Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, May 27, 2016

05/27 Links Pt2: Let’s Take BDS to Court; J Street: For sale to the highest bidder; Tariq Ramadan, Islam’s Goebbels

From Ian:

Shmuley Boteach: J Street: For sale to the highest bidder

While never monolithic, the pro-Israel community has been mostly unified since Israel became independent. That has all changed since the emergence of J Street as a lobby that explicitly set out to challenge the establishment. The group claims it is pro-Israel, but it is fundamentally divisive and philosophically more in tune with the Arab lobby than the pro-Israel lobby.
This was most recently apparent when J Street decided to support President Obama’s catastrophic nuclear deal with Iran despite the opposition of both the Netanyahu government, the opposition Labor Party, and, according to the polls, approximately 80 percent of both the Israeli and American population.
Now we learn that its campaign to mislead Congress and the American public about the Iran deal was paid for by the Ploughshares Fund. Ironically, Ploughshares seeks to eliminate the world’s nuclear stockpiles and yet supported an agreement that encourages nuclear proliferation. The Fund paid J Street an astounding $576,500 – the equivalent of nearly one-third of the lobby’s entire 2014 budget — to help the Obama administration undermine Israel’s security.
According to deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, the Ploughshares Fund was a key partner in the campaign to recruit nongovernmental organizations, proliferation experts and “friendly” reporters to create an “echo chamber” to support the Iran deal. J Street’s executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami had numerous meetings with White House officials, including Rhodes, and the organization created a website, Iran Deal Facts, to echo the administration’s talking points. Blogger Elder of Zion described J Street succinctly as “nothing but a paid shill for the White House to split the U.S. Jewish community and put it at odds with how Israelis feel.”
The Iran case is just one example, however, of J Street’s malevolent influence.

Tariq Ramadan, Islam’s Goebbels

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with Georges Bensoussan, one of France’s most important scholars of the Holocaust. He told me that “Tariq Ramadan’s request for French nationality is a political provocation of the same nature as that used and abused by the Nazis against the Weimar democracy. It is the Islamist version of Nazi tactics of 1930-1932 years, when Goebbels said that the Weimar Republic had given the Nazis the weapons of its own defeat.”
Tariq Ramadan is Islam’s Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. This Nazi official punctually arrived late at his own rallies: “It increases the tension”, Goebbels said. And to those who reproached him because he used a taxi, Goebbels replied: “You have no idea of what is propaganda. I would have to get two taxis, one for me and one for my bag.”
It was Goebbels’ idea to launch the Nazi appeal to the heart in order to manipulate public opinion. “The art of propaganda” he said, “consists precisely in the ability to solicit the public’s imagination with an appeal to the feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will attract attention and will touch the hearts of the masses of the nation.”
Joseph Goebbels was frail, slender, with a large head and a hollow face, a beautiful voice. People flocked to hear him, because he was able to instill in the public different feelings such as hysteria, hatred, enthusiasm. He knew how to use every means: books and films, radio and music, media and tourism. He conquered writers, philosophers, scientists, intellectuals. “It is nice to exercise power with guns, but wonderful is gaining power over the hearts and the brains,” Goebbels said.
This is exactly what Mr. Ramadan and other Islamists are doing today in Europe: the ferocious appeal to the Muslim masses, the manipulation of hatred and emotions through mosques and schools, the conquest of brains and hearts through televisions and rallies.
Dr. Goebbels and Dr. Ramadan also share the same goal: the submission of Europe. Yesterday to the Aryan race, today to Islam.

Sweden Choosing to Lose War against Middle East Antisemitism?

Who invited this "Salafist megastar," who denies the Holocaust and is known for making anti-Semitic statements, to visit Malmö? What do you do when anti-Semitism in Malmö, Sweden's third-largest city, is so normalized that children in a public school can endorse a conference with anti-Semitic elements?
Anti-Semitism is such a gigantic problem in Malmö that even senior city officials cannot understand how it became so normalized. They seem to dismiss it as part of a non-Swedish culture that, in a multicultural society, must be tolerated, even accommodated.
If there are children in Swedish public schools today who are promoting an anti-Semitic conference, what will these children do in the future?
Is Sweden really turning into a country where Jews are no longer welcome, someday to become a country without Jews? And if that happens, what does that say about Sweden? And who will come next after the Jews?

Moroccans refuse to play Israel in wheelchair tennis

From the Jerusalem Post:

Politics reared its ugly head in sports once more on Thursday, this time at the World Team Cup wheelchair tennis event at the Ariake Colosseum in Tokyo.

Israel was scheduled to face Morocco in a Men's World Group 2 tie for positions 5-8, but the Moroccans never showed up, being ordered to forfeit by their local paralympic committee.

"This is a sad day for sports, and an even sadder day for paralympic sports," said Israel coach Nimrod Bichler. "Politics have mixed with sports in the past, but paralympic sports were always different." Israel's team, which includes Amir Levi, Adam Berdichevsky and Asi Stokol, was awarded a default 3-0 victory.

...The ITF told The Jerusalem Post in response to Thursday's incident.

"The ITF was established to, among other things, preserve the integrity and independence of tennis as a sport, and to do so without unfair discrimination on the grounds of color, race, nationality, ethnic or national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or religion. In light of the report that the Moroccan team failed to play a scheduled match against Israel in Men’s World Group II of the ITF Wheelchair World Team Cup, we will contact the Moroccan Tennis Federation as a matter of urgency to establish the facts of this situation, and we will follow the relevant ITF Wheelchair regulations and the ITF Constitution, as necessary, to determine the appropriate action."

As this photo shows, the Malaysian team did play Israel - and posed with them:

Malaysia won.

It will be interesting to see if the Moroccan team is praised or vilified in Morocco's media. Sofar, I didn't see any stories about this there.

