Why peace is impossible, reason #3951 (plus proof ME "experts" are anything but)

Excerpts from The Forward's article about their interview with Hamas' Abu Marzouk:

Any agreement reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority will be subject to far-reaching changes if Hamas comes to power in a democratic Palestinian state, a top Hamas leader told the Forward in an exclusive and wide-ranging interview.

Mousa Abu Marzook, considered Hamas’s second-highest-ranking official, said that his group would view an agreement between Israel and the P.A. — even one ratified by a referendum of all Palestinians — as a hudna, or cease-fire, rather than as a peace treaty. In power, he said, Hamas would feel free to shift away from those provisions of the agreement that define it as a peace treaty and move instead toward a relationship of armed truce.

“We will not recognize Israel as a state,” he said emphatically. “It will be like the relationship between Lebanon and Israel or Syria and Israel.”

He also made clear that such an agreement must include the unqualified right of Palestinians to return to land in what is now Israel.

Abu Marzook was at pains to knock down suggestions in numerous media outlets that Hamas is preparing to abandon armed resistance against Israel in favor of mass popular resistance against Israeli rule.

A February 6 article by Time magazine correspondent Karl Vick about the “mainstreaming” of Hamas was one object of his disdain. In it, Vick played up comments by Meshal, who, at a November reconciliation meeting with Fatah leaders, praised the popular protests of the Arab Spring last year in Egypt and Tunisia as packing “the power of a tsunami.”

“The new government emerging in Cairo may be dominated by Islamists,” Vick wrote hopefully, “but it has pushed both sides to make up and adopt the nonviolent strategy against Israel, complete with negotiations.”

For Abu Marzook, the November meeting in Cairo meant something “completely different.” At the meeting, he said, the groups involved asked, “What kind of [activities] between us we can share together?” And mass civil resistance, it was decided, was one in which all could participate.

“We accept that,” he said. “[It] can now make reconciliation easier.” But giving up both the right and the opportunity to conduct military operations? “It doesn’t mean that,” Abu Marzook stated flatly.

Indeed, a careful look at the original Agence France Presse report from which Vick drew Meshal’s comments reveals some important remarks the Time correspondent left out. “Now we have a common ground that we can work on,” Meshal said then. But he added, “As long as there is an occupation on our land, we have the right to defend our land by all means, including military resistance.”

In a long exchange about terrorism, the Hamas leader resolutely defended his organization’s past acts of violence targeting civilians.

As for the Protocols, “The Zionists wrote it, and they said, ‘No, we didn’t.‘ [It’s] linked to Zionists,” he said.

Informed that the document was, in fact, a forgery, Abu Marzook appeared nonplussed. “Really? This is the first time I know [about this],” he said.

So any peace agreement that Israel might manage to hammer out with the PA would be torn up after any elections that bring Hamas to power - like the last ones. Making any already illusory potential agreement meaningless.

Astonishingly, the Forward takes pains to quote "experts" throughout the article who see these very words by a Hamas leader and try to spin them as if they are peaceful, the exact way that Karl Vick did and Marzouk proved wrong:

Quite apart from the content of Abu Marzook’s remarks, several veteran observers of the hard-line Islamist group viewed the fact that the interview took place as a larger signal of change now roiling the organization.

“I think the mere fact of his speaking to you, independent of what he said, is almost more important than the specifics,” said Shlomi Eldar, who has reported on Hamas from Gaza for Israel TV’s Channel 10 and other media outlets since 1991. “Even granting such an interview is far away from what he thought two or three years ago…. What [Abu Marzook] really wants is for Jewish Americans to convince the Israelis that Hamas is not like an animal.”

Gershon Baskin, an Israeli peace activist who has acted as a liaison between Hamas and senior Israeli government officials, including in the process that finally freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, termed the interview an “historic landmark.”

“The amount of time he gave you is amazing,” Baskin said.

Why is this fundamentally different than Hamas writing op-eds for the New York Times, something they have done a number of times? All it means is that they are learning how to spin the media better - and how to spin these "experts"who substitute wishful thinking for actually listening to what is being said, explicitly. The idea that people can find the fact that an interview occurred to be more relevant than the actual words spoken is stunning. And it shows that Hamas' new-found media savviness works to its advantage, because so many will disregard their hardline positions and instead find some fake symbolic peacefulness. Hamas doesn't even have to lie to get Westerners to fall all over themselves to praise the murderous thugs; they just have to act vaguely Western.

One other "expert" is also shown to be clueless about Hamas:

At some points, Abu Marzook seemed to claim that the Hamas leaders who publicly celebrated such killings — who have included Meshal himself — were not speaking for the organization, or that Hamas had not itself directed and planned the actions or, at least, had not planned them as civilian hits.

“There’s no one speaker [within] the resistance,” he said. “Everybody talks about their actions, and you can make what you want of those speakers. They make it as [if this is] the policy of the resistance. And this is not right. Our policy is… against targeting any civilian.”

On those occasions when civilians die in such actions, “there is no planning” for this, he claimed, “because it’s very difficult to make something like this to be perfect…. When you killed his brother or his [fellow Palestinian] civilians, he wants to retaliate. It’s very difficult to say anything bad to him.”

Mouin Rabbani, a Jordan-based Middle East contributing editor to Middle East Report who follows Hamas closely, expressed surprise at such distancing remarks.
“I’m surprised he didn’t repeat their traditional justifications,” he said.

In the past, Rabbani said, Hamas had expressed interest in reaching an understanding with Israel whereby each side would undertake to avoid hitting civilians or civilian infrastructure targets. “In the past, among other arguments, they’ve justified their actions by claiming every Israeli is a soldier. It’s very uncommon for them to basically disavow these actions.”

No, it's not. During Cast Lead they claimed that they were not targeting civilians with their rockets, and their response to the Goldstone Report said the same. I have traced the first time Hamas made the claim that they don't target children back to 2008 and I explain exactly what prompted them to make that claim.

Besides proving that peace is impossible, this Forward article also proves that many so-called experts on the Middle East are clueless about basic facts.

Read More

BBC can't find a Muslim cleric willing to appear with a rabbi in Doha

From Israel Hayom:

Former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi and current Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau was scheduled to travel to Qatar in the coming weeks to take part in the monthly Doha Debates panel, together with other religious leaders. The event was canceled, however, because no Muslim representative could be found to participate.

The Doha Debates, which have been broadcast on BBC World News since 2005 and have a potential viewership of more than 350 million people, had already secured a Christian representative to speak alongside Rabbi Lau, but no Muslim cleric would agree to join them.

"They are always talking about dialogue and [peace] partners, but apparently they don't really mean it," Lau told Israel Hayom on Wednesday. "We reach our hand out and they leave us hanging."

The Doha Debates are chaired by award-winning former BBC correspondent and interviewer Tim Sebastian, who founded the program in 2004 and secured its editorial independence.

No government, official body or broadcaster has control over what is said at the sessions or who is invited.

As I have noted many times before, to the Muslim establishment, "dialogue" means a monologue where they can impose their viewpoint but will not listen to any other. In fact, at least one fatwa explicitly rejects "dialogue" when there is no way for the Muslims to control the message.

Apparently, most Muslim leaders have a real problem with "free speech" when that speech includes anything that they disagree with.

Read More

A round-up of violent anti-semitic incidents in 2011

The Kantor Center report on anti-semitism is now available. While they note that violent incidents decreased in 2011, reading about all of them at once is still jarring:

Despite the decrease in major violent incidents, Jews in 2011 were victims of numerous such incidents. According to the French SPCJ, violence in 2011 was much more severe than in the previous year, and led in some cases to the hospitalization of the victims. Thus, for example, in June, a rabbi was physically assaulted by two men in their twenties in the eleventh arrondissement in Paris. The perpetrators kicked and punched him in the head and body while shouting antisemitic abuse. The victim was hospitalized. In April a young Jew returning from the synagogue in Villeurbanne was assaulted by two youths who inquired first as to his identity. That same month, a young woman was violently attacked by a man on a bus in Caluire et Luire, Lyon. The assailant threw a bottle at the girl’s head, pushed her against a window and punched her in the face, while hurling antisemitic insults, such as: “Big Jewish nose” and “Dirty Jewish bastard, the Arabs will kill you.”

Similarly, throughout the year in Britain, visibly Jewish individuals were attacked by passers-by in close proximity to synagogues, and Jewish children were attacked on their return from school. In July, a Jewish individual walking home through a park in London was identified by a group of white youths as Jewish and brutally attacked. In another incident in February a Jewish woman was crossing the forecourt at a gas station in Manchester in order to pay when a car containing two women reversed sharply into her, knocking her to the ground, The occupants (two white women) then got out of their car, shouted “Dirty Jew” and spat at the injured woman lying on the ground, before getting back into the car and driving away.

In Lausanne, Switzerland, an assistant rabbi was brutally attacked when he left the synagogue and abused with antisemitic insults. In addition, an Orthodox Jewish young man was stabbed in front of his family in the parking lot of the Natural History Museum in Geneva in late December. According to the CICAD (Intercommunity Coordination against Antisemitism and Racism), the number of antisemitic manifestations recorded in French-speaking Switzerland increased by 28 percent (mainly cyber hate) from the previous year. Moreover the level of incidents of violence, vandalism and insults was the highest since monitoring began in 2003.

In Belgium, a 13-year old Jewish girl was physically attacked by a group of five girls of Moroccan origin, in November in Brussels. After shouting insults at the girl, the group leader said, “She’s only a dirty Jewess,” and all five began beating her on the head and the knees. The victim needed both medical and psychological treatment.

There were also incidents of physical violence in Buenos Aires, Argentina. For instance,the principal of an Orthodox Jewish school was beaten outside the premises in May. In September, an Orthodox Jew was attacked outside a synagogue in the neighborhood of Flores. The attacker pulled a skullcap from his backpack and made obscene gestures, declaring that the only solution was to burn the synagogues and the Jews.

Three matters that came to light in 2011 illustrate the danger to Jewish communities in the U.S. posed by white supremacists and Islamists. In October, a couple with a racist worldview from Oregon, who thought, erroneously, that they had murdered a Jew, admitted to interrogators that they had intended to kill more Jews. In May, New York police arrested two immigrants, an Algerian and a Moroccan, on suspicion of conspiring to attack a New York synagogue. This event may be added to the number of terrorist acts planned in recent years by Islamists in the U.S. against Jewish targets and which were aborted by early discovery of the organizations and plots. In addition, Emerson Begolly, an American citizen who was indicted in July 2011 for soliciting acts of terrorism and posting bomb-making materials online, exhibited rabid antisemitism in his extensive online activity. He called for the death of all Jews and encouraged others to target synagogues, Jewish schools and day care centers.

Read More

The Guardian gives an antisemite a forum

I wrote about the party that was thrown in honor of Raed Salah, anti-semite and inciter to terror, in London.

It turns out that he wrote a column for Comment is Free in the Guardian where he pushes his normal lies. In it, he claims that he is against anti-semitism:

After a 10-month legal battle, I have now been cleared on "all grounds" by a senior immigration tribunal judge, who ruled that May's decision to deport me was "entirely unnecessary" and that she had been "misled". The evidence she relied on (which included a poem of mine which had been doctored to make it appear anti-Jewish) was not, he concluded, a fair portrayal of my views. In reality, I reject any and every form of racism, including antisemitism.

I have no doubt that, despite this, Israel's cheerleaders in Britain will continue to smear my character. This is the price every Palestinian leader and campaigner is forced to pay.

One of the pieces of evidence given to the judge was the entire passage of his blood libel:

“We have never allowed ourselves, and listen well, we have never allowed ourselves to knead the bread for the breaking of the fast during the blessed month of Ramadan with the blood of children. And if someone wants a wider explanation, you should ask what used to happen to some of the children of Europe, whose blood would be mixed in the dough of the holy bread. God Almighty, is this religion? Is this what God wants? God will confront you for what you are doing”.

Salah claimed that "holy bread" was metaphorical. The "expert" they used to debunk that this was anti-semitic was none other than Israel-hater Ilan Pappe! And the ruling showed that they didn't buy his argument, and in fact they destroyed it:

In our judgment this is all wholly unpersuasive. The appellant is clearly aware of the blood libel against Jews. If his intention had been to draw an analogy between events of the Spanish Inquisition and actions of the Israeli state he could have said so in clearer terms that did not require over ten paragraphs of explanation for his true meaning to be made clear. If he had meant to refer to Christians using the blood of others to make bread, which he seems to consider less offensive than referring to Jews doing so, then he could have inserted the word “Christian” into the text of his the sermon as he does in paragraph 175 of his explanation. Allusion to historical examples of children being killed in religious conflict does not require reference to their blood being used to make “holy bread”. The truth of the matter is that the conjunction of the concepts of ‘children’s blood’ and ‘holy bread’ is bound to be seen as a reference to the blood libel unless it is immediately and comprehensively explained to be something else altogether.

Besides, even the explanation does not quite work. Professor Pappe accepts that “superficially” the reference could appear to be to the blood libel but that the “sentence without the adjective Jewish is not a repetition of the blood libel.” He maintains that the next sentence of the sermon is a reference to a chapter in the history of the Inquisition. But neither the appellant nor Professor Pappe identified a source for this “chapter” of the Inquisition where Christians used blood of Muslim (or any other) children for Christian holy bread. There is no evidence that this is a commonly known matter in any of the communities in Israel, so that those hearing the sermon would recognise the reference. The explanation now put forward would not, so far as the evidence goes, moderate the meaning of the words in the sermon as actually delivered.

...We do not find this comment could be taken to be anything other than a reference to the blood libel against Jews and nothing said by the appellant or Professor Pappe explains why it would be interpreted otherwise from the original Arabic text or in the English text before us. We accept that this sermon was given on a somewhat turbulent day when the appellant had been refused permission to pray at one of the holy sites of his religion, one that he genuinely fears is under threat from the Israeli authorities. That is not sufficient to negate his comment and the hatred that might be fostered by it and lead to intercommunity violence in the UK. We conclude, therefore, that it was a comment that
the respondent was entitled to take into account and take seriously when considering whether the appellant should be deported.

The judge pretty much said that Salah's speech was in fact anti-semitic, although he found other reasons to downplay its importance. So despite Salah's protestations to the contrary, it is clear he was knowingly pushing the classic blood libel.

If the Guardian read the judgment, they know this.

But the judge ruled that since this was the only evidence of anti-semitism, he would let it slide:

There is no reliable evidence of the appellant using words carrying a reference to the blood libel save in the single passage in a sermon delivered five years ago. Similarly, the reliable evidence relating to calls to martyrdom is confined to the same occasion. The absence of other evidence is striking, for at least two reasons. The appellant is a prominent public figure and a prolific speaker. The first indictment shows that his speeches are of interest to the authorities in Israel. In these circumstances we think it can fairly be said that the evidence before us is not a sample, or ‘the tip of the iceberg’: it is simply all the evidence that there is.

I disagree. For example, Salah also wrote an article about 9/11 that pushed a number of classic anti-semitic tropes (although he was careful not to use the word "Jew" but "unique mover.") In that article, he claims that 4000 Jews were warned to stay away from work at the World Trade Center, that Benjamin Franklin wrote a document warning about Jewish control of the world, that Jews were behind the assassination of JFK (not because he was a Zionist but because he was a Catholic), and that Jews were behind the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

The larger point is that while the British legal system might have found that the evidence that Salah is anti-semitic not strong enough to have him deported, the Guardian clearly read the judgment and even so decided that Salah is an appropriate person to write a column for them - which is quite a different thing.

Read More

Video: "Made in Israel"

From Israel21C:



(h/t jzaik)

Read More

"Thousands of settlers storm town, perform Talmudic rituals"

As Sabeel reports:

Thousands of Jewish settlers burst into the town Kifl Hares southeast of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank, and performed Talmudic rituals in a memorial in the town, under the protection of the Israeli army and in coordination with the security services of the Palestinian Authority.

Thousands of Jews did some to visit the tomb of Joshua (as well as Caleb Ben Yefuneh) on the anniversary of his death.

The holy site has been vandalized a number of times by Palestinian Arabs, in stories that barely get reported, as opposed to the world headlines that accompany graffiti sometimes scrawled on mosques in Israel.

Existing signed agreements between Israel and the PA are supposed to allow free access to holy sites under Arab control. Then again, Jordan signed similar agreements with Israel in 1949, and yet Jews were not allowed to visit any of their holy places during that anomalous 19 year time period that so many still consider "the status quo."

Read More

Islamists freaking out over Egyptian mufti who visited Jerusalem

Islamists are now calling for the resignation of Egypt's mufti Ali Gomaa over his recent visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque and other sites in Jerusalem, via Jordan.

Hamas official Izzat Rishq said that the only way that Muslims should visit Jerusalem is as conquerors, not under the protection of Jews.

Sheikh Azzam of Islamic Jihad in Gaza called the visit "reprehensible."

The Palestine Scholars Association condemned the visit, saying it was a "type of normalization with the Jews who usurped the land and holy sites."

In Egypt, Tariq Zomor, a spokesman for Jemaah Islamiyah, said that the visit was "irresponsible" and that there will be protests against the mufti on Friday. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood called the visit "a disaster." Other Egyptian Islamists derisively referred to Gomaa as "Mubarak's Mufti."

Al-Ahmed Al-Tayeb, the influential sheikh of Al-Azhar University, is calling an emergency meeting this afternoon of scholars at the institution and will issue a statement.

Israeli Islamist leader Raed Salah showed his own hypocrisy. He is currently barred from visiting Jerusalem because of his constant incitement and attempts to start new uprisings against Israel. He complained that since he is banned from the Al Aqsa Mosque, no Muslim leader should visit. "How can we explain that this military occupation prevents me from entering Jerusalem and at the same time allows some prominent Arab and Muslim to enter the heart of Jerusalem which is Al Aqsa?" he whined.

Islamic preacher Safwat Hejazi said that Gomaa's visit was a "criminal act" and a "fraud" of Muslims and called him a "sinner."

Read More

Egyptian MB visitor to US was implicated in child porn

From Bikya Masr last week, in a story that really flew under the radar:

The US State Department broke with procedure last week when it ordered US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) not to conduct a secondary inspection on members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) on their way to visit government officials in the US.

It is not clear where the order was issued from.

This happened despite the fact that one member of the delegation had been implicated – though not charged – in a US child pornography investigation, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

The person of interest to the US State Department was Abdul Mawgoud Dardery, who was part of a pornography investigation in Pennsylvania. He was the senior member in the four-person FJP delegation, which held court with academic groups and met with senior officials at the White House and State Department.

Dardery had lived in the United States long enough to attain legal permanent residency, known as a Green Card. That status lapsed after he left the country for more than six months. The child pornography investigation took place during Dardery’s time in the US and was so noted in his immigration file. It surfaced when CBP officials learned of his pending visit.

A US official said that extra inspection is standard operating procedure when a foreign visitor has been tied to criminal or terrorist activities. “Secondary inspections” involve going through the visitor’s baggage and viewing the contents of computers and other electronic devices to search for evidence of illicit activity. Agents would typically search other members of the party to ensure Dardery did not hand off his computer equipment to an associate to avoid detection.

In addition, the Brotherhood’s relationship with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas would have triggered extra scrutiny for the incoming delegation. But that “secondary inspection” never happened, a law enforcement source said. The State Department ordered CBP not to do it.

The State Department issued a cable specifically barring customs officials from carrying out any inspections of Dardery and the other members of the delegation on their arrival at New York’s JFK Airport.

The Brotherhood recently won a near majority in parliamentary elections – a sweep by any evaluation.

Ironically, they are keen on introducing legislation to block Internet access to pornography in Egypt.

The IPT report is here.

Read More

Yom HaShoah: Poster, trailer, video

The official poster for Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day is simple and poignant:

And from Times of Israel:

A pair of Israeli animation students used the Steven Spielberg-sponsored Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation project to produce an animated film that tells the story of a 10-year-old girl in Holocaust-era Poland. The film uses both stop-animation and classic animation techniques to describe an event in the life of Nyosha, the grandmother of Liran Kapel, who along with her partner Yael Dekel created the film. It will premiere at a film festival in Sderot in June, and from there will travel to other festivals around the world.

“It’s a story about faith,” Kapel told The Times of Israel, as she described the event that lies at the heart of the film. Nyosha lives in a small village in Poland with her mother, surviving from hand to mouth on very little money. One day, Nyosha sees a beautiful pair of shoes in the window of a shoemaker’s store, and decides she must have them. But after bringing what little money she could raise to the shoemaker, he tells her it isn’t enough; but if she wants, he will sell her one of the shoes.

Nyosha is so enamored of the shoes that she agrees, and for months walks around her hometown wearing that single shoe as she worked to try and raise money to buy its mate. But then comes the German invasion of Poland — and with it the destruction of her village and her way of life. As the Nazi soldiers approach, Nyosha and other townspeople take refuge in the attic of a building. Among those holed up in the attic is none other but the shoemaker, who now holds court over an enormous pot that everyone assumes contains food. The villagers beg for a morsel, but the hard-hearted shoemaker ignores their pleas.

This goes on for three days, after which the desperate villagers have had enough. They band together to attack the shoemaker and “liberate” the supplies — only to discover that the pot contained shoes, not food. One of the shoes, however, is the mate to Nyosha’s pair, and during the fight between the villagers and the shoemaker, she manages to get hold of the shoe, puts it on, and hides.

Just in time, it turns out. The Nazis, discovering the lair, march up the steps and hustle everyone outside, where they shoot the villagers. Nyosha’s mother is among those set to be shot, and she signals to her daughter to stay inside and hide. Nyosha does so just as a Nazi guard comes back upstairs looking for survivors. When he sees Nyosha’s small, pretty shoes lined up next to the bed she is hiding under, something apparently touches the Nazi and even though he knows Nyosha is there, he spares her. Hours later, when the Nazis have gone and the Jews have been killed or deported, Nyosha emerges to find herself utterly alone. She runs to the forest, wearing the shoes that just saved her life.

“It’s a true story,” Kapel said, adding that the follow-up was just as amazing. “She roamed the forest and eventually found villages, where she knocked on doors offering to work. One Polish family took her up on her offer, and she used a fake Polish name, never letting on she was Jewish. She worked for the family for years, and after the war she was eventually found by Youth Aliyah representatives, who put her on a boat for Israel, where she rebuilt her life.”

The trailer:




Finally, here is what a busy Israeli highway looked like today when the sirens went off:




(h/t Mike)

Read More

Yom HaShoah: the murdered Jews of Gdow, Poland

For Yom HaShoah, I looked through the Yad Vashem victims database to find a typical small village in order to list all the victims we are aware of who lived there. (Yad Vashem limits queries to 1000, so looking for any well-known city or even popular last names would return only the first thousand names.)

Here are 82 of the Holocaust victims of Gdow, Poland.  In general the database only has a fraction of the actual victims of the Shoah.

The entire village had 375 Jews in the mid-19th century.

You can click on any name to go to that person's record at Yad Vashem.

Name	Birth year
Bodner, Elish Elisha
Bodner, Gitel
Bodner, Mirjam Miriam
Brand, Chawa Khava	1893
Eichhorn, Erna Ester	1907
Eichhorn, Helena
Feder, Huma Khuma	1862
Feder, Szymon Shama	1872
Geler, Berl Ber	1938
Geler, Shevakh	1902
Gotreich, Alter
Gotreich, Chaja Khaia
Gotreich, Hadassa Hadasa
Gotreich, Josel -
Gotreich, Sara
Grantov, Gdaliauhu Gdaliyahu	1893
Heller, Berta
Kleinman, Henny Hena	1880
Klinger, Haia Khaia
Klinger, Khenia Khana
Klinger, Tosia
Kuechler, Abraham Avraham	1882
Kuntz, Brenda -
Kuntz, Jacob Yaakov
Lebel, Chaskel Yekhezkel	1910
Lehrfeld, Hirsh	1880
Lehrfeld, Tauba Antonina	1885
Leibel, Abram Avraham	1895
Leibel, Aron Aharon	1865
Leibel, Avraham	1910
Leibel, Chawka Khava	1910
Leibel, Chenya Nekhemia	1910
Leibel, Chenya Nekhemia	1905
Leibel, Cheskel Yekhezkel	1901
Markus, Cecylia	1888
Mateles, Sala	1900
Perlberg, Eliasz	1886
Reisman, Giza Giza	1929
Reisman, Izak	1897
Reisman, Rosa
Reisman, Sydka Sidi	1918
Szmaje, Ester	1909
Szmaje, Moshe
Wellisch, Riwka Rivka
Windholz, Kalman	1897
Zimerspitz, Aleksander	1899
Zimerspitz, Volf	1873
Zimerspitz, Zisl Zysl	1903
Zwetschkenspiel, Sigmun	1878

Read More

Time for another open thread

For two years I've been watching people complain about the Disqus comment system here, and how screwy it acts. From my perspective, though, it had one great feature that I loved -it automatically sends all comments to my email account and allows me to reply to messages (and moderate them) via email. This meant that I did not have to actually go into the Disqus system to administer the comments and it saved me a lot of time.

But now that feature just disappeared over the past few days, making it much harder for me to follow threads of conversations here without spending more time than I have.

Practically, this means that if you have interesting links to send me, email is probably the best way.

The other recent headache is that the scheduling capability in Blogger seems to have broken in the past couple of days. Articles that I thought would have been posted ended up in limbo until I re-edit them. It's just another time-suck that I don't need.

Moreover, it looks like my life will not be getting any less hectic. Quite the opposite.

Even so, over the next day or two, I will post my 14,000th blog entry.

I did notice that the last open thread from Monday night was quite busy, with nearly a hundred comments, so it seems like a good time to start a new one. Venting about these problems is just an excuse for an open thread, anyway.

Read More

A cascade of non-trivial trivia from 1912-13

The virulently anti-Israel IMEMC says:

Israeli soldiers and policemen displaced resident Khaled An-Natsha and his family from their home in Al-Ashqariyya area, in Beit Hanina, north of Israeli controlled East Jerusalem. The eviction came following a court order that granted Israeli settlers ownership over the property.

The Palestinian News and Info Agency, WAFA, reported that the soldiers also detained An-Natsha after “arguing with the soldiers”.

The Israeli District Court in Jerusalem previously issued an eviction notice ordering An-Natsha to vacate the property, claiming that the land on which his home is built belonged to a Jewish man since 1936.

I was wondering if perhaps there were Jews in Beit Hanina who were forced to flee their homes in the 1936 riots, the way that the Yemeni Jews were chased out of their homes in Kfar HaShiloach (now knowsn as Silwan.)

Doing a little digging I came upon this illuminating item, from the American Jewish Yearbook for 1912-1913, under events that occurred in Palestine in October 1912:

Dilov and Bet-Hanina, in vicinity of Jerusalem, acquired by Zionist organization.

I never heard of Dilov, and the entry does not elaborate if (as implied) the Zionist bought all of Beit Hanina or a portion, but isn't that interesting?

In the same yearbook we also see other information that goes against the conventional wisdom of today's revisionist historians:

August [1912] At Rapha [Rafah - EoZ], Anglo-Egyptian authorities sanction sale of ten thousand dunams of land to Anglo-Palestine Company, for colonization by Agudath Yisroel (of Jaffa), and group of Bielistock Jews.

January [1913] - Turkish government confirms purchase of land in Samaria and Galilee by Palestine Department of the Zionist Organization. Amount paid, 750,000 francs ($150,000)

JUNE [1913] - Rechid Bey, former Minister of Interior and Governor at Jerusalem, in interview with representative of Budapest paper expresses himself in favor of Jewish activity in Palestine.

June [1913] — Hazim Bey, vali of Beirut, declares that he is in favor of Jewish immigration into Syria, as beneficial to the Empire.

Who knew that parts of Rafah were owned by Zionists and earmarked for religious Jews? How often do we hear about Arabs who actively supported Jewish immigration?

The things you learn when you just take the time to look...

(h/t Dan)

Read More