Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, November 16, 2014

You Stole Their Land (Mike Lumish)

"It is Palestinian land and Zionists are squatting on it."

We will never get through to most western liberals with our arguments because not only are hard-line anti-Zionists immune to reason, we're not even making the right arguments for the center.

We all understand that there is a radical vocal element, primarily on the left in the west, that is entirely irrational on this topic and who will despise Israel no matter what it does or fails to do. Those people cannot be reached. It does not matter how many times Israelis zoom into Haiti to save lives, people like, say, "Lefty Coaster" on Daily Kos will always-and-forever despise the Jewish people and, thus, despise the Jewish State of Israel.

I am less worried about people like him, I think, than in the political ideological middle. It is the well-meaning center that concerns me. Your average American liberal Democrat. This is a demographic that is highly significant in the American context and anti-Semitic anti-Zionists have been gnawing on them for many years, now.

For the moment, liberal Democrats are maybe 50 / 50 in favorability on Israel and those numbers are probably eroding.

If there is a segment of American society that can be reached via reason, however, this is the segment. Liberal Democrats in the United States traditionally prided themselves on their capacity for reason, even in politics, so let's give it a whirl.

In a recent video of Caroline Glick discussing her book The Israeli Solution she made the following argument, among others, and it is an argument that goes right to the core of Jewish relations with the liberal west.

What she said was this and I paraphrase:

We look at liberal Democrats (or western progressives, more generally) and we think, "Gee, there is no more liberal and progressive country in that entire part of the world than Israel." And then we wonder how it is, therefore, that Israel does not have much support among western progressives? On the contrary, western progressives are far more suspicious of Israel than are their conservative counterparts.

How can this be? Progressives are pro-feminism and Israel has the best feminist record, by a long shot, than any country in the entire region, if not the world!

It does not matter, you stole their land.
Yes and let's talk about Nobel Prize winners in science and medicine, shall we? Did you know that Israel has done more, in a shorter period of time, to advance scientific and medical knowledge than any other country in human history?

It does not matter, you stole their land.
And ethics in war? Anti-Semites spread the blood libel by suggesting that the IDF specifically targets civilians, particularly children - as Lefty Coaster does in the link above - but the fact of the matter is that the Israeli military forces do more to avoid civilian casualties than any army in the history of warfare.

It does not matter, you stole their land.
Alright. Alright. Let's talk about who is inclusive and liberal and who is exclusive and authoritarian. The Palestinian-Arabs want absolutely nothing to do with Jews. Period. The Arab-Muslim State of Palestine needs to be entirely Judenrein. The very idea of Jews living in Judea is an abomination. Meanwhile, in Israel about 20 percent of the population is Arab and Muslim. They have greater civil liberties than do Arabs and Muslims anywhere else within the entire Middle East and elect their people to the Knesset.

It does not matter, you stole their land.
You get the idea and Glick is absolutely correct.

If even we agree with the reality of a concept known as "The Occupation of Palestine" then we have no case. Period. End of story.

If Israel is occupying "Palestinian" land then we should just pack it up and go home, because there is no argument to be made. If the truth is - as the Palestinian-Arabs claim and as their western-left supporters agree - that white European Jews marched onto Jewish land and snatched that land from the indigenous Arab population then history should bear this out.

Thankfully, history tells us a very different story.

The eastern coast of the Mediterranean has no more indigenous people than the Jewish people. We were there thousands of years prior to the Arab conquests. We were there, in no particular order, before the Romans or the Persians or the Babylonians or the Brits. There are no other people on this planet, from an historical perspective, who can lay greater claim to the Land of Israel than the people of Israel, the Jewish people.

Is there really any argument to be made that this is untrue?

Can, for example, San Francisco State University professor Rabab Abdulhadi - who is building an academic career based on spreading hatred toward Jews among liberals and progressives - honestly argue that Jews have less claim to Judea than do Arabs? Arabs conquered and now control 99.9 percent of the entire Middle East and it is somehow unjust that the native Jewish population hold onto any portion of our historic homeland?

It is entirely absurd, but this is the poison that they are selling.

The best and most straightforward manner of dealing with this nonsense is to remind western liberals that Israel is Jewish land. Just as France is French and England is English and Portugal is Portuguese and China is Chinese, so Israel is Jewish. The very word "Israel" means the Jewish people.

Now, unlike France, Engand, Portugal, or China, we are willing to share that land, but no one can tell us that it is not Jewish land.

And that, my friends, needs to be our clear and obvious red-line and we need to bang it into their skulls.

And Jerusalem will remain united under Israeli rule.

Am Yisrael Chai!

(originally published in Jews Down Under)

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

The EU: Punish the peaceful, honor the hateful

From Ha'aretz:

The European Union has distributed a confidential document to its 28 member states that contains the draft of a proposal for sanctions to be imposed on Israel if it takes action in the West Bank that could make the two-state solution impossible, European diplomatic sources and senior Israeli officials said.

