In every case where his behavior is inscrutable, it's always possible there are things we don't and cannot know. Things that go on behind the scenes. But it just will no longer wash.)

Sure. We know about the to-do in Jordan, with the security guard who shot dead two Jordanians after he got stabbed in the back with a screwdriver by one of them. Jordan held him and the Israeli ambassador to Jordan hostage for a short period of time. It was during this time that Bibi had the newly installed metal detectors and other new security aparatus dismantled. This was followed by smiling photos of Bibi sitting with the Israelis released from Jordan. A photo opp.

We were supposed to believe the removal of the metal detectors served as ransom for the Israeli hostages.

But I don't think anyone believed it.

Look, Bibi said it straight out: He wants to keep the status quo regarding the Temple Mount. He wants to fortify the Waqf.

Why? God only knows. I sure don't. I don't understand that at all.

Once again, the Temple Mount was in our hands. Har HaBayit B'Yadeinu! The Arabs were staying away. And we once again thwarted our own ambition. Our highest ambition. (Or did we? Maybe we just didn't care enough.)

Two weeks ago Har HaBayit was empty. It was ours.

And now we have lost our holy place again. Or rather: we gave Har HaBayit to Jordan, once more.

And this time, it's not on Dayan, but on Bibi. Bibi of the "iron wall" remarks of July 23, one day before it was announced the metal detectors were going bye-bye:

"The members of the Government and I share in the terrible grief of the Solomon family. Yosef, Chaya and Elad were murdered by a beast incited by Jew-hatred. The security forces are operating on the ground as necessary, at all times. The home of the loathsome terrorist will be demolished as soon as possible. We are also taking action against those who incite toward acts of murder and those who praise them.

Since the start of the events, I have held a series of assessments with security elements including those in the field. We are receiving from them an up-to-date picture of the situation, as well as recommendations for action, and we will decide accordingly. We are conducting this calmly, determinedly and responsibly and thus we will continue to act in order to maintain security.

Today we are marking the anniversary of the passing of Zeev Jabotinsky, one of the fathers of Zionism. The Cabinet will make an important decision regarding the preservation of his heritage, one of the principles of which – as is well-known – is 'The Iron Wall.'"

It's a disaster, a real one. Not some silly drummed-up charges by those on the left to take Bibi down in court, but a serious reason for the right to boot him out on his butt.

“They are trying to get me and attempting to topple the right,” Netanyahu reportedly told senior officials in his coalition, regarding all the faux criminal investigations surrounding him and his wife. But the "right" isn't right and hasn't been for a long time. Har HaBayit is not ours. We cannot pray there. We aren't building settlements but destroying them. Judea and Samaria are still under martial law.

And there is no iron wall.

The problem is Bibi knows there is no one of his caliber to take his place. This makes him think he can act with impunity, without any accountability to his electorate. This is what we contemplated during the 2015 election. The fact that no matter whom we vote for, we get leftist policy.

We vote for the Likud, for the right, to shore up settlement activity, to be true to Jabotinsky's vision of Greater Israel, an Israel on both banks of the Jordan. We vote for the right so as to end the state of martial law in Judea and Samaria and exercise sovereignty. We vote for the right so Jews will have freedom of worship on the Temple Mount, our holiest site.

But we never get what we vote for. Ever.

And anyway, the alternative is to vote for a small party that can't possibly win enough votes to make noise or effect policy.

A prime minister to replace Bibi: who can find? Moshe Feiglin doesn't have the charisma or the presence. His milquetoast response to the business with the metal detectors was a serious turn-off

"Although I anticipated that Netanyahu would remove the metal detectors from the Temple Mount, and although I very much hoped that I would be proven wrong, things developed in such an amazing and fascinating manner that I couldn’t help but think that perhaps we were on the threshold of an historic change."

So, um. He knew Bibi would blow it, but hoped he was wrong? He was WAITING for things to go south?

Um, WHY? This was a time to scream and act. Not hold our collective breath and wait.

This is not someone who can lead my country.

Bennett? The MK who uses every opportunity and crisis to grandstand and verbally kick the PM between his legs.

Lapid? Who knows what the man believes. To the right, he is right-wing on issues. To the left, he is left-wing on issues. He's a journalist who makes stuff up.

A journalist with great hair.

I could happily give a run down on all the people who might take Bibi's place. But it's a waste of my time and yours.

The bottom line is it no longer matters that the person to take over from Bibi won't have perfect English, be an amazing orator, or a brilliant strategist. We've had enough capitulation on the issues that matter most to us as a people. It's time for Bibi to go.

And it almost doesn't matter who takes his place.

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UNESCO Calls Pride Rock Scar Heritage Site, Deems Simba Return Illegal (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Pride Rock, Serengeti Ecosystem, Tanzania, August 9 - The United Nations Education, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated this location as a site of Scar's heritage today, striking a political and diplomatic blow against Scar's nephew Simba in their struggle over rule of the pride.

The body voted 14-2 in favor of Scar's claim to Pride Rock, following appeals and machinations by Scar's allies among the member states, and against Simba, who claims title to Pride Rock by dint of his late father, Mufasa. Scar and his supporters, which include the influential Hyena Group of non-aligned states, maintain that Simba has no claim to the title, either because he is not authentically Mufasa's son; because even if he is Mufasa's son, Pride Rock is and always has been indigenously Scar; because Simba or Mufasa stole it from Scar; or because Simba has perpetrated genocide against Scar and has forfeited the privilege of sovereignty on Pride Rock.

While the move carries little practical significance, supporters of Scar trumpeted their victory. "This is yet further proof that our cause is just and the Zionist Simba is but a usurper," declared Shenzee, a Hyena representative who brought the resolution before the Council on behalf of Scar. "Let this herald momentum toward a just resolution of Scar's suffering at the hands of the imperialist Simba."

Observers of the UN lamented the blatant ahistoricity of the vote results. "No serious scholar questions Simba's connection Pride Rock," explained Rafi Ki of Baboon Watch. "The nations involved in this fiasco care more about the declarative value of the motion, though, than about its relationship to reality. This is a non-binding forum through which the various regimes can pay lip service to the Scar cause, even as they develop relationships with the up-and-coming Simba, who may yet prove more useful to them than the tired old Scar who appears more interested in holding onto power than in improving the lot of his subjects."

Recent months have seen increased tension over the historic site, with hyenas and Scar jockeying for control of the elevated area overlooking the pridelands. Simba and his supporters have accused Scar and his allies of inciting violence, while Scar continues to cultivate the image of a pursuer of peace even as his administration pays stipends to anyone who kills a member of Simba's band.

Simba was exiled from Pride Rock long ago and aims to reestablish his place in his ancestral homeland, a move Scar opposes.

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