Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

11/28 Links Pt1: Palestinian dream: To liberate "Palestine" from the River to the Sea; Palestinian arrested in Italy for plotting to poison town’s water supply; Abbas having coffee with terrorists and their families

From Ian:

PMW: The great Palestinian dream: To liberate "Palestine" from the River to the Sea

Palestinian children are still being taught that “Palestine” includes all of Israel. Decades after the Oslo Accords, the PA and Fatah still don’t recognize Israel's existence.

The photo above is a prime example of this. The Palestinian Authority Presidential Guards posted this image of a young boy making the “V” symbol for “victory” while holding a Palestinian flag. Behind him is the PA map clearly named “Palestine” that includes all of Israel and the PA areas.

The names of the following Israeli cities and regions are written in the colors of the Palestinian flag on and around the map: “Haifa,” “Jerusalem,” “Safed,” “Nazareth,” “Jaffa,” “Tal Al-Rabia (i.e., Tel Aviv, see note below),” “Tiberias,” “Be’er Sheva,” “Ramle,” “Ashkelon,” “the Negev,” “Lod,” “Acre,” and “Beit Shean.” “Gaza” is also marked. The text on the image, states that Palestinians will “return”:

Posted text: “#Good_morning #The_Palestinian_Presidential_Guards”
Text on image: “Palestine We will surely return”
[Official Facebook page of the PA Presidential Guards, Nov. 25, 2018]

Another Palestinian way of saying that all of the State of Israel is “Palestine” is to describe it as stretching “from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” This is one of the PA's popular slogans. Recently it was repeated by a university lecturer who described the “great Palestinian dream”:

The great Palestinian dream: To liberate "Palestine" from the River to the Sea

Read more about this here: https://t.co/hEyUUMgmkj pic.twitter.com/PJNtxOPlP9
— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) November 27, 2018

Gil Troy: Wanted: Responsible adultism at the UN against Hamas’s ‘kitetifada’

Last Friday, Adele Raemer, a 63-year-old teacher from Kibbutz Nirim, and two other Israelis testified in Geneva at another UN “Human Rights Council” anti-Israel farce whose name reveals its bias: The “Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Israel’s government won’t cooperate, justifiably. Why legitimize the latest UN lynch mob, targeting the alleged “military assaults on the large-scale civilian protests that began on 30 March 2018.” But these brave Israelis touchingly described how Israelis – and Palestinians – have suffered since Israel’s 2005 Disengagement-for-Peace from Gaza, what the UN falsely calls “the occupied Gaza Strip.”

“It’s a misnomer to call these ‘protests.’ They were violent attacks,” Raemer exclaimed in Geneva. Testifying for four and a half hours, she explained how Hamas bombs and burns her progressive paradise in the Negev – in undisputed, within-the-Green-Line-Israel. Asked, repeatedly, “Why do you stay?” she answers poignantly, patriotically, “It’s my home. Why should I leave?”

Resenting Israel’s impotence, she says, “I don’t remember voting for Hamas, but they – not my government – run my life. They decide when I go into my safe room – or not. They decide when school is open for me to teach – or not.” Adele, and her children, grandchildren, students, and neighbors, are held hostage by 30,000 thugs harassing the Jewish State instead of building the Palestinian state they claim to desire.

It’s a long way from the Grand Concourse in the Bronx to Geneva via the Negev, but this Bronx-born kibbutznik-turned-activist feels compelled to defend her home. Immediately after she finished Young Judea’s 1972-1973 yearlong course, the Yom Kippur War erupted. Adele returned to Israel to make her life with her people. Inspired by 1970s-style communal Zionism, she eventually settled on Kibbutz Nirim, today a farming community of 372, smack on Gaza’s border.

Back then, three decades after Egypt nearly overran the plucky, two-year-old kibbutz in 1948, Nirim was a Zionist cliché in living color, an egalitarian community making the desert bloom. These farmer-idealists weren’t limousine liberals but true progressives. Most supported a Palestinian state. They happily cooperated with their Palestinian neighbors.

Then, Hamas happened.

Palestinian arrested in Italy for plotting to poison town’s water supply

A Palestinian man with links to the Islamic State group was arrested in Italy Wednesday on suspicion that he was planning a terror attack on the island of Sardinia, according to a state prosecutor.

State anti-terror prosecutor Federico Cafiero de Raho said the suspect planned to poison the water supply in the central island town of Macomer as well as a nearby military base, with ricin and anthrax.

The suspect was identified by the Il Fatto Quotidiano daily as Alaji Aminun, a Palestinian refugee from Lebanon, who moved to Macomer.

The arrest came two months after Lebanese authorities arrested another Palestinian refugee on suspicion of plotting to poison the water supply of a military barracks there. At the time, officials said the suspect had been linked to the Islamic State and had worked with another man, apparently Aminun, to “carry out a mass poisoning in a foreign country” through “poisoning food during a public holiday,” without specifying the location.

While The Forward praises Muslim charities, it asks for help to dig up dirt on Jewish charities. Plus, a quick look at the Forward's own non-profit paperwork. (It isn't pretty.)

Earlier this week The Forward had an article talking about how much Muslim charity CelebrateMercy raised for Jewish causes in the wake of antisemitic attacks over the past year.

Thee is no skepticism about what the head of the charity is saying about how the funds are being distributed; not all the funds raised have been disbursed but the plans being made are reported without any independent research. No digging into IRS forms, for example.

Compare that with how The Forward reports on Jewish charities:

The Forward is asking readers to help us review the tax filings of thousands of American Jewish charities. We’ll teach you how to dig into a charity’s finances. Then, we’ll assign our reporters to follow up on what you find.

All you need to help is some time, and maybe a cup of coffee.

The American Jewish community has an extraordinary abundance of nonprofit institutions. Many of them are doing good, important work. But it’s difficult to know which ones are living up to the responsibility of spending tax-exempt donations wisely.

At the Forward, we spend a lot of time looking at the financial information that the federal government requires charities to make public. We’ve found some really big stories there.

But we usually focus on just the fifty or so largest charities in the American Jewish landscape. There are more than two thousand Jewish charities that file tax returns.

If we work together, we can do some serious watchdog reporting on these groups, which handle billions of dollars in tax-exempt donations.

Given previous reporting from that reporter, Josh Nathan-Kazis, we know that he will scrutinize and report on every piece of dirt, real or imagined.

To the Forward, Jewish charities are suspect while Muslim charities are assumed righteous.

Interestingly, The Forward itself is a non-profit. And it's own records show some interesting things that donors might want to know about that organization.

For example, in 2016, the Forward Association lost some $7.6 million according to its NY State CHAR500 filing. That's a lot of money, more than double what it lost in 2015.

But its president, Sam Norich, had $462,000 in compensation - an $80,000 raise over 2015.

Is this the best use of charitable funds for The Forward Association?

(Norwich apparently had a lifetime salary but they decided in 2014 to pro-rate his salary for the next few years over his expected lifespan. Maybe other non-profits give sweetheart deals to their executives, but that is hardly a responsible use of non-profit funds.)

It gets worse.

The Forward Association spent $539,000 on fundraising, but (when you subtract the money automatically transferred over from The Forward Fund (which requires no fundraising) the total amount raised was $1.4 million, meaning fundraising was an astounding 38% of the total amount raised, a percentage that would raise eyebrows for any auditor of a charity.

Speaking of auditors, the 2016 return was audited and found to have a ton of mistakes, the sort of thing that Nathan-Kazis would crucify any other Jewish organization for.

The mission of the organization according to these filings is "TO PROMOTE AND STRENGTHEN JEWISH PEOPLEHOOD YIDDISH CULTURE AND SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE. IT PURSUES THESE GOALS THROUGH ITS PUBLICATIONS AND PHILANTHROPIC GRANTS AND THROUGH COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS WITH OTHER LIKEMINDED ORGANIZATIONS." Yet it has not made a single grant in the past two years on record.

This is all from a small amount of checking, mostly a single year's records.

You can find previous years' 990 forms here if you want to take a crack at it.

If the Forward was so fearless in its reporting as it pretends, then when will we find its analysis of its own non-profit paperwork, which upon a cursory glance seems at least as problematic as many of their "scoops" on Jewish charities that actually do something positive for the community rather than demonize large portions of the Jewish community as The Forward does, every day.

UPDATE:

The @jdforward reported on a number of financial scandals of Jewish charities that used Loeb & Tropper as accountants.

Guess who else hired Loeb & Tropper AFTER these stories? Yup, the non-profit that runs The Forward. pic.twitter.com/8rlZtulj2D
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) November 28, 2018

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B'Tselem still counts Hamas terrorists as child victims of Israel

At Academia.edu, Jonathan Slosser had written a paper showing that over four years after the 2014 Gaza war, B'Tselem still inaccurately calls many Hamas terrorists "civilian."

And instead of the "human rights" organization decrying Hamas' use of child soldiers, it blames Israel for killing legitimate targets in a war.

Here is a selection of his findings.

B'Tselem:

Ahmad Salim Lafy 'Abdin
17 years old, resident of Gaza city, killed on 31 Jul 2014 in Gaza city, by gunfire
from an aircraft. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Killed
in his family's home in the a-Nasar neighborhood.

Hamas Al Qassam Brigades:

He loved to join the resistance and join the Mujahideen. He loved working in the ranks of the Qassam Brigades and was committed to all the duties required in order to serve the path of jihad.
He joined the Al-Qassam Brigades in a military course and was stationed in the advanced posts on the eastern border. He joined the battalion's corps of brigades and was creative in this field and obtained more than one level.
One of the most prominent jihadist acts carried out by our martyr during his jihadist life was digging tunnels, preparing combat points, guarding tunnels, and transporting food, drink and equipment to the mujahedeen in time of war.
The occupation planes attacked him when he came out for a jihad work and he was bombed before he reached the desired place.

B'Tselem:

'Othman Fawzi Lafy 'Abdin
17 years old, resident of Kh. al-'Adas, Rafah District, killed on 31 Jul 2014 in Kh. al-'Adas, Rafah District, by gunfire from an aircraft. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Killed while standing in the entrance to his home.

Qassam Brigades:

He joined the Mujahideen
When he learned of the martyrdom of Jihad and the martyrdom of martyrdom, he joined the mujahideen with all sincerity and sincerity. He was diligent in the fight for the sake of Allah and was keen on all military activities to develop his physical and mental skills.

B’Tselem:

'Imad Nassim 'Issa Seidam
16 years old, resident of Rafah, killed on 02 Aug 2014 in Rafah, by gunfire from an
aircraft. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Killed when he
returned to his home, which had been bombarded two weeks earlier, to feed birds
he was raising.

Qassam Brigades:

In the year 2012 and since the age of fifteen years old line Imad named in the
ranks of the Martyr Izz el-Deen al-Qassam to be one of its sons in the battalion
martyr martyr / Amir Qafa on the shore of the city of Rafah, and before joining our
martyr was helping the Mujahideen and keen to serve them.
Abu Anas was one of the first pioneers in the commitment to all military activities.

B’Tselem:

Fayez Tareq Fayez Yasin
16 years old, resident of Gaza city, killed on 01 Aug 2014 in Gaza city, by a missile
fired from an aircraft. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information:
Killed together with his father as they were about to leave 'Ali Bin Abi Talib
Mosque in a strike on vehicles that had come to evacuate injured people to
hospital. Three other people were killed in the strike.

Photo from Yasin family:

Like Amnesty, B'Tselem has had years after the evidence came in to adjust its databases to reflect the hundreds of "civilians" who were proudly claimed by terror groups as one of their own.

B'Tselem is more honest than HRW and Amnesty in how they report casualties, but a lie is a lie. And there is no excuse for them to continue to publish databases with false information that they know very well is false.

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11/27 Links Pt2: A third of Europeans say Jews too politically influential; Jordan's media showcase a couple of role-model jihadist murderers; Driver tried to hit men leaving LA synagogue

From Ian:

How Jordan's mainstream media showcase a couple of role-model jihadist murderers

Being the parents of a child murdered by a proud and pleased woman who doesn't stop boasting about what she did was never going to be easy.

Regular readers know that Malki, our sweet, vivacious fifteen year-old eldest daughter was one of the victims of the Hamas bombing of the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria on August 9, 2001. The mastermind of the attack, convicted for her role in scoping out the target site because of the attractive number of Jewish children who frequented it and planting the human bomb there before fleeing, was sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment. She was the first-ever Hamas female jihadist. Her name is Ahlam Tamimi.

Tamimi walked free, along with 1,026 other Arab terrorists - most of them killers - in the catastrophic deal Israel made with the Hamas terrorists to secure the freedom of an Israeli hostage, Gilad Shalit, in October 2011. She has been living free-as-a-bird in Jordan, not under cover, not in hiding, ever since.

She married another convicted Arab terrorist/murderer, Nizar Tamimi, in the summer of 2012. He is her cousin. (Another cousin is Ahed Tamimi, the 17 year old blondish "icon" of Palestinian "resistance" recently released from an Israeli prison.)

The United States Department of Justice unsealed terrorist charges against Ahlam Tamimi on March 14, 2017. That same day, her name was added to the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list and the US let it be known it was asking Jordan to extradite her to face charges in a Washington courtroom. The two countries have had an active extradition treaty since 1995.

Giving Tuesday: World Vision Must Answer Terror Finance Questions

On Giving Tuesday, the Middle East Forum is warning Americans about the risks of giving to charities that are active in areas of the world where terrorist groups operate. This comes in the wake of an investigation into World Vision, the international evangelical aid charity, and its continued refusal to acknowledge the depths of its involvement in the financing of a designated terrorist-funding Sudanese charity linked to Osama Bin Laden, or to take any corrective measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Writing in the Christian Post on November 3, the Forum revealed the full extent of the role played by World Vision in a 2015 decision by the Obama administration to approve the transfer of $115,000 of taxpayers’ money to the Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA), which the U.S. government designated as a terrorist organization in 2004 because of its close links to Bin Laden. The Christian Post article followed a July 2018 report the Forum wrote in National Review first uncovering the scandal, which was covered by media all around the world.

In response to the Christian Post article, World Vision referred to the Forum’s evidence as “false,” “unfair” and “outrageous.” World Vision declined, however, to address the Forum’s questions about the history of its financial relationship with the Bin Laden-linked charity, or the matter of a fraudulent identification number submitted to the U.S. government as part of World Vision’s grant application.

The Middle East Forum has now responded to World Vision’s latest obfuscation with a detailed post refuting World Vision’s attempt to muddy the waters.

Cliff Smith, Director of the Middle East Forum’s Washington Project, said: “It is not our intention to impugn any of the good work that World Vision does. But an appropriate response to the discovery that your charity has been working with a designated terrorist entity connected to Bin Laden is not denial and obfuscation, but reflection and internal investigation. World Vision should answer, substantively, without dodging questions, the issues raised by the documented facts we discuss, and let the chips fall where they may. Taxpayers and other World Vision supporters would better welcome a charity that could admit making such a serious mistake.”

Driver tried to hit men leaving LA synagogue: cops

Authorities arrested a motorist suspected of trying to run down two men leaving a Los Angeles synagogue, and detectives are investigating the case as a hate crime, police officials said Monday.

The driver yelled anti-Semitic remarks at the men Friday night, made a U-turn and drove at the pair, who took cover behind a car and an electrical box, said Deputy Chief Horace Frank.

The suspect made another U-turn and targeted the men, then tried to speed away but crashed into another car in the largely Jewish Wilshire-area neighborhood, Frank said.

No injuries were reported.

The suspect, Mohamed Mohamed Abdi, was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, but is now a U.S. citizen, officials said. The 32-year-old was arrested for investigation of assault with a deadly weapon and remained jailed. It wasn’t known Monday if he has an attorney.

The FBI joined the investigation, and Abdi could face federal charges, Frank said.

What are you thankful for?

Great people walk amongst us every day, so common, so ordinary, that they’re usually taken for granted and rarely thanked. Who notices when we pass a nurse, a storekeeper or a guard in the entrance to a supermarket?

I would like to thank these everyday heroes: The men and women of the army and security services that protect us. The citizens who have tackled armed terrorists with their bare hands without a thought for their own safety. All the people who have stepped closer to suicide bombers to shield others from the explosions. The doctors, nurses and paramedics who see the dead and the wounded again and again while working tirelessly to save lives. The amazing Zaka volunteers who come after every attack to clean up the pieces.

Every person who, just to fulfill their daily routine, has to pass places where people they loved were murdered – shopkeepers who go to work, children whose parents or relatives were murdered in their own home, people who live their regular lives in places where bombs fell, bullets flew and terrorists exploded. The children whose clear thinking saved their younger brothers and sisters are heroes. The mothers and fathers who raise their children in happiness and joy, knowing that when they are eighteen, they will have to go to the army and possibly to war and horror. The children who grow up with the news of dead soldiers, bereaved parents and memories of the funerals they attended and still are full of motivation to work hard, serve the country and protect us all.

Sometimes going to a club, café or party is an act of heroic defiance. The people who refuse to be cowed by terrorism and insist on living their lives to the fullest. The people who rather than being consumed by hate and trauma strive to make the world a better place, full of compassion, even for our would-be murderers –

All of you are the source of my strength and hope.

In Israel we live under the shadow of death, of current and remembered horrors. Suicide bombing must be one of the most evil things invented by man. Turning kites and balloons, children’s toys, into weapons of destruction and terror is a diabolical level of creativity. Again, and again we are surprised by the depths of depravity but, BUT we must remember that the other side of greatest evil is greatest good.

We see this awe inspiring good in our everyday heroes. These courageous, stubborn, compassionate, good people are OUR people, the Maccabees of today, the heroes of tomorrow.

Most people don’t recognize the heroism of the everyday Israeli. Maybe it’s because we don’t make a big deal out of it. After all, what choice do we have? Lay down and die? Be miserable? But the thing is that this is a big deal. And for that I say: Thank you. All of you.

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For over 14 years, my columnists and I have been providing original analysis and many scoops along with videos, infographics, memes and cartoons, on the blog as well as on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Sometimes these stories gain international recognition.

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Please support my efforts in supporting Israel and fighting antisemitism!

You can pay using Paypal (below or using this link) or by becoming a Patron with Patreon. You can also send an Amazon gift card to my email, elder -at- elderofziyon.com. Or you can have me give a talk at your organization.

Either way, thanks so much for your friendship and support!

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Matti Friedman at the 2018 Jewish Media Summit (photo credit: Chaviva Gordon-Bennett)

You have to admire Matti Friedman. He bucked the entrenched wisdom to expose the unfairness (here and here) of the media’s excessive focus on Israel by, for instance, the Associated Press. And he did so as a liberal when being liberal, for the most part, means being down on Israel. In other words, Friedman doesn’t allow his political beliefs to color the truth—something that’s not as easy as it sounds, especially when one has a journalist’s platform to use or abuse.

Today I discovered that Friedman’s not only a great writer whose morals remain intact, he’s also a rousing speaker, personable, witty, and fun. You can listen to him rapt, for as long as he’s willing to give of his time, and still be left wishing for more. The former AP columnist held forth on the subject of How to Report the Middle East from the Middle East at the Jewish Media Summit in Jerusalem, and even gave the audience a chance to ask questions, which he answered with long, thoughtful responses.

Friedman, an Israeli Canadian journalist, began by describing how small Israel is within the world at large, the infinitesimal space taken up by its land mass. Even within the Middle East, Israel takes up just one small sliver of land and has a population of fewer than 8 million people, out of the 411 million people--overwhelmingly Arab--who populate the Middle East as a whole. Despite this, when Friedman worked there, the AP had more correspondents covering Israel than it had covering the very large country known as China. There were, in fact, more correspondents in the AP’s Israel bureau than in all the combined countries of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Israel, moreover, is being covered as a “conflict story,” says Friedman. This despite the violence and recent horrific death toll a short distance away in Syria, or the bloodshed in Iraq. Compared to what is happening in other Middle Eastern countries, Israel is a very safe place, indeed. And when Friedman goes on to compare the number of Jerusalem fatalities (27) to that of other cities in the year 2017, the contrast is even starker. During the same time period the number of fatalities in Indianapolis, for example, was 175. In Jacksonville, Florida, 133.

Friedman says that there is a lot of framing going on when it comes to reporting the news. He gave an example of how this works: your editor sends you to cover a pro-Trump protest. You get there and while there’s a lot of police, there are actually only two protesters.

As a journalist, you’re faced with two choices. You can call your editor and say, “There’s no story.”

But, as Friedman says, editors hate that, and if a writer does this too often, he puts his job on the line. The other alternative is to frame the story: "A small, but vocal protest . . ."

In framing the story, the journalist isn’t lying. He hasn’t said anything untrue, but he’s giving the readers what they want, rather than the real story. So it is with framing the Israel story as a conflict story or a moral story in which Israel is always in the wrong. This, although Israel is much safer than many other Middle Eastern countries, its major cities safer than many major American cities. This, although the IDF goes to extreme lengths to avoid loss of life of civilians in, for instance, Gaza.

Friedman also talked about how journalists can zoom in or out of a story to give a certain impression or picture. The example he gave was the highlighting of the suppression of the English language in Montreal, where English speakers are a minority, in favor of the French-speaking majority. English lettering on signs, for instance, is regulated for size. Seen from this perspective, this is oppression of a minority, something that is accepted as immoral by the world as a whole.

But if you zoom out of the picture, you see that actually, this regulation of the English language is a response to the fact that North America, for instance, the United States, is overwhelmingly English-speaking. Montreal’s French-speaking community is the real minority, which hopes to protect its language and culture by regulating the use of the English language in that city.

Zooming in gives you one narrow picture. Zooming out then, gives you the bigger picture. Journalists covering Israel, says Friedman, are unfortunately “zooming in really tight” to highlight Arab oppression.

Friedman spoke of the “brilliant branding’ in creating the concept of the Two-State Solution. (Don’t like the Two-State Solution? You’re against a solution.) He also spoke about the accepted notion that the root of the conflict is the occupation of Israel in 1967 and that only with the end of the occupation will there be peace. But clearly, said Friedman, this is incorrect. Friedman reminds us that the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, was formed in 1964, before Israel took over Judea and Samaria in 1967. What then, were they planning to “liberate?”

Friedman also spoke of the shortsightedness of journalists in expecting that Israel could just vacate the territories. “The vacuum Israel is being asked to create is not Nevada. The vacuum created in the West Bank would more likely be filled with guys in black masks.”

During the question and answer period, I asked Friedman for his thoughts on how words and terms are used and abused by journalists to paint a certain picture, how the evolution of inaccurate terms takes place so that they become part of our accepted lexicon for Israel. I gave the example of Professor Ruth Wisse of Harvard who says that the word “conflict” in regard to Israel, is a misnomer, that in reality, it’s “the Arab war against the Jews.”

(At this, Friedman gave a start, shocked.)

I gave a second example. The term “West Bank,” describes the territory in question as if one were standing in Jordan. As if it were the actual bank of a river, which it is not. This territory is not, in fact, within sight of any body of water. I mentioned that the correct, most accurate geographical description of the territory is “Judea and Samaria.”

“West Bank” has, nonetheless, become the accepted nomenclature for the territory. I wanted to know Friedman’s thoughts about journalists (like me) insisting on using the correct terms: if doing so is effective and if it can be done without making the writer look slightly insane or rabidly political. I want to be taken seriously. But I also don’t like to use what I see as propagandist words and terms in my writing. It gets my back up.

While Friedman obviously didn’t agree with Prof. Wisse about the word “conflict,” he thought of another excellent example of the issue I raised. The word “refugee” means something different when applied to Arab refugees. The standard is different.

But in terms of language use, Friedman said we should ask ourselves, “Does this piece explain what’s going on to the people of Poughkeepsie?”

That sounded to me like a pretty good litmus test.

Friedman was thoughtful as he wound up his response to my question. “Maybe someone should take a closer look at this question of words and terms,” he said.

I didn’t tell him that someone already had. That someone would be me. I wrote a piece called Israel is Engaged in a War of Words in 2014, the very same year Friedman exposed the double journalism standards applied to Israel.

It was my first piece for the Algemeiner and I had been pleased with how it turned out. But I didn’t want to toot my own horn on Friedman’s turf, so I kept quiet.

I still wrestle with the awkwardness of not using words like “Palestinian” or “West Bank.” And of course, I refuse to call it a “conflict.” It’s caused me a lot of trouble during my blogging career. Some find my insistent use of these terms insulting and iconoclastic, while the worst of my detractors think my refusal to use accepted terms and words an actual symptom of mental illness.

It takes a thick skin to be in the blogging world. Refusing to use terms one sees as sly propaganda for the other side takes not a little courage because of the inevitable abuse it brings. It is my dearest hope that other bloggers who take the side of Israel, will join me in using only accurate language to describe Israel and its challenges.

Matti Friedman is a reasonable and honest journalist. I hope he will think over the issue I raised and maybe even write about it someday. I’d like to think that we might even find a place of agreement and comfort.

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11/27 Links Pt1: Evelyn Gordon: The one option Israel doesn’t have in Gaza; AG: ICC can’t rule on conflict as there is no Palestinian state; Ten Years After Mumbai

From Ian:

Evelyn Gordon: The one option Israel doesn’t have in Gaza

By the time the second intifada began in 2001, Hamas and Fatah had built up a powerful terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank; only by reoccupying the territory did Israel succeed in putting an end to Palestinian attacks. Likewise, argues Evelyn Gordon, the only way to end Hamas’s rocket fire and other attacks would be to reoccupy the Gaza Strip—at a price that few Israelis today are willing to pay:

[Reoccupying] Gaza would have very high costs—in soldiers’ lives, in international opprobrium, and possibly in saddling Israel with responsibility for Gaza’s civilian problems. . . . No democracy could undertake such a costly plan without widespread public support, but especially not Israel, because any major military operation requires a massive call-up of reservists, and Israeli reservists tend to vote with their feet. They’ll show up in droves for an operation with broad support, but an operation widely considered unjustified will spark major protests. . . .

But with the option of reoccupying Gaza unavailable, the two main options left are both short-term fixes. One is a smaller-scale military operation. The last such operation, in 2014, bought Israel’s south three-and-a-half years of almost total quiet, but at a price (for Israel) of 72 dead and massive international opprobrium. Another such operation might buy a similar period of calm, but at a similar or even higher cost. And it would have to be repeated again in another few years, by which time Hamas may be better armed and capable of exacting an even higher price.

The second option, which [Prime Minister] Netanyahu evidently favors, is to negotiate a long-term ceasefire. This might buy a similar period of quiet, though since it hasn’t been tried before, there’s no guarantee. And it has several obvious advantages: no deaths, no international opprobrium, and most likely, greater support within Israel (though, judging by past experience, not abroad) for a more forceful response once the ceasefire collapses, as it will at some point.

But this option also has some obvious downsides. First, it’s devastating to Israeli deterrence, since it shows that firing rockets is a good way to get Israel to capitulate to your demands. Second, it ensures that when the inevitable next round arrives, Hamas will be able to inflict much more damage than it could today. . . . Either of these options would only postpone the inevitable: barring a miracle, Hamas will eventually become overconfident and cause Israel enough anguish to provoke it to reoccupy Gaza.

The Palestinians No One Talks About

The 3,903 Palestinians killed in Syria in the past seven years are of no interest to the Western correspondents and their editors.

The Western media's obsession with Israel has created the impression that the only Palestinians living on this planet are those who are residing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This impression does injustice to the Palestinians who are facing horrendous conditions, torture, and death in the Arab countries, especially Syria.

Who cares about the suffering of these Palestinians? No one. Every week, scores of foreign journalists travel to the Israel-Gaza border to report on clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian rioters. Have any of these journalists thought of travelling to Syria or Lebanon to report about the atrocities that are being committed against the Palestinians there? Of course not. Why should they do so when the story lacks an anti-Israel angle?

The number of Palestinians killed in Syria will soon reach 4,000. Perhaps then, with that gruesome milestone reached, will Western correspondents in the Middle East wake up to the enormity of the crimes that are really being perpetrated against Palestinians?

As of this writing, the site seems to be down, but the UN has a style guide that includes a dictionary of commonly-used words whose spelling needs to be standardized. Even though the guide says it uses the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as its default authority on spelling, some words are used so often that the style guide can be used to save time from looking them up in the dictionary.

One such word is "Judaize."

The UN websites use that word over a thousand times. As far as I can tell, it is always in the context of Israel wanting to "Judaize" Jerusalem (or, as many UN documents call it, Al Quds.)

"Judaizing" Jerusalem is like wetting water. But thanks to efforts of those antisemites who want to cut all ties of Judaism to Jerusalem, like the UN, the word has become a pejorative.

Needless to say, "Islamicize" and "Christianize" are not words that are needed in the UN spelling style guide.

(h/t Irene)

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Ma'an reports that the Hamas-linked committee in charge of the weekly riots at the Gaza border has announced that Iran plans to pay the families of anyone killed in the riots.

In addition, Iran says it will pay those injured, and also provide medical attention for them.

"Iran's adoption of the martyrs of the return and wounded marchers is an important step in supporting the steadfastness of the people and supporting the resistance in this way and in other ways," said Hussein Mansour, a member of the Coordinating Committee for the March of Return and Breaking the Siege.

Mansour called on the Arab world to follow Iran's lead in "supporting the Palestinian people, supporting their steadfastness and supporting the continuation of the resistance."

Generally, Iran's financial support for Gaza has been through Islamic Jihad "charities." It has had an on-again, off-again relationship with Hamas which doesn't want to upset other Arabs by openly associating with Iran. By using this committee as a front, Hamas can enjoy the benefits of Iranian assistance without accepting funding directly.

Mansour said that the payments would be made without regard to political parties and organizations that the recipients belong to.

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Words matter, and when lies get embedded into everyday descriptions of the Middle East as fact it is enormously difficult to set the record straight.

National Geographic has a nice article (not yet online) about the race to find and preserve Biblical archaeological texts, many of which can be found in Israel and areas controlled by Israel. But one parenthetical statement makes one wonder who does fact checking for the esteemed magazine.

"In 1993, after signing the Oslo Accords - which provided a framework for returning disputed territories to Palestinian control - the Israeli government launched Operation Scroll, an urgent survey of all the archaeological sites the country potentially stood to lose."

It is nice that the author didn't lazily say "occupied territories" instead of "disputed territories," but it is quite untrue that Oslo was about "returning disputed territories to Palestinian control."

Because they were never under control of anyone known as Palestinians, nor were they ever under control of any independent political entity since the Romans defeated the Jews in 70 CE.

They were under control of Jordanians, British, Ottomans, Crusaders, Fatimids, Umayyads, Byzantines and others - but never the Arabs who moved into the area many centuries after the Jewish kingdoms fell.

Too many people think it is axiomatic that a people called the Palestinians have been indigenous to the region and deserve to control "their" land. However, the Palestinian Arab people are an invention of the 20th century. There were Arabs in the land called Palestine but they were not a people by any definition of the term; no one identified them as such and they didn't identify themselves as such.

Many get very upset when this is pointed out but mollifying those who implicitly threaten violence when they don't get their way does no service to the truth.

If the land is being "returned" to any indigenous people, it is the Jewish people who deserve it. Whether the current Israeli government decides it is in the interests of its people to give the land away to others is a separate issue. If any people can claim the right to the land, from a historical, moral or legal perspective, it is the Jewish people.

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11/26 Links Pt2: Evelyn Gordon: Jews Feel Safer in Europe’s Conservative East Than Its Liberal West; Ocasio-Cortez compares migrants to Jews fleeing Holocaust; Former BDS Activist: I Lacked Empathy for Israelis

From Ian:

Evelyn Gordon: Jews Feel Safer in Europe’s Conservative East Than Its Liberal West

Everyone except anti-Semites understands that Israeli actions don’t justify attacks on Jewish citizens of other countries, but rampant anti-Israel sentiment often makes anti-Semites believe that society will tolerate such attacks as long as they can be portrayed as “anti-Israel.” And this belief is hardly unfounded. To take just one example, consider the notorious case of a German synagogue firebombed in 2014. Both the trial court and the appeals court ruled that this wasn’t an anti-Semitic crime, but merely an overly zealous form of political opposition to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Consequently, the perpetrators received mere suspended sentences.

In short, hostility toward Israel in the surrounding society encourages anti-Semitic acts among people who already hold anti-Semitic beliefs. And since hostility toward Israel emanates primarily from the left these days, it’s no surprise that such hostility is higher in liberal Western Europe than conservative Eastern Europe. Thus, both of the main contributors to anti-Semitism in Europe today—Islamic anti-Semitism and left-wing hostility toward Israel—are more prevalent in the liberal West than in the allegedly “fascist, anti-Semitic” countries of Eastern Europe.

None of the above implies that right-wing anti-Semitism isn’t a real problem; it obviously is. Nor does it imply that Eastern Europe’s right-wing governments have a clean bill of health on anti-Semitism; they have been responsible for some undeniably problematic acts and statements. It certainly doesn’t guarantee that nationalist parties won’t turn against the Jews tomorrow, as a prominent European rabbi warned last week. The British Labour Party’s swift transformation into an anti-Semitic cesspool shows just how quickly Jew-friendly attitudes can disappear. And it doesn’t mean America’s situation is necessarily analogous; the U.S. is too different from Europe for easy parallels to be drawn.

Yet to pretend, as many American Jews do, that right-wing anti-Semitism is the only kind we need to worry about flies in the face of reality, at least as it has played out in Europe. The European reality similarly belies the claim that rightist governments are, by definition, bad for the Jews. And given that reality, Netanyahu’s close relations with conservative European governments could actually help combat anti-Semitism in those countries by bolstering their positive attitudes toward Israel.

The world is a great deal more complex than the simple “left-wing good, right-wing bad” equation so prevalent among American Jews today. And recognizing that complexity might help liberal Jews be more understanding of their conservative brethren, both at home and in Israel.

Liberal Jews are still turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism on the left

Consider Peter Beinart, the one-time New Republic editor. “No, BDS Is Not Anti-Semitic, And Neither Is Ilhan Omar” was the headline for a piece he wrote in the Jewish Daily Forward recently.

BDS, of course, is short for boycott, divest, sanction—a movement that singles out the Jewish state for such punishment. This, despite the horrors that are routine around the world, from China to Venezuela.

Beinart writes that the “BDS movement doesn’t officially oppose the existence of a Jewish state, but some of its most prominent advocates do.” So leaders of the movement want to destroy Israel, but the movement isn’t tainted by them? Where else would this be an acceptable line of argument? If white nationalists marched for gay rights, which liberal would disregard their outsize hate and focus on the one point of agreement? It’s laughable.

As for Ilhan Omar, she’s the newly elected Minnesota congresswoman who in January will take Ellison’s seat in the House of Representatives. In 2012, she tweeted: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”

The notion that Jews have the world under a spell is as classic an anti-Semitic trope as one can find, yet somehow Omar finds a Jewish defender in a Jewish publication.

Then there’s Linda Sarsour. Last week the Women’s March leader called out “folks who masquerade as progressives but always choose their allegiance to Israel over their commitment to democracy.” This was another old Jew-hating trope: namely, that Jews secretly harbor dual loyalty to Israel. And this is just the latest in a long litany of anti-Semitic comments she’s made.

What’s even more odious is that the Sarsours of the country are called on to help heal the hatred they sow. Last year, Sarsour sat on a panel at the New School about fighting anti-Semitism. And just last week Al Sharpton, who has a history of saying heinous things about Jews in the 1990s, was on MSNBC to discuss — you guessed it — fighting anti-Semitism.

It’s like a bad joke. The guy who has referred to Jews as “interlopers” and “diamond merchants” is now the one claiming to fight Jew-hatred. Has he ever apologized? Jews forgive public figures like Ellison, Omar, Sarsour and Sharpton. But they would never encourage other targeted groups to do the same.

Fighting the normalization of anti-Semitism has to begin with Jews themselves speaking out. Now would be a good time to start.

Firecracker thrown at Israeli reporter in Berlin

A reporter for the Israeli public broadcaster KAN was attacked in Berlin on Sunday evening while filming a report on the street.

Antonia Yamin, the Europe correspondent for KAN, was speaking to the camera in Hebrew in the Neukölln neighborhood of Berlin when a rowdy group of four teenagers passed by. At first they attempted to disrupt her broadcast, shouting and blocking the camera. Yamin paused and asked the group to move along. The video then shows her running after one of the men who threw a firecracker at her and her cameraman. The firecracker is then seen burning on the sidewalk.

“The truth is I had a very nice day at work today,” Yamin tweeted on Sunday evening with a video of the incident. “But between one interview and another I had to stop to report about the Brexit deal. As you can see on the video you can’t report in Hebrew in Neukölln, Berlin without being disturbed and without people throwing firecrackers at you.”
The Neukölln neighborhood is known for having a high concentration of immigrants.

Yamin told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that she didn’t report the incident to the police.

“I had an interview afterwards and I am filming the whole week,” she wrote via a direct message. “I also don’t think that it will bring me anywhere to sit for a few hours at the police station.”

Yamin said she won’t let the incident change anything about how she will report in the future.

“Fifteen minutes after the incident I was already filming my next story,” she said, “about an Israeli drag queen who performs together with a Syrian belly dancer (a wonderful story about friendship).”

האמת שבסך הכל עבר עלי יום נחמד בעבודה. היו לי כמה מרואיינים מדהימים שאני כבר ממש משתוקקת שתראו בסדרת כתבות שתעלה בקרוב. בין מרואיין אחד לשני הייתי צריכה לעצור לרגע כדי לדווח על הסכם הברקזיט המתגבש. אבל מתברר שבשכונת נויקלן בברלין אי אפשר לדווח בעברית מבלי שיפריעו ויזרקו עליך נפץ pic.twitter.com/1TKJqora5b
— Antonia Yamin (@antonia_yamin) November 25, 2018

Cartoon shows Palestinians are livid over Israel/Arab cooperation

Haaretz reported "From Qatar to Iran, none of the countries participating in the MED2018 conference seemed really interested in the Palestinians. Normalization with Israel, on the other hand, was all the rage: ‘It’s a total change in paradigm’"

This cartoon caption from Felesteen is complaining about security cooperation between Israel and some Arab countries.

Palestinians are confused and adrift without the reflexive support of their Arab "brethren."

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BDS Newsbytes

Another BDSer Runs Amok

By now, many of you have probably seen this video of a “prominent” ~~human-right~~ BDS activist Simone O’Broin going nuts on an Air India flight when the flight attendants refused to give her more alcohol than the huge amount she had already clearly consumed.

Her tirade, including expletives and racial slurs directed at those denying her booze, was also wrapped in a drunken version of the sort of self-righteous outrage O’Broin and her ilk tend to serve up to anyone who challenges their demand to be given the moral high ground immediately and unconditionally.

This is just the latest example of boycotter misbehavior we have seen in recent years. Just a couple of years ago, for example, Husam El-Qoulaq (who played a central role in organizing student government divestment votes as an undergraduate) won Internet fame as the Harvard Law School student who told Israeli political leader Tzipi Livni that she smelled. Despite best efforts by El-Qoulaq and the school to erase this misbehavior from personal and public records, and best efforts by apologists to put his infantile comments “into context,” El-Qoulaq now stands alongside O’Broin as exemplars of what is really going on in the mind of the BDSer.

Keep that in mind the next time they try to feign reasonableness before an audience they are trying to sucker.

AirBnB

Speaking of suckers, the decision by the online travel firm AirBnB to delist properties in the disputed territories (but only the ones owned by Jews) can be seen as the latest attempt by political activists to go around the political process by targeting the Internet firms that control access to goods, services, news and interpersonal communication.

Given how much time I and others have spent debunking BDS hoaxes, it is in our interest to admin when the BDSers score a rare win, if only as a point of contrast. But it should also be acknowledged that this win, which came at the end of a two-year bullying campaign supported by wealthy and high-profile organizations like the increasingly contaminated Human Rights Watch, ended not with the crippling of the Jewish state’s economy but rather with a few dozen houses no longer being included in one of many online travel sites.

This story can also be seen in light of the traditional BDS tactic of demanding someone else take action with no concern for the consequences that someone else will have to bear. Already, AirBnB has faced stiff criticism for their hypocrisy, given how many human rights abusers – including genuine occupiers of other people’s territory – they continue to include in their listings. The inevitable lawsuits are beginning to kick in, and it’s just a matter of time before the company is asked to explain why their decision should not trigger action by the many, many US states that have anti-boycott legislation on the books.

As those consequences gel, I suspect that the many compliments AirBnB received for caving to BDS pressure will not translate to a scintilla of support for a company that must now bear the brunt of a choice forced on them by others. Freiers.

University of Leeds

Having just mentioned a BDS win, it’s worth noting that the boycotters are still trying to pull fast ones on the public when they announce their latest “victory” on a BDS web sites or in some breathless press releases.

Most recently, we’ve seen the Hampshire Strategy play out in the UK where the decision by the University of Leeds to change its investment strategy based on issues related to climate change was transformed into their joining the BDS “movement.”

How did this come about? Well, as at Hampshire, Leeds has been targeted for years by anti-Israel activists demanding investments in several large and prominent companies pulled from the school’s portfolio. And, like every other similarly targeted university on the planet, they have refused to do so. But given the scale and diversity activity of their portfolio, it was just a matter of time before some of those investments got moved in and out, either for purely financial reasons (like the stock not doing well) or for political reasons having nothing to do with the Middle East.