The representatives, who received the document from the EU’s European External Action Service (EEAS), were asked to keep its distribution limited and not to show it to Israel yet. Israeli diplomats in a number of European capitals reported the existence of the document to the Foreign Ministry, adding a few details about its content. However, they were unable to obtain the full document.

Three European diplomats and two senior Israeli officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the document deals mainly with “sticks and carrots” for Israel with regard to maintaining the two-state solution, although they said the document contained mainly sticks.
...
European diplomats familiar with the document say it discusses Israeli actions that would constitute a red line for the EU. For example, it mentions advancement of construction in the E1 area between Ma’aleh Adumim and Jerusalem; construction of the Givat Hamatos neighborhood and additional construction in Har Homa south of Jerusalem, both of which are over the Green Line in Jerusalem. The EU believes that such construction puts at risk territorial contiguity of the Palestinian state and might make it impossible for Jerusalem to be the capital of both states.

Sanctions mentioned by the document include marking products manufactured in the settlements in EU supermarkets; limiting cooperation with Israel in various areas; and even restrictions on the free-trade agreement with Israel.

Of course, this document does not mention any "sticks" for Palestinian behavior that is against peace. On the contrary, this anti-Israel document is being drafted at the exact same time that EU nations are moving closer to recognizing a Palestinian Arab state.

What has the PLO done, exactly, to ensure a successful two-state solution and a peaceful Middle East?

The answer can be discerned from the juxtaposition of two things that happened last Friday. One was this interesting State Department dialogue between reporter Matt Lee and spokesperson Jen Psaki:

QUESTION: So on the Palestinian side, one of the issues that we’ve seen has been this spate of sort of lone attacks either by car rammings or stabbings or the instance of such ilk. Could you tell us what it is you are hoping that the Palestinians will be able to do to avoid those kind of actions taking place in the future?

MS. PSAKI: Well, obviously, as I just mentioned, President Abbas made it clear that he is willing to do everything possible to restore calm. Broadly in the discussion they talked about a range of areas, including access to holy sites, security for holy sites, coordination among security forces and authorities, regional security architecture, incitement, and settlements. Those are a number of the pool of areas that obviously need to be addressed.

And I think the fact that there was a commitment to take affirmative steps we obviously feel is positive. Now, of course, the proof is not in the words. The proof is in the actions. So we’ll see what happens over the next couple of days. But we’re just not going to get into more specific details.

QUESTION: Jen, you mentioned that the proof is in the actions, clearly, but you’ve only cited one action and that was on the part of the Israelis to open up – to drop the age restriction. Have you seen any affirmative action from the Palestinians to do what President Abbas said that he was going to be doing?

MS. PSAKI: Well, Matt, obviously, these discussions happened last night, and we certainly anticipate that there will be in the coming days.

QUESTION: Right. But there was – I mean, there was pretty quick and demonstrable action taken by the Israelis. I’m just wondering if you saw any quick and demonstrable action taken --

MS. PSAKI: There’s public and private actions, but I don’t have anything more specific.

QUESTION: All right.

MS. PSAKI: We’ll see what happens in the next couple of days.

QUESTION: Is it – I’m not sure I understand why you think that it is wise to announce that the two sides have – or that three sides have agreed to steps to calm things down and then to keep them secret. ... I just – it doesn’t make any sense to me that you wouldn’t want them – that you would want these alleged steps that were agreed to to become public. That way, people know what to expect.

MS. PSAKI: Well, we sent a strong message that there were – there was an agreement to take affirmative steps in order to hopefully generate some calm in the region. There was an evaluation and discussion made by all the parties involved that this was the best way to proceed.
...
QUESTION: Just a follow-up very quickly. What would be demonstrable and quick action by the Palestinians that you would like to see?

MS. PSAKI: I’m not going to spell it out further, Said, other than to convey that President Abbas made clear that he’ll do everything possible to restore calm. He restated his firm commitment to nonviolence. They talked about a range of issues that both sides can work on, including regional security structure, coordination among security forces, incitement, settlements – a lot of the issues that have been causing tensions in the region.

In other words, only Israel is expected to do anything concrete.

Indeed, the official PA TV encouraged violence immediately after this meeting where they supposedly would restore calm.

Here is the crux of the issue: The international community does not expect anything peaceful from the PLO. Only Israel is expected to work hard towards peace, while the Palestinian Arabs are not expected to do anything. Even something as simple as publicly calling for calm is considered too much to expect from them. If pressed, Western pundits would say that Abbas has his hands tied because of the "Palestinian street."

Of course, this is an admission that the Palestinian Arabs themselves are not interested in real peace. But the problem goes beyond that.

In truth, Abbas controls the Palestinian street. The PLO and Fatah (not to mention groups in Gaza) are the ones who make public calls for "days of rage." They are the ones who publicly honor terrorists, calling them heroes. They are the ones who are explicitly against any kind of "normalization" with Israelis. They are the ones lobbying incessantly for sanctions and resolutions aimed only at Israel. They are the ones who have refused to negotiate for years, trusting instead that the West will do the pressuring for them.

And they are right.

