Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, April 08, 2014

George Galloway says Tzipi Livni admits to sleeping with hundreds of men (UPDATE)

A couple of years ago, Arab media started reporting that Tzipi Livni had admitted to sleeping with prominent people to extort/steal information while she was at the Mossad.

The rumor was utterly fabricated. She had actually said that she was never asked to sleep with the enemy..

Nevertheless, within a week the rumor morphed into the accusation that she slept with Saeb Erekat and Yasser Abed Rabbo presumably during the 2007 negotiations.

Now the rumor has resurfaced, by none other than George Galloway, speaking on his Iranian PressTV program, who has added more details: Livni bragged about this in a book she supposedly wrote, and now her victims include "hundreds" of men!

At the YouTube link you can see videos of Galloway's alleged ex-lovers talking about his hypocrisy and lies.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

UPDATE: BillPoser in the comments says:

This is great! The moron said it in England, which has nasty libel laws. And in English common law, impugning a woman's chastity is defamatory per se. She can nail Galloway to the wall in court.

Anyone want to call Shurat HaDin?

Frank Barat's byline in Mondoweiss says that he is a "Human Rights activist based in London."

Mondoweiss publishes his adulatory interview with Leila Khaled, the notorious hijacker from the 1970s, who says that Palestinian Arabs didn't use enough terror during the intifada:

Q: How are you Leila? What are you doing nowadays in Amman?

Leila Khaled: I am fine as long as I am a part of the struggle for freedom, for our right of return and for an independent State with Jerusalem as capital. I know it is not going to happen in the near future, but I am fighting nevertheless. Here in Amman, I am the chief of the department of refugees and Right of Return in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (P.F.L.P).

...Barat: If negotiations do not bring peace to the Palestinians, what will? What should the leadership do?

LK: Resist! That’s how you achieve your rights as a People. ...

Barat: P.L.O stands for Palestine Liberation Organization. Do you think it has lost its true meaning? Bassam Shaka in 2008 told me that the P.L.O, before anything, needed to go back to its roots as a liberation movement.

LK: No liberation is achieved without resistance. My party has not changed. It has stuck to its original program. We are calling to escalate the resistance. People talk about popular resistance. It does not only mean demonstrations. Using arms is also popular. We have people who are ready to fight.

Barat: What does peaceful and non-violent resistance means for someone like yourself, who chose armed resistance as a mean for liberation?

LK: Resistance takes more than one face. It can be all kinds of resistance. Non violent and violent. I am ok with those who choose non-violence. We are not going to liberate our country by armed struggle only. Other kinds of resistance are necessary. The political one, diplomatic one, the non violent one. We need to use whatever we have got.

... We chose armed struggle. We did not achieve our goals. Then the intifada broke out and the whole world took us seriously. We gained the support of people all over the world. Still, we did not reach our goals because the leadership was not brave enough at that time to escalate the intifada, to take it to another level.

..Every year, around December, I look back at the past year and then decide to do something for the coming year. This year, I decided to quit smoking, so I did.

Barat: Mabruck!

Israel-haters don't have the slightest shame about their hypocrisy of pretending to care about "human rights" while discussing how to murder the most Israeli Jews in order to achieve their aims. Barat has not the slightest discomfort when Khaled says that blowing up buses and restaurants was not enough for her.

But at least we learned one thing from the terrorist Khaled: when "pro-Palestinian activists" say "popular resistance" it does not necessarily mean "non-violent resistance."

(h/t Gary@CiFWatch)

UPDATE: Ma'an also published the interview.

Video of BDSer flipping out in Brighton

This might not be quite as funny as "Meltdown Girl," but it is great nonetheless.

An anti-Israel protester, appropriately named Dick, apparently went crazy when a pro-Israel person played a kazoo during the weekly protests that Sussex Friends of Israel have effectively countered.

The amount of frustration that the haters have at finding themselves losing is a sight to behold.

