Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, August 09, 2017

08/09 Links Pt1: Is the State Department Buying Arab Propaganda?; Preparing for the post-Abbas era

From Ian:

Is the State Department Buying Arab Propaganda?

After centuries of Muslim persecution, often genocidal, or dhimmitude under sharia, Christianity in the Middle East has been stunted, if not effectively crushed. To avoid discrimination, Christians gave their children Arab names instead of Biblical ones. Their religious celebrations are kept indoors, lest Christian festivities offend Muslims. As in a Stockholm Syndrome, Middle East Christians often ended up defending and even praising Islam, even if that comes at the expense of their own religious rights.
It is stunning to see is how on the one hand, the US State Department and media play down the genocide going on today against Christians in the Middle East, but on the other hand, immediately believe Muslims when one of their leaders tells an American delegation that he does not fear Arabs but fears Jews.
With many branches of the US government apparently determined to distort reality, there seems to be a series of deliberate decisions to ignore -- and to prevent the American public from knowing -- what is really going on.
"Politically incorrect" language has been censored by the State Department, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the previous Executive branch, and, most recently, the National Security Council, which recently seems to have purged the entire department.
It is dangerous for the West to accept Arab anti-Semitic propaganda voiced by some Christian leaders in the Middle East; they are held hostage by the Muslim majority around them. Since the age of the internet, even many Arabs have stopped buying Arab propaganda.
A recent mark was retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was Secretary of State. Wilkerson recently said on MSNBC, during the recent Temple Mount crisis, that Jews pose the biggest threat to Christians in the Middle East. He learned this, he said, in 2002-2003 in Ramallah, during a business trip to meet with Yasser Arafat, from a Middle Eastern Catholic Bishop, who had told him that the biggest enemy for Christians in the region was not the Arabs but the Jews. So, Wilkerson, instead of condemning countless unprovoked terror attacks against Israelis, criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It is most unfortunate that a former high-ranking State Department official decided to blame Israel during the recent crisis, in which Jews were the obvious victims. It is more than unfortunate that Wilkerson took the Bishop's statement at face value instead of recognizing the complexities of the Middle East, where "no" and "yes" rarely mean "no" and "yes".

Peace With the Palestinians Was a Bust. Here’s What Israel Should Do Next.

Half a century after the victory in the Six-Day War, 40 years after its most important political benefit in the separate peace with Egypt, half a decade after the implosion of the Arab structures around it, Israel needs a different strategy vis-à-vis the Palestinian issue. Israel should have adopted such a strategy at the latest when the “Peace Process” predictably failed in Oslo, Camp David, and Annapolis. But it’s not too late to finally abandon the fantasy of peace with the Palestinian national movement and move to an admittedly less desirable yet much more realistic proposition of unilateral disengagement from the overwhelming majority of the West Bank. Three questions beg a detailed and responsible answer: Why isn’t peace a possibility? Is there a viable alternative? How would it work?
Why no peace?
Peace, in the sense of termination of conflict and end of claims, where both sides are free to pursue their own separate nation-building projects—an Arab state of Palestine and a Jewish state of Israel—has been consistently rejected by the Palestinian national movement. Manipulative or ignorant Arabs, Westerners, and Israelis who claim that the Palestinians have all but abandoned their insistence on the “right of return”—the destruction of the Jewish state by demographic means—can no longer successfully cheat mainstream Israelis. “Let me put it simply,” said President Abbas, in January 2014: “The right of return is a personal decision. What does this mean? That neither the Palestinian Authority, nor the state, nor the PLO, nor Abu-Mazen [Abbas], nor any Palestinian or Arab leader has the right to deprive someone of his right to return. … The choice is yours. You want to return? You will return. … Even a father cannot forgo his children’s right.”
Palestinian leaders not only consistently rejected a state (notably in 1947, 2001 and 2008) but demonstrated their profound lack of interest in any constructive enterprise when the nation-builder they were lucky enough to have as prime minister—Salam Fayyad—could not muster any significant public support in the PA kleptocracy. For almost a quarter of a century of controlling most of their population—and with contributions, goodwill and assistance on a magnitude never before showered on a small people—Palestinian elites have produced little except for excuses and a discourse of perpetual victimhood. They have never taken responsibility for the consequences of their misguided decisions and have demonstrated no motivation to take charge of their future in an independent state.
Based on their national record since the emergence of a Palestinian people almost one hundred years ago, the State of Palestine, if it is born, will be a failed, violent, corrupt state, adjusted even less than other Arab entities in the region to meet the challenges of the 21st century. As long as they are under occupation the Palestinians have the supreme attention of the world, billions of dollars to live off and scheme bribes off, perfect excuses to invest nothing in their future, and armies of gullible supporters in Western democracies that help them delegitimize Israel. All this will go away if the Jews can no longer be blamed. Since the Palestinians are not willing to terminate the conflict and have no motivation to establish a state and undertake the responsibilities that statehood entails. Next to the Palestinian addiction to victimhood, the other unbridgeable obstacles for peace—including security and the barbaric Hamas regime in Gaza representing half their people—dwarf in comparison.