The West has internalized the fact that the PLO cannot be expected to do a damn concrete thing to help bring peace. But since peace is so important, and no one wants to admit that Israel's "peace partner" supports violence and terror, the onus must be placed on the reasonable Israelis - and only the Israelis - to do more, and more, and more.

Abbas gets all the carrots, and Israel gets all the sticks, because deep down everyone knows that making Palestinian Arabs angry could end up resulting in bombs in European capitals down the line.

So violence and threats are rewarded and the one people in the Middle East who actually truly want real peace are the ones who are demonized.

Last week I (and Israellycool) reported that a "journalist" that had been killed in Gaza, whose death UNESCO condemned, was actually a Hamas terrorist.

After Gidon Shaviv of Presspectiva emailed UNESCO about this new evidence, they commendably and immediately removed Murtaja from their list of journalists killed in wars. Moreover, UNESCO released a strong implicit condemnation of Hamas for "instrumentaliz[ing] the profession of journalists by combatants."

On 14 November, the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, issued an update about the statement she issued on 29 August, 2014, regarding Abdullah Murtaja, in the context of UNESCO’s mandate to defend freedom of expression and press freedom.

The original statement issued on 29 August was in line with UNESCO’s policy of condemning all killings of journalists. During this week, information has been brought to the attention of UNESCO that Mr Murtaja was a member of an organized armed group -- an active combatant, and, therefore, not a civilian journalist. This has come to light in a video was posted recently on the Internet with Abdullah Murtaja speaking as a member of an organized armed group.

UNESCO therefore withdraws the statement of 29 August.

“I deplore attempts to instrumentalize the profession of journalists by combatants," declared Irina Bokova. “The civilian status of journalists is critical, especially in situations of conflict, to ensure the free flow of information and ideas that are essential to the wider public and the restoration of stability and peace,” declared the Director-General.

Sometimes, we get results!

See Presspectiva and CAMERA for their announcement.

Secret synagogue under Al Aqsa? No, just another wild Arab rumor.

Egypt's Youm7,and other media, report that new photographs of Jews praying in tunnels beneath the Al Aqsa Mosque have surfaced:

As anyone who has actually been to the Kotel knows, these photos are taken from the building immediately to the left of the outdoor plaza where many pray (especially when it rains.) The wall is in fact the Kotel itself. Nothing underground here, although from within that building there are shafts that go down to the bottom of the Kotel itself.

But perhaps since Arabs would riot if there were secret synagogues underneath the Kotel, maybe the Jews should just stop prayers in any area that looks tunnel-like. After all, that seems to be what "experts" who blame Jews for Arab rioting seem to want to see.

More proof that American "pro-Palestinian" groups really support terror

From the U.S. Palestinian Community Network:

Oakland – Activists with the Bay Area Rasmea Defense Committee have chained themselves to doors of the federal courthouse in Oakland to protest the conviction and imprisonment of 67 year-old Palestinian community organizer, Rasmea Odeh. Supporters are also rallying in front of the federal building, condemning what they call a politically motivated trial targeting Odeh because of her role as an outspoken Palestinian leader and activist. Odeh was convicted on Monday, November 10th in a Detroit federal court of knowingly lying on her immigration application, even though she maintains that she did not understand the questions on the application.

The main basis for Odeh’s conviction was that she had allegedly falsely answered “No” to a question asking whether she had ever been arrested or imprisoned. The government claimed that Odeh failed to disclose that she had been convicted by the Israeli government of participating in “terrorism,” even though this conviction in a military court lacked due process and was the result of a forced confession made after she was repeatedly tortured and raped by Israeli military authorities.

“The only reason Rasmea was imprisoned in Israel was because she was tortured, sexually assaulted, threatened with death and ultimately forced to confess to charges she didn’t commit,” says Hatem Abudayyeh, spokesman for the Rasmea Defense Committee. “Now, more than 40 years later, and after 9 years of living here with US citizenship, she’s being made to re-live her trauma and is wrongly imprisoned once again.”

As we've discussed previously, there is no question that Rasmeah Odeh planned and carried out a murderous terror attack. The same film where Rasmea claims that she was tortured is the one where her relative and fellow bomber Ayesha Odeh describes how they planned and implemented the attack, saying that Rasmeah was more involved than she was:

"Rasmeah Odeh was more involved than I was [in the grocery store bombing] ... I only got involved during the preparation of explosives. We wanted to place two bombs to blow up consecutively. I suggested to have the second bomb go off five or six minutes after the first bomb so that those who get killed in it would be members of the army and secret service, but it did not explode. They diffused it 20 seconds before it exploded."

There is no question that the many activists who pretend that Odeh is innocent are very aware of this video confession by her friend - not only a confession, but a proud confession!

Which means that these "pro-Palestinian" groups in the US really support bombing supermarkets crowded with Jewish shoppers.

(Why they decided to protest in Oakland for a conviction in Detroit is interesting in itself....)