04/07 Links Pt2: Democracy, Friedman-style; Beinart’s double standards; Hugh Laurie Tours

From Ian:

John B. Judis and the Future of Liberal Support for Israel

Judis’ historical narrative, where it is not outright erroneous, is marked by the tendentiousness of someone with an ideological ax to grind. For example, he usually describes Arab violence in low-key terms, and mostly explains it as a response to Zionist actions; whereas Jewish violence repeatedly seems to amount to wanton brutality.
The Arab riots of 1929, for one, are presented as being triggered by Jewish provocation. The Palestinian leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini, writes Judis, “was not trying to start protests, and certainly not a riot, but… when Zionist groups began to claim that the [Western] wall was theirs, Palestine’s Arabs took to the streets.” Omitted is the fact that Jewish claims were voiced peacefully, while the Arabs quickly turned to brutal violence. Judis does note that “In Hebron, Arab mobs killed between 65 and 70 Jews and in Safed 18 Jews were killed,” but the whole affair seems to come out rather even. “Overall, 123 Jews were killed and 116 Arabs—the latter primarily by British police.” This anodyne summary contrasts with that of Sir John Chancellor, the British High Commissioner, who reported “acts of unspeakable savagery” being “perpetrated upon defenseless members of the Jewish population regardless of age or sex.”

More on that destructive Obama interview about Israel

Last month, Jeffrey Goldberg published an interview with President Barack Obama, ahead of Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the United States to attend the AIPAC conference. The President wasn’t at all friendly in the interview, warning (in Goldberg’s words) that “time is running out.” Roughly four weeks later, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority refused to continue negotiations with Israel. Is there a connection between the two?
Put a different way, in the words of Neo-Neocon Did Obama Sabotage Kerry on Peace Talks?
The answer is “yes,” and here’s how.
There are two points that Obama made in his interview worth recalling.
1) Obama implies that if Israel doesn’t make peace he may no longer be willing to defend it in international fora.
2) Israel has a unique opportunity to make a deal with Abbas, something it may not have again.

Democracy, Friedman-style

What remains for Thomas Friedman now that his idols have failed him? The same thing other Jews have done throughout history -- beat on their people's battered chest. Eureka, Friedman declared, I have found the most amazing analogy: Sheldon Adelson and the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have something in common: "They are both trying to destroy Israel. Adelson is doing it by loving Israel to death and Khamenei by hating Israel to death." Lovely, isn't it? Courtesy of the newspaper that caters to people who have long ago stopped thinking of themselves as thinking people.

Arafat's bodyguard: Arafat lied when he condemned suicide bombings

From MEMRI:

Muhammad Al-Daya, longtime bodyguard of Yasser Arafat, said in a recent TV interview that Arafat used to lie when he denounced bombings in Israel. Arafat "would condemn the bombing in his own special way, saying: 'I am against the killing of civilians.' But that wasn’t true," said Al-Daya, in a BBC Arabic interview which aired on April 3, 2014.

Following are excerpts:

Interviewer: Ariel Sharon used to say that Arafat was a pathological liar. Many politicians who had dealings with Arafat said he was an excellent liar.

Muhammad Al-Daya: Islam allows you to lie in three cases: In order to reconcile two people...

Interviewer: For the sake of reconciliation.

Muhammad Al-Daya: If your wife is ugly, you are allowed to tell her she is the most beautiful woman alive. The third case is politics. You are allowed to lie in politics.

Interviewer: So you acknowledge this...

Muhammad Al-Daya: Yes.

Interviewer: So he used to lie in your presence?

Muhammad Al-Daya: Abu Ammar? Yes. When there was a bombing in Tel Aviv, for example, he would say... This would happen due to pressure, especially by President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak would call Arafat and say to him: “Denounce it, or they will screw you.” Arafat would say to Mubarak: “Mr. President, we have martyrs. The [Israelis] have destroyed us. They have massacred us.” But Mubarak would say to him: “Denounce it, or they will screw you.”

Then Arafat would condemn the bombing in his own special way, saying: “I am against the killing of civilians.” But that wasn’t true.

This is no surprise to those who followed Arafat's reflexive "condemnations" of bombings during the Oslo "peace" process.