MEMRI: Motto Of Hamas Summer Camps This Year: 'Marching On Jerusalem'; Their Goal: To Train The Generation That Will Liberate Palestine, Jerusalem

Hamas's summer camps in the Gaza Strip, whose motto this year was "Marching on Jerusalem,"[1] opened on July 9, 2017 and were attended by 120,000 children and teens. According to Hamas officials, their goal is to train the generation "that will lead the campaign of liberation."[2] In addition to Quran lessons, sports and technology activities, games and entertainment, the camps also offered extensive military indoctrination and training, including weapons training.[3]
Explaining the rationale behind the camps' motto, Hamas's former education minister, Osama Al-Muzaini, said: "Jerusalem is the compass of the Palestinian cause and the central issue of the conflict with the occupier... It is part of the Islamic faith, and its liberation is first a religious duty and then a national one." He added that the camps' goal is "to train the generation of victory and liberation, which will have the honor of liberating Jerusalem and uprooting the occupation."[4]
Many of the camps had names alluding to Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, such as the "We Are the Keepers of the Gates" camp, while others were named for Palestinian martyrs, such as the Muhannad Al-Halabi camp, named for a man whose stabbing of two Israelis in Jerusalem's Old City in October 2015 sparked off the Al-Quds Intifada,[5] or the "Eastern Area Martyrs" camp.[6]

HAMAS SUMMER CAMP: "CAPTURE" ISRAELI SOLDIER

A source of pride is the consistent headlines of Israel providing medical assistance to other countries, even those that are not friendly.

For instance, recently, a medical team from Israel was in Fiji providing medical assistance

Also, over the past few years, Israel has not only brought Syrians in need of medical attention into the country, Israel has also built clinics inside Syria and provided tons of food, medicine and clothes.

But what about closer to home? What kind of medical help does Israel provide to Palestinian Arabs?

The medical help that Palestinian leaders get from Israeli hospitals is an open secret, not the least because of the irony of these Arab leaders accusing the Jewish state of all manner of war crimes and apartheid -- all while availing themselves of those medical facilities.

For example, Hamas terrorist leader Ismail Haniyeh has never been shy about getting Israeli medical care for his family:

o His daughter (complications after routine procedure)
o His grand-daughter (acute infection)
o His brother-in-law (serious cardiac episode)
o His Mother-in-law (cancer)

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh
Credit: Wikipedia

PA President Abbas is also not shy about having his family treated in the hospitals of the evil Zionist state:

His wife (surgery)
His brother (cancer)
His brother-in-law (heart surgery)

Mahmoud Abbas. Credit: Wikipedia

The sister of Hamas senior official Moussa Abu Marzouk was treated in an Israeli hospital for cancer and most recently chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat is being treated in Israel for pulmonary fibrosis while waiting for a lung transplant.

Saeb Erekat Credit: Wikipedia

But what about the regular Palestinian Arab on the street?

A report published by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) gave the following numbers for how many Palestinians have been treated:

o 2008: 144,838
o 2009: 180,000 (source: IDF)
o 2011: 197,713
o 2012: 219,464 Palestinian patients received medical treatment in Israeli hospitals – 21,270 of them children
o 2015: 221,787 (190,000 from West Bank and from 31,787 Gaza; source: Mako; Hat tip: Elder of Ziyon)

One major factor in the number of Palestinian Arabs who get the medical care they need in Israel is security. That was not as pressing a concern before the Second Intifada in 2000:

“Up until September 2000, a Ramallah resident could have taken his car and driven to Ichilov Hospital [in Israel],” began Commander of Judea and Samaria Division, Brig. Gen. Nitzan Alon [speaking in 2010]. “But from September 2000 we’ve been in a state of terror. Hundreds were killed, Jews and Palestinians alike. The battles took place in the heart of the cities, in places where enemies stood side by side with civilians, with difficult conditions and limited ability to evacuate. We could not practice medicine beyond the minimum. In those days, we were on the verge of a humanitarian crisis.”