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The New York Times reported on Wednesday:

A bitter divide over the Middle East could threaten Democratic Party unity as representatives of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont vowed to upend what they see as the party’s lopsided support of Israel.

Two of the senator’s appointees to the party’s platform drafting committee, Cornel West and James Zogby, on Wednesday denounced Israel’s "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza and said they believed that rank-and-file Democrats no longer hewed to the party’s staunch support of the Israeli government.

Israel haters immediately freaked out over the use of scare quotes for the word "occupation." Glenn Greenwald wrote a long article about how American media are so frightened of the mighty Israel lobby, all because of the scare quotes.

Salon picked up on it and found lots of tweeters complaining about the scary scare quotes.

And then the NYT silently took them away.

Yet to say that Israel occupies Gaza as a fact is simply a lie. The definition of occupation always included "boots on the ground" and the only people who still claim that Israel occupies Gaza in the legal definition of the term are liars.

I have a fairly comprehensive post with links that shows that Gaza is not occupied by any standards besides the ones that were made up out of thin air for Israel, and only for Israel. I've shown how Amnesy has one definition for Israel and another for everyone else. I also show that the ICRC changed its definition of "occupation" deliberately for Israel, and only Israel.

The European Court for Human Rights, when not talking about Israel, gives the accurate definition:

The Court notes that under international law (in particular Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations) a territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of a hostile army, “actual authority” being widely considered as translating to effective control and requiring such elements as presence of foreign troops, which are in a position to exercise effective control without the consent of the sovereign (see paragraph 94 above). On the basis of all the material before it and having regard to the above establishment of facts, the Court finds that Gulistan is not occupied by or under the effective control of foreign forces as this would require a presence of foreign troops in Gulistan.

Finally, when the UN was asked about why it refers to Gaza as "occupied," it didn't reply with any legal arguments. It simply said that Gaza and the West Bank are considered one territory so, for nomenclature reasons, they refer to both as Occupied Palestinian Territories. This is even though the definition of "occupation" is explicitly not all-or-nothing, if you bother to read the only definition that exists in international law, from the Hague in 1907.

If the legal definition of occupation has been extended the way Israel haters believe, then why didn't the UN answer with a legal argument instead of a semantic one?

Because it is laughable.

Greenwald points to what he regards as an "outstanding two-minute video" as proof that Gaza is still legally occupied. It is a sarcastic video from Al Jazeera that does not quote a single scrap of international law or a single legal scholar for its "proof."

Even if you discount the Israeli position that the West Bank is not occupied, but disputed - for which there is plenty of evidence when you look at the facts and don't try to shoe-horn definitions after the fact - it is inaccurate for the NYT to say flatly that Gaza is occupied. Teh scare quotes were entirely appropriate and necessary in this context.

By caving to the haters, the NYT shows that accuracy is not as important as making its desired audience happy.

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05/27 Links Pt1: UN demands Israel pay for 1996 shelling of Lebanon; The dream museum of the Palestinians

From Ian:

Some Help That Israel Doesn’t Need

When it comes to reinventing the wheel, some people just never tire of the exercise. That’s the only way to view a new Middle East peace initiative that its sponsors are touting as the proposal that the world has been waiting for that will finally solve the problem that has resisted every previous initiative. But in this case, the solution isn’t coming from unfriendly outsiders like the European Union, the United Nations, or even the Obama administration. It’s a group of American Jews who not only believe they are acting in the best interests of Israel but are pushing their ideas forward in cooperation with an organization of retired Israeli military and security officials as well as a Washington security think tank. Buoyed by the bad press that the current Israeli government has been getting, these people think now is just the moment to push forward a peace plan that will help prepare the way for change despite the opposition of the elected leaders of the Jewish state.
But even if we were to concede that their motives are pure, what they are doing is not only a waste of time, it is also actually counter-productive.
The group in question is the Israel Policy Forum, an organization supported and staffed by people with records of support for the Jewish state but which has been out of the news for a long time. Created at the behest of the late Yitzhak Rabin in 1994, the IPF’s original intent was to serve as a counterweight to AIPAC because the prime minister thought it was insufficiently enthusiastic about the Oslo Accords. Supported by heavyweight American Jewish donors, the group had a big initial splash, but its backers didn’t have the stomach to compete with the umbrella pro-Israel lobby. It was also soon outpaced by events as the Oslo process unraveled and was ultimately discredited in the eyes of the Israeli public by the deceit of Yasir Arafat and the horror of the Palestinian terrorism that he unleashed in the years that followed.
Since then, the IPF has been eclipsed among liberals by J Street, a group that didn’t shrink from seeking to support the Obama administration’s policy of pressure and more “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel as well as backing an Iranian nuclear deal that was opposed by Israelis across the political spectrum from left to right. Indeed, for many on the Jewish left here even J Street isn’t radical enough since it still puts itself forward as a “pro-Israel” group and opposes the BDS movement that aims at waging economic war on the Jewish state even as it supports those who practice more selective boycotts. But the IPF has just gotten fresh blood in the form of faithful Obama loyalist, apologist and funder Alan Solow and other liberal big shots. Yet though this effort is aimed at a more mainstream audience, the IPF initiative is based on the same bogus notion that Israel needs to be saved from itself and forced to make concessions to the Palestinians in order to preserve it as a Jewish state.

