Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

02/11 Links Pt2: Arab, Muslim and pro-Israel; David Draiman Supports Scarlett Johansson, Blasts BDS

From Ian:

I’m Abdel. I was born in Algeria and lived there for a little over a decade. During that time, I had the distinct pleasure to go through a brutal civil war where Islamists (supported financially and morally by Hamas, Iran and Saudi Arabia) where trying to take over the country to impose their worldview on everyone else. Friends and family members of mine were killed and the country almost went down the drain. My parents, who were executives at the time, were also involved politically. Specifically, they were leading political parties who’re trying to get religion out of politics– in the midst of an Islamic insurgency. You can only imagine how more problematic their personal and familial situation became: regular death threats, bullet proof door in our home, different itineraries and time to get to work, et cetera. In sum, it was a living hell. Oh, did I mention that I’m the VP communication for McGill Students for Israel?
Now, why? Why does a guy who’s born in a country that does not even recognize Israel come to support it? Below is the case for Israel from the perspective of someone who grew up and lived in a self-proclaimed Arab and Muslim country.

Disturbed Frontman David Draiman Blasts BDS ‘Harassment,’ Rips Emma Thompson for Siding With ‘BDS Nazis’

Jewish heavy metal rocker David Draiman took to Twitter Sunday, Feb. 9, to condemn the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for harassing one actress and then called out another star for siding with the global campaign.
“I support Scarlett Johansson’s endorsement of @SodaStreamUSA and condemn the BDS’ harassment of her,” he tweeted. He also uploaded a photo of himself that included text saying he supports the Her actress “against the haters.”
Earlier on Sunday, Draiman called British actress Emma Thompson a “boycotter of Israel” via Twitter and accused her of siding with “BDS Nazis.” The Saving Mr. Banks star and other British actors said, in a letter published by Britain’s Guardian newspaper, that they are seeking to boycott Israel’s Habima Theater troupe from performing later this year in a theatrical festival at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in London.

Scarlett for Sec'y of State - and Israel: A Facebook Movie

Two items.

One is a great article from Bret Stephens in the WSJ. Since it is a pain to get behind their paywall, here's the whole thing:

Last month the Palestinian ambassador to the Czech Republic blew himself up as he tried to open an old booby-trapped embassy safe. When police arrived on the scene, they discovered a cache of unregistered weapons in violation of international law. Surprise.

Then the real shocker: After prevaricating for a couple of weeks, the Palestinian government apologized to the Czechs and promised, according to news accounts, "to take measures to prevent such incidents in the future."

As far as I know, this is only the second time the Palestinians have officially apologized for anything, ever. The first time, in 1999, Yasser Arafat's wife, Suha, accused Israel of poisoning Palestinian children. Hillary Clinton was there. Palestinian officialdom mumbled its regrets.

In other words, no apology for the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. No apology for the 1973 murder of Cleo Noel, the U.S. ambassador to Sudan, and his deputy, George Moore. No apology for the 1974 massacre of 25 Israelis, including 22 schoolchildren, in Ma'alot. No apology for the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, where 38 Israelis, including 13 children, were killed.

And so on and on—straight to the present. In December, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas posthumously bestowed the "Star of Honor" on Abu Jihad, the mastermind of the Coastal Road attack, as "the model of a true fighter and devoted leader." Dalal Mughrabi, the Palestinian woman who led the attack itself, had a square named after her in 2011. In August, Mr. Abbas gave a hero's welcome to Palestinian murderers released from Israeli jails as a goodwill gesture. And Yasser Arafat, who personally ordered the killing of Noel and Moore, is the Palestinian patron saint.

I mention all this as background to two related recent debates. Late last month Scarlett Johansson resigned her role as an Oxfam "Global Ambassador" after the antipoverty group condemned the actress for becoming a pitchwoman for the Israeli company SodaStream. Oxfam wants to boycott Israeli goods made—as SodaStream's are—inside the West Bank; Ms. Johansson disagrees, citing "a fundamental difference of opinion in regards to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] movement."

The second debate followed rambling comments on the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations from John Kerry at this month's Munich Security Conference. Israel, he warned, faced a parade of horribles if talks failed. "For Israel there's an increasing delegitimization campaign that's been building up," he said. "People are very sensitive to it. There are talks of boycotts and other kinds of things."

So here is the secretary of state talking about the effort to boycott Israel not as an affront to the United States and an outrage to decency but as a tide he is powerless to stop and that anyway should get Israel to change its stiff-necked ways. A Secretary of State Johansson would have shown more courage and presence of mind than that.