But today, he says, the situation is different. Thanks to many efforts on both sides, stability has been restored. “The political leadership is able to make decisions not in the context of buses exploding. And now, along with direct military activity – patrolling, arrests, crossings – we are starting a new kind of routine. Medicine is an integral part of it. In today’s reality, we are obligated to do a lot more than the minimum. Our addressing of the situation should be as wide ranging as possible,” said Brig. Gen. Alon.

But while the situation is more stable, it has not returned to the way things were before the Second Intifada. The process for getting access to Israeli hospitals remains complex:

Sick Palestinians need to see a local doctor, who will refer them to a specialist, who then may ask to send them for treatment in Israel. From there, the Palestinian Authority Health Office will need to authorize it, get a permit from an Israeli coordination officer, find the right hospital, and send a commitment to pay the bill. This process alone can take weeks or even months.

That bill is being paid, at least in part, by the Palestinian Authority. The PA prefers that their people (though not their leaders) get their medical care in the hospitals available in the West Bank and Gaza. Besides the expense of superior care, there is the issue of the PA paying money to Israel, which they do whether the patient is from the West Bank or Gaza. For a time in 2009, the PA stopped paying the Israeli hospitals altogether.

But while the cost of care is higher in Israel than in the West Bank, Palestinian Arabs are charged the lower rates that Israelis pay, not the higher rates for foreigners. Those rates the Palestinians pay are much lower than those in the US or Europe. Another consideration is that there are subsidies from foreign governments, charities and the hospital itself.

An example given by Dr. Weintraub, of Hadassah, in 2009, for cancer care is that “it costs between $50,000 and $100,000 here. It costs four times that in the U.S.”

One source of subsidies is The Peres Center for Peace, which sponsors care for 1,000 Palestinian children each year in Israeli hospitals and provides training for 40 Palestinian doctors.

This medical aid and hospitalization is provided despite an atmosphere of mistrust from the Palestinian patients and potential mistrust from their neighbors for having availed themselves of medical assistance from 'the Zionist state'.

It is also provided despite the claims from those who question providing medical care to the enemies of Israel. Shurat Hadin is among those who have written to the Health Ministry and the National Transplant Center requesting that PA chief negotiator Saeb Erekat be removed from the waiting list for a lung transplant in Israel.

And this medical aid is provided while some in Gaza think that Israel owes them that medical care because of the embargo, ignoring the actions taken by the Hamas terrorists which have made that embargo necessary.

The fact remains that while Israeli medical assistance is most noticed when it is being offered in far away places in friendly countries, it is also available to those with no love for Israel, some of whom continue to wish for it's destruction.

And it is those latter cases of assistance that do not get the big headlines.

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This story is nonsensical unless you understand Arab honor/shame culture.

Many young Palestinians are upset that Israeli police have increased inspections of their bags on the way to visit Al Aqsa Mosque, in the wake of the fact that it has been used as a weapons depot for attacking Israelis.

So they came up with a bizarre plan to walk around with empty knapsacks on their backs. This causes the Israeli police to stop them, check them and check their bags.

When the bags are found to be empty, they claim, the Israeli police are "angry" and, therefore, the young Arabs are happy.

One Arab who saw this play out said, "I saw a group of police officers stop a group of young Jerusalemites in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, they searched their bags, and they were all empty, and I saw anger in the faces of police officers who were not able to do anything but inspect and return the bags to their owners."

This means that these Arab youths are deliberately trying to be stopped and searched by Israeli police, slowing down their ability to visit their supposedly holy site - all because they think that it makes the Israeli police frustrated to search a bag and not find any weapons. And if they are traveling in groups then all of them must wait for every bag to be inspected.

This makes them happy.

While normally, being stopped and searched is considered humiliation for the Arabs, but now that they consider it humiliation for the police they want to be stopped and searched.

