Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, July 17, 2015

Hamas isn't the only terror group that the PLO wants to unify with

From Ma'an:

A delegation of independent political figures met with members of the Islamic Jihad Movement in the Gaza Strip on Thursday to continue reconciliation talks among Palestinian factions.
The delegation was headed by Yasser al-Wadiya, member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership, who updated Islamic Jihad's leaders on the results of his latest visit to Egypt to work on the ongoing process of national reconciliation.

The PLO executive committee appointed a committee to consult all Palestinian factions on reforming a new government in mid-June, and it was widely expected that the new government would see factional leaders replace the current government's independent technocrats.

Islamic Jihad and Hamas are not PLO members but are allegedly included in talks.

There are plenty of people throughout the years that have tried to rehabilitate Hamas' image, claiming that it now runs a (shadow) government and it is more practical and pragmatic and not solely fixated on terror, despite daily statements calling for genocide against Jewish Israelis.

But Islamic Jihad cannot be considered anything but a terror group. And the "moderate" PLO is considering them as legitimate as any other political party.

Which tells you all you need to know about the PLO. Too bad the rest of the world closes its eyes to that small fact.

Elder gets results!

On Wednesday I reported that the College Board had published AP Art History materials saying that Jerusalem was in "Palestine."

Today - they fixed it online.

I hadn't written to them but they tweeted me and emailed me as well:

We have corrected the geographic attribution for the Dome of the Rock to “Jerusalem” to be consistent with prominent college-level Art History texts. The change has been made in our online AP History materials, and we will distribute an updated printed edition to teachers. We deeply regret the error.
Zach Goldberg Director Media Relations

Two cheers for fixing that issue. The third cheer will come when they recognize that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

07/16 Links Pt2: ICC orders its prosecutor to reconsider 'Mavi Marmara' war crimes allegations

From Ian:

ICC orders its prosecutor to consider 'Mavi Marmara' war crimes allegations against IDF

In a shocking 2-1 decision, the International Criminal Court on Thursday ordered its Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to consider opening a full criminal investigation into 2010 Mavi Maramara flotilla war crimes allegations against IDF personnel only 7 months after Bensouda had closed the file.
With harsh language, the ICC told Bensouda that she should have more seriously considered the possibility that those killed by the IDF in the incident were “systematic or resulted from a deliberate plan or policy to attack, kill or injure civilians.”
The decision puts the ICC the closest it has ever been to intervening directly into the Israeli-Arab conflict and places the court in the position of potentially being harsher on Israel than Bensouda, who herself has been criticized by Israel for recognizing a State of Palestine.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely responded to the decision derisively, stating, “the International Court in the Hague has turned with this decision into a tool for Palestinian propaganda.”
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon echoed those sentiments, saying, “Israel harshly rejects” the ICC ruling and that “Israel had acted in self-defense and in line with international law.”
Further, Nachshon recalled that a quasi-independent Israeli commission with international observers as well as a UN Secretary General-sponsored commission confirmed Israel’s self-defense claims.

Eugene Kontorovich: Dutch Supreme Court Ruling on Israeli Criminal Jurisdiction in the West Bank

So Berland would seem to have a receptive audience for his argument that Israel cannot be understood to apply to crimes committed across the Green Line.
However, the Dutch Supreme Court came to a different conclusion (adopting the opinion of the Court's Attorney General). It began by establishing the relevant presumptions. In considering an extradition request pursuant to a treaty, a court can only reject it if the requesting state's lack of jurisdiction is clear on the face of the papers. That is, if the lack of jurisdiction is manifest without further investigation.
While the Court noted the state of international opinion on the issue, it said that Israel's lack of territorial jurisdiction in East Jerusalem and Beitar was not one of these black-and-white issues that it could in effect take judicial notice of. One would imagine that if China requested extradition regarding a crime that occurred in Spain, this would be one of the "clear" case that fall outside the presumption.
To be sure, the Court made no pronouncement on Israel's borders, and indeed suggested it would be inappropriate to do so in an extradition case. It simply decided that the lack of territorial jurisdiction is not an apparent, day vs. night, judicial notice kind of fact. Even given the presumption in favor of finding territorial jurisdiction, the fact that it was not overcome under the present circumstances is quite noteworthy. To put it simply, the conclusion that the anti-jurisdiction argument does not overcome the presumption means the argument is not a 100 percent unquestioned winner.
Indeed, it suggests that the International Criminal Court may face difficulties in exercising jurisdiction over Israeli settlements. If these are within Israeli territorial jurisdiction (albeit not sovereignty), there is no basis for the Court to act. Here again, the Court would have to overcome very high presumptions to exercise jurisdiction, because Israel is a non-member state and because of the Monetary Gold principle. While extradition is presumptively valid, jurisdiction in the ICC needs to be affirmatively established, rather than disproved.

Bernard Lewis, the intellectual giant and the grasshoppers

Bernard Lewis is the greatest scholar of the Middle East and the Islamic and Arab past in the world. The shallow political correctness in the New York Times, which has lauded the pygmie Edward Said in scathing opposition to Lewis's superior mind, is a sad statement of our times
It is a truth universally acknowledged, except by book reviewers in the New York Times, that Bernard Lewis is the most important and distinguished scholar on the history of the Middle East and of the Islamic and Arab past.
Therefore, it was startling that Jacob Heilbrunn in his review of the book Ally by Michael Oren (Sunday, July 12, 2015) when referring to the “legendary Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis,” under whom Oren studied at Princeton, repeated Edward Said’s scurrilous remark that Lewis was, “dripping with condescension and contempt toward the Arab world.”
In repeating this infamous comment, Jacob Heilbrunn reveals he writes more from a political perspective than from scholarly analysis. Even if Heilbrunn himself does not subscribe to this offensive statement, he has disgraced himself by quoting it.

The antisemitic author

I've mentioned the popular Egyptian Ramadan TV series "Jewish Quarter." That series is virulently anti-Zionist but it treats Egyptian Jews who were loyal citizens in the 1950s as normal people.

This caused some controversy, forcing the actors who played Jewish roles to defend themselves and reiterate that, indeed, they really hate Israel.

Nevertheless, Egyptian media has been very supportive of the series, which follows a popular movie documentary called "The Jews of Egypt" that also nostalgically looked back at the time that Egypt had many Jews integrated into society and how they were forced out of the country.

Syria also has a popular, multi-year Ramadan historical series called Bab Al-Hara. It takes place in the 1930s before Syrian independence, and it follows a number of Damascus clans. while Jews are not the focus of this series, they are shown as normal members of Syrian society. This year, the seventh year of the series, focused much more on the Jewish section of Damascus.

This rankles a writer in JordanZad. In an explicitly antisemitic article, Samaher Abdullah Alsaaida says that this series is calling for "normalization" with the enemy. she quotes the Koran about how Jews cannot be trusted and says that the series whitewashes how evil Jews really are. She's upset that a rabbi in the series calls for good relations between Jews and Muslims when, in fact, the Jews were scheming against Muslims and the series is whitewashing their historic evil in Syria.

"The screenwriter and director of the series and those who support it forgot that Jews are not part of human civilization, but they have only one message: the message of corruption on earth and the dissemination of bad ideas and obscene culture," says Assaaida.

She is also worried that Muslim children will grow up and want to marry Jews as a result of thie series, and she laments the fact that it was not properly censored.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

So Barack Obama has got his agreement, his legacy. There will be debate and a vote (or votes) taken in the US Congress, but even if the Congress passes a resolution that disapproves the deal, and even in the unlikely event that such a resolution survives a presidential veto, the horse is out of the barn. The US is only one of the Western parties to the deal, which will likely receive the backing of a UN Security Council resolution. Who would enforce continued sanctions?

I’m not going to enumerate all the reasons this is a bad deal on a global scale (you can read about some of them here). What I wonder is why Obama and his people pushed for it. Did they think at first that they could get an agreement that would moderate Iran’s behavior and hold back their nuclear project, and then found themselves suckered by Iran’s negotiators? Or were they going for something entirely different?

As an Israeli, I can’t see anything good in the deal, and both Israel’s government and opposition agree with me (although the opposition is somewhat comically trying to blame the Prime Minister for it). But looking at it from an American point of view, what were they thinking?

One explanation is sheer incompetence. I suppose this is possible, especially since John Kerry is involved, but it’s not terribly interesting. What other explanations are there?

Another is the one I suggested in “Breakdown and Betrayal:” they were following the Iraq Study Commission recommendations to buy the friendship of the Arab and Iranian troublemakers in the Middle East by giving them Israel. This is certainly part of it, especially for Obama, who I am convinced would like nothing better than another Arab state in the place of Israel.

But there’s one other – even worse – possibility: that the deal represents a tactical withdrawal from the Middle East. Could it be that the administration has decided that the US can’t successfully confront Iran in any case, and the deal exists to put a pleasant face on the American surrender?

Iran has staked its claim. It wants to establish a Shiite caliphate to dominate the Middle East (and much of the world’s oil supply). It wants US influence out of the region. It wants Israel gone. Its long-term ambitions may well be much greater.

No prior administration would have accepted that. But apparently Obama and his advisors have convinced themselves that they can live with an Iranian Middle East. At least, they think, it will solve the problem of ISIS. And – very importantly – perhaps they have convinced themselves that they do not have the power to stop it.

But isn’t it true that sanctions brought Iran to the verge of capitulation? Supposedly its financial straits brought the regime to the table. All that would be needed would be to keep the pressure on.

I disagree, and I think the administration does too. What happened was that despite the sanctions, Iran managed to develop its nuclear program almost to completion. It was simply a matter of reallocating resources, and the totalitarian Iranian regime had the power to do that indefinitely, despite the pain it caused the population. What could the people do, vote for the opposition?

What brought Iran to the table was not economic pressure, but the opportunity presented by the Obama Administration, which was anxious to shed its obligations in the Middle East. The administration understood that only a credible threat of military action could stop Iran, and it was not prepared to make such a threat – because it might have to carry it out. And it was not prepared to pay the price for that.

The mighty USA, the nation with the largest GDP and military budget in the world, a nation that possesses thousands of deliverable nuclear warheads and massive conventional forces, could crush Iran in a matter of days or weeks. But the consequences would include some casualties, a huge bump in the price of oil, and terrorist attacks against American interests all over the globe, perhaps even the homeland. Don’t forget that while America is a superpower in many ways, it is a soft target. And in the field of terrorism, Iran is the superpower.

This explains why the negotiations proceeded as they did. The West wasn’t holding the high cards – the Iranians were.

Obama, who is ideologically opposed to coercion by the West in any event, simply does not see that continued US influence in the Middle East is worth the cost. So he’ll make the best of his weakness, give Iran what it wants without a struggle, and contract the sphere of influence of the US a little. So what if it means that the corrupt House of Saud goes down the drain, and the Jewish state of Israel – which he believes should never have been created in the first place – is lost as well?

One can only imagine the consequences. A newly empowered Iran would push the boundaries of its caliphate in all directions. Russia and China have spheres of influence to think about too, and would rush to fill the vacuum created by a withdrawing United States. Everyone that could get nuclear weapons, would. Muslim supremacists in Europe and elsewhere would be encouraged.

Obama could cut military budgets even further and stop droning ISIS and other terrorists – the Shiite militias will take care of that for him. He could play Cyrus to the ‘Palestinians’, bringing them ‘back’ to their ‘homeland’ at last. He could reopen the US Embassy in Teheran and build one in al-Quds, ‘Palestine’.

Yes, Barack Obama could be the third world hero that he has always envisaged himself as, revered like Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela. Only, his importance would be even greater than theirs.

He would go down in history as the man that finally brought about the end of the Pax Americana, the twilight of the West.

07/16 Links Pt1: No, we don’t want war. And yes, there was a better deal; Obama's ME Exit Strategy

From Ian:

David Horovitz: No, we don’t want war. And yes, there was a better deal

Three months ago, defending what he called the “historic” framework understandings reached with Iran in Lausanne over its rogue nuclear program, US President Barack Obama planted a false and highly unpleasant insinuation. “It’s no secret,” the president declared in an April 2 address, “that the Israeli prime minister and I don’t agree about whether the United States should move forward with a peaceful resolution to the Iranian issue.” The nasty implication? That while America favors diplomacy to thwart Iran’s march to the bomb, Benjamin Netanyahu wants war.
In the House of Commons on Wednesday, a day after the US-led world powers had signed their comprehensive accord with the Islamic extremists who rule Iran, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond escalated that false narrative by another few degrees. “The question you have to ask yourself is what kind of a deal would have been welcomed in Tel Aviv,” Hammond said in Parliament, and then continued, despicably, “The answer of course is that Israel doesn’t want any deal with Iran.”
Finally, later Wednesday, Obama cemented the foul misrepresentation of Israel’s stance. “There really are only two alternatives here,” the president correctly asserted at a press conference. “Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation, or it’s resolved through force, through war. Those are the options.” So far, true enough. But he went on to claim that the accord signed Tuesday was the best that could have been achieved — and that critics such as Netanyahu had failed to present viable alternative conditions. “What I haven’t heard is, what is your preferred alternative?” claimed the president, his voice full of injured good intention.
The consequence of all this disingenuous oratory: The United States and its partners have concluded a dreadful agreement with a treacherous regime in Tehran — an agreement that places Israel, but emphatically not only Israel, in considerable danger. And they are now busily compounding their failure by misrepresenting what has unfolded, and pointing some of the blame, thoroughly unjustifiably, at what Hammond so charmingly called “Tel Aviv.”

Countering Obama, Israel says it offered alternative to Iran deal

Israel forcefully rejected Thursday US President Barack Obama’s assertion that critics of the nuclear agreement with Iran have failed to present better options, arguing that a good deal is still possible if the international community, led by Washington, maintains the sanctions regime on Tehran.
“We have consistently laid out an alternative, which is a better deal that actually blocks Iran’s path to the bomb and links the lifting of restrictions on Iran to tangible changes in Iranian behavior,” a senior Israeli official said Thursday.
The official also disputed Obama’s contention that the entire international community backs the Vienna agreement, which the United States and five world powers signed with Iran on Tuesday. He also indicated that the Israeli government is convinced it can persuade US lawmakers to oppose the deal. “We believe we can win on the substance,” he told The Times of Israel.

Obama Defends Nuclear Deal: Either My Deal Or War With Iran

President Obama challenged critics of his newly minted Iran nuclear deal, asserting that his agreement was the only one that would prevent the country from getting a nuclear bomb.
“The facts are the facts,” he insisted, saying his argument was “hard to dispute” by critics who’s arguments he asserted “defies logic” and “makes no sense.”
He also mocked some critics, suggesting that they were unfairly raising concerns about Iran “taking over the world.”
“I say that not tongue in cheek, because if you look at some of the statements by some of our critics, you would think that Iran is, in fact, going to take over the world as a consequence of this deal, which I think would be news to the Iranians,” he said.
Obama held his press conference this afternoon in the East Room of the White House instead of the briefing room, the first time in that location since the aftermath of the November 2014 elections.
His overall argument rested with the message the administration has been sending for months – that his deal would be the only way to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon – using the phrase “nuclear weapon” 28 times. He added that the international community would be able to catch any “funny business” if Iran tried to cheat the inspectors.

Barack Obama Makes Case Against Iran Nuclear Deal

UNRWA turns its back on REAL refugees to continue to indoctrinate the fake ones

This is an overview of UNRWA's budget priorities, from its website:

Over half of UNRWA's budget goes towards education - far more than for housing or medical services. As we have seen, UNRWA's education is fixated on teaching generations of Palestinian Arabs that they will "return" to destroy Israel, and hate and intolerance towards Jews.

But this education, which UNRWA tries hard to hide, is their number one priority.

What about helping real refugees? You know, the thing that refugee agencies are supposed to do?

Sorry, says UNRWA - those guys are on their own, even if they are considered Palestinian.

Dozens of Palestinian families that fled to Lebanon from Syria are now homeless, after the U.N. relief agency stopped paying refugee rent fees earlier this month, the National News Agency reported Wednesday.

The families are now squatting in a number of schools in the Beddawi refugee camp, located in north Lebanon.

Vowing not to leave until UNRWA revokes its decision to cut rent fees granted to refugees, the families were seen unpacking their luggage inside the schools.

UNRWA halted payment of aid for housing subsidies due to a massive budget shortfall. The agency was giving refugees between $150 - 250 a month toward housing.

By my calculations, UNRWA spends about $150 a month per child for schooling. For the same amount of money they can house an entire family for a month - a family that would otherwise be homeless.

And because of the bizarre rules of the UN, since these families' ancestors happened to be in British Mandate Palestine in 1947, they are ineligible from getting aid from UNHCR, the other UN refugee agency that supports every refugee except those whom UNRWA calls "Palestinian."

In other words, the UN's only refugee agency for Syrians of Palestinian origin are giving their basic needs a far lower priority than indoctrinating Jordanian or PA citizens (who are not refugees by any definition) with anti-Israel and antisemitic hate. Oh, and they are also in danger of being deported back to Syria.

Real refugees are not UNRWA's priority.

What a sick, sick agency.

Arabs Today reports that Israeli authorities will be issuing 8,000 new permits for Palestinians to work in Israel.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, already some 110,000 Palestinians work in Israel and in Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria.

The average daily wage for a Palestinian in Israel is NIS 196.4, well over double the to NIS 94.2 average wage for for those in the West Bank.

This means that about 25% of all income in the West Bank comes from people working for Israelis. The daily wage for employees of Israelis has been steadily increasing through the years while the number of hours worked per week has been decreasing.

Now, picture the impact on the Palestinian economy if BDSers had their way and all Israeli services were boycotted. Or if a Palestinian state was established where going to work would entail crossing an international border.

Mosques in Israel call for jihad, support ISIS

"

Israel's Channel 10 has a story about incendiary and pro-terrorist rhetoric in mosques during Ramadan - in Israel.

The reporter notes that there are some pro-jihad, pro-ISIS sermons in the the mosques in the territories, but normally preachers under PA rule must submit their sermons to the authorities in advance, which limits somewhat the jihadist extremism in sermons there. Even Hamas makes sure that there are no pro-ISIS sermons in Gaza. But in Israel, where there is far more freedom of speech, the preachers are much worse.

The report mentions that preachers in the mostly Arab "Triangle" area of Israel will generally not talk about jihad. But in Umm al-Fahm things are quite different.

There, the Muslim preachers openly call for an Islamic caliphate. One preacher said, "Netanyahu be damned, this Jewish dog, going after ISIS (Da'esh) in the Sinai, is saying that our brothers in Hamas cooperated with the Islamic state in this action. But a Hamas spokesman said that Daesh is their enemy as well. As if the Jews and Hamas have become allies! "

The reporters also reported that sermons on the Temple Mount were among the most extreme, and the sermon there resulted in a huge pro-ISIS demonstration there.

I hope the video gets translated into English.

(h/t YV)

07/15 Links Pt2: Jews, the Canary in the Coal Mine; Amira Hass: Terror 'Legitimate' in Judea-Samaria

From Ian:

Why the Jews Are the Canary in the Coal Mine

When tyrants target the Jews and incite the people against them, the real target is everyone's freedom. It is a mistake to point out that the same fate befell others, that non-Jews were also gassed and cremated, that the Inquisition persecuted "everyone," so why are the Jews feeling sorry for themselves. The whole purpose of taking down the Jews is precisely to enslave everyone. If Jew-bashing is being stoked once again, it is because the enemies of liberty are ready to make a move on everyone's liberty.
The Jews are like the canary in the coal mine, not because the Jews, like the canary, succumb to the poison before everyone else. It is because the enemies of liberty know that all humanism, all doctrines of liberty and sanctity of human life in Western Civilization come from the Jews; from Jewish sources and from Jewish thinkers. In order to put those ideas to rest, they have to eliminate the Jewish roots, the Jewish frames of reference and the Jews, whose very presence is a reminder that people have the God-given right to live in freedom and equality. The goal of Jew-bashing is the destruction of everyone's freedom, and that is why everyone should take warning.
In historical terms, democracy has not lasted long: fewer than three hundred years in America; two hundred fitful years in France, punctuated by the occasional resurgence of tyrannical rule; one hundred and fifty years in Britain, and barely a hundred troubled years on various parts of the European Continent, where it was interrupted by fascism and its Nazi variant for as long as twenty of those years, and by Communism for more than seventy years. This record means that most of those countries – except Czechoslovakia, briefly, and the Scandinavian countries -- never really experienced democracy. The rest of Europe had fascist regimes with only some of the trappings of democracy at most.
In the Islamic world, only Iran experienced democracy, and only briefly. The CIA and British intelligence destroyed it because they feared the socialist government that the Iranians elected. The people liked democracy and they remember it, as was clearly evidenced by the failed 2009 "Green Revolution."
Democracy in Europe appears to be nearly finished by now, falling rapidly to Islamic tyranny on one side and autocratic rule by unelected, unaccountable, faceless European Union bureaucrats on the other, with a resurgent Imperial Russia in the wings. I fear America may not be far behind. And I fear that if liberty fails in America, it will fail everywhere.

Caroline Glick: The hour of the pro-Israel Democrats

It works out that President Barack Obama is a multi-tasker. Even as he and Secretary of State John Kerry have been devoting their attention to capitulating to Iran, they still managed to open a new front against Israel by buffeting the anti-Israel boycott movement.
Last week State Department spokesman John Kirby announced a radical new US policy regarding free trade with Israel that paves the way for all of Israel to be placed on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) chopping block. The announcement came against the backdrop of two recent events.
Second, last month Obama signed the Trade Promotion Authority bill. Weeks before he signed it, both houses of Congress added a provision to the bill instructing US trade negotiators to “discourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel,” by foreign governments. The provision relates both to “business in Israel or in Israeli controlled territories.”
As Prof. Eugene Kontorovich pointed out in a recent article in The Washington Post, Congress’s action was in line with nearly 50 years of US policy.
Kontorovich explained, “US laws have long applied the same economic treatment to all areas under Israeli jurisdiction (including Jerusalem).
For example, the pair of anti-boycott laws passed in the late 1970s treat Israeli companies the same regardless of their location in relation to the Green Line. And the US-Israel Free Trade Implementation Act, first passed in 1985, affords ‘areas under Israeli jurisdiction’ the same treatment as all ‘Israeli’ products for US trade purposes.”

Haaretz's Amira Hass: Terror 'Legitimate' in Judea-Samaria

Terror attacks against Jews in Judea and Samaria are "legitimate," Haaretz journalist Amira Hass insisted to an audience at Duke University in North Carolina.
Hass gave two separate lectures at the university in March, ISLAMiCommentary reported earlier this month: one entitled “The Israeli Occupation and Jewish-Israeli Dissent” and the other, “Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Jew in an Occupied Land."
During the talks, Hass deemed Gaza "a concentration camp" - a term she used even though her mother survived Bergen-Belsen - and called terror attacks on Jews a "legitimate" means of "resistance."
Hass claimed that Gazans "are deprived of so many basic things, because Israel deprives them of peace, (the) basic right of freedom of movement."
She based her "concentration camp" claim on the fact that Israel has required Gazans to travel with a permit back and forth to Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) since 1991 to help stop the steady stream of terror attacks on Israelis.
"From time to time Israel changes — I call it the policy of the goat," she said. "You put inside people’s lives many hardships and then as a kind of goodwill gesture, you remove one of the hardships when you want. But it’s taken as a favor done, not as a right and not as a policy."
Hass further claimed that Israel's security policies were implemented to enforce a system of segregation.

BBC defends translation of ‘Jews’ as ‘Israel’ in Gaza doc

The BBC defended its decision to translate the words of Gaza children saying that Israel was responsible for massacres rather than Jews.
The translation appears in subtitles that BBC editors prepared for the public broadcaster’s documentary “Children of the Gaza War” by Lyse Doucet, which was cleared for airing this week.
In one interview, a Gazan child says the “yahud” are massacring Palestinians. However, the subtitles read, “Israel is massacring us.” The Arab-language words for Jews and Israelis are pronounced “yahud” and “yisraelina,” respectively. The BBC in the past has offered a correct translation of the word “yahud.”
Responding to complaints by viewers, the British Broadcasting Corp.’s complaints department sent one complainant a letter that read, “We took advice from a number of translators in Gaza and London and were advised that the most accurate interpretation of what the contributors were saying in this context was ‘Israeli.’”

Arab rumor that Israel to allow Hamas leaders' homes to be rebuilt

The pro-Fatah Palestine Press Agency, quoting Al Hayat of London, is reporting a rumor that Israel is allowing construction materials to enter Gaza earmarked for Hamas and Al Qassam Brigades leaders.

According to the story, which I could not find in Al Hayat, Israel gave the green light to rebuild the home of Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar as well as the homes of Mohammed Abu Shamala and Raed Attar, both Al Qassam Brigades leaders killed during the war.

Fatah media has a tendency to paint Hamas and Israel as being allies in order to discredit Hamas.

This rumor sounds dubious. Tens of thousands of damaged houses in Gaza have received construction materials necessary to rebuild, but totally destroyed houses are only now being considered for rebuilding. Israel isn't making that decision, and in fact it appears that Hamas has been keeping the almost destroyed Shejaiya neighborhood in particular in ruins to show it off to foreign diplomats and journalists, not even cleaning up the rubble.

Hamas clearly has the opportunity to get cement from the black market, as tunnel and bunker construction is prioritized over home building, so the idea that Hamas leaders couldn't rebuild their homes without Israeli permission is far-fetched.

Today is the anniversary of Israel bombing Zahar's (unfortunately empty) home.

Amid Yemen Strife, UNHRC To Hold Urgent Cocktail Party (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Geneva, July 15 - More than 1600 civilians have been killed in the ongoing Saudi-led offensive against Houthi rebels in Yemen, prompting the United Nations Human Rights Council to call for an immediate reception, with drinks, to which various celebrities would be invited to mix with Council delegates and their staff.

Iran-backed rebels have ousted the government of Yemen, and a coalition of Sunni states, lead by King Suleiman of Saudi Arabia, has embarked on an airstrike campaign and a limited ground offensive to restore stability and check Iran's influence in the region. Strikes have killed thousands, and the United Nations' own figures put the number of civilian deaths resulting from the campaign at hundreds more than even the most inflated civilian death figures from last year's Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. The latter conflict prompted a series of urgent Council sessions and the adoption of an investigation's report claiming Israeli war crimes. For purposes of moral and political consistency, the Council will address the violence in Yemen by inviting George Clooney, Bono, and several other show business personalities to immediately mingle with Council member nation representatives at a hotel and conference center in Geneva.

"The Human Rights Council must maintain its dedication to making the world a better place, and not ignore conflict zones simply because the issues appear intractable or politically unpopular," explained Pakistani delegation secretary Aiwil Parti. "Even if it takes associating with some of the most notorious names in entertainment, we know we just have to do our jobs."

Given the urgent and deadly issues at stake, the gathering will also include ambassadors from the member states of the Security Council. "An occasion of this importance and magnitude - not to mention free-flowing Scotch - demands the presence of at least several Security Council members," said Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov. "Naturally, it would help to raise the profile of this important subject, and its urgency, if ministers attend, as well. Incidentally, does anyone know if Kylie Jenner plans to be there?"

Critics of the organization have not hesitated to accuse the Council, and the UN as a whole, of hypocrisy. "I didn't see the Human Rights Council throwing so much as surprise eighth birthday party for Ban Ki-Moon's grand niece over the ongoing bloodbath in Syria," said former US Ambassador John Bolton. "That particular cocktail party has been raging for more than four years and killed more than two hundred thousand people, but do these delegates treat that as the impetus for a formal reception? I think we all know the answer, and it has nothing to do with Muslim objections to alcohol, I'm afraid."

Sudanese President and indicted war crimes suspect Omar Bashir has yet to confirm whether he will attend.

07/15 Links Pt1: The Iranian regime is anti-Western and anti-Semitic. Can we trust its nuclear deal?

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The Iranian regime is anti-Western and anti-Semitic. Can we really trust its nuclear deal?

Nothing has changed in the rhetoric of the Iranian regime in the thirty six years since it came to power. Nothing meaningful has been shown to have altered in its ambitions. But it is the presumption of this deal that the Iranian regime – a regime which continues to boast of its desire to wipe UN member states off the map – is a rational actor. This is in many ways morally as well as strategically bamboozling. If Iran were led, say, by a group of far-right wing white racist Ku Klux Klan members who had seized the country by force I doubt the American administration would regard it as a rational actor whose word on nuclear ambitions would be accepted and their build-up of conventional weaponry permitted. But the Iranian regime is instead a rabidly racist anti-Western and anti-Semitic regime which sponsors anti-Western and anti-Semitic terrorism around the world. The fact that our governments have just signed a deal with them is surprising. The fact that they have done so without any significant political opposition in the UK is damning.
Well now Iran can look forward to a flood of hundreds of billions of dollars of unfrozen assets. Lobbyists in London, Paris, Moscow and Beijing are already in place and limbered up to start promoting business with Iran. Once that show is on the road it is highly unlikely – whatever else happens – that the sanctions so carefully put in place by previous administrations will be reintroduced. What is highly likely is that after a brief interregnum the Iranian regime will start to lie and cheat and cover-up all over again. Will America or Britain be in a position to do much about it then? Will we have the will? What will happen when Russia sells Iran the anti-aircraft system Moscow has wanted to sell for years and which is now back on the table? What about when, in five years time according to this agreement, Iran is allowed to gain further ballistic technology? What about at any point in the next decade when the inspectors have their first refusal of access to a site, or the sense that the real action appears to be happening elsewhere?
Then Iran will have what the Ayatollahs have always wanted – the time to ‘break out’ and develop the weaponry which their leaders have repeatedly threatened to use. Then, or perhaps a long time before then, Sunni powers in the Middle East region who have become increasingly nervous about the unchecked ambitions of Iran and disenchanted with their ‘allies’ in the West, will compete in a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. At some point this will mean that the least stable continent in the world will be armed to the teeth with the world’s most dangerous weaponry.
I know that Greece is important. And I know that the manner in which a fox can be killed appears to matter to a lot of people. But it is also possible – just possible – that what has been going on in Vienna in recent days is more important than any of this and that Britain and the world will rue the day that our global interest became so limited and our diplomatic attention-span grew so wretchedly small.

Michael Oren: Why Israel Won’t Be Celebrating the Iran Deal

The present deal with Iran poses a threat not only to Israel, but to the U.S. and the world
In Israel, one of the world’s rowdiest democracies, politicians rarely agree on anything. Which is why their reaction to the nuclear arms deal with Iran is so unique. For the first time in living memory, virtually all Israelis – left, right, religious, secular, Arabs, Jews – are together calling the deal disastrous.
The reasons might not be clear to many readers of the agreement. According to preliminary reports, its 100 pages contain bewilderingly complex provisions for supposedly delaying Iran from making a bomb. There are international inspections of the Iranians’ nuclear facilities but none that would actually catch them off guard. There are limits to the number of centrifuges with which Iran can enrich uranium to weapons grade, but only for a decade during which not a single centrifuge will be dismantled. And Iran can continue to research and develop more advanced technologies capable of producing nuclear weapons even faster. Most mystifying still, the deal recognizes Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear power without demanding that Iran cease promoting war throughout the Middle East and terror worldwide.
For Israelis, though, there is nothing mystifying about this picture. We see an Iranian regime that will deceive inspectors and, in the end, achieve military nuclear capabilities. We see an Iranian nuclear program that, while perhaps temporarily curtailed, will remain capable of eventually producing hundreds of nuclear weapons.
This is a picture that we’ve all seen before. Back in 1994, American negotiators promised a “good deal” with North Korea. Its nuclear plants were supposed to be frozen and dismantled. International inspectors would “carefully monitor” North Korea’s compliance with the agreement and ensure the country’s return to the “community of nations.” The world, we were told, would be a safer place.

Alan Dershowitz: Does this deal prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon?

Certainly the words of the Iranians are not the same as the words of Obama. Whose words accurately represent the meaning of the contract we are being asked to sign?
The time has now come to be crystal clear about the meaning of this deal. If it is intended to prevent Iran from ever developing nuclear weapons, the President must say so in the clearest of terms and he must get the Iranians to express agreement with that interpretation. Ambiguity may be a virtue at the beginning of a negotiation, but it is a vice in interpreting and implementing a deal with such high stakes.
Recall that former US President Bill Clinton made similar assurances with regard to North Korea back in 1994 – as the accompanying chart shows. But within a few short years of signing a deal that he assured us would require the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear program, that country tested its first nuclear weapon. It now has a nuclear arsenal. How can we be sure that Iran will not act in a similar fashion?
The deal with Iran has been aptly characterized as a “leap of faith,” “a bet” and a “roll of the dice” by David Sanger in a news analysis for the New York Times. The gamble is that by the time the most restrictive provisions of the deal expire, Iran will be a different country with more reasonable leaders. But can the world and especially the nations most at risk from an Iranian nuclear arsenal, depend on faith, bets and dice, when they know that the last time the nuclear dice were rolled, they came up snake-eyes for America and its allies when North Korea ended up with nuclear weapons.
The burden of persuasion is now on the Obama administration to demonstrate that Obama was accurately describing the deal when he said that it will “prevent” Iran from “obtaining a nuclear weapon.” It is a heavy burden that will be – and should be – difficult to satisfy.

.@JeffreyGoldberg vs. @PeterBeinart on @jstreetdotorg

Last night there was a very cogent tweet by Jeffrey Goldberg that upset Peter Beinart:

There are two options. If Goldberg is correct, then J-Street calling themselves "pro-Israel" is an absurdity - you cannot be pro-Israel when almost all Israelis disagree.

If Beinart is correct, then I can say with more certainty that I am pro-Palestinian.

After all, according to Beinart, it is up to individuals to define whether they are pro- or anti-something, and objective reality is not relevant.

I support the right of Palestinian Arabs to live in peace and security in any Arab country without discrimination. I support equal rights for Arab citizens of Israel. I support helping the economy of the territories. I am very opposed to Arab discrimination against Palestinians. I condemn how Lebanon and Egypt and Jordan and Gulf countries treat Palestinians as second class citizens.

Therefore, I am pro-Palestinian, by Peter Beinart's definition..

And my pro-Palestinian credentials actually outweigh J-Street's pro-Israel credentials, because I have lots of examples of Palestinians who (among themselves) agree with everything I just wrote, while J-Street will have to dig around the extreme Left of Israeli politics to find those who agree with them concerning Iran.

The fundamental question is whether being "pro-" something is objective or self-defining.

By objective standards, J-Street cannot claim to be pro-Israel if actual Israelis who have to live with the consequences of J-Streets positions consistently disagree with them group.

By Peter Beinart's standards, if someone wants to claim to be pro-Israel then they are. Presto!

College Board AP materials refer to "Jerusalem, Palestine"

From the The AP (Advanced Placement) Art History Curriculum Framework by the (US) College Board:

This seems to be new. It is copyrighted 2015. Other materials in the AP College Board site refer to Jerusalem as if it does not belong to any country, but only this new document seems to specify "Palestine" as to where Jerusalem belongs.

Interestingly, its 2010 Scoring Guidelines for the same topic mentions facts that students may include when discussing the building, and one of them is "The location is also sacred to Jews and Christians, and so the dominant position of the Dome of the Rock implies Islam’s spiritual superiority." Naming Jerusalem as part of a fictional Arab state whose constitution says its official religion is Islam, rather than as the capital of the existing Jewish state, implies the exact same thing.

You can send messages to the College Board from here.

(h/t Ben D)