But Mr. Kerry's failure goes deeper. How is it that Mr. Abbas's glorification of terrorists living and dead earns no rebuke from Mr. Kerry, nor apparently any doubts about the sincerity of Palestinian intentions? Why is it that only Israel faces the prospect of a boycott? When was the last time the U.S., much less the Europeans, threatened to impose penalties on Palestinians for diplomatic or moral misbehavior?

In 2011 the Palestinians defied the U.S. by making a bid for statehood at the U.N.; then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice warned there would be "adverse negative consequences" for the Palestinians. Of course there were none, and the administration fought behind the scenes to make sure there wouldn't be any. Type the words "Kerry condemns Abbas" or "Kerry condemns Palestinians" into a Web search and you'll get that rare Google GOOG +1.40% event: "No results found."

No wonder one Israeli government minister after another has taken to calling the secretary "insufferable," "messianic" and "obsessive"—and that's just what they say in public. The State Department has reacted indignantly to these gibes, but this is coming from the administration that likes to speak of the virtues of candor between friends. Its idea of candor is all one-way and all one-sided.

This is a bad basis for peace. If one expects nothing of Palestinians then they will be forgiven for everything. If one expects everything of Israel then it will be forgiven for nothing, putting the country to a perpetual moral test it will always somehow fail and that can only energize the boycott enthusiasts. It all but goes without saying that the ultimate objective of the BDS movement isn't to "end the occupation" but to end the Jewish state. Anyone who joins that movement, or flirts with it, is furthering the objective, wittingly or not. One useful function of an American diplomat is to warn a group like Oxfam that it is playing with moral fire.

Instead, the job was left to Ms. Johansson. How wonderfully commendable. "One gorgeous actress with courage makes a majority," said Andrew Jackson—or something like that. We could do worse with such a person at State.

And here is a very cute video from Jerusalem U:

Personally, I'd say that Israel joined in 1300 BCE....

(h/t Natan, Yoni)

"Zionists trying to hide Canaanite-Palestinian civilization"

You know how Israel is always accused of using archaeology to hide any traces of Muslim presence in the land (a charge that a simple visit to the Israel Museum would dispel)?

Well, that's passe. Now Israel is being accused of hiding the flourishing Canaanite-Palestinian civilization.

A Jordanian columnist says "The Zionist movement is trying hard to obliterate any trace of the existence of the Canaanite civilization in Palestine."

Given that the Torah says that the Canaanites existed, this is an interesting accusation. But, you see, it isn't the Canaanites they are hiding so much as the purported Palestinian ties to Canaan. You see, from this article we learn that the formidable giants that the twelve Israelite scouts encountered (Numbers 13:28) were, in fact, Palestinian!

You learn something new every day.

It is good to know that Palestinian Arabs are in fact descended from Canaanite non-Arabs.

Except for those named Erekat/Uraiqat/Areikat.

And the famous Husseini family of Jerusalem, who came in the 12th century. (The Shawishes come from the Husseinis.)

And the equally famous Nashashibis of Jerusalem, who are of Kurdish/Turkoman or Arabian peninsula origin.

And the Abu Ghoshes, who came around the time of the Crusades, possibly from Europe.

And the Barghoutis, who came from the Bani Zeid clan who arrived after the Crusades as well.

And the Al Khalil family, from Mecca.

And the Khazens, who are from Lebanon.

And the Nusseibehs, the oldest Arab family in Jerusalem, who arrived in the 7th century.

And the Qudwa and Arafat families, who came from Aleppo, Syria to Gaza in the late 17th century.

And the Ridwans, who came from the Ottoman empire to become leaders in Gaza.

And the Salibas, from Greece via Lebanon.

And the Touqans, from either northern Arabia or northern Syria.

And the Hammoudas from Transjordan.

And the Zeitawis who came from Mecca to Morocco to Gaza. They are related to the Zaghabs.

And the Ghassans, who came from Arabia to Lebanon.

And the Tamimis, who come from the Tamim tribe of Arabia.

And the Tarabins, who claim to originally come from the Bakom Valley east of Mecca.

And the Jabaris, who descend from an inhabitant of the Jabar castle on the Euphrates.

And the Matar family from Kuwait.

And the prominent Jerusalem family Nammari, who came to Palestine from Spain during the expulsion.

And the Adwans, who came from the Hijaz.