Even more insane is that metal detectors would allow them a much faster path to praying (and playing soccer) on the Haram al-Sharif - but that is too "humiliating" so they'd rather be inspected one by one.

But that isn't shameful when they believe that they are humiliating the police instead of being humiliated, which was what they considered being frisked a week ago.

This also illustrates the zero-sum game mentality - if we aren't humiliated, then the enemy must be feeling shamed. And vice versa.

The reason that there is no peace plan that works is because Westerners try to think logically about the issue and to see what each side wants. There is no logic. Arabs generally don't work in a logical world but in an emotional one, where the exact same event can be considered either honorable or shameful based on their mindset that day.

In the end, though, any Jewish control over what they consider Arab and Muslim lands is the ultimate humiliation and that shame cannot be erased no matter how many concessions Israel gives.

The Palestinians don't need aid. They need an army of social workers and psychologists to help their self-esteem (=honor.) If they were half as confident in themselves as they pretend to be, they would be able to make concessions for real peace instead of symbolic victories like supposedly frustrating the police.

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Even two-year old Palestinians are taught to attack Jews

I received this email from Rabbi Elchanan Poupko, a New York based writer, teacher, and blogger.

I am on a visit to Israel and went to the Western Wall.

When I left the Western Wall I decided to walk through the Arab market up to Jaffa Gate. As I am walking I hear a ring of fire crackers, the kind that you throw on the floor and they make a little pop, blowing up all around me. I get under a balcony and it still coming I look around and can't figure out where it's coming from. Suddenly I realize that this Arab mom has her two-year-old child in a baby carriage.

He has a huge package of firecrackers and she has him throwing them on Jews.

I took out my camera took a picture and a video and she got really mad.

Just thought it's a powerful message about what kind of unthinkable things some Palestinians do using their children as tools of terror.

Bang snaps are not dangerous, of course, but the idea that 2-year old kids are being taught from the cradle to throw explosive devices on Jews would be considered shocking in any context - except when the attackers are Palestinians.

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The knock on the door (Forest Rain)

Israelis are generally friendly, warm and happy to have guests over. You don’t have to call in advance, just show up and knock on the door.

But there is also a different kind of knock on the door. One that is never welcome. In fact, it is every family’s nightmare.

Last night a family in Haifa was getting ready to go to bed. Galit and her four children ages 6-14, were going through their habitual motions, the same as any other evening. The only thing different was that Galit’s childhood sweetheart, husband, father of her children, was away in the south of the country, on reserve [military] duty.

Dinner, baths, possibly a TV program or a movie. The things every family does.

There was no forewarning, nothing to raise alarm or concern. Dudi hadn’t gone off to fight in a war, of course he would come back… The news that a military helicopter crashed would not have reached his family. The news was only released this morning.

One moment life is completely normal and then, a knock on the door changes things forever.

Can you imagine that knock on the door, when no one is expected to show up? Looking out, you see military uniforms and somber faces. Your heart begins to race. This is the experience you have heard about from others. The one experience you never dared think about, horror of horrors, the event you never want to have happen to you. But it is happening. This time, the nightmare is yours.

Do you dare open the door? If you let them inside you know your life will be shattered. You don’t want to hear what they came to tell you. At the same time, you know that slamming the door in their face will not undo the reality that is about to step in to your home.

Did Galit hope they were going to tell her that her Dudi had been injured? Were her children next to her when she was notified?

If your child is asleep when you find out that your husband is dead and will never come home again, do you wake up the child or do you let the child sleep to give him or her a few more hours of innocence?

The IDF never leaves a bereaved family to cope alone. A trained team goes to notify the family face to face. They are the ones who take the brunt of the family’s initial shock and all the emotions that rise up as a result – anything can happen from tears, rage, to physical collapse that necessitates emergency medical treatment.

I have heard so many stories of this awful moment. People who opened the door and understanding what they were about to be told, instinctively slammed the door, as if that would keep the awful news away. One mother told me that when she was notified, she fainted. When she revived she found herself lying on her couch but it seemed like she was in a black pit with demons pushing her down. She couldn’t get up, couldn’t hear anything that was happening around her.

I will never forget the teenager who described how the night before they were notified that his brother had been killed, he and his mother felt physically ill. The next day he was sitting in the window of their home and he saw the uniformed team walking to their door. He flew out of the house, screaming at them to go away, to not come any nearer to his home. He did not want to hear what he knew they were going to tell him. He did not want his mother to have to face them. He screamed at them in rage. They calmed him, hugged him and took him inside to speak with the rest of his family.