The dream museum of the Palestinians

There’s no better example of this then the French peace conference planned to proceed without any Israeli or Palestinian participation, a virtual diplomatic equivalent of the empty museum at Bir Zeit, all showy exterior with no underlying substance.
With the fading Abbas nearing the end of his futile tenure, the PA’s foreign funders in the US and Europe would make better use of their leverage at this time to apply real pressure on the Palestinians to usher in a younger, more dynamic, less corrupt, and genuinely moderate leadership – one that perhaps that will dedicate itself to laying the foundations of a viable Palestinian nation ready to live in real peace beside a Jewish state, and to offer its own people more than just yet another failed Arab nation.
Before the world expends even more efforts on the Palestinian national project – and asks Israelis to take real risks in allowing that to happen – it’s time to first demand exactly what will be the content of that still empty Palestinian museum.
Or, as scholar Foud Ajami put it in The Dream Palace of the Arabs, his intellectual study of the faltering dreams of modern Arab nationalism across the Middle East: “As the world batters the modern Arab inheritance, the rhetorical need for anti-Zionism grows. But there rises, too, the recognition that it is time for the imagination to steal away from Israel and to look at the Arab reality, to behold its own view of the kind of the world the Arabs want for themselves.”

Caroline Glick: Liberman’s first challenge

As for Hamas, in formulating a strategy for cutting the terrorist regime down to size, Israel should take a lesson from Syria. There are a half dozen Islamic State-like militias operating along the border on the Golan Heights. But they are too busy fighting one another to attack Israel.
Such militias operate in Gaza as well and are already engaged in an internecine battle with Hamas.
Israel should constantly check and diminish Hamas’s military capabilities to prevent it from rebuilding its arsenals and offensive capabilities.
It should also help to destabilize it as a coherent fighting group. The presence of other jihadist militia in Gaza facilitates the accomplishment of this goal.
Finally, Israel needs to realize that there is unlikely to be a clear-cut resolution of this struggle, at least in the next generation.
With the traditional Arab regimes still in place fighting for their survival, and Iran ascendant, Israel needs to assume that more terrorist regimes like Hezbollah, ISIS and Hamas will be formed from the wreckage of the Arab state system in the future. Instability, then, can be expected to remain a chronic condition of the Arab world.
The good news is that Israel has the capacity to adapt and forge constructive strategies for weakening and dividing our enemies. The bad news is that so long as we insist on obsessing over ourselves, we are unlikely to do so.

New Zealand foreign minister refuses to call murdering Israeli civilians "terrorism"

From Shalom Kiwi:

While Prime Minister Key “stands with Belgium in the fight against terrorism”, and Foreign Minister McCully “stand[s] with the people and Government of Turkey in their fight against terrorism”, neither can bring themselves to stand with Israel against their fight against terror.

This double standard was brought into sharp focus again at an event last week, where Minister McCully said he makes “no apology for calling it as it is” when it comes to Israeli settlement building yet could not bring himself to use the word “terrorism” to describe the Palestinian attacks against Israelis in recent times.

A leader of the Islamic Council of New Zealand has previously indicated that he thinks Israelis attacked by Palestinians are not considered innocent victims nor their attackers terrorists but for a member of the New Zealand government to do similar is concerning.

Here's the video.

(h/t David C)

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EoZ featured in Zman Magazine article on media watchdogs

Zman Magazine is a monthly publication for the religious Jewish community that includes in-depth articles on topics that you will not see in the mainstream media.

This month they feature media watchdogs for Israel. (The article is not yet online at their website.)

Ian gets a shout-out too.

And over five pages of the article feature EoZ, after sections on Honest reporting and CAMERA.

Here are the first two pages about me:

And their conclusion:

This might be a good time for me to ask for donations...

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Guggenheim Abu Dhabi

Yesterday I wrote about a disgusting article written on the official Guggenheim Museum blog which falsely accused Israel of racism and of censorship of art.

The museum's social media director seemed already a little embarrassed about the article. Instead of tweeting the article title, which is "Censorship in Israel," the tweeter only highlighted a side point it mentioned:

Israel's infrastructure for art is weak, says @CCATelAviv curator Chen Tamir: https://t.co/Q2OiQGBfYE #GuggUBSMAP pic.twitter.com/FjgPeM7BUz
— Guggenheim Museum (@Guggenheim) May 20, 2016

Yet the Guggenheim is guilty of more that just publishing a slanderous article filled with lies and half-truths.

You see, the Guggenheim has been trying since 2006 to build a huge museum in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

And the UAE routinely engages in real censorship of art. Not the false "withholding funds" definition that idiot artists like Chen Tamir whine about where a government doesn't want to support someone publicly defecating on their flag, but honest-to-Allah censorship of art.

The last editions of both Art Dubai in 2012 and the Sharjah Biennial in 2011 saw works removed because of objections to their content.

In Sharjah, accusations of blasphemy leveled at a work by the Algerian artist Mustapha Benfodil resulted not only in the removal of the work, but also in the dismissal of the biennial’s director, Jack Persekian.

Mr. Benfodil’s installation, “It Has No Importance,” placed two teams of mannequins in soccer uniforms in a public courtyard, with sexually graphic comments scrawled in Arabic on their shirts.

In the words of the 2011 biennial’s curators, Rasha Salti and Haig Aivazian, the graffiti “borrowed the voice of the victims of rape at the hands of religious extremists in Algeria.”

Sheika Hoor al-Qasimi, the 33-year-old director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, who is overseeing this year’s biennial, said that the management team that had permitted the 2011 installation — and others deemed offensive — had erred. “It was an oversight by the entire team,” she said. “It was not censorship. It was illegal. The U.A.E.’s laws clearly forbid nudity and blasphemy and you cannot break the law.”

Arsalan Mohammad, editor of the Middle East edition of Harper’s Bazaar Art, commented: “In my experience here, what gets called censorship in an artistic context is explained as upholding public standards of decency, avoiding blasphemy and offense to the nation’s rulers. The two terms are interchangeable.”

Yet instead of railing against explicit censorship of art in the UAE, artists find ways to find the silver lining, as artist Jime Reyes Gonzalez wrote in 2013, ending up implying that censorship is a good thing for art in the end

Coming to the UAE was an instant shock for me. As opposed to the self-service approach, art and media here are more visibly regulated. As part of an academic institution in the UAE, most of us have a fairly good idea of what kinds of things are allowed. We know not to criticize the government, politics, the royal family or Islam. We know to avoid delicate topics such as homosexuality and gender roles.