As I’ve noted before, divestment is a political act which means taking a financial step without announcing publicly that you are doing so for a clearly stated reason means political divestment has not occurred. In the case of Leeds, as at Hampshire, the school has actually stated explicitly that they did not do what the BDSers say they did, making it even more clear that divestment has not occurred.

Given that Hampshire is still trotted out as a BDS “win” nearly ten years after this ur-BDS hoax was exposed, don’t expect Leeds to get dropped from Omar Barghouti’s slide deck anytime soon.

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11/26 Links Pt1: Netanyahu's Vision for the Middle East Has Come True; Kontorovich: Airbnb’s Anti-Israel Hypocrisy; Ottawa briefed on PA’s glorification of terrorism

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Airbnb’s Anti-Israel Hypocrisy

The tech company will operate anywhere and serve anyone—except Jews in the West Bank.

Two very different organizations took action last week against Jews owning property in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority sentenced two Palestinians to 15 years hard labor for selling land to Jews. And Airbnb, the tech behemoth and online marketplace for lodging, announced it would no longer serve Jewish communities in the West Bank. The two actions differ in brutality but are based on the same idea: Jews should have no home in the West Bank.

Under Airbnb’s policy, an American Jew with a rental property in the West Bank is barred from listing it for rent on the website. But an American Arab is welcome to list his home a few hundred meters away, even though the Palestinian law forbidding real-estate deals with Jews carries a maximum penalty of death. That openly racist policy doesn’t trigger Airbnb’s delisting policy.

Airbnb admits the West Bank is the site of complicated “historical disputes.” Until 1948, the West Bank was part of the League of Nations’ 1922 British Mandate for Palestine, created to become a “national home” for the Jewish people. In 1947, the U.N. General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution suggesting the territory be divided into Arab and Jewish states, an idea the Arabs immediately shot down. Indeed, when the mandate ended and Israel declared independence in 1948, all its Arab neighbors invaded immediately. Jordan occupied the West Bank and massacred or expelled every Jew in the area, took their homes and destroyed their synagogues. Israel only regained the West Bank after Jordan foolishly attacked again in 1967. Many Jews then returned, including to lands Jews had purchased before Israeli independence.

Since then, the dispute has narrowed. Israel signed the Oslo Accords with the Palestinian leadership in 1993, leaving all settlements—the new and returning Jewish communities—under complete Israeli control. Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1994. To be sure, the Palestinians still demand the removal of Jews from the entire West Bank. But Airbnb’s policy applies only to the Israeli—primarily Jewish—communities in the disputed territories.

Israeli cities in the West Bank are open to any lawful resident of Israel, including Arabs. By contrast, any Jew who enters the West Bank’s Palestinian towns risks his life.

Click Twitter link for the full article:

Very important piece from @evkontorovich on @airbnb bigotry.
https://t.co/us9VesdXzy via @WSJOpinion
— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) November 26, 2018

Airbnb, UNHRC boycott Israel yet ignore other disputed territories, report charges

An NGO published a report on Monday charging hypocrisy against boycotts of Israel in the aftermath of Airbnb’s boycott of Jewish West Bank settlements and with the UN Human Rights Council close to publishing a blacklist of companies that still do business there.

The report by Professor Eugene Kontorovich of the Kohelet Policy Forum said that “major American and European companies like Airbnb, Coca Cola, Ford and Caterpillar continue to legally do business in occupied territories worldwide without hinderance. That is because - except when `Israel is involved - no one believes such business is actually illegal.”

Regarding Airbnb, Kontorovich said that the company was now trying to get itself off of the UNHRC blacklist by boycotting Jewish West Bank settlements and there was a danger that other companies could follow suit. He added that it was unclear whether Airbnb would even succeed in getting itself taken off the list since it was not boycotting disputed areas of Jerusalem.

Deputy Minister of Diplomacy in the Prime Minister's Office, Michael Oren commended the “Who Else Profits II” report, stating, "This treatment isn't being handed out to any other country in the world, which means its inherently anti-semitic."

A past similar report by Kontorovich in summer 2017 alleged that the UN Human Rights Council was turning a blind eye to more than 40 European companies that operate in four other areas deemed occupied territory by the UN.

The other occupied areas listed by the reports are: Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus, Armenian-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and Russian-occupied portions of Ukraine.

The New Israel Fund encouraged the Airbnb boycott of Israel

The extremist American Jewish non-profit organization, The New Israel Fund (NIF) is yet again part and parcel of boycott efforts against the State of Israel. Along with its stated policy of endorsing a boycott against Israel, non-profit organizations financed by the NIF were integral to influencing Airbnb’s decision to remove listings for homes in “Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank.”

As a report by NGO Watch noted, “This change in policy was a clear result of a coordinated and well-financed campaign targeting the company by NGOs involved in BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns against Israel, led by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), in concert with the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), at least three Israeli groups, and the Palestinian Authority. The funders responsible for this campaign include a number of European governments as well as the US-based Rockefeller Brothers Fund.”

Who are these Israeli non-profits?

Kerem Navot co-authored a November 2018 report with Human Rights Watch, entitled “Bed and Breakfast on Stolen Land:

Tourist Rental Listings in West Bank Settlements” which alleges that that Airbnb (and Booking.com) “facilitat[e] Israel’s unlawful transfer of its citizens to the settlements.” Kerem Navot is funded by NIF, and the organizations leaders come from NIF backed organizations.

Who Profits posted a profile of Airbnb, listing its owners, investors, contact information, and details on “listings on Airbnb’s website …in … illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories.”

Airbnb was also featured in the NGO’s October 2017 report and accompanying political campaign, “Touring Israeli Settlements Business and Pleasure for the Economy of Occupation.”

A media outlet financed by NIF, +972 published an article “Airbnb lets you vacation in illegal West Bank Settlements,” which claimed discrimination alleging “thinly veiled discrimination along ethnic or national lines.”

Airbnb was wrong and its decision is racist and Anti-semitic.