And the Dajanis, originally from Arabia but whose first resident came to Palestine from Spain and Morocco.

And even the Nabulsi family, who are named after the town of Nablus, but Nablus only got that Arabicized name in the 7th century.

The Murads came from Albania, and settled in Palestine in the 1500s.

The Al Hafi clan descended from Bishar al-Hafi who lived in Baghdad.

The Chehaybers are of Turkish-Arab descent.

Christian families from Bait Sahour named Abu Aita, Khoury, Yacoub, Ibrahim, Sous, Abdil-Masih Al-Hayik, Rishmawi and Hannouneh whose ancestors came from Turkey in the 17th century.

The Marashda, Khair, Bannoura, Awwad and Badra families who came from the Rashda area of Egypt in the 18th century.

The Kukali family which came from Syria around the same time.

The Tawil, Sa'ad, Gharub and Masa'ad families, descended from the Marashda family mentioned about.

And the Hejazis from Arabia, Mughrabis from Morocco, Masris from Egypt, Houranis from Syria, Turkis and Dogmushes from Turkey, Yamanis from Yemen, Jaziris from Algeria, Hindis from India, Kurdis from Kurdistan, Halabis from Aleppo, Trabelsis (Tripoli), Sudanis (Sudan), Faranjis (French), and Shamis (Syria).

But besides every famous Palestinian Arab clan, sure, everyone else must be Canaanites.

02/11 Links Pt1: PA Minister Claims Western Wall; PA's Human Rights Violations Ignored

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinian Authority Human Rights Violations Ignored by Media, West

That Hamas is responsible for human rights violations and assaults on freedom of expression should not come as a surprise to anyone.
But what is surprising is that the Palestinian Authority leadership, which often boasts that Palestinians living under its jurisdiction enjoy freedom of expression and democracy, is continuing to lie not only to its constituents, but also to the Western media and international donors about its human rights record.
The PA has been successful in diverting attention from these problems by putting all the blame on Israel. As far as the PA is concerned, Israel alone is responsible for human rights violations and assaults on freedom of expression and the media.
Evidently, most Western journalists, governments and human rights groups have chosen to endorse the Palestinian Authority's stance that the only evil-doers are the Israelis. And that is precisely why the ICHR report about the anarchy, lawlessness and human rights violations by the PA and Hamas will be completely ignored in the West.

The Palestinian Covenant Refutes the Palestinian Narrative

The Yishuv’s Jewish population in 1917 consisted of people from each of the three sources, but even if they all came from only one of them, the acknowledgement in the Palestine National Covenant that there were Jews there before 1917 disproves the current Palestinian narrative’s claim that the Land has been home “since time immemorial” to a thriving Palestinian culture. If the Jews are from the first source, then they predate the Palestinian arrival. The second source pre-supposes the existence of the first. The third source reflects Ottoman recognition that the Land was underpopulated and in need of a revival; i.e., whatever culture was there could hardly be described as flourishing.
The Palestinian narrative is thus hoist with its own petard: The Palestinian people’s founding document announces that its narrative isn’t true.

A reasonable alternative

In other words, a reasonable alternative will have to involve Arabs moving, not Jews.
It doesn’t have to be all the Arabs. Unlike them, we don’t require an ethnically pure state to live in. But we also don’t have to live alongside creatures committed to violence, as the members of the PLO and Hamas are.
We can hear the screaming of the Left, the Europeans, the academic community and of course the Muslim world all the way over here. How dare we suggest that Arabs might be displaced (of course, the idea that a ‘solution’ involves expelling every last Jew so ‘Palestine’ can be free of contamination is perfectly reasonable to them)! (h/t Bob Knot)

Cool new Israeli weapons: advanced drone and lightweight precision missiles

From I-HLS:

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) today revealed its new Super Heron heavy fuel Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

The Super Heron features a heavy fuel 200 horsepower engine and an advanced propulsion system, which enhance the UAS’s capacity, rate of climb and performance. Super Heron’s air speed exceeds one hundred and fifty KTAS (knots true airspeed).

The Super Heron’s systems feature advanced avionics, triple redundancy, advanced computerized systems, enhanced processing capabilities, increased electrical power and standard interface architecture, allowing for the simple integration of new payloads. The system consists of multiple proven operational configurations for intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition & reconnaissance missions, maritime patrol and other missions.

Also:

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has recently successfully completed a series of demonstrations of LAHAT missiles firing from helicopters.