As students and artists, we should be concerned with how much we can express. We enjoy a considerable amount of freedom within NYU Abu Dhabi to express ourselves freely on these topics, and are even encouraged to do so, but if we want our work to be shown anywhere outside of the school community, we have to adhere to the laws of our host country.

At first, I was deeply disturbed by this censorship. As a film major, I found it more than slightly disconcerting to pursue filmmaking in a place where films in the cinema are blatantly cut and edited to fit the local standards. I did not come here with a particularly strong desire to make offensive paintings of Sheikh Mohammed or a film that criticizes homophobic tendencies within Islam but the fact that I couldn’t was still annoying. I struggled with trying to understand what the “you can do anything, as long as it is respectful” framework meant exactly.

As I gained more experience actually creating art here and watching my peers do the same, I was surprised by what I discovered. The fact that we have to work under relatively dense limitations sparks an interesting alternative to blunt expression. I watched my friends craft beautiful capstone pieces dealing with the sensitive topics mentioned above without ever stating the topic at all. I watched and learned that there are other ways to say what you want through art that is not so in-your-face. I have found that the restrictions in place do not necessarily mean that we cannot talk about certain things, but rather that we have to think harder about how we talk about these things.

As an art student, I have finally chosen to take it all as, in the words of Professor Savio, “an opportunity, rather than a constraint – a chance to be creative and imaginative in a way [you] never thought possible … Everywhere there are rules and restrictions that must be adhered to. No reason for the artist to go into a box, close the lid, and resent the limitation. Use restriction to set your ideas free.”

There you have it. When an artist or a museum sees an opportunity for self advancement, suddenly censorship is not so big a deal. And while there is controversy over whether the Guggenheim would be allowed to show nudes, for instance, it is obvious that the types of shows it creates when the museum is finally completed will be informed by a desire to not upset its Arab hosts. There will be no Arab version of "Piss Christ."

The Guggenheim, by publishing an article about the horrors of nonexistent Israeli censorship, has no problem with partnering with a country where art censorship is normal and explicit. The double standards to which Israel is subject by these supposed defenders of art and freedom of expression is stunning, and their hypocrisy is blatant.

(h/t califlefty)

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.@UNRWA issues propaganda video that contradicts its accusations against Israel

Here is a propaganda video from a UNRWA that was posted this week:

It shows a teenager, Waed Abu Rajab, describing how difficult it is for him to get from his house to his UNRWA school in Hebron.

As he describes his ordeal, the camera follows him going to school.

He describes how he is often stopped at two separate checkpoints. The video shows him walking right through them.

He describes how it can take him a half hour to go to school. No delays are seen.

He says that the guards always ask him intrusive questions, like where he is going. No one asked him anything.

He says he is scared. He doesn't look scared at all.

He says that if the soldiers don't harass him, settlers will. No settlers are visible in the video.

He says that sometimes the soldiers shoot tear gas for no reason, and they don't mind because they always wear gas masks. None of the Israeli security forces there are wearing gas masks.

Not a single claim of his is corroborated by the video, and most of them are contradicted.

Of course, the video doesn't mention that the reason the checkpoints are there is because people who are Waed's age were stabbing every Jew they could find in Hebron only a few months ago..

No, that doesn't fit UNRWA's propaganda story.

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05/26 Links Pt2: Dershowitz: Sanders is an Ignoramus; Lumish: Israel is Insane; Caught in a web of hate

From Ian:

Dershowitz: Not Surprising ‘Ignoramus’ Bernie Sanders Tapped ‘Professional Israel-Hater’ for Democratic Policy Committee (INTERVIEW)

The Palestinian activist appointed by presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders to the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee is a “professional Israel-hater,” internationally acclaimed legal mind Alan Dershowitz told The Algemeiner on Tuesday.
Dershowitz, a fierce defender of Israel and avowed supporter of the Democratic Party, was referring to Arab American Institute (AAI) President James Zogby, whom Sanders tapped on Monday to help draft party policy.
Dershowitz, who said he’s debated Zogby on numerous occasions, explained why he is “not surprised” that the senator from Vermont contending for the Democratic nomination picked him to fill such an influential position. “Bernie Sanders is an ignoramus when it comes to the Middle East, and he is very strongly biased against Israel. He gets his information from hard-Left, anti-Israel sources, and he doesn’t think for himself,” he said.
Regarding another of Sanders’ anti-Israel appointees to the committee — philosopher Cornel West, a BDS proponent who wrote that the crimes of Hamas “pale in the face of the US-supported Israeli slaughter of innocent civilians,” and accused President Obama of being “most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want”– Dershowitz said, “Putting two Israel-bashers on the committee risks dividing the Democratic Party over an issue on which they’ve always been united.”

Michael Lumish: Israel is Insane

If there is one issue that genuinely pisses me off it is Israeli policy concerning the Temple Mount. How is it possible that someone like Moshe Dayan could be so naive as to think that handing over the holiest site of the Jewish people to Arabs would somehow placate them?
It did the exact opposite as should have been entirely predictable.
Instead of being grateful to the Jewish people for their generosity, the Arabs use the Temple Mount as a club and Israel allows this despite the fact that it need not do so.
They have even made it a rule that no member of the Knesset shall be allowed to go up there.
I do not know what to say. The stupidity is just breathtaking.
By preventing non-Muslims from praying on the Temple Mount Israel sends a message to the world that Jerusalem is not really a Jewish town. Maintaining the "status quo" is the same as maintaining the idea that Jerusalem actually belongs to the Arabs and, therefore, Jews are nothing more than land thieves.
The problem that Jews have with the Temple Mount is the same problem that Jews have with the notion of "Israeli Occupation of the West Bank." If Israel is illegally occupying someone else's land, including the Temple Mount, and thus Jerusalem, in general, then we might as well pack it in and say goodbye.
If Jewish people think that we stole land from others and if they think that we should not even be allowed to pray at the site of the Temples then what is the point of Israel? I understand that much of the rabbinate, for theological reasons, believe that Jews should not go up to the Holy of Holies, period, but that is not the point.
The point is the question of Jewish sovereignty.

Caught in a web of hate

An undercover investigation by Jewish News this week sheds light on the anti-Semitic “lynch mob” active online, and details the extraordinary ease with which pro-Palestinian activists can descend into a world of hate.
Our reporter, who created fake anti-Israel internet profiles to gain access to secret groups, reveals how anti-Semites connect with one another and feed off group members’ anger, in a self-reinforcing “spiral of extremism”.
Crucially, our investigation also outlines how the technology and algorithms underpinning social media tilt and “taint” search results towards the perceived political persuasion of the user, showing how hate builds on hate.
Moreover, it reveals how savvy bloggers manipulate this technology, with a “correlation between the level of venom and the likes/shares they receive”.
Describing this murky and “truly frightening” cyber Twilight Zone, ‘Mr X’ reveals the anti-Semites’ source of “news” on Israel, the legal loopholes they exploit and the use of ‘memes’ – images edited to affect emotion or ridicule.
Brace yourselves for a cold, hard look at those no longer able or willing to hear cold, hard facts about the Jewish people and the democratic State of Israel – and the mind-warping processes that assist them. (h/t Alexi)

UN passes resolution singling out Israel for violating health of Palestinians

From UN Watch:

The UK, France, Germany and other EU states voted today for a UN resolution, co-sponsored by the Arab group of states and the Palestinian delegation, that singled out Israel at the annual assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) as the only violator of “mental, physical and environmental health,” and commissioned a WHO delegation to investigate and report on “the health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory” and in “the occupied Syrian Golan,” and to place it on the agenda again at next year’s meeting.

By contrast, the UN assembly did not address Syrian hospitals being bombed by Syrian and Russian warplanes, or millions of Yemenis denied access to food and water by the Saudi-led bombings and blockade, nor did it pass a resolution on any other country in the world. Out of 24 items on the meeting’s agenda, only one, Item No. 19 against Israel, focused on a specific country.

“The UN reached new heights of absurdity today,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer, “by enacting a resolution which accuses Israel of violating the health rights of Syrians in the Golan, even as in reality Israeli hospitals continue their life-saving treatment for Syrians fleeing to the Golan from the Assad regime’s barbaric attacks.”

How the UN manages to be so consistently outrageous is remarkable. And France, saying they want to sponsor a peace summit, enthusiastically supports such egreguous examples of hate against Israel.

While researching something else I recently came across an obscure 1984 article in Public Health Review. Written by three members of Israel's department of public health for Gaza, it explains how Israeli doctors dramatically reduced the infant mortality rate in the sector between 1973 and 1982.

[...]

What Israel did to save Gaza children was nothing short of miraculous. To cut infant mortality by two thirds in a decade is amazing.

But propagandists are louder than truth-tellers and Israel haters are much more motivated than ordinary people who know better.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Old realpolitiker Henry Kissinger was in the news recently when he sat down with Donald Trump, to give him the benefit of his experience. It brought to mind Kissinger’s numerous attempts to get Israel out of the territories it conquered in 1967, before, during and – especially – after the Yom Kippur War.

Kissinger went to Iraq in December of 1975 to try to wean the regime away from the Soviet Union and improve relations with the US. In a discussion with Sa’dun Hammadi, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Kissinger suggested that American support for Israel was a result of Jewish political and financial power, promised that the US would work to force Israel back to pre-1967 boundaries, and indicated that while the US would not support the elimination of Israel, he believed that its existence was only temporary. Here is an excerpt (the whole thing is worth reading):

I think, when we look at history, that when Israel was created in 1948, I don't think anyone understood it. It originated in American domestic politics. It was far away and little understood. So it was not an American design to get a bastion of imperialism in the area. It was much less complicated. And I would say that until 1973, the Jewish community had enormous influence. It is only in the last two years, as a result of the policy we are pursuing, that it has changed.

We don't need Israel for influence in the Arab world. On the contrary, Israel does us more harm than good in the Arab world. You yourself said your objection to us is Israel. Except maybe that we are capitalists. We can't negotiate about the existence of Israel, but we can reduce its size to historical proportions. I don't agree that Israel is a permanent threat. How can a nation of three million be a permanent threat? They have a technical advantage now. But it is inconceivable that peoples with wealth and skill and the tradition of the Arabs won't develop the capacity that is needed. So I think in ten to fifteen years, Israel will be like Lebanon—struggling for existence, with no influence in the Arab world. [my emphasis] …

Kissinger also promised that aid to Israel, which he presented as a result of Jewish political influence, would be significantly reduced. He indicated that legal changes in the US – he must have been referring to the creation of the Federal Electoral Commission in 1974 to regulate campaign contributions – would attenuate Jewish power and therefore American support for Israel. Naturally, he didn’t foresee the Israel-Egypt peace agreement, which permanently established a high level of military aid to both countries.

He further promised that the US would support a PLO-run Palestinian state if the PLO would accept UNSC resolution 242 and recognize Israel. This of course is what (supposedly) happened in the Oslo accords.

Kissinger insisted that “No one is in favor of Israel's destruction—I won't mislead you—nor am I.” But his hint that a smaller Israel might not survive is clear. Surely he understood that a pre-1967-sized Israel (within what Eban called “Auschwitz lines”) would have no chance of surviving, simply because of the strategic geography of the area.

Kissinger was wrong about the Arabs developing the capability to challenge Israel, but their place has been taken by soon-to-be-nuclear Iran and its proxies, who are significantly more dangerous than the Arab states ever were.

US policy, however, has kept more or less the same shape, except that the hypocrisy of insisting that the US supports the existence of Israel but in a pre-1967 size is even more glaring. The substitution of the PLO for the Arab states as the desired recipient of the land to be taken from Israel has barely made a ripple either in America or among the Arabs, suggesting that the policy is more about Israel giving up land than about the Arabs getting it.

The original motivation for Kissinger’s promises was supposedly the desire of the US to replace the Soviet Union as the patron of the Arab states. After the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War in 1991, however, there was no change in policy. Although the Oslo Accords were initiated by left-wing Israelis, the US eagerly embraced them, and the so-called ‘peace process’ became a permanent stick to beat Israel with.

President Obama is especially adept at emphasizing support for Israel’s existence while at the same time demanding that Israel make concessions that would make her continued existence impossible. Apparently agreeing with Kissinger about Jewish power, Obama has worked to reduce the pro-Israel influence of American Jews in numerous ways, such as by providing access to the White House for groups like J Street and the Israel Policy Forum, while marginalizing traditional Zionist organizations like ZOA.

Kissinger’s almost antisemitic claim that US support for Israel is bought with Jewish money was probably untrue in 1975 and is even less so today, when a large proportion of American Jews, including wealthy ones, have chosen their liberal or progressive politics over Zionism. The coming struggle over the introduction of a pro-Palestinian plank into the Democratic platform is an indication that the party and with it, many of its Jewish supporters, is moving toward Obama’s position.

The Obama Administration’s program to extricate itself from the Middle East by empowering Iran as the new regional power has given a new impetus to the policy of shrinking Israel. Iran sees Israel as a major obstacle to its hegemony, for both geopolitical and religious/ideological reasons, and is committed to eliminating the Jewish state. Obama found it necessary to restrain Israel from bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities at least once (in 2012), and seems to be prepared to sacrifice Israel in order to achieve his goal of establishing Iranian regional dominance.

Some would go even further and say that Obama’s primary ideological goal is to eliminate Israel and the Iranian gambit is a means to this end, but that is highly speculative! Or maybe it’s a matter of two birds with one stone.

Henry Kissinger didn’t do us any favors, but I think the anti-Israel thread in American policy would have been strong enough without him, running from Truman’s Secretary of State George C. Marshall all the way to Obama’s stable of anti-Zionists like Rob Malley and Ben Rhodes.

Today Israel is long gone from the Sinai, more recently from Gaza, and probably only thanks to the disintegration of Syria, still holding the Golan Heights. I would like to believe that PM Netanyahu was correct when he said that Israel will never leave the Golan. Regarding Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, I expect that we are about to begin a very difficult time, as the Obama Administration is likely to mount a campaign in its last days to fulfill Kissinger’s promise to the Arabs at long last.

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05/26 Links Pt1: Fatah event to "honor" suicide bomber; Breaking the slander; The Lie of "Disproportionality"

From Ian:

Fred Maroun: The Lie of "Disproportionality"

A Betrayal of both Israelis and Palestinians
By making an accusation of disproportionality without defining the meaning of the term, Sanders and Haaretz betrayed not only the Palestinians and the Israelis, but also their professions. They made false and unsubstantiated accusations while ignoring the thousands more Palestinian deaths that the Palestinians are inflicting on their own people -- by training toddlers and children for war, using their own people as human shields and failing to provide shelters for them, as the Israelis do for their citizens.
In addition to helping Sanders attract the naïve and anti-Israel vote, and helping Haaretz attract anti-Semitic readers, unsubstantiated claims of disproportionality divert attention from the fact that preventing more wars requires replacing Gaza's Iranian-backed terrorist regime with a regime that is interested in the well-being of the Palestinians. Sanders and Schechter propose nothing to achieve this. They prefer falsely to accuse Israel of anything that might possibly sound damning, and hope that no one will dig for some truth or ask any questions.
To naïve people, Sanders and Schechter appear thoughtful, compassionate individuals who care about the Palestinians; in fact, they merely are either ignorant themselves or duplicitous. If betraying Israelis and Palestinians equally is what Sanders means by "a more balanced position," all that is disproportionate is their unjustified hostility towards Israel that is also unhelpful to the Palestinians.

PMW: Fatah event today to "honor" suicide bomber

Ayyat Al-Akhras was a Fatah terrorist who carried out a suicide attack in a supermarket in the Kiryat Yovel neighborhood in Jerusalem in March 2002. Two people were murdered in the terror attack, and 28 were injured.
The Fatah Movement announced yesterday that today, Thursday May 26, at 3:45 PM "an event will take place to mark the anniversary of the death as a Martyr (Shahida) of Ayyat Al-Akhras."
The invitation added: "To honor she who watered the ground with her pure blood."
Earlier this year, Palestinian Media Watch documented that Fatah commemorated murderer Ayyat Al-Akhras' death as a "Martyr," naming her "Bride of Palestine."

Ben-Dror Yemini: Breaking the slander

Rather than offering constructive criticism of IDF actions, Breaking the Silence has chosen to accuse without being held accountable.
There is a clear difference between constructive criticism and a horror show of propaganda. Breaking the Silence could choose the former option, but instead it has chosen the latter. Any organization that sends representatives to tell journalists, diplomats and foreign activists that IDF soldiers fire machine guns at civilian populations as if in a video game, and tell UN delegates from Iran and Sudan that Israeli soldiers are looters and criminals, does not deal in legitimate criticism. Rather, it is part of a system bent on Israel's demonization.
Among others, Breaking the Silence cooperates and gets its funding from sources that support the BDS movement. It is not interested in improving Israel's morality, but to deny Israel's right to exist. Based on all of this, in addition to discredited public testimonies, should Breaking the Silence be allowed to continue with its uncorroborated slander? Is this what amounts to criticism, democracy and due process?
In a democratic country there is room for soldiers to criticize actions that took place during their army service. There are, after all, exceptional cases that should be dealt with, just as there is an ever-present need to correct and improve what is currently considered acceptable conduct. But Breaking the Silence has chosen a different path. It wants to be above the law, to vilify without being held accountable. Israeli authorities should not lend a hand to this kind of trickery.

It is so nice that Israel's neighbors have holidays centered around the Jewish state.

Hezbollah Secretary General, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, stressed that the axis of Resistance won’t be defeated and will keep on supporting Palestine, whose banner will be raised again.

In a popular ceremony in the Bekaa town of Nabi Sheet on the occasion of “Resistance Liberation Day,” Sayyed Nasrallah stressed that the Zionist entity “is our enemy” and that the only way to confront this enemy is by resistance.Sayyed Nasrallah on May 25, 2016

His eminence renewed commitment to the tripartite formula of “army, people and resistance,” noting that this formula is targeted and that “we should work together to confront this threat.”

“In liberation day we should remember the Israeli crimes against the Lebanese and Palestinians. We should remember that the Zionist entity is our enemy.”

On the other hand, Sayyed Nasrallah renewed his call to abide by the tripartite formula of “army, people and resistance,” noting that this formula is being targeted by the resistance enemy.

“Our army, our people and our resistance is targeted… we should be aware. We should believe in our capabilities, we can defend our country, we can build our country.”

“In this day we should remember that Shebaa farms and Kfar Shouba hills are still occupied by the Israeli enemy. We should remember that we still have prisoners at Israeli jails and missing people.”

His eminence urged the Palestinians “not to bet on those who abandoned them for nearly 70 years,” stressing that “despite confusions aroused by the resistance enemy (through latest developments in the region), neither Iran nor Syria will abandon Palestine.”

“Iran and Syria will keep on supporting you,” Sayyed Nasrallah addressed the Palestinian people, stressing that their liberation can be achieved by unity, steadfastness and resistance.

In this context, Sayyed Nasrallah stressed that the Axis of Resistance will triumph and that the banner of Palestine will be raised again.

Nasrallah wasn't the only one to mark this holiday:

.@Khamenei_ar Greetings to great nation of Lebanon, to victorious Hezbollah& to its valorous, dedicated, Arab leader Hassan Nasrallah.1/8/06
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) May 25, 2016

It's a love fest!

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The famous Guggenheim Museum in New York has a blog that says it "tells the Guggenheim’s evolving story, and offers insights on visual culture, urbanism, and the global art world, along with regular discoveries from the archives."

It recently posted this outrageous piece by Chen Tamir, called "Censorship in Israel:"

Over the past two years, the arts in Israel have been increasingly threatened by censorship and draconian government funding proposals. Some see this as the beginning of a culture war not unlike the one endured by the United States during the 1990s, when politicians used arts funding reform as a political tool to curry favor with conservative constituents. Freedom of speech is not treated with the same reverence in Israel as it is in the States; the country was not founded on a constitution that privileges such liberty. (Indeed, there is no Israeli constitution, a fact that some would consider a root cause of its racist and lopsided legal system and civic infrastructure.) The state of stagnation and worsening division in Israel/Palestine further entrenches the occupation, allowing more settlements to be built and inflicting further oppression on Palestinians. The metanarrative in Israel is one of continuous existential fear and victimization, which leads to the increased justification of insularity and nationalism, and the silencing of opposition.

Tamir includes many half-truths and absurd exaggerations as well as a complete disregard for the definition of "censorship."

The calls for and instances of censorship over the past two years have been both top-down (from government officials) and grassroots (by private citizens calling for the removal of artworks). Some individuals have taken matters into their own hands and established paramilitary organizations that spy on human rights activists and organizations, most notably the extra-political group Im Tirtzu, which recently published a blacklist of “moles”—cultural producers of all stripes who support leftist organizations that they perceive as anti-Zionist.

Im Tirtzu is paramilitary?

And why is art that defames a nation free speech, but compiling a list of people behind that art is "censorship?"

Here's another example of "censorship":

Artist-choreographer Arkadi Zaides was criticized for a video and dance work incorporating footage from B’Tselem’s Camera Project (through which cameras are given to Palestinians to document conflicts with the army and neighboring settlers). The Museum of Petach Tikva, which presented the work, was asked by the municipality to close the exhibition early following pressure from a “concerned citizen,” while the Ministry of Culture withdrew its funding from the show (although the exhibition remained open until its scheduled end date a few days after this incident).

So, not a single person was deprived of seeing the show. How is that censorship?

Further examples include the redirection of arts funding to things like the Zionist Art Prize, and right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, acting as temporary Minister of Education, vetoing the 2015 candidate for the Ministry’s annual literature prize.

That is not censorship either.

Minister of Education Naftali Bennett and Minister of Culture and Sport Miri Regev have been responsible for a string of incidents of or attempts at censorship, ranging from the banning of books and plays to a withdrawal of state funding from Jaffa’s Elmina Theater unless its director, Norman Issa, reversed his refusal to perform in a settlement in the West Bank. Regev, who previously served as the chief censor of the Israeli army, recently treated the director of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Suzanne Landau (herself recently accused of self-censorship) to a surprise Friday-night phone call to ask about a work of art in a recent exhibition by Uri Katzenstein.

The only thing in this list that is actual censorship is the supposed "banning of books and plays." Curiously, Tamir doesn't mention their names, but almost certainly he is referring to the Education Ministry taking an anti-Israel novel off of its reading list as "banning," which it isn't. Almost certainly there has been no banning of any play as well.

It takes a while before we find out how Tamir defines "censorship": the refusal of a nation to fund art that directly attacks it.

Herein lies the crux of contemporary censorship: funding. As in the American Culture Wars, public funding is being manipulated to become a mechanism of censorship.

That is not censorship by any definition. Making it somewhat more difficult for an artist to make a living from public money is not censorship. I can make art if I want, but if the Guggenheim decides not to make an exhibition of my artwork and the government doesn't fund me I am not being "censored." If publishers aren't interested in my poetry and the BBC refuses to air my play and MTV doesn't want to air my music videos, I am not being "censored."

The entire article is a string of lies that simply misuses the meaning of the word "censorship" to falsely paint Israel as a racist society.

The Guggenheim Museum should remove this article. Not because I support censorship - I emphatically do not - but because I do not believe that the museum should publish lies, fabrications and slander. Tamir has the full right to post her lies on her own website and the Guggenheim has the full right to reject publishing a litany of her lies and half-truths.

If supporters of the Guggenheim decide to withhold their funding to show their displeasure for the museum becoming a mouthpiece for anti-Israel propaganda, that isn't censorship either.

(h/t Lauri)

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From the Jerusalem Post:

Two Palestinian men are in custody for allegedly raping and urinating on a mentally disabled woman in south Tel Aviv, in what police say was a nationalistically motivated crime.

The incident took place on Independence Day earlier this month, at the 20-year old victim’s aunt’s apartment.

During the act, Imad Aladin Dragame, 42, allegedly filmed the rape, which police say was carried out by two other Palestinians – including a minor – who urinated and spit on the woman while shouting anti-Semitic slurs at her and threatening to murder her aunt and brother if she complained.

The third suspect in the case remains at large, while the minor and Dragame were on Wednesday remanded for an additional five days. For Dragame, a resident of Nablus with a legal permit to work inside Israel, it was the third remand hearing since he was arrested on May 16, following a complaint by the victim’s aunt. He also faces drug charges after police found 11.5 grams of marijuana in his apartment, which is in the same building as the victim’s aunt.

Sgt.-Maj. Yisrael Sianov, the officer representing the police, minced no words about the grave nature of the case, saying “this was an incident of the utmost severity – the rape and exploitation of a helpless girl with mental disabilities, while they degraded and humiliated her, and urinated on the victim while yelling racial slurs at her.

“In addition, they threatened her not to tell anyone, saying they would rape her aunt and murder her brother.

"This is a shocking incident.”

This is not the first time that Arabs raped Jews because they were Jews:

The [2012] rape of the Israeli girl and her boyfriend was carried out at knife-point in a bathroom at the parking lot of Tel Aviv’s Gan Ha’ir complex, during which the attacker, Nablus native Ahmed Jaber, beat and assaulted both victims for over an hour.

During police questioning, Jaber talked about the difference between his “respectable sister” and Jewish girls “who wander the streets.” He told his interrogators that they are “not sons of this land,” and called them “foreign residents,” adding that before 1948 there was no State of Israel.

The [Defense Ministry] concluded that Jaber carried out a violent attack aimed at “harming a person due to her being a member of the Jewish people, as part of the Israeli-Arab conflict,” and conveyed hope that “the victim of this shocking act will be able to rehabilitate herself and find relief for her pain.”

And in 2007:

A gang of serial rapists have been prowling the North, raping Jewish women as revenge for IDF actions in the West Bank, police revealed Tuesday after arresting six suspects.

"We are raping Jews because of what the IDF is doing to the Palestinians in the territories," one of the six suspects told investigators from the Northern District Central Investigative Unit (CIU) during questioning.

During their questioning and their brief appearance at the Nazareth Magistrate's Court Tuesday, none of the four main suspects indicated that they felt remorse for their actions.

Police said they were aware of four attacks carried out by the gang, but they believed there were probably other incidents that had gone unreported by the victims. In all four cases, police said, the rapists' modus operandi were strikingly similar - all of the attacks were directed against young women who were waiting at bus stops or designated hitchhiking points in the western Galilee and the Haifa area. In all of the cases, the attackers forced their victim into a car and drove together with the victim to an isolated spot, where they raped her.

All of the suspects are from the Galilee town of Bir al-Maksur, a Beduin village near the Hamovil Junction.

The first attack occurred in April 2005, when a 13-year-old girl was raped at the Zevulun Beach in Kiryat Yam. In December of that year, a 19-year-old soldier was kidnapped and raped just outside of Kiryat Ata. According to police, the gang attacked again three days later. In that assault, the gang allegedly kidnapped a 16-year-old girl who was standing with her friends at the Kiryon Junction in Kiryat Bialik. They allegedly took her to a grove near Tamra, where they raped her. It was after the third attack, commander of the Northern District CIU Asst.-Cmdr. Menahem Haver said, that the police realized they were dealing with a serial rape gang. In that case, the teenage victim told investigators that one of her attackers told her the attack was in revenge for IDF operations in the Gaza Strip.

In 2014, a female professor of theology at Al Azhar University explicitly said that Islam allows raping Jewish women who are "prisoners" in any war with Israel:

"'Those whom you own' (slavery) existed before Islam. It existed among all nations and countries, not just among pre-Islam Arabs. Anyone could trade in freeborn men and women. This is called the selling of freeborn people. It's like the selling of human organs and trafficking in freeborn humans today. But when Islam emerged, it put (slavery) into order, by limiting it to legitimate wars between Muslims and their enemies. If we fought Israel, which is plundering land, and is an aggressor against people and their faith... Obviously, it is impossible that we will fight Israel, even though Surat Al-Isra in the Quran foretells this, and nothing is beyond the power of Allah... The female prisoners of wars are 'those whom you own.' In order to humiliate them, they become the property of the army commander, or of a Muslim, and he can have sex with them just like he has sex with his wives.

(h/t Yoel)

UPDATE: The woman says she lied about being raped.

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