Even The New York Times almost, almost noticed the lie back in 2002:

Before Yasir Arafat condemned "terror against civilians" on Saturday, his wife, Suha al-Taweel Arafat, told an Arabic-language magazine that she endorsed suicide attacks as legitimate resistance against Israeli occupation.

In an interview published Friday in Al Majalla, a London-based, Saudi-owned weekly, Mrs. Arafat said that if she had a son, there would be "no greater honor" than to sacrifice him for the Palestinian cause.

"Would you expect me and my children to be less patriotic and more eager to live than my countrymen and their father and leader who is seeking martyrdom?" she was quoted as saying.

Other media would occasionally notice Arafat's doubletalk.

It was described well in Barry Rubin's biography of Arafat about a 1997 incident:

Of course, there are whose who have a vested interest in pretending that Arafat was a saint. Daoud Kuttab, award winning journalist, claimed in 2002 that Arafat condemned terror attacks in Arabic without the slightest skepticism. Of course, that happened years after he was called on not condemning terror in Arabic.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie can't define the problem with US Jewish students

Rabbi Eric Yoffie in Haaretz asks why young US Jews are supposedly turning off from Israel. What he doesn’t realize is that he is part of the problem.

To be sure, students don’t want to hear sweeping generalizations about how everyone, everywhere is hostile to Israel and the Jews. Rabbi Daniel Gordis, speaking recently in Atlanta, told his audience that “the Palestinians hate Israel (and let’s be honest, the Jews, too) far more than they care about themselves.” American Jewish students are just not buying this; they are appropriately skeptical about Palestinian intentions, but are open-minded about the possibility of some kind of settlement. Their professors—and their parents—have taught them to avoid dismissive, categorical, uncritical thinking; and they know that Israel still has champions and friends, and that yes, moderation does exist, even in parts of the Arab world.

In short, our students are a sensible bunch. Why then do we have a problem with them? Because I have described only the first half of the discussion—the part where the basic arguments are made. But there is always a second part, during which the students prod and challenge. What about settlements, they want to know? If Israel is committed to two states, as I say it is, why the unending declarations from Israel’s government about more settlement construction? How is that consistent with a desire for a Jewish and democratic Israel? How are they to explain settlements to the anti-Israel activists on campus? How are they to explain settlements to themselves?

And even if I am right that Palestinian refusal to accept Israel is the heart of the problem, what, they ask, does Israel propose to do about it? How does it make sense for Israel’s government to do nothing other than build more settlements and wait for a restive, impoverished Palestinian population to explode?

Well, I admit, they are right. And I explain possible courses of action that Israel could take to ease the dangers of international isolation and strained relations with the United States: A unilateral withdrawal from some of the territories; a general settlement freeze; a decision by Israel to define its borders; an announcement that settlement will be confined to the major settlement blocs.

But, the students want to know, will Israel actually do any of these things? I hope so, I tell them, but I just don’t know.

What’s wrong with this picture?

First of all, it is very saddening to see that a rabbi who used to head one of the major American Jewish denominations seems to believe that the bulk of a college student’s Zionist education must occur on campus and that support of Israel is dependent on Israeli actions. Being pro-Israel must have solid arguments behind it, to be sure, but very few people become Zionists because of arguments. There is no substitute for experience - both the experience of growing up in a home with committed Jewish values and the experience of actually going to Israel for a week, month or year and seeing things first-hand.

The Jewish commitment to the Jewish state is not dependent on who is leading the government and whether you support them.

This doesn’t mean Jews cannot criticize Israel, but it does mean that supporting Israel is a wholehearted effort that is driven by emotions and love of your people; and that if you want to change Israel then the proper way to do it is by moving there and starting or joining with those who believe as you do, not by lobbying foreign organizations to bypass Israeli democracy.

Secondly, Yoffie doesn’t even seem to know that Israel’s settlement building is already being done inside existing settlement blocs with extraordinarily few exceptions. The idea that the West Bank is being steadily taken over by Jewish-owned homes is simply a lie, the percentage of the WB that is being taken up by Jewish settlements is virtually the same as it was 20 years ago. His inability to articulate that and instead to commiserate with students who don’t know any better indicates that perhaps Yoffie is not the best candidate for defending Israel on campus. Even liberal Jews should support building in communities that will remain in Israel no matter what, especially within Jerusalem's boundaries.

Thirdly, Yoffie completely ignores the fact that there is a Jewish claim to some or all of the territories. Whether it is a legal claim, indicated by UNSC 242’s wording of “secure and recognized boundaries,” or the emotional and historic claim of Jews having the right to have access to their holiest places in Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, Shechem and elsewhere, he does not seem to mention that to these students. Whatever you think about the wisdom of Israel’s actions in Judea and Samaria, you must at least acknowledge that the negotiations are partially over the final borders, and it is silly for Israel to unilaterally concede land that is terrifically important historically, religiously and strategically - especially to people who say explicitly that they want to use that land as a springboard for the next phase of their campaign to destroy Israel.

As much as Yoffie thinks he loves Israel, he seems to be conflicted, and he is passing his own insecurities to the students that he thinks he is empowering. You can be sure that none of the “pro-Palestinian” speakers on campus are betraying any doubts about their cause. And students will naturally gravitate towards those that seem more sure of themselves.

Even that may be forgivable if Yoffie was willing to honestly describe the "right wing" or religious or national defense perspective on these topics and give them a fair airing while saying that he disagrees. Someone who really loves Israel also loves those he disagrees with. From this article, it appears that he cannot give the benefit of the doubt to the democratically elected Israeli government.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie needs to figure out his own feelings before he attempts to give what he thinks is a pro-Israel message to students who are very attuned to self-doubt.

04/07 Links Pt1: The Myth of the Thirsty Palestinian; Erekat: Hamas Were Never Terrorists

From Ian:

The Myth of the Thirsty Palestinian

The latest line of anti-Israel attack claims the Jewish state withholds water from the Palestinians. As usual, the haters have their facts wrong.
The issue of water rights in the West Bank is constantly raised in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, appearing again and again in public discourse around the world. According to critics of Israel, the Jewish state selfishly exploits the area’s water supplies and denies access to the local population. In doing so, the critics say, Israel is not only abandoning its responsibilities to the West Bank Palestinians, but ruthlessly and illegally abusing the natural resources of the occupied territory. This idea has become extremely widespread in the international media, and was recently voiced from the Knesset plenum by the President of the European Parliament, Herman Schultz, causing a minor scandal in Israel and abroad.
As with all attacks on Israel, the truth is much more complicated and, to a great extent, precisely the opposite of what the critics claim. When one examines the relevant data, it becomes clear that, under Israeli rule, the Palestinian water supply has become larger, more technologically sophisticated, of higher quality, and much easier to access; almost entirely due to Israeli efforts.

Erekat: Hamas Not, and Never Was, a Terror Group

The Palestinian Authority, controlled by the Fatah terror group, is once again trying its hand at “unification” with its sister terror group, Hamas. As a sign of Fatah's “goodwill,” Saeb Erekat, the PA's top negotiator and a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, called on Hamas to implement all previous agreements with Fatah in order to “fight together against Israel.”
Erekat made the comments Saturday at a conference titled “The Strategy of Resistance.” Erekat said that “we demand that Hamas, more than ever before, implement the Cairo and Doha agreements. The political movements have an obligation to resolve their differences at the ballot box, and not through bullets.”
“I hereby declare, in the make of President Mahmoud Abbas and the directorate of Fatah, that Hamas is a Palestinian movement, and is not and never was a terror group,” Erekat added.

NATO’s new secretary-general: Problematic not only for Israel

Stoltenberg spoke at several meetings over the years in which there were brutal verbal attacks on Israel, while he remained silent. A prime minister indicates his support by not confronting these attacks.
The most recent case was at the May 1 celebration of the umbrella Trade Union LO in Oslo in 2013. Salma Abudahi from Gaza’s Union of Agriculture Work Committees (UAWC) spoke at the event. Earlier she had given an interview in which she called rockets a “symbol of resistance” and said that occupied people have a right to defend themselves. “It is important,” said Abudahi, “to understand the proportions. The Israelis are killing our loved ones all the time.” This was yet another example of Palestinian hatemongering.
Stoltenberg spoke after Abudahi at the meeting and ignored her incitement in his speech.
If NATO states believe that out of all potential candidates this person is the most qualified to coordinate the workings of the alliance and head its staff, this is indication of poor judgment. Regarding Israel’s contacts with this powerful organization, Stoltenberg’s anticipated appointment is at best moving several steps backward.

Stop UNRWA War Education : What You Can Do

The collapse of talks with the Palestinian Authority leave an agency in tact which is capable of galvanizing nearly half a million Palestinian students into violent, direct action against Israel, under the slogan of the “right of return”.
That agency is UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
During the second week of March, 2014, education experts Dr. Arnon Groiss and Mr. Jonathan HaLevi provided academic presentations at venues in the US Congress and the British Parliament concerning lethal aspects of UNRWA education:

There was a press conference in the Al-Ram neighborhood Sunday morning, sponsored by the "Consumer Protection Association", to emphasize the importance of Palestinian Arabs buying Arab products rather than Israeli products. The name of the conference was "Palestinian Products First."

Speakers at the conference included the PA Minister of Communications, the head of the Consumer Protection Association, and the Under Secretary of Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs, as well as a representative of the Ministry of Agriculture.

During the conference, one of the attendees went to the head table and plopped down a box of Israeli biscuits, saying that these were the cookies being served at the hospitality table at the entrance of the meeting! She recognized them and retrieved the box from the kitchen.

The organizers scrambled to remove the offending box of biscuits. The head of the consumer protection organization who organized the conference, Azmi Shyoukhi, claimed that the biscuit box was planted there "in order to sabotage the conference and to promote the products of the settlements in front of the cameras."

Al Quds newspaper confirmed that the cookies were indeed there, as someone innocently simply went to a local market to buy cookies to serve at the entrance without realizing their poisoned provenance.

After the story was published, the Al Quds reporter who wrote the story received a threatening phone call for daring to publicize such an embarrassing incident.

Note also that the PA department that guards against using Israeli goods is the Consumer Protection Association, presumably because of Jew-cooties. Also note that the embarrassed official referred to the Israeli cookies as a "settlement product."

#OpIsrael brags about hacking a cancer therapy website

This week, Israel is supposed to be besieged by cyber-attacks by one of the "Anonymous" groups.

“On April 7, 2014, we call upon our brothers and sisters to hack, deface, hijack, database leak, admin takeover, and DNS terminate the Israeli Cyberspace by any means necessary,” the group said in a YouTube video posted on April 2.

An early list of sites that have been hacked include an insurance company, a business consultant, a meditation/yoga site and a construction company. (Turn down your speakers if you want to see the hacked sites.)

Hardly earth-shaking targets.

Another target was a Michigan swim club that the hackers thought was Israeli!

Most notable, however, is that one of the sites they bragged about hacking is a service that offers therapy for cancer survivors. And, unlike the swim club, they knew exactly what it was.

It appears that the #OpIsrael hackers are just as moral as the other "pro-Palestinian" groups, willing to hurt any Israeli Jew in the name of "rights."

From Egypt Independent last week:

Power outages could be extended from two and a half hours to 6 hours aday due to fuel shortage, Minister of Electricity and Renewable Energy Mohamed Shaker told CBC Channel Wednesday.

If the fuel available to the Ministry of Electricity becomes 10 percent less than the required quantity to run power plants, deficit in the capacity of electricity will reach 3,000 megawatts, which means power outage would be from two and a half hours to three hours a day, the minister said.

He added if a shortage in fuel reached 20 percent, power outage could extend to six hours a day.

The Minister of Petroleum Sherif Ismail said more quantities of natural gas would be available between July to September and the crisis could be solved if liquid fuel was used to run power plants.

Ismail added that using available liquid fuel would decrease power outage daily to reach only one hour and a half or two hours. Ismail called for rationalizing the consumption of electricity in peak hours saying the ministry would do its best to provide the needed fuel.

And Sunday:

Cabinet sources said Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb is meeting on Sunday evening with the ministers of electricity and petroleum to discuss ways of ending the power cuts problem and appease public anger.

Israeli gas is not yet ready for export to Egypt, and little upsets people more than regular, extended blackouts.

Things will be heating up in Egypt this summer, quite literally.

Latest BDS conundrum: Salt 424 - boycott or not?

From Tablet:

Salt 424, which gets its name from the fact that the surface of the Dead Sea is 424 meters below sea level, is the first company to bring gourmet salt from the Dead Sea to the Israeli and international market. Less than a year after its launch, the company is selling its products in seven countries, including the United States and Canada, and it already has European chefs as acolytes.

The company produces several different lines. The “natural” series includes simple blends: salt with black pepper, salt with hot chili pepper, as well as smoked salt and “wild fire salt” with jalapeños. The “organic” series features pink salt with organic paprika, or salt with organic spinach, dill, or rosemary. ...

Lior started his career as insurance assessor, “but my midlife crisis hit me early, when I was in my mid-thirties,” he told me. “Since I love food and cooking, I started looking for things to do in the food industry. I managed the Haifa branch of the Agadir Burger chain. Then I opened a pancake house in Haifa. That’s when I took a day trip with my kids to the Dead Sea and by chance met Hoosam Hallak, the Paletstinian owner of a salt factory in the Dead Sea called West Bank Salt. We talked and he invited me to see how he makes salt. Two weeks later I came to visit him.”

From 1956 to 1967 there was a small Jordanian/British potash factory located on Jordanian land where West Bank Salt stands today. “After the Six Day War, Hoosam’s father Othman Hallak made an agreement with the Jordanian government to continue operating the plant, and it reopened as a salt extraction business,” Lior continued. “The company has been producing traditional commercial table salt for the West Bank and Gaza and Jordan ever since. The Dead Sea has a desert climate of 40 degrees Celsius, almost no precipitation, and clean dry air, which results in high-quality salt that is rich in minerals. It’s an amazing thing. At the end of my visit, Hoosam gave me a bag of salt to take home. I took that salt to food technologist Dr. Eli Sigler, who analyzed it in his lab. Dr. Sigler told me that this is the richest mineral salt he ever saw.”

Hallak was looking for ways to expand his own business: “In 2004, we started marketing our salt to Germany and other European countries. That’s when we understood that we have a product that stands out,” he said. “For the past four years we have been participating in the Fancy Food Show in the U.S., and from that point on we understood that we have an edge. We were looking for someone who can market that for us.”

...Development began in 2011, and Salt 424 launched last May. “We work together in full cooperation,” said Lior, who buys salt from Hallak’s factory and turns it into gourmet salt by refining and infusing it in Haifa. “Hoosam Hallak lives in East Jerusalem, the factory workers live in Jericho, I live in Haifa, and we all work together in perfect harmony.”

“Me being a Palestinian and Alon being an Israeli, for me it’s about the human nature of working together with someone that will make you better,” said Hallak. “If I can make my salt better to market this will benefit me and my company and my workers, and if Alon can help me do that, I won’t judge him for his background. … As far as politics are concerned, we believe that there is room from everybody. We’re industrialists. Our contribution is making the lives of the people around us and those that work for us economically viable. Part of the history of this company is perseverance and resilience, despite being in a very tough area.”

My guess is that the Israel haters will boycott Salt 424. They will also claim that it is violating international law by profiting off of "Palestine" natural resources, even though the factory that produces the salt is completely Arab.

The article notes that many major European chefs are loving the product.

Terrorist Marwan Barghouti, one of the architects of the deadly second intifada, released a statement that"liberation of the prisoners should be considered a core national priority of the march of resistance to the occupation.... as part of the doctrine of national resistance to the occupation."

In a paper he wrote that was read by his wife in a conference, he blamed the current leadership for their failure to get prisoners - like himself - to be released.

The idea that releases of terrorists are conducive to peace is certainly one of the more Orwellian ideas to come out of the failed Oslo process.