What a horrible job.

It takes unfathomable depths of spirit to be capable of embracing and containing the pain of families ripped apart.

I did not know Maj. David “Dudi” Zohar or his family but he is (was) a well-known figure in Haifa. He was a Hebrew Reali School alumnus. His four children attend the Reali school (the same school mine attended). The school has a Remembrance Wall for each student / graduate killed during IDF duty or in terror attacks. Dudi’s will be the 302^nd name added to the wall.

Dudi Zohar was a highly appreciated figure in Elbit Systems where he worked for the last 13 years. Just a few short hours before the tragic helicopter crash Dudi was filmed for an internal project in Elbit, geared to support and encourage leadership. He explained his perspective on camera, saying: “Talents are a good starting point. No one is born to be on top. Those who attain the top are born talented but also must work very hard. Talents are the minimal starting point. After that, everything depends on work, guidance and faith… a leader must be brave and have enough daring. His [or her] responsibility is to coach others.”

I didn’t know Dudi but, in a way, I do know him. He is family I never met. His are the qualities that built this country, raised up new leaders and protected our future. He served his people in the IAF and in civilian life. His death bites chunks out of the lives of many who will continue to live but will always have a gap where the man they once knew should have been. The husband, the father, the friend, the advisor, the mentor…. Gone.

I don’t know Galit or her children but I can’t stop thinking about the knock on their door. My heart aches for their pain.

And I hope to God that knock never comes to my door.

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08/08 Links Pt2: Ryan Bellerose: Unassailable; Why Is The News Fake? Visit France see a play on the Toulouse Jew-murderer

From Ian:

Ryan Bellerose: Unassailable

Pro-Israel advocates and activists need to understand that we do not have to say things like “ Jews are indigenous BUT….” Or “ The Arabs have rights too….” Of course the Arabs have rights of longstanding presence but those rights are not the same as indigenous rights.
The indigenous argument is important, because its airtight. The only arguments against it come from people who don’t even understand indigenous rights or indigenous status. The people who say “but the Arabs are indigenous” are only doing so because they have been force-fed false history and lies. The Arabs are indigenous… TO ARABIA, the Hejaz where their language, religion, customs and genetics all come from. If they self-identify as Arabs then they cannot self-identify as indigenous to non-Arab lands and that means any land outside the Hejaz, because truthfully the Arab world should be called the “Arabized” world. Indigeneity is site specific – Jews are not indigenous to the entire Middle East any more than Arabs are, any more than Amazigh are or Bedouin. It’s time to start calling out false narratives, not empowering them.
Jews can trace their lineages back several thousand years. They can show the genesis of their spiritual mode and method and trace it back to Israel, their evolution as a people, their cultural and linguistic coalescence, all of it comes right back to Israel, every path, every creek and stream, every hill, all have a story attached, that’s how you know the Jews are home. How can you expect that to be balanced with a group of people who started showing up in the 7th century and never actually built anything other than some scabby villages and a few mosques?
So get off the fence, you don’t need to be – besides some of you have been fence-sitting so long your ass must be getting sore by now. Take a side, take a stand, because we are the good guys and we are tired of having to carry your ass. No more virtue signaling, no more weak and vacillating arguments that give equal time to the enemy. It’s time to tell the truth.
Jews are indigenous to Israel. Jews are from Judea, Arabs are indigenous to Arabia. It’s not complex, it’s not fair, it’s not balanced, it’s simple unfettered truth.

IsraellyCool: Why Is The News Fake?

Have you ever wondered what I know about how the News Wires like AP, Reuters and Agence France Press (AFP) operate which leads me to be so contemptuous of most of their coverage. This is the first time I’ve told this story in public.
When Matti Friedman first came out and exposed the goings on at Associated Press (AP) in Israel, I recognised the pattern. I had a chat with him and told him the same story I told above: he had never been to the APTN offices in London and wasn’t working directly with the video side but as soon as I told him he started to rethink about things he’d seen while working at AP in Israel.
His original whistle blowing article had put the finger on the problem completely: there is a filter through which the news passes. Stories painting Israel in a positive light very often get blocked, negative stories pass. Negative stories about Palestinian leadership almost never see the light of day.
If you want to see a written version, I first put this down in 2006. It was republished in 2010 largely unchanged. If I have to stress one point about what I saw at the offices of AP TV News in London it is this: why are over half the staff I saw working in a London office speaking and working almost exclusively in Arabic?

Melanie Phillips: Lionising the fringe elements

The key fact about Jackie Walker, however, which has merely been reinforced by her Edinburgh travesty, is that she is troublingly obsessed by Israel and the Jews. In any normal universe, such a person would be treated as a (truly) fringe wacko of repulsive views and ignored. Instead, she is lionised. At Edinburgh she received a standing ovation (ok, there were only about 30 people in the audience, but still) with a banner fixed to the front of the stage reading: “Anti-Semitism is a crime. Anti-Zionism is a duty”.
Across the Atlantic a not dissimilar scene was being enacted by the far left Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) at a convention in Chicago last Saturday. That passed a BDS motion, with 90 percent approval of the 697 delegates from 49 states, to wild applause while participants chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. In other words they were chanting their support for the extermination of Israel. This is, of course, what the BDS movement is all about.
You can watch that horrible scene here.
As with the British Labour Party’s Jew-baiting and Israel-bashing bigots, the issue that should cause such concern is the tacit or overt support for such views – or at the very least, the conspicuous failure to confront them.
The DSA claim that they now have about 25,000 dues-paying members nationwide, up from 8,000 in recent years. A similar rapid increase is true of Labour’s far-left Momentum caucus. The real problem, however, is the failure by the Labour Party to kick Momentum out, and the silence of the Democratic party in the US over the DSA spectacle – for even though the DSA is a separate organisation, this is the general direction in which the Democratic party itself has gone.
The deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee Keith Ellison, who has been associated in the past with the virulently anti-Jewish Nation of Islam, has made a number of questionable remarks including recorded comments at a 2010 private fundraiser in which he said that American foreign policy was “governed” by Israeli interests.
In other words, both Jackie Walker in Britain and the DSA in America are holding a mirror up to the so-called moderate left. Like Caliban in The Tempest, those self-described centrists may be recoiling from what they see in that glass – but it’s their own reflection from which they are flinching.

Ma'an publishes, with a straight face, an article by a self-described international law expert named Samir Dweikat describing exactly why Jews have no right to buy land in British Mandate Palestine under international law.

The "logic" is fairly bizarre, but the argument seems to go like this: After the Ottoman Empire dissolved, the Palestinian Arabs gained legal ownership of everything from the river to the sea (even though these boundaries were created by the British and French.)

The laws that governed the area of what became British Mandate Palestine were -Palestinian Arab laws!

And Palestinian law does not allow Jews to purchase land in Palestine!

QED.

The fact that there was no Palestinian Arab entity or Palestinian Arab laws, in 1918 are of little importance to this expert on international law.

"Palestinian law" which apparently governs international law says that Jews have no right to own "any inch of the land...from the river to the sea." Anyone who sells land to a Jew is a traitor and the sale is invalid, and the Jew must return the land. Dweikat reiterates that Jews are not allowed to own even a grain of sand.

Under international law.

Ma'an actually thinks that this argument, made without a single reference to a single actual law, is weighty enough to publish.

Which tells you a lot about Palestinian media altogether.

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An op-ed in Al Hayat says that Israel's support for persecuted minorities in the Muslim world is really the Jews' attempts to destroy Arab and Muslim unity.

You can't make this stuff up.

Salah Hassan writes that Israel has been wooing religious and ethnic minorities in Arab countries, under the pretext of protecting them from persecution by Muslims. He concentrates on how Israel is destroying Iraq by supporting minority population there.

It started with Israel bringing Iraqi Jews to Israel in the 1950s. Then Israel went after the Baha'i, who were concentrated (and persecuted) in Iran and Baghdad, and who now are based out of Haifa.

Israel has been cultivating relationships with the Kurds for decades as well.

The final straw, apparently, was the Israeli Knesset hosting Nadia Murad, the Yazidi survivor of ISIS atrocities, last month. Once again the Jews are trying to fragment the Arab world by turning the Yazidis against the Muslims who are raping and beheading them.

Hassan is also concerned over some Jews who are making noises to save the minority Mandeans in Iraq.

This is all, we read, "part of [Israel's] work on the permanent fragmentation of the Arab countries. This is to complete the work of Daesh [ISIL}"

Of course, the idea that Arabs and Muslims just have to treat their minority groups as human beings is not part of the discussion.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

08/08 Links Pt1: Arab Tour Guides Slander Israel at Yad Vashem; It’s Not the Settlements, Stupid

From Ian:

Palestinian tour guides accused of anti-Israel 'brainwashing'

Palestinian and Israeli Arab tour guides working in Israel are repeating incendiary falsehoods to foreign tourists they take to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem -- including the refrain common among Palestinians that "Israel is doing the same thing to us as the Germans did to the Jews in the Holocaust."
The Israeli Tourism Ministry grants Palestinian tour guides certificates in accordance with the 1994 Paris Protocol of the Oslo Accords, which mandates that Israel allow Palestinian guides, certified by the Palestinian Authority, to guide tour groups in Israel.
However, several Israeli tour guides have revealed that Palestinian tour guides make anti-Israel assertions, not only at Yad Vashem and elsewhere in Israel, but also during other tours, such as those conducted by the Israeli Tourism Ministry to Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
"The problem is mainly with the Palestinian guides, but sometimes also with Israeli Arab guides," says O., an Israeli tour guide. "The guide usually takes a group of tourists on one- to 10-day trips. ... What he says, and how he says it, will shape their opinions of the place and the people."
Tour guide Zvi Harpaz says he has heard the Palestinians slander Israel at Yad Vashem on numerous occasions.
"This is known in the tourism world, and this phenomenon has been around for many years. I myself heard a guide say that exact sentence to a group of American Catholic tourists, and I am not alone," Harpaz says.

Two Rising Stars of the Democratic Party Are Courting the Anti-Israel Left

Senators Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, both of whom are expected to seek the presidential nomination in 2020, have just seized opportunities to shore up their anti-Israel bona fides, according to Jonathan Tobin. Booker, as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voted against the Taylor Force Act—which would condition U.S. aid for the Palestinian Authority on its cessation of payments to terrorists and their families—while Gillibrand made clear her opposition to the Israel Anti-Boycott Act. Tobin writes:
Both [senators] were once rock-solid supporters of Israel. But both have other priorities these days—they are thinking about running for president in 2020. Their problem is that no one who plans to compete in future Democratic primaries can ignore the growing power of their party’s left wing, which has grown increasingly hostile to Israel. The influence of the far left is the only thing that might explain why Booker and Gillibrand are presenting themselves to their party’s base as less than fully supportive of Israel. . . .
Booker—considered very close to the Jewish community [while serving as mayor of Newark], before he was elevated to the Senate—was one of four committee Democrats (out of ten) to oppose the Taylor Force Act. His explanation was that he wanted the aid money to be held in escrow for more than a year. A more likely reason is that he is signaling to the left that he wants to be considered sympathetic to the Palestinians. Gillibrand’s abandonment of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act was just as telling. . . .

Four US Senators and how they betrayed Taylor Force

Somewhere I read their explanations and their excuses, but so much of it was gobbledygook that it made no sense to me.
Nor would it make sense to anyone who has an understanding heart. There is nothing vague or subtle about Abbas’ program.
His program calls for the murder of every Israeli and every Jew, else why the reward?
Taylor Force, a US Army Veteran, was not Jewish (so far as I know) but on a visit to Israel last year he was murdered by an Arab whose family now live wealthy from the PA pension. That’s what sparked the legislation. The only question is – what took so long?
Next question – who could vote against a bill that asks nothing more than humanity and decency?
Perhaps Murphy, Udall and Merkley would like another try explaining themselves, and as for Booker, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach feels “betrayed” by his “friend.”
The advice from Pirkei Avot (“Ethics of the Fathers”) is to “seek no intimacy with the ruling powers.”
They will use you but when it counts they will let you down – and they did it again last week, times four.

For the ninth consecutive year, Saudi Arabia announced that it would host a thousand family members of Palestinian "martyrs" for Hajj.

King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud ordered the hosting on Monday.

The Minister of Islamic Affairs Sheikh Saleh bin Abdulaziz bin Mohammed Al-Sheikh said that the offer comes from the Muslim and Arab brotherhood held by the King for Palestine and its people.

Al-Sheikh stressed that the Palestinian people deserve all the respect and appreciation due to their great sacrifices to preserve Jerusalem and the land of Palestine, which is an Arab Islamic land.

He pointed out that the Kingdom sought in all circumstances to obtain the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and achieve their hopes and aspirations, and harnessed their potential at all levels to reach those goals.

These statements make the much heralded Saudi-pushed "Arab Peace Plan" look more like a stage towards the destruction of Israel rather than a permanent peace, if all of Israel is considered to be forever an Arab Islamic land.

This also makes it look like, while Saudi Arabia has been leaning towards declaring Hamas a terror group, it doesn't consider all Palestinian terrorists to be terrorists - only the ones associated with either Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood.

Fatah terrorists are heroes.

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Ma'an News published "the story of a martyr" in which a teenager who decided to die while attacking Israeli police two years ago is described in poetic terms filled with antisemitism. It was written by a friend of his.

Excerpts:

16 year old Laith al-Khalidi has been a refugee in his homeland since he opened his eyes to this world...

It was his dream to become a lawyer one day, so he can defend his cause and his homeland Palestine, and he loved life and studied to be an Oud player, with a vivid and lively smile...

On Friday, July 31st, Laith awoke with his family to eat breakfast together, as usual, and heard the shocking news in Palestine, of a baby that was burned by the hands of the lowly monkeys. He addressed his mother saying: "Why did they burn him?

Two tears fell from Laith's eye to announce the death of an innocent child inside him and the birth of a brave man.

Al-Laith went with his father and his brother to pray Friday, and after the prayer they returned home, the sorrow and hatred filled his heart and hatred of the pigs and monkeys had reached its peak, as he opened his account on the social networking sites, and published a picture of the burning of Dawabsha, Sometimes thoughts come to him like arrows...What can he do? Every day the enemy shames women, kills children and humiliates the elderly. Laith realized here that the hour had come to take revenge for every Palestinian. His mind did not cease to fantasize like a united fist.

He and his friends went to the Atara checkpoint north of Ramallah. He came out of the house angrily and echoed his words: "I am not afraid of the bullet. Come, let me be a martyr." "We must burn them like they burned the baby." ...The last stone he threw after a crack inside him the voice of crying for him and his mother and his father and his brother Ahmada , "God bless you for the baby to me."

A few seconds later, with the sound of bullets, a soldier fired his treacherous shot. Laith greeted it with an open chest and with all his heart, ...pounding the chrysanthemums in his chest
.
It was said to be a butterfly shot, any label that assassinated the beautiful tomorrow as the butterfly !!! The earth is saturated with it until it is plucked, and from it the flowers were drawn to her, and green fields were opened on that holy body.

.. O Laith, the most beautiful story I have ever heard in my life, the legend that will shine in our veins and will remain on the banks of our pains, the flower of Jasmine will still embrace the strings of the warm sun, and will not forget your gift on the teeth of a child like lion, The sky of the camp, its crescent overlooking its land, its walls painted with pain, everything in existence will miss you. The sun, and the color of your skin, was painted in a color of freedom.

If this is not encouragement for young Palestinians to become "martyrs," I don't know what is.

Yet Ma'an keeps getting funded by European NGOs and governments.

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1959 Jordanian guidebook erases Jews from history, all Jews since King David are "occupiers"

The "Guide to the West Bank of Jordan" was a 1959 booklet, written for Christian pilgrims by Jordanian Christians Ghattas J. Jahshan and Maheeba Akra Jahshan:

Almost certainly the book was written in conjunction with the Jordanian government as this full page photo of King Hussein indicates.

The book does everything is can to erase Jews from the history of Judea.

So while Kings David and Solomon are reluctantly mentioned, King David merely "occupies" Jerusalem and Jews are excluded from its history.

The Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is the "ex-Jewish Quarter" complete with a new name that Jordan created for it to erase any Jewish history:

The Mount of Olives is described without mentioning the tens of thousands of Jews buried there.

Even the Kotel is mentioned without mentioning anything about Jews.

Its map of the area calls Israel the "Occupied Area of Palestine:"

Notice that the West Bank isn't "occupied Palestine." It isn't Palestine at all. Only Israel is.

Yet the book couldn't erase the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount altogether, calling it "Mt. Moriah." This is before Muslims succeeded in telling the world that the entire Mount is "Al Aqsa."

(h/t Josh K)

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