11/15 Links: Israel Fights Terrorism. Europe Rewards It; The Israeli Arab Grievance Industry

From Ian:

Israel Fights Terrorism. Europe Rewards It

So basically, as Israelis are dodging the cars, stones and fireworks being used by Palestinian terrorists, Europe is rewarding these same terrorists with more recognition of their proposed state. In the meantime, the Europeans are also condemning Israel for wanting to build homes in its own capital and in part of its Biblical homelands in Judea and Samaria. Obviously, this isn’t the first time Europeans have tried to tell Jews where they can and can’t live. Ghettoizing Jews has been a European tradition for centuries, from medieval times, right up until World War II, when the Nazis established ghettos to concentrate the continent’s Jewish population before systematically murdering them. And now they are trying to ghettoize us in our own country! I guess some things never change. Clearly, Israel needs to respond to the ludicrous actions of the Europeans. But how?
My suggestion: let Israel recognize the right of various European peoples to their own independent states. So the British parliament passed a resolution calling for the recognition of a future Palestinian state. Let Israel’s Knesset pass its own resolution calling for recognition of an independent Scotland, an independent Wales, and the reunification of Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic. If France and Spain decide to reward Palestinian terrorism by calling for recognition of the so-called state of Palestine, let Israel recognize and support the independence of Corsica and Brittany in France, and Catalonia and the Basque Country in Spain. As a lot of people say, what goes around comes around.

WSJ Editor Rips Obama Admin. for Treating Israel Like ‘Virtual Outlaw State’

A prominent Wall Street Journal editor firmly denounced President Barack Obama’s foreign policy approach to Israel in a recent speech to a Jewish group, saying the White House treats the Jewish state like a criminal entity.
“Treating a democratic government as if it is a virtual outlaw state, as if it is embarrassing to bring the prime minster through the front door… there have been a series of slides and insults that are unbecoming of a great and serious power,” said Bret Stephens, columnist and deputy editorial page editor for the Journal.
Stephens penned an op-ed for the Journal in late October titled “Bibi and Barack on the Rocks” wherein he chastised the White House for its “petty insults” against Israel, which he said puts the strategic relationship between the countries at risk. He wrote that the Obama administration “seems to give more thought to pursuing personal vendettas against allies like Israel than it does to waging effective military campaigns against enemies like ISIS.”
Expanding on his views about the Obama administration’s relationship with Israel, Stephens told guests at the IAJF event that the U.S. needs to view things from Israel’s perspective.
“You listen to Obama administration officials talk about war and they say ‘Well, let’s take a look at Crimea. Look at it from a Russian point of view.’ [But] when was the last time the [Obama] administration said ‘Let’s see the world through the eyes of the Israeli prime minister or the Israeli defense minister?’” Stephens asked. “What does it mean to them to say ‘Oh yeah, let’s just get out of the West Bank. Let’s do so in a six month time table.’ Does that make sense?”

The Israeli Arab Grievance Industry

So what can we do?
In light of all this, it's hard to swallow the "dispossession and discrimination" line being bandied about to justify Israeli Arab violence and crime. When you unravel all the arguments of racism made by Arabs and leftists, you're mostly left with feelings of discrimination in being accepted to jobs. But in a country where judges, senior doctors and heads of colleges are Arabs, it's hard to accept this as a justification for revolt.
The reasons for the outbreak of violence therefore need to be found elsewhere, in the culture of extended family and tribe which is still very strong in the Arab sector, as well as the strengthening of Islamist bodies in Israel in recent years. These are slowly diverting the energies and organizational capabilities used for crime in a more nationalist direction, and to rally the masses for a struggle for the Palestinian homeland in the Arab triangle and Wadi Ara.
Because of this, police programs for community policing and "increasing trust" by studying cultural gaps and ethnic sensitivities are simply irrelevant. Such plans create an atmosphere in the police of either justifying or excusing crime by recognizing the "difficult background" of rioters and their "narrative" for the Israeli War of Independence.
Sadly, the police have been increasingly exposed to such programs primarily through a designated program promoted by the left wing organization, the Abraham Fund, and with the cooperation of the police. The "policing in a torn society" program teaches senior police officers to take cultural differences into consideration, understand the criminals' motives and to try and rebuild trust. The result of all this is the "containment" policy, which enables riots to take place on a limited scale so that the oppressed minority can express its "authentic rage". (h/t sophie44)

Pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi has an article by Ayman Abubann entitled "Anti-semitism: The big lie of Zionism."

The author's thesis seems to be that Israelis made up the lie of anti-semitism in order to use it as a tool to shut up its critics.

And it includes this little nugget: "Historical research indicates that the Jews of Europe sowed the ground of corruption and the spread of immorality."

So if antisemitism is a Zionist plot, and Ayman Abubann is antisemitic, then he must be a Zionist!

UPDATE: No, I'm not in a different time zone and I don't have a beta copy of the infamous "Shabbos app." I intended for this to be posted Sunday afternoon and I made a mistake on the dates.

11/14 Links Pt2: Kontorovich: Why Gaza is not remotely occupied; Israel bans Mads Gilbert

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Why Gaza is not remotely occupied (I)

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court last week found no jurisdiction over Israel’s naval interdiction of vessels seeking to break the Gaza blockade. But she did issue a long obiter pronouncement – albeit non-binding, tentative, and discounted with multiple disclaimers – that it would be “reasonable” to conclude Israel occupies Gaza.
Normally such a tentative statement would not warrant further examination. But even with all the qualifications, the prosecutor’s argument is not reasonable. It is absurd and unprecedented. It embodies principles that have never and can never be applied to other situations. This post will discuss the doctrinal and judicial flaws with the OTP’s analysis. A subsequent post will examine state practice, the insignificance of the alleged powers the OTP claims Israel exercises.
An occupation is traditionally defined as a power exercising “effective control” over the territory in a way that displaces the prior government. The occupying power is expected to provide law and order, essential services, and all the basic functions of government – and is thus required to have the kind of control that allows for that. As the ICJ has put it, occupation requires a territory to be “actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.” There has never been a finding of a such “remote” occupation, lasting nine years after the end of physical occupation and in the presence of a distinct and hostile local government. Indeed, even puppet governments are not considered occupation by the puppet master.

Gaza is not remotely occupied (II)

Ironically, the ICC decision comes shortly after Sweden’s much-trumpeted decision to recognize a Palestinian state. The Swedes are sticklers for international law, and do not believe in short cuts around the objective Montivedeo criteria for recognizing new states. Thus in explaining their decision, Stockholm said that the Palestinians do have a government, a power exercising control. It likened it to Kosovo and Croatia, where recognition occurred when the government only controlled some of its claimed territory. The Swedes did not specify which territory the Palestinian government controls (or which government), but presumably it would include Gaza and Area A.
Even aside from the issue of whether Palestine qualifies as a state, most of the world recognizes a Palestinian “government” that includes Gaza as well. A government governs, and thus has effective control. So it the Prosector is truly guided by the opinion of the international community, she has a problem, as these views are contradictory. That is the danger in departing from legal tests to political ones.

Israel bans co-author of Lancet letter from Gaza

A Norwegian doctor who has been critical of Israel has been banned from entering the Gaza Strip for life, with Israeli officials citing security reasons, Norway’s Verdens Gang newspaper reported Friday.
Dr. Mads Gilbert has been treating patients at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital for 30 years, VG reported, but on his most recent trip in October, Israeli soldiers at the Erez Crossing told him he could not enter.
Gilbert has called the decision “provocative, unreasonable and totally unacceptable.” The Norwegian Embassy in Tel Aviv said it was told the doctor was being prohibited from entering the Palestinian territory for “security reasons,” with no further justification given.

Gilbert was one of the authors of a letter published in the prominent medical journal Lancet during the recent Gaza conflict, which accused Israel of massacring Palestinians and overwhelmingly targeting women and children. The British journal’s editor Prof. Richard Horton later said — following a trip to Israel — that he regretted the letter and that it “did not convey the level of complexity that is the reality in Israel.”

In a 2001 interview with the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, Gilbert stated that 9/11 occurred because of Western foreign policy and that he supported terror attacks within the framework of that “context,” claiming that “the suppressed have a moral right to attack the United States.”

Comedy from Hamas

Hamas spokesperson Ahmad Yousef wrote a hilarious piece of fiction for The Guardian's Comment Is Free.

Don't read this while drinking if you don't want Coke all over your keyboard.

The question I have faced most frequently since returning to Gaza in 2006 is this: does the Hamas charter, which contains passages deemed offensive to Jewish people, truly represent the movement’s vision and political goals?...This was a text written in the early days of the first intifada. Our youth rebelling against the Israeli occupiers needed a rallying cry – a written expression of their resolve. The charter was designed to be that inspirational document and it was never intended to be the governing instrument, the guiding principle or the political vision of the movement.

See? They don't want to really exterminate the Jews - they just wanted to gain enthusiastic members by claiming that they want to exterminate the Jews!

Were pundits to truly scrutinise Hamas’s actions since its inception, they would find not a single official statement or position that is based on denigrating another faith, certainly neither Judaism nor Christianity. Nor can anyone produce a shred of evidence that Hamas formally encourages prejudice against anyone’s ethnicity.

Classic!

And the group has been far more conscious of avoiding civilian casualties than the Israelis.

Stop it, you're killing me!

(This Hamas video admits that the target of the mortars is the "settlement" of Erez, not soldiers.)

(Another one supposedly shows the rocket that targeted Ben Gurion Airport. Which is a civilian target.)

Judge Hamas on the measures it takes for its people. Do not rely on the words of a document – the charter – written under entirely different circumstances. Declare it dead, some have said; and yet, to do so would be to succumb to yet another Israeli demand. We do what is right, not what we are told by an occupier.

So all Israel has to do is demand that Hamas manufacture rockets to aim at Israeli citizens. Then Hamas will be forced to stop rather than succumb to an Israeli demand!

Pure comedy gold.

Even most Guardian commenters aren't buying this, although some of course will drink anti-Israel Kool-Aid no matter how poisonous the source.

11/14 Links Pt1: Channeling incitement through Abbas’s free pass; Fear and Loathing in Jerusalem

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Channeling incitement through Abbas’s free pass

As if the escalating terrorist attacks in Israel over the past few weeks haven’t been bad enough, what has been so dismaying is the way the West simply refuses to acknowledge what is happening in front of its eyes.
Numerous Western media outlets described the murderous attacks by Palestinians ramming their cars into Israelis in the street as “car crashes” or “traffic accidents.”
Yet Fatah’s official Facebook page featured cartoons, lyrics and other messages encouraging Palestinians to run over Israelis with their vehicles. Preposterously, it raved that the Aksa mosque was under threat. “Run over, friend, run over the foreign settler!” it screamed. “The Jews are defiling al-Aksa – will you not rage?” As the director-general of the Strategic Affairs Ministry Yossi Kuperwasser said this week, the violence – which has developed into stabbing attacks – is the inevitable result of the systematic dehumanization of Jews ingrained in Palestinians’ psyche from early childhood. Day in, day out they are told that the Jews are “the descendants of apes and pigs,” that they have “no historical connection to Jerusalem,” that they are “defiling” the city with their presence and that those who kill them are heroes.
Such venomous indoctrination is being perpetrated by Palestinian school textbooks, social media, cultural activities – and by Mahmoud Abbas. This supposedly moderate Palestinian leader has now revealed himself openly as a principal instigator of violence and mass murder.

Fatah Official: Palestinians Who Sell Land to Jews Should Be Hanged on Electric Poles

Exclusive: Hamas bombed Fatah officials' homes and faked ISIS claim of responsibility

It was Hamas that bombed homes and vehicles belonging to Fatah officials in the Gaza Strip last Friday, making sure to forge a false claim of responsibility by the Islamic State in Gaza, a Western intelligence source speaking exclusively to The Jerusalem Post revealed on Thursday.
The incident – which caused damage but no injuries – was conducted by Hamas’s armed wing, Izzadin Kassam, without a heads-up to its political leaders, the source said.
“We will not allow the return of internal conflicts, chaos and anarchy to the Gaza Strip,” Hamas spokesman Eyad al-Bozom said after the blasts. “The security services will pursue anyone who had any connection to these criminal acts until they are brought to justice.”
The intelligence source said such activities may form a pattern of operation conducted by Hamas when it wants to hurt its rivals without being blamed.
The source added that the explosion at the French Cultural Center in Gaza City on October 7 was the work of Izzadin Kassam. In that case as well, Hamas issued a false claim alleging Islamic State responsibility.

Antisemitism conference in Berlin ignores Muslim Jew-hatred

The NYT reports:

Against the backdrop of what several speakers called an unmistakable rise in anti-Semitism in Europe, the American ambassador to the United Nations warned on Thursday that the increase in attacks poses a threat to European values, and urged leaders to step up their efforts to thwart anti-Jewish sentiment.

“Make no mistake – we have a problem,” said Samantha Power, a top aide to President Obama, at a conference here organized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. She said the growing number of anti-Semitic acts “are not only a threat to the Jewish community, they are a threat to the larger project of European liberalism and pluralism.”

The two-day conference was attended by only about two-thirds of the 57 member states, most of whom, unlike the United States, sent deputy-level representatives.

Ms. Power, speaking firmly, chastised European leaders, asking why fewer countries were attending the gathering than were present a decade ago, when representatives passed a resolution on fighting anti-Semitism, known as the Berlin Resolution. Deputy Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi of Israel noted at the time that the measure had been adopted with the force of law in only 12 of the 57 participating states.

Here is Samantha Powers' speech. (Full text here.)

The only specific groups she mentioned as having antisemitic attitudes were right wing groups in Europe. The only mentions of Muslims she gives are two anecdotes of Jewish groups (in Sarajevo and in London) helping Muslims in trouble. She elliptically mentioned that antisemitic attitudes were being manifested in anti-Israel protests - protests that she emphasized were an important part of a pluralistic society - but she did not once mention that Muslims are the major purveyors of antisemitism worldwide today, even as she mentioned specific attacks on Jews in Europe that were done by Muslims.

And it was not only Samantha Power. The conference's closing statement mentions nothing about rabid incitement against Jews happening daily in Muslim countries.

The conference agenda shows that there was not a single session talking about endemic antisemitism coming from Muslim communities in Europe and Arab states However, there was one about right-wing nationalism:

Working Group IV: The Relationship between Nationalism and Anti-Semitism. Nationalist and populist political parties in Europe have been part of the political landscape for some time, employing at various times anti-Semitism as part of their ideology. However, concerns revolve around the recent electoral success in some countries of extreme right-wing parties that openly use anti-Semitism as part of their party platform. There have also been troubling incidents of individual politicians from more mainstream parties making unabashed use of anti-Semitic stereotypes. Furthermore, challenges emerge from charges of anti-Semitism brandished openly in the political arena. This working group will discuss ways to counter manifestations of anti-Semitism in the political arena.

Of course, there are some manifestations of antisemitism among some right wing groups in Europe, but almost all of the actual attacks have been coming from Muslims. Malmo, Paris, Toulouse, Brussels, Berlin, London - Muslims have been behind the events we've all read about, not right wing nationalist groups. Even The Guardian, when writing on the resurgence of antisemitism, mentions the Muslim factor.

The fact that the biggest source for hate and incitement has been ignored and downplayed by this conference shows that the conference itself is not meant to seriously address antisemitism, but rather to pretend to address it by using it as an excuse to attack the groups that they want to attack anyway and to ignore the major source of hate in the world today.

From what I can see online, this conference was a joke. Nothing will come out from it and already it is being watered down from the original Berlin conference on the topic ten years ago. It is an exercise in self-congratulatory politics so attendees can pretend that they "did something" - but nothing so drastic that they could put themselves in danger from radical Muslims who live in their own areas.

(h/t Ronald)

UPDATE: I'm told on Twitter that this working group addressed this.

Working Group VI: Addressing Anti-Semitism against the Background of the Conflict in the Middle East
At the 2004 Berlin conference, OSCE participating States emphasized that international developments, including those in the Middle East, never justify anti-Semitism. A lack of differentiation between the actions of the state of Israel and Jewish communities in OSCE participating States can lead to direct threats as well as to attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions. This working group will address ways for governments and civil society to identify effective approaches to countering anti-Semitic discourse in connection with conflicts in the Middle East. This will include a discussion about relevant educational tools.

Maybe the group was great, but the descriptions seems to me to still be trying hard not to offend Muslims rather than attack the topic head on.

From Ma'an:

A group of Palestinians stuck on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing into Gaza on Thursday called upon Egypt to open the crossing after three weeks of closure in order to allow them to return to the Gaza Strip.

"We have been stuck in Egypt for 20 days, but no one has helped us or even talks about us," Talal Salim, one of those stuck at the crossing, told Ma'an.

The Palestinians stuck at the border are victims of the Egyptian government's policies regarding the crossing's opening hours, which can be sealed shut for weeks at a time with little notice.

The most recent closure came after a bomb hit Egyptian soldiers in el-Arish, 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of the Gaza border. The crossing was closed in response, despite the lack of a clear relationship between the incident and Gaza.

The Deputy Minister of the Interior in Gaza, Kamel Abu Madi, called upon Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah crossing permanently, arguing that "there is no excuse for its closure."

Outside of Israeli, Jewish and Arab media, this story has been almost completely ignored. (The Huffington Post published an article that buried the Egyptian closure in a larger diatribe against Israel.)

However, when Israel closed the its crossings for a couple of days earlier this month after rocket fire, wire services reported on this worldwide.

Construction materials were also being imported from Egypt to Gaza, so that has stopped along with the people being stranded, medical patients with nowhere to go except Israel, and students who cannot get to their Egyptian universities.

So why does an Israeli closure for two days get far more media coverage than an Egyptian closure of three weeks and counting?

We all know the answer.

Islamic Jihad is taking credit for the current wave of stabbing attacks in Israel by bragging that they started the trend nearly thirty years ago.

They write:

The beginning [of the knife revolution] was in 1986 when the fighter Khaled Jaidi shook the pillars of the occupation and settlers when he headed to the Firas market looking to stab;for his first goal was a settler (Haim Ezran), first fatality of a usurper from the stabbing knife of Islamic Jihad at the hands of pure Mujahideen.

This daring operation began a new phase in Gaza.

Jaidi did not stop at this point but continued the mission and went continuing his resistance with a knife, terrifying the settlers and (stabbing) three others.

He was arrested by the Zionist occupation forces on 24.12.1986 and sentenced to three life sentences in prison, and he gained freedom in a deal after 23 years of captivity.

Here is how the first two victims were murdered:

An Israeli from Ashkelon was fatally stabbed while shopping in Gaza Saturday. The victim, Haim Azran, 35, was assaulted from behind in an alley off the main street and knifed twice in the throat and once in the back.

He was aided by a friend, Mordechai Mordi, who summoned help from the local military head-quarters. An ambulance rushed Azran to Barzilai Hospital. He was taken by helicopter from there to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba where he died of his wounds.

[Yisrael] Kitaro, 43 years old, was killed when he took his taxi to the auto repair shop in Gaza that his Shimshon Taxi Company has been using for the last 14 years. Many Israelis have their car repairs done in Gaza because the labor rates are cheaper.

While Mr. Kitaro was waiting outside for the work to be completed, a man came up behind him and slit his throat. Bleeding profusely, Mr. Kitaro managed to stagger about 100 yards - none of the Arabs would get near him - before he was picked up by a Border Police squad. By the time he was transferred to hospital, he was dead. The Israeli police have imposed a curfew on the neighborhood and rounded up several suspects.

The terror group goes on to describe many other stabbings done by "heroic" and "pure mujahadeen".

As usual, you will not be able to find a single Arabic-language voice denouncing a culture that turns people who stab random Jews to death into heroes.

That is how one can judge a culture. The near-absence of opposition to randomly stabbing civilians to death, on moral grounds is one of the most under-reported stories in Western media.

There are always going to be extremists in any group of people, but Western media chooses not to notice the huge amount of support given to the terrorists by the silence or cheerleading of hundreds of millions of Arabs for terrorism against Jews. Only a tiny minority actively kill - but the vast majority condone it, based on the absence of anyone saying in their own language that these kinds of attacks are reprehensible.

So Islamic Jihad has a blank check from the Arab world to praise murderers without fear of being put on the defensive by their own community.

Rage and calm (Poster)

Commenter Matti found this poster was on the Fatah Facebook page:

The caption says "When Jews desecrate....We get angry!"

And there was also this:

Posters spread over Jerusalem calling on Palestinians to"Get angry" for"Jews have entered AlAqsa & stomped on Quran" pic.twitter.com/3GtOlz3tev
— Mudar Zahran (@Mudar_Zahran) November 5, 2014

What can you say about a "peace partner" where there is constant incitement to violence like this?

I tweeted this poster earlier, using real headlines:

11/13 Links Pt2: Lumish: “You Stole Their Land”; A Serious Medical Journal Just Went Mental

From Ian:

Author of ‘Best Speech by an Israeli Diplomat Ever’ Calls Time on Palestinian ‘Narrative of Victimhood’ (INTERVIEW)

I first encountered the name of George Deek at the end of September, when a reader sent me a link to an entry on a Norwegian blog headlined “The best speech an Israeli diplomat ever held.” Whether the speech deserved that ultimate praise is an open question, but it was certainly one of the more powerful personal accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that I’ve ever read. The fact that its author was a 30 year old Christian Arab citizen of Israel, a native of Jaffa, and the current number two at the Israeli Embassy in Oslo, with an enviable command of Arabic, Hebrew and English, only made the person of George Deek more intriguing.
This week, I conducted a long interview with Deek over the phone. He spoke rapidly and eloquently for over an hour, weaving his personal story into the wider fabric of the Middle East’s myriad ethnic, religious and political conflicts. Deek made the case that his own, sometimes frustrating, quest to succeed in a Jewish state offers a scintilla of hope to the other countries of the Middle East, where – as we are seeing once again in Iraq and Syria – sectarian and communal divides are much more stark and brutal. That he did so with a charm that almost compels you to agree with him is by the bye; the intellectual merits of his arguments warrant serious consideration, and perhaps indicate that Deek has a future ahead of him as a liberal Arab writer or politician.

Michael Lumish: “You Stole Their Land”

The eastern coast of the Mediterranean has no more indigenous people than the Jewish people. We were there thousands of years prior to the Arab conquests. We were there, in no particular order, before the Romans or the Persians or the Babylonians or the Brits. There are no other people on this planet, from an historical perspective, who can lay greater claim to the Land of Israel than the people of Israel, the Jewish people.
Is there really any argument to be made that this is untrue?
Can, for example, San Francisco State University professor Rabab Abdulhadi – who is building an academic career based on spreading hatred toward Jews among liberals and progressives – honestly argue that Jews have less claim to Judaea than do Arabs? Arabs conquered and now control 99.9 percent of the entire Middle East and it is somehow unjust that the native Jewish population hold onto any portion of our historic homeland?
It is entirely absurd, but this is the poison that they are selling.
The best and most straightforward manner of dealing with this nonsense is to remind western liberals that Israel is Jewish land. Just as France is French and England is English and Portugal is Portuguese and China is Chinese, so Israel is Jewish. The very word “Israel” means the Jewish people.
Now, unlike France, Engand, Portugal, or China, we are willing to share that land, but no one can tell us that it is not Jewish land.

Chloé Valdary: The Missing Piece: Jewish Lives Matter

“Yes it’s true that Jews have been an oppressed people. But lots of people are oppressed.”
Dr. Clayborne Carson — the director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University — gave this flippant response when I pointed out that Jews are an aboriginal people who come from the land of Israel, who have always yearned to return to their land. The trivialization of the persecution of a people could not have been captured so perfectly; but what was tragic about Carson’s statement was that the man who subtly diminished the plight of an indigenous civilization carried the name of Dr. King’s legacy; and indeed, Dr. King is turning in his grave.
Yet this was the sentiment that colored most of the arguments put forth by the debaters at Stanford’s panel discussion event entitled, “Whose Rights? An educational debate on the dis/connection between the U.S. Civil Rights Movement & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” In reality, neither Jewish nor Palestinian rights were truly substantially addressed. I brought up the former incessantly, but to no avail; the concept of the right of Jews to live anywhere on the face of the earth including Judea & Samaria is one which needed no responding to; the debaters preferred to ignore it. They also preferred to ignore the curtailing of the right of Jews to worship freely at their holiest site; the right of Jews to enter certain areas under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority; the right of Jews to buy land from Arabs; the right of Jews to visit the burial sites of their forefathers and mothers; the right of Jews to live anywhere in the land between the river and the sea.