LAHAT (Laser Homing Attack) is an accurate lightweight missile, homing-in on a laser spot. It has a ground launch range of 8 km (10 km from helicopters) and can be supplied a variety of mission-customized warheads. The lightweight missiles and launcher do not adversely affect the helicopter’s effective mission time. LAHAT missiles, sold in significant quantities to various customers, serve as precision guided munitions, and may be launched from ships, vehicles and helicopters.

(h/t Yoel)

What's Iran up to with its warships?

This analysis by J. E. Dyer is a must read:

...To the escalating [anti-American] rhetoric, we can add two other circumstances that have not existed before, when Iran was issuing threats about the U.S. military. One is the voyage of Sabalan and Kharg to the Americas.

All things being equal, we wouldn’t necessarily expect Iran to add political freight to this expedition. In other respects, Iran is keeping it on the down-low, making no announcements about the task force’s progress around Africa, and celebrating no fraternal stops along the way (although these stops – for fuel – have to be occurring). That’s not normal. One of the purposes of sending your navy out to show the flag is to actually show the flag. But Iran’s not doing that.(1)

The possibility certainly exists that the Iranians want to keep as low a profile as possible until Kharg, the supply ship with the big hold, has discharged whatever cargo she may be carrying. The continued silence about the task force’s movements would tend to corroborate that theory. I have no doubt that U.S. intelligence knows where the two ships are (the Iranians may imagine that they are hiding the ships’ movements from the Israelis by avoiding publicity). But the seemingly furtive nature of the Iranian transit suggests that there might be something on Kharg that the U.S. wouldn’t like.

I’ve mentioned before that Kharg could be delivering missiles (or other weapon systems) to Iran’s pals in Central America. Shahab-3s for the missile complex reportedly being developed in northwestern Venezuela are one obvious possibility. Kharg would be used because of her immunity as a naval vessel from search and seizure. The U.S., or other nations in the region – such as Colombia and Panama – would care most about certain kinds of weapon systems, and would be more likely to try to intercept commercial cargo ships carrying them. But because Iran is under UN sanctions which prohibit exporting weaponry (in particular, UNSC Resolution 1747), a commercial ship could be stopped solely for that reason, even if it carried nothing more than small arms.

...If Iran is “preparing the battle space” by trying to surround Israel with threats, she will try to demonstrate to the U.S. that she can pose unacceptable threats to us, even if it’s through one-off, Hail-Mary-type actions. The little frigate, Sabalan, is probably not a player.(3)

That’s where the Kharg comes in. What is she delivering in the Americas – and where will she deliver it?

The possible answers are tied to the scenarios by which Iran could hold the United States at risk. There are two principal categories of scenario: terrorism, and missiles launched from other countries in the Americas. Kharg could be carrying cargo relevant to both.

Terrorism against American homeland targets could take a number of forms, for most of which there would be no need to deliver cargo via Kharg. Chemical and biological weaponry would be the most likely forms of terrorist tool Kharg could deliver. There are any number of ways the agents of Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Shabaab, or other terror groups known to operate in the Americas could move such agents into the U.S.

On the other hand, it wouldn’t really take Kharg to deliver these items, nor would it be as important to introduce them via a country like Venezuela, where Iran can be certain of official approval.

Kharg’s unique value is in being able to deliver large items that can’t be hidden from inspection with deceptive packaging. Medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) and missile systems (including mobile launchers and command vehicles) are the obvious possibilities. The map shows threat rings for the extended-range Shahab-3 if launched from Venezuela, Nicaragua, or Cuba.

If we assume Iran does not yet have a nuclear warhead, the main option for making this threat a true deterrent, at least potentially, is the use of chemical warheads. Conventional high explosive warheads would be alarming to the public, but would not be a daunting enough threat. They would do comparatively little damage before triggering a response of some kind from the United States. Of course, chemical warheads delivered via ballistic missile would themselves have only limited effects in the area of impact. Missile delivery is not the way to achieve the most lethal effects with chemical weapons.

That said, two things are worth reiterating. One, the U.S. does not have a constant-ready missile defense network that would protect the central and southeastern United States from an MRBM threat emanating from the south. We are unprotected on this axis. Shifting to a footing of 24/365 alert and anti-missile protection – e.g., by deploying Patriot systems in the continental U.S. or Navy Aegis ships offshore – would constitute a new, un-resourced requirement. We’d have to cut back defense operations elsewhere to meet it.

Two, our ability to react against the “shooter” is limited by the forces we have ready today. We don’t have extra ships and aircraft to deploy for a deterrent presence in Central America. We could react after the fact with B-2 bombers, and possibly other conventional forms of attack, such as submarine-launched cruise missiles and ballistic missiles with conventional warheads. But we would have to attack to mount a response, in (most probably) Venezuela or Cuba, and that response would be inherently escalatory.

It’s quite possible that our current administration would view that as a bridge too far. Realistically, I think the military would view the prospect with strong disfavor. Our ready forces would not have such a preponderance of power, or such advantages of geography, that we could do it easily and without inconvenience.

Bottom line: MRBMs down south would constitute a material transformation of our security footing in the hemisphere. It’s a development we couldn’t live with.

But what would Obama do if the Iranians presented it as a fait accompli? The one thing we can count on is that he would not take decisive action to eliminate the threat. For Iran – and her potential henchmen in Central America or the Caribbean – that would be the important factor. They could very well calculate that getting MRBMs into the hemisphere could give them leverage over the U.S. in negotiations, as the missiles in Cuba did for Khrushchev and the Soviet Union in 1962.

There's lots more. Read the whole thing.

The Hamas Ministry of Education has issued a statement strongly criticizing UNRWA's curriculum for schools in Gaza, especially its unit on human rights, saying that it does not accurately reflect the Palestinian Arab culture of terrorism.

The statement says "We condemn the UNRWA printing and distribution of curricula in schools without the knowledge and without the approval of the ministry." and added that these approaches "do not fit with the culture of Palestinian society, and aims to brainwash Palestinian students and make them accept the Israeli occupation."

"This UNRWA curriculum intends to wipe out the culture of generations of Palestinian students from their homeland and their cause and [instead] entrench a culture of peaceful resistance as a solution to the conflict, and alienate students from the resistance."

It went on to accuse UNRWA's curriculum of "serious and dangerous irregularities affecting Palestinian culture and Islamic values and components of society in general." and it demanded that UNRWA stop teaching this curriculum and to withdraw its books from schools. Hamas also called on all teachers to reject "the destructive teaching of these books, and not to make the themselves a tool for polluting the minds of our dear students."

The Hamas ministry stressed that UNRWA is obliged to obtain approval from the Ministry of Education for its curriculum. A source told Anatolia News Agency that UNRWA's curriculum includes concepts that are "unacceptable," such as the right of men and women to marry from other religions, which contrasts with the teachings of Islamic law which prohibits women from marrying non-Muslims. Also problematic was the omission of Britain's responsibility for the plight of the loss of Palestine in 1948, and its condemnation of terrorism against Israel.

Hamas created its own curriculum this year, and UNRWA traditionally uses the curriculum of the host country.

Hamas' new curriculum includes paramilitary training for high school students.

UNRWA responded saying that it had worked with Hamas to help design the curriculum and it stressed that it was very sensitive to Palestinian Arab culture. UNRWA categorically denied that is curriculum was "against the heritage and values of our people."

UNRWA schools in Gaza were already teaching jihad, although they took down the websites that proved it after I exposed them. They have never commented on that story.

The UNRWA human rights curriculum has been targeted by Palestinian Arabs before, and there was special vitriol when there were rumors that UNRWA would mention the Holocaust. UNRWA denied that it would ever mention that Jews suffered in World War II in its schools.

"Jews invented vaccines to weaken Muslims"

From MEMRI:

An article published by Mahnama Banat-e-Aisha, an Urdu-language magazine for Pakistani women, called the polio eradication campaign a Jewish conspiracy furthered by international organizations. The article was titled "Polio: Disease, Or Dangerous Jewish Conspiracy?" It alleged that several international organizations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the WHO, Rotary International, the World Bank, and UNICEF, which were providing massive funding for international polio eradication campaigns, are serving Zionist interests.

Claiming that the eradication campaigns are a Jewish conspiracy, the article quoted reports from Urdu, Hindi, and English-language newspapers on various incidents in India of children contracting polio despite being vaccinated. It also referred to several such cases in Yemen and Indonesia, adding that Islamic scholars in Nigeria issued a fatwa against polio vaccination. The article also noted that Dr. Ibrahim Datti, a physician and president of Nigeria's Religious Law Supreme Council, accused the U.S. of including anti-fertility components in the polio vaccines.

The following are excerpts from the article:

"The Jews, who dream of ruling the world, have invented different types of vaccines, drugs, and injections in an organized way to weaken Muslims in their beliefs on spiritual, practical, and moