Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 03, 2018

05/03 Links Pt1: Ben Shapiro: Lies and More Lies; Oren: 'Conduct of the Obama administration borders on criminal'; NY Times calls for Abbas ouster over ‘vile’ claim on Jews and Holocaust

From Ian:

So, the Iranians lied.

So did the Obama administration.

On April 30, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that in a stunning intelligence coup, the Israelis had somehow obtained 100,000 files from Iran’s secret atomic archive in Tehran. The files showed that Iran had ardently pursued nuclear weapons for years, lying about it all the while; that they had then failed to turn over the information showing the extent of their program during negotiations over the Barack Obama administration-pushed Iran deal; and that they had hidden those files in a secret warehouse with the obvious intent of reviving their nuclear program the minute they can get away with it.

According to Netanyahu, Iran “is brazenly lying when it says it never had a nuclear weapons program.” Furthermore, Netanyahu claimed that nuclear development “continued … in a series of organizations over the years, and today, in 2018, this work is carried out by SPND, that’s an organization inside Iran’s Defense Ministry.” The head of Iran’s earlier nuclear program currently heads the SPND.

Advocates for the Obama administration have come forward to contend that there’s nothing new here — that everyone knew Iran had been lying about its nuclear program. But when the deal was signed, Secretary of State John Kerry stated that Iran would have to disclose past military-related nuclear activities: “If there’s going to be a deal, it will be done. … It will be part of a final agreement.”

Other advocates say that Israel’s intelligence would be damaging to the Iran deal — but those nefarious Jews made it up. According to Tommy Vietor, former Obama National Security Council spokesman, “After years of bashing U.S. intelligence agencies for getting Iraq wrong, [Donald] Trump is now cooking up intel with the Israelis to push us closer to a conflict with Iran. A scandal hiding in plain sight.”

Caroline Glick: The Ayatollah's Archive Violates the Iran Deal

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s revelation Monday evening that Israel’s Mossad spy agency had seized Iran’s nuclear archive means that the ayatollahs have violated the nuclear deal negotiated by then-President Barack Obama, his EU partners, the Russians, and the Chinese in 2015.

Despite misleading claims by former Obama administration officials and their supporters in the liberal media that the material provided “nothing new,” the existence of the archive itself is a bombshell.

The intelligence Israel captured from a secret warehouse in Teheran includes more than half a ton of documents and computer files that detail the regime’s past work in developing all aspects of a nuclear arsenal. The archive was painstakingly preserved and transferred to a new secret location after Iran concluded the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal.

According to Ehud Yaari, Arab Affairs commentator for Israel’s Reshet television station, by archiving the material and so preserving Iran’s progress towards constructing nuclear weapons, Iran committed a material breach of the JCPOA.

Paragraph T of Annex 1 of the JCPOA is titled “Activities which could contribute to the design and development of a nuclear explosive device.”

Prelude to a Showdown?

Again, though, to focus on the intelligence Netanyahu revealed is to lose the plot. The exposure of an exceedingly complex operation that revealed these documents to the world is by itself an alarming development. According to the Israeli officials with whom Axios reporter Barak Ravid spoke, the Iranian nuclear archive was transferred to its covert home in February of 2016 explicitly to hide the military dimensions of its nuclear program from inspectors. The Israeli operation that uncovered that warehouse, which was known only to a small circle of Iranian officials, took years to prepare and involved hundreds of agents and informants. Exposing this operation has compromised all of those irreplaceable human assets and sacrificed a lot of invaluable collection capability. No government does that without performing a cost/benefit analysis. Either Israel concluded that making this operation public was worth the concrete policy objective that would be achieved by the reveal, or Netanyahu’s government determined that the value of its assets in Tehran was going to depreciate soon anyway as a result of events. And events are becoming rather ominous.

In as many months, Israel has executed three airstrikes on Iranian targets inside Syria. In February, Israel claimed to have shot down an Iranian drone originating in Syria that penetrated its airspace. In response to that incursion, the Israeli military targeted and destroyed four Iranian positions and an Iranian-operated command-and-control center from which the drone originated. One Israeli aircraft was shot down by Syrian anti-aircraft fire during that operation. In early April, Israel executed an airstrike on an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps post in Syria in which Iranian soldiers and Hezbollah were killed. And just days ago, Israel attacked two Iranian-linked bases inside Syria killing dozens of Iranian and Syrian fighters and igniting ammunition that resulted in several massive explosions. The tempo of Israeli operations is increasing and Americans sources say observers have every reason to fear the accelerating trend.

U.S. officials reportedly told NBC News that, within the last two weeks, Iran has stepped up deliveries of small arms and surface-to-air missiles to Syria as part of Tehran’s effort to “shore up Iranian ground forces and to strike at Israel.” The conspicuous reinforcement of Iranian soldiers, support staff, and weapons stockpiles might have led Israel to draw the gravest of conclusions. “The three U.S. officials said Israel now seems to be preparing for military action and is seeking U.S. help and support,” NBC News revealed.

The arguments among political factions within the United States regarding the Iran nuclear deal and various presidential legacies are peripheral to what may be the more immediate issue: the prospect of imminent hostilities between Israel and Iran, to say nothing of Tehran’s proxy forces in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. Seen in that light, Netanyahu’s decision to reveal the most eye-opening feat of spycraft in a generation is anything but a “nothing-burger.”

Hanna Amira, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), told the official Voice of Palestine radio on Thursday morning that Abbas' speech to the National Assembly "is a historical account of the facts, which was corroborated by some Jewish historians."

This includes the disproven "Khazar" theory and Abbas' noxious claim that Jews' behavior is what has caused antisemitism.

Fayez Rashid, writing in Al Watan, supported Abbas' words about Jews as well, saying that they were historical facts supported by Jews like Ilan Pappe. He is no Fatah flunky though - the bulk of his article criticized the rest of Abbas' speech.

The condemnations of Abbas' antisemitism by the UN and Israel were covered extensively in Arabic language media over the past day.

As usual, one needs to look at what they don't say as well as what they do. I did not find a single Arabic-language media source that condemned or even chided Abbas for his absurd and offensive statement about Jews. The tone of the articles is more along the lines of how pro-Jewish the West is by making a big deal over Abbas' words.

This incident is not just an indictment of Abbas' Jew-hatred. The complete lack of condemnation, and the tacit support offered by some, shows that antisemitism is a fundamental part of the Arab worldview.

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The main mantra in support of the Iranian nuclear deal has always been - and continues to be - that the deal includes "the most intrusive inspections regime ever negotiated." The logic is that Iran can't possibly be working on a parallel and secret nuclear weapons program while opening up (some of) its nuclear facilities to IAEA inspectors.

The New York Times reports:

Israel is not finished with its lobbying campaign. Officials there said they planned to share much of the data they had harvested from the secret archive with the International Atomic Energy Agency — including data on some previously unknown nuclear sites in Iran.

If there are previously unknown nuclear sites in Iran that the IAEA itself is unaware of, then doesn't that prove that the current inspections regime is literally worthless?

Yet the NYT downplays the importance of such a discovery:

Israel’s intention appears to be to force the organization, a United Nations agency, to demand that the Iranians allow inspections of those sites, even though some of them may have been closed or dismantled years ago. Since Iran considers many of these military sites, the Israelis, and some American officials, expect the Iranians to balk at the demand — inciting another crisis for the deal.

Instead of noting that the existence of secret nuclear facilities is a huge red flag, the NYT throws up a smokescreen of claiming - with no knowledge - that many of these facilities may have been dismantled years ago.

And also it mentions in passing that Iran refuses to allow inspections of suspected nuclear research sites that Iran classifies as "military" - which was a huge red flag to the entire JCPOA plan when it was agreed upon, and also swept under the rug.

If Iran balks at a demand to allow inspections, then - the NYT logic goes - such inspections are better left undone. Otherwise, there could be a crisis!

What kind of logic is this?

“The Israeli prime minister’s presentation on Iran’s past research into nuclear weapons technology underlines the importance of keeping the Iran nuclear deal’s constraints on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions,” the British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, said in a statement. “The Iran nuclear deal is not based on trust about Iran’s intentions; rather it is based on tough verification.”

How is "tough verification" possible when the IAEA doesn't even know all the sites to inspect?

All of the people who defend the Iran deal based on these "tough verification" should be at the forefront of insisting that Iran come clean about their secret nuclear facilities.

Their silence in the wake of Israel's intelligence coup - indeed, their derision of it - shows that for all their posturing about how wonderful the deal is, their intent is not to stop an Iranian bomb as they claim, but to mindlessly defend the indefensible.

The best summary of how absurd this "inspections regime" is can be found in this tweet: "Basically, with advance notice the cop is allowed to pull the car over to search for contraband, except it's forbidden to search the glove compartment."

The new Mossad revelations takes this analogy further - the cops aren't allowed to inspect the huge trailer behind the car either, since it isn't defined as being part of the car.

(h/t EBoZ)

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The PFLP terror group issued a statement about how bad things are in Gaza.

Unlike Western reports that automatically blame everything on Israel, this Arabic statement accurately places the blame on the party that is responsible - the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) warned Thursday that continued punitive measures against the Gaza Strip could cause a total collapse of the Gaza Strip.

The Front stressed in a press statement that the continuation of the measures against the Gaza Strip and the failure of the PA and the Accordance Government to respond to the national and popular appeals against imposing more punitive measures, culminating in the blackmail exercise exercised by the Authority against its employees in Gaza from the date of the last month's salary until yesterday, ...This could cause a total collapse of the sector, which would a fertile environment for the implementation of [Trump's] deal of the century.

The Front considered that the continued manipulation of the lives of our children and the enjoyment of the suffering of our people through the imposition of further punitive measures is a crime that runs counter to the Palestinian Basic Law, international and humanitarian law, and strengthens the state of division and schism in the Palestinian arena.

The Front called on the masses of our people, national and Islamic forces, civil society organizations, national and national figures and all sectors of our people to unite behind a progressive struggle program that adopts resolute measures to confront these measures and pressure to stop them immediately.

The PFLP is not exactly Zionist. But they see the situation in Gaza and who is responsible - not Israel's "blockade." The PA has been systematically cutting services to Gaza for over a year now and the Western press rarely reports about it, because Arabs are expected to act with callous disregard to other Arab lives.

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EU doesn't condemn Abbas' antisemitic remarks - it downplays them, and praises him as a peacemaker

From the European Union External Action:

The speech Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas delivered on 30 April contained unacceptable remarks concerning the origins of the Holocaust and Israel's legitimacy. Such rhetoric will only play into the hands of those who do not want a two-state solution, which President Abbas has repeatedly advocated.

This is not a condemnation. This is merely saying that Abbas' statements are "unacceptable." And why are they unacceptable?

Not because they are antisemitic. Not because they deny history. Not because they blame Jews for causing the Holocaust.

No, the main problem with Abbas' speech is that it allows the Israeli right to point out that Abbas is an antisemite who does not deserve to be rewarded with a state!

The only direct characterization of Abbas' character in this statement is that he has "repeatedly advocated" a two state solution, meaning that a man who spouts Jew-hating conspiracy theories is better than the evil people who point out his antisemitism.

The EU then tries to obfuscate the issue by saying antisemitism is bad.

The Holocaust and World War Two have defined Europe's modern history like no other event. Holocaust education remains central to building up resilience against all forms of hatred in our societies. Antisemitism is not only a threat for Jews but a fundamental menace to our open and liberal societies. The European Union remains committed to combat any form of anti-Semitism and any attempt to condone, justify or grossly trivialise the Holocaust.

There is no wording that ties the second paragraph to what Abbas said. It sort of implies that Abbas might have trivialized or condoned the Holocaust, but the statement it so general that is could refer to anyone, anytime.

This EU statement does not say a single negative thing about Abbas, and it says one "positive" thing about him - that he supports a two state solution (on the way to destroying the Jewish state via "return.")

The statement also does not call on Abbas to walk back his statements or to apologize. He did something that is vaguely unfortunate and it must be forgotten as quickly as possible before those right wing Jews make a big deal over it.

Despite how central the EU claims Holocaust education and the fight against antisemitism are, this statement proves that it has learned little from the Holocaust - that hate must be loudly and specifically condemned and the people who espouse such hate must be held to account.

(h/t Irene)

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05/02 Links Pt2: Bibi: Abbas was a Holocaust denier, has remained a Holocaust denier; German Newspaper’s Israeli Flag Test Yields ‘Frightening Results’

From Ian:

PMW: Jews` usury caused Antisemitism - speech by PA Chairman Abbas

The main antisemitic elements of his talk were:
1. The Jews brought Antisemitism upon themselves because of their "social roles" connected to "usury and banks"

2. It was this Jewish behavior that led to "massacres by some state every 10 to 15 years from the 11th century until the Holocaust"

In addition, Abbas denied Jewish history and the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. He argued that Ashkenazi Jews are the descendants of the Khazar Kingdom - "a Tatar-Turkic state" - who have no connection to the 12 tribes of Jacob in the Bible. He rejected completely any Jewish connection to the land of Israel:

"They are talking about longing for Zion and that's why they are going [there] and so forth. I say - not me, rather history says that these words are baseless."
[Official PA TV, April 30, 2018]

The following are the main parts of Abbas' talk concerning these subjects. Abbas defends his antisemitic claims, citing Jewish sources for some of his remarks. (See below):

1/3 PA President Mahmoud Abbas: Holocaust, Massacres of European Jews Due to Their Function in Society as Usurers Hitler Struck a Deal with the Jews pic.twitter.com/qAkCvH8SzL
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 2, 2018

2/3 PA President Mahmoud Abbas: Hitler Struck a Deal with the Jews pic.twitter.com/uV6Qsl3dJR
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 2, 2018

3/3 PA President Mahmoud Abbas: The U.S. Behind the Arab Spring pic.twitter.com/ihyYC42YiD
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 2, 2018

German Newspaper’s Israeli Flag Test Yields ‘Frightening Results’

As Germans continue to probe the connection between antisemitism and hostility to Israel in the wake of recent antisemitic incidents across the country, a leading newspaper on Monday carried out a live experiment to determine how long an Israeli flag could be displayed in major urban thoroughfares before being removed.

Israeli flags hung in three locations by reporters from the Bild newspaper were removed within ninety minutes by individuals who happened to be passing by, video revealed.

“The results are frightening,” the newspaper reported. “At the Hermannplatz in Berlin-Neukölln, the Israel flag flew for 42 minutes, for 61 minutes in Munich’s Bahnhofsviertel, and for 81 minutes in the center of Frankfurt.”

Video shot in Munich caught two men walking past an Israeli flag draped over a bicycle railing. Moments later, the men returned and angrily tore the flag down. Meanwhile in Berlin, two youths were filmed at the entrance to a rail station ripping the flag and throwing it to the ground, before one of them tried – and failed – to set it on fire with a cigarette lighter.

German politicians from across the spectrum interviewed by Bild were unanimous in their condemnation of the flag removals.

“The tearing down of the Israeli flag is something we will not tolerate in Germany,” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told the paper. “We will clearly stand against any form of antisemitism.” His colleague Horst Seehofer, the Interior Minister, pledged to show “zero tolerance” for antisemitic displays.

Hans Asperger, after whom Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) is named, is oft been depicted as a grandfatherly figure. The kindly white-haired Austrian pediatrician, it is thought, is the reason we’re as far as we are today in our understanding of AS. And there is immense gratitude for that.

The only problem with this fairytale is that it is a lie.

Here is the truth:

· Hans Asperger rose to prominence by default after his more accomplished Jewish colleagues were expelled from the University of Vienna

· Hans Asperger was not first to note the syndrome that bears his name

· Hans Asperger likely lifted his early work on AS from two Jewish colleagues who were booted from the university and expelled from Austria, Georg Frankl and Anni Weiss

· Hans Asperger actively participated in Hitler’s eugenics program, referring children with Asperger’s Syndrome to the Am Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna for euthanasia

Hans Asperger, in other words, sent children with Asperger’s Syndrome to die. The children he referred for euthanasia were murdered by starvation or lethal injection. The cause of death was listed as “pneumonia.”

Contrary to the benign figure he cut in circles affected by the subset of autism known as AS, Hans Asperger was a Nazi. Did he go along to get along? Did he find the work repugnant?

Edith Sheffer, author of a new book, Asperger’s Children: The origins of autism in Nazi Vienna, argues that Asperger was a willing participant in the murder of “defectives.” According to Sheffer, Asperger may have been attracted to the idea of a fascist collective as embodied by the Nazi concept of Volk: that of an Aryan people unsullied by those with “defects,” be they physical, psychological, or social.

There's also the fact that in 1938, these two things happened:

· The Dean of the University of Vienna Medical School removed over half of its faculty, mostly Jewish doctors
· Hans Asperger was promoted to become director of the Curative Education Clinic at the (very) young age of 28

What happened here? Was Asperger promoted because the Jews were gone? Or was he chosen for his ardent embrace of Nazi ideology?

Did Asperger, drunk with newfound power, simply fall in line with the Nazi killing machine, helping to eliminate all those who could not conform to the image of perfect Aryan? Or did he go along to get along: go along with murdering helpless children because he was afraid he’d otherwise be killed?

Did Hans Asperger experience a twinge of guilt as he sent children with AS to their deaths?

Does it matter?

An editorial in Molecular Autism argues that it matters a great deal. It matters that the story comes to our attention. And it matters that we know the truth.

This is about bioethics and accurate medical history, they say. The editors are unequivocal in stating their belief that Hans Asperger was a willing volunteer, “complicit with his Nazi superiors in targeting society’s most vulnerable people,” based on their review of an article by medical historian Herwig Czech, appearing in the same journal.[1]

Simon Baron-Cohen*, Ami Klin, Steve Silberman, and Joseph D. Buxbaum, authors of this important editorial, write: “We take the unusual step of publishing this Editorial so as to explain our reasons for publishing this article. Two of us are Editors-in-Chief of Molecular Autism (SBC and JDB), one of us served as Action Editor during the long review process of this article (SBC), and two of us served as anonymous reviewers for this article, but have decided to forgo their anonymity (SS and AK).”

Hitler's letter authorizing the murder of the "incurably sick"

The four writers, all Jewish, take the bold step of owning history and making you own history, even when it is unpleasant, even when they might be accused of prejudicial treatment of the facts by dint of their religion.

They don’t CARE what you think. They will do what is right.

Respect!

In contrast, there is Sahil Singh Gujral, “the first openly autistic postgraduate in the UK to win the Wellcome Trust’s PhD studentship.” Speaking to the Guardian, Gujral compares these revelations regarding Asperger complicity in the Nazi eugenics program to Leo Kanner's views on the sterilization of the mentally disabled. But Gujral woefully misrepresents Kanner’s views.

Leo Kanner

Kanner advocated sterilization only for those who were incapable of caring for children. He didn’t for a moment believe that included all people with intellectual disabilities. “In my 20 years of psychiatric work with thousands of children and their parents,” said Kanner, “I have seen percentually at least as many 'intelligent’ adults unfit to rear their offspring as I have seen such 'feeble-minded' adults. I have--and many other have--come to the conclusion that, to a large extent independent of the I.Q., fitness for parenthood is determined by emotional involvements and relationships."

Jay Joseph[2] detailed an important debate between Kanner, a Jew, and Robert Foster Kennedy, chairman of the American Psychiatric Association. Foster Kennedy, advocated a U.S. euthanasia program patterned on the Nazi model that Hans Asperger served to implement. Kanner argued against such a program.

As they lined up for and against the murder of those with disabilities, these two men betrayed their ideological underpinnings. Foster Kennedy's views were likely informed by his academic milieu: he received an honorary degree in 1936 at the University of Heidelberg’s Nazi-sponsored 550-year jubilee celebration. Kanner's views were likely influenced by the fact that he was a Jew, part of a nation that values life.

It is worth reading in full, Joseph’s lengthy recounting of Kanner’s argument against euthanasia for the disabled. Kanner's Jewish humanity is on full display. A taste:

Kanner spoke of ‘the garbage collector’s assistant who has served our neighborhood for many years’. This was a ‘sober, conscientious, and industrious fellow, . . . deservedly respected by his employer, his co-workers and his spare time companions.’ Still, ‘with an I.Q. of 65, he is rated by us psychiatrists as feebleminded or mentally deficient' . . .

Kanner discussed ways in which the ‘mentally deficient’ contribute to society:

“Sewage disposal, ditch digging, potato peeling, scrubbing of floors and other such occupations are as indispensable and essential to our way of living as science, literature and art. Cotton picking is an integral part of our textile industries. Oyster shucking is an important part of our seafood supply. Garbage collection is an essential part of our public hygiene measures. For all practical purposes, the garbage collector is as much of a public hygienist as is the laboratory bacteriologist. All such performances, often referred to snobbishly as ‘the dirty work’, are indeed real and necessary contributions to our culture, without which our culture would collapse within less than a month.”

Although Kanner agreed with Kennedy that ‘idiots and imbeciles cannot be trained in any kind of social usefulness’, he disagreed with Kennedy’s conclusion that, in Kanner’s words, ‘we are justified in passing the black bottle among them’ through the procedure some ‘dignify with the term euthanasia’. Kanner linked such ideas to reports of Nazi atrocities, and asked, ‘Shall we psychiatrists take our cue from the Nazi Gestapo?’

. . . Kanner agreed with Kennedy and others that ‘sterilization is often a desirable procedure’ for ‘persons intellectually or emotionally unfit to rear children’. However, he objected to sterilization performed ‘solely on the basis of the I.Q.’

Kanner objected to sterilizing people on their basis of their IQ. And he certainly never advocated murdering people with Asperger’s Syndrome. Unlike Hans Asperger.

Propaganda poster for the Nazi eugenics program

Here’s an interesting factoid: some believe that Hans Asperger had Asperger’s Syndrome himself. He spoke of himself in the third person. He quoted himself. He was cold and distant, an introvert.

And yet he was sending people just like himself to die of starvation or lethal injection.

No. There is no comparison between Hans Asperger, who sent children to starve to death, and Leo Kanner, who looked at people’s worth rather than at their ability to conform.

Propaganda for Nazi Germany's T-4 Euthanasia Program: "This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money, too." from the Office of Racial Policy's Neues Volk.

Consumed by this story for several days, I cannot help but enumerate, in my mind, the wonderful people I know who have Asperger’s Syndrome. My brilliant cardiologist, for instance, or a certain young man who leads a local congregation with a voice like an angel.

What would have happened had these two been under Hans Asperger’s care in Vienna?

I think about this until my brain aches then think about it some more: the unfeeling banality of the particular evil of Hans Asperger, who marked for elimination the children he "championed."

I can see the children being marched into the bus that would take them to a place where they would be starved to death, or given a shot of something to steal the breath from their lungs, the sight from their eyes, the world around them.

Collection bus for killing patients. Hartheim Nazi killing center, bus with driver

The true story of Hans Asperger, Nazi, is an important story that must be told far and wide.

For if we do not, who will?

*Simon Baron-Cohen is a renowned autism researcher and expert, a cousin of Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who played, among other roles, Borat.

[1] Simon Baron-Cohen, Ami Klin, Steve Silberman, and Joseph D. Buxbaum, Did Hans Asperger actively assist the Nazi euthanasia program?, (Molecular Autism, 2018), https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13229-018-0209-5

[2] Jay Joseph, The 1942 ‘euthanasia’ debate in the American

Journal of Psychiatry,(Sage Publications, 2005), https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c10d/3408c200077d9123f802a92408859c37d90c.pdf

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Gaza Mother Not Sure Her Baby Ready Yet To Throw Full-Size Molotov Cocktail (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Suja'iyya, Gaza Strip, May 2 - A local couple fell into fierce argument this evening, neighbors report, over whether their preschool-aged child is old enough to participate in violence against Israel, with the father insisting the boys can serve as a human shield at any age, and the mother retorting that no offspring of hers is going to join the Great Return March unless he has grown enough to hurl firebombs the distance necessary to kill a Jew.

Residents in the apartment adjacent that of Ali and Buthayna Hussein related Wednesday that despite agreeing on the value of violent confrontation with the Zionists and on making the latter look bad by placing children in harm's way and blaming Israel for the resulting casualties, the couple differs on the weight each tactic carries in practice. Those differences, note the neighbors, sparked the third such voluble exchange between Ali and Buthayna since the current wave of protests along the border with Israel began several weeks ago.

"Ali is six years older than Buthayna, but she can hold her own in an argument with him," observed Ahmad, who lives next door and is a second cousin to each half of the couple. "Just because he's in Hamas, that doesn't intimidate her - she knows where the glory is, and she's not going to settle for some indirect martyrdom for her baby when not so long from now, little Yahya will be big enough to kill Jews or die in the attempt, which is much more honorable."

"Yeah but we need him as a shahid now," countered Wafa, another neighbor, echoing Ali's contentions. "You can't just wait until Yahya grows up to become another bomb engineer instrumental in killing dozens of Jews on buses, like his namesake Yahya Ayyash. These are desperate times, when the world has begun to care about people other than Palestinians, and someone's got to step up to reassert our proper place atop the headlines. If that means stepping in front of a rock-throwing, fence-cutting, or firebomb-hurling compatriot to take a bullet, so be it."

"Buthayna has dreams," responded Fadi, another resident of the neighborhood who overheard the Husseins' argument. "It's insensitive to her to demand Yahya die as a human shield - there are literally tens of thousands of other babies and toddlers in this area whose parents would be more than happy to sacrifice them for this cause. Leave Buthayna alone and let her continue raising the boy to become a full-fledged mujahid."

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05/02 Links Pt1: Bret Stephens: The Iran Deal Is a Lie; Toameh: The Real Gaza Blockade; Palestinian ‘Journalist’ Killed at Gaza Border was a Terrorist

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: The Iran Deal Is a Lie

“The sanctions lifting will only occur as Iran takes the steps agreed, including addressing possible military dimensions.”

That was State Department spokesman John Kirby in June 2015, speaking just as negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal were wrapping up. But Tehran did not “take the steps agreed.” The deal was founded on a lie.

Two lies, actually. The first was Iran’s declaration to the International Atomic Energy Agency, prior to the implementation of the deal, of the full extent of its past nuclear work. This was essential, both as a test of Tehran’s sincerity and as a benchmark for understanding just how close it was to being able to assemble and deliver a nuclear warhead.

The second lie was the Obama administration’s promise that it was serious about getting answers from Tehran. In a moment of candor, then-Secretary of State John Kerry admitted “we are not fixated on Iran specifically accounting for what they did at one point in time or another” — but then he promised Congress that Iran would provide the accounting.

That was when the White House still feared that Congress might block the deal. When it failed to do so, thanks to a Democratic filibuster, the administration contented itself with a make-believe process in which Iran pretended to make a full declaration and the rest of the world pretended to believe it.

“Iran’s answers and explanations for many of the I.A.E.A.’s concerns were, at best, partial, but over all, obfuscating and stonewalling,” David Albright and his colleagues at the nonpartisan Institute for Science and International Security wrote in December 2015. “Needed access to sites was either denied or tightly controlled as to preclude adequate inspections.”

So much, then, for all the palaver about the deal providing an unprecedented level of transparency for monitoring Iranian compliance. So much, also, for the notion that Iran has honored its end of the bargain. It didn’t. This should render the agreement null and void.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: The Real Gaza Blockade

Recently, the ّIslamic and National Forces, a group of Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip, called on Egyptian President Abed Al-Fattah Sissi to open the border crossing to allow wounded Palestinians from Gaza to receive medical treatment in Egyptian and Arab hospitals. Again, ostensibly for "security reasons," their appeal was completely ignored. Emad Al-Agha, a member of the ّIslamic and National Forces group, said there are intensive contacts with the Egyptian authorities to pressure Cairo to open the border crossing for "humanitarian" reasons.

Reports about the suffering of Palestinian travelers at the Gaza-Egyptian border crossing fill Palestinian media outlets, but these reports are almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media in the West. Western journalists are well aware of the Egyptian border closure, but as Israel is not involved, the reporters and their editors do not really care.

Thousands of Palestinians converge on the terminal between Gaza and Egypt whenever there is a rumor that it might be opened. Some wait there for days with their luggage and are forced to sleep out in the open. Some Palestinians are required to pay bribes to Hamas and Egyptian officials to obtain permits to leave the Gaza Strip through the terminal. A Facebook page entitled "The Rafah Border Crossing - Endless Suffering" shows dozens of examples of the humiliation the passengers experience there.

Like most Arab countries, Egypt cares nothing about the Palestinians, especially those living in the Gaza Strip. From the point of view of the Arab states, the Palestinians are Israel's problem alone. Yet Egypt is sending Palestinians to knock on Israel's door and blame Israel for the "humanitarian" crisis in the Gaza Strip, while it is really Egypt that is responsible for the blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Arab and Egyptian hypocrisy achieves new heights as journalists from these "countries create "fake news" echo chamber reporting on the "'March of Return" and use it to condemn Israel for sealing its border with the Gaza Strip. When will the real blockade of the Gaza Strip, the Egyptian one, be called out and condemned in the mainstream media?

Iran ordered to pay billions to families of victims of 9/11 terror attacks

By court order, Iran is to pay billions of dollars to the families of the September 11 terror attacks, The Hill reported on Tuesday evening.

US District Judge George Daniels ruled that the Islamic Republic and other institutions must pay $12.5 million per spouse, $8.5 million per parent, $8.5 million per child and $4.25 million per sibling killed in the incident, according to the report.

The lawsuit was first filed in 2004 and was joined by families of the over 1,000 victims of the attack. It accused Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran for aiding the 2001 hijackers although the 9/11 Commission never found direct evidence for Iran's involvement.

The lawsuit was only able to proceed in 2016, when Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, permitting the families of the victims to sue state actors for the terror attacks. Then-President Barack Obama had vetoed the law, arguing it could set a dangerous precedent but Congress overrode that veto.

According to the report, the ruling will probably turn out to be largely symbolic, as Iran is very unlikely to ever pay the damages, which in total amount to 6 billion dollars. There would be no feasible way to force the Islamic Republic, which never even responded to the lawsuit, to make the payment.

There is lot of evidence of Jew-hatred in the Arab and Muslim world, but perhaps the most telling is the desire - actually, the pressing need - to associate one's enemies with Jews.

Egyptian (both Islamist and secular), Turkish, Saudi Arabian leaders have all been damned with the accusations of being secretly Jewish. Fatah and Hamas trade accusations of being Zionist. Malaysian political parties love to accuse their opponents of having Jewish ties. It comes up all the time in Arab and Muslim media.

The latest being published today is about the Qatari royal family. It's a doozy.

Ban Thamer al-Ani, an Iraqi "researcher" with a master's degree from the University of Baghdad - so you know her academic credentials are impeccable - wrote a book called "Iran and Qatar's plots against the Middle East." In it she reveals the startling truth.

Ban says that Iran and Qatar are relying on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to destroy the Arab world.

This "researcher" says that the Qatari ruling family has Jewish roots, and this is the secret of its hostility towards the Arabian Gulf. Ban claims to have found historical documents that the ruling family in Qatar can be traced to a Jewish slave

If I understand the story correctly, in the 1800s a person named al-Khalifa close to some Gulf rulers fell in love with a Polish Jewish woman with the Jewish name of "Helena McCart" or something like that. Helena's father worked in a pig farm owned by one of the Polish feudalists. He was, of course, "one of the Jewish rabbis".

The night before he was to return to the Gulf, Helena took off her clothes and seduced him, and then her father allowed her to marry him and he stayed and joined the Jewish family's pig farming business, seemingly as a slave but he also converted to Judaism. He had four children, who he taught about his people and his country. The boys wanted to go back to the Arab countries their father came from, so the devious rabbi married them off and ordered them to spread in the Muslim countries. You know, to take over the Arab world.

Two went to Palestine and the other two went to the Arabian Gulf. They settled and changed their names from Al-Khalifa to Al Thani, the name that the Chief Rabbi ordered them to use when they settled in the country. (The rabbi must have been promoted.) This unnamed rabbi is said to be famous among the Jews of Poland.

"Those who returned to their father's country numbered fifty-three men and women. A Shaykh from the tribe of Al-Maqar discovered their truth and declared war on them but avoided the war by marrying their most beautiful Jewish woman and giving her a lot of money. And she betrayed him and he killed her and threw her body to the dogs, and he declared war on the rest of the al-Thanis and after several wars the Jewish al-Thanis won.

This historical document is said to have disappeared from the Turkish National Museum and no one knows what it is.

But this "researcher" knows all about the story in detail - without having any documentation. Which is an amazing attribute of Arab historical research altogether.

The story has it all - a Jew, a slave, a pig farmer. If you wanted to come up with the worst possible thing to accuse an Arab of being, this is it.

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Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas gave an antisemitic speech that was widely covered in the Israeli and right-wing press, not so much in the Western media.

i24News briefly summarizes what he said about Jews:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas made controversial statements Monday evening suggesting the Holocaust was not due to anti-Semitism but rather to the Jews’ “social behavior, [charging interest], and financial matters.”Giving his own “history lesson” of pogroms in Europe during the start of a four-day session by the National Palestinian Council in Ramallah, Abbas highlighted that “such pogroms did not take place in Arab nations, which had Jewish communities."

There obviously were pogroms in the Arab world against Jews, although not to the extent of pogroms in Europe. But a few of them are notable to mention in context of Abbas' speech.

In 1834, there was a huge Arab pogrom against Jews that lasted 33 days in the town that Mahmoud Abbas was born in, Safed (Tzfat.) Chances are some of his relatives participated in it.

This source says 500 were killed:

In 1834 the local Arabs rebelled against the new Egyptian governor who ruled Ottoman Palestine between 1831 to 1841. The rebellion against this governor, Muhammad Ali, expanded to include attacks against the Jews of Palestine. While the Jews of certain cities like Jerusalem were spared, Tzfat was not. A Safed Islamic clergyman named Muhamad Damoor incited the Moslems to attack the Jews of Tzfat. On June 15, 1834, local Arabs and Bedouins, including the Arabs who lived in the Arab Quarter of Tzfat itself, invaded Tzfat’s Jewish Quarter.
The Arabs destroyed homes, plundered synagogues and businesses and burned much of the city. Eyewitnesses described scenes of torture, and murder over the course of 33 days. Historians estimated that over 500 people were killed and many others were blinded and maimed.

I couldn't corroborate the 500 killed, but many were.Here's another description:

The Palestinian Arabs of the Eastern Galilee took advantage of a regional crisis, the war between Egypt and Turkey, to attack their Jewish neighbors and strip them of everything they had: clothes, properties, houses, and the like. In the process people were beaten in the streets, many times to death, synagogues destroyed and holy books desecrated. An entire community of 2,000 souls (Kinglake says 4,000) was forced into hiding for 33 days, in caves, ruins, inhospitable mountaintops, and basements. In that mayhem there were good Arabs who saved lives, like the people of the village of Ein Zeitim and a few individuals, Muslims and Christians from the city itself, but there were also the double crossers who promised to help for a large sum of money, only to hand over the Jews to the rioting mob outside the hideout. For 33 days the lives of the Jews of Safed had practically no value, and anyone of them who showed his or her face in public was at risk of been beaten to death, sometimes by people they knew as neighbors or business associates.

This is a classic pogrom by any definition.

But what about the 1929 riots that killed scores of Jews in Hebron, and the earlier massacre in 1921?

Abbas actually mentioned them in his speech - admiringly - calling the Arabs who butchered Jews "revolutionaries."

Abbas is an antisemite who considers Arabs butchering Jewish woman and children "revolutionaries" - and then tells people that Arabs always treated Jews well.

By the way, when Abbas pretended to walk back his Holocaust denial in 2014, the New York Times wrote a major story about it. Now that he shows that he is an antisemite who blames Jews themselves for being slaughtered, the NYT (as of this writing) has not said a word.

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From an op-ed in The New York Times by Steven Simon, who somehow survived a single year as National Security Council’s senior director for the Middle East and North Africa:

Monday afternoon, just a bit behind schedule, Mr. Netanyahu took to the stage next to an enormous screen. The headlines had suggested he would be in his office at a desk or podium to share news of existential importance. Instead, he presented a minor-league TED Talk — and in English, no less. Outside the elite, fewer and fewer people in Israel speak English, so the notion of a country’s leader supposedly addressing his compatriots in a foreign language on a matter of national security added to the weirdness of the performance.

One would think that a writer freely admitting that he didn't understand why something happened would disqualify him from calling it "weird."

But it wasn't weird. Netanyahu is a brilliant communicator. Dismissing his choice and medium of messaging reveals that Simon cannot think outside his own little box.

Obviously Bibi wasn't addressing Israelis. A good theory of who he really was addressing comes from Michael Weiss, an expert on the Middle East:

Today [Bibi] broadcast to the IRGC that their most guarded facilities are playgrounds for the Mossad. Not a confidence building exercise for Iranians if they seek to go to war.

Netanyahu is playing chess and Simon thinks he's watching a game of tic-tac-toe.

The archive had been stored in what Mr. Netanyahu described as a derelict warehouse in Tehran. The photos he displayed indicated that there did not even appear to be a lock on the door. One wonders how important the Iranians thought these documents were, given the slapdash approach they took to storing them.

Is Simon seriously claiming that the Iranians didn't care about the contents of these archives? Without knowing the content of any of the tens of thousands of documents? Again - he doesn't understand something so he displays his ignorance by disparaging what he doesn't understand.

Why were sensitive documents in this civilian warehouse? Barak Ravid has an excellent Twitter backgrounder on the Mossad operation, and he writes in part:

An Israeli official said the Mossad received intelligence that showed the Iranians were trying to hide all the documents which dealt with the military dimensions of their nuclear program. The official said that in a highly secret operation known to a handful of Iranian officials the Iranians transferred tens of thousands of documents and CD's from several different sites around the country to a civilian warehouse in Tehran. The Israeli official said the Iranians did all that because they were afraid that in post Iran deal inspections the IAEA will discover the incriminating documents The Mossad has put the warehouse under surveillance and started preparing for a possible operation to seize the documents. According to Israeli officials more than 100 Mossad spies worked on this operation.

100 Mossad agents working in a highly sensitive area, and this NYT "expert" claims that there was not even a lock on the door so it was a cinch. Wow, those Mossad agents should have just walked in the unlocked door- what's wrong with them for not consulting with Steven Simon?

Simon goes on to say that everything revealed in the archives was known already. Um, no - there are so many files that the US and Israel haven't finished going through them yet. Ravid again:

In February Mossad started translating & analyzing the documents most of were written in Farsi. A special team with 50 analysts was formed in the Mossad & a separate team is working in the CIA. Both intelligence agencies still haven’t finished analyzing the documents
An Israeli official told me: "The documents tell us new things about the military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear program. Things we didn’t know before. The documents give us new details about Iranian R&D sites, sites for possible nuclear tests & individuals involved"
The official added: "The documents tell us more details than the IAEA knew until toady about the Iranian nuclear program.

And as David Horovitz notes, the documents show not that Iran is violating the deal - but how terrible the deal was to begin with, and how foolhardy it was to offer a deal that gave Iran the pathway to nuclear weapons and delivery systems where research can continue at full tilt.

All this in exchange for a delay of a few years for the weapon itself and many billions of dollars to help pay Hezbollah and prop up the Syrian dictator who gasses his own people to death.

But the New York Times is committed to supporting the deal that should be replaced with something that actually stops Iran's obvious quest for nuclear weapons - something that has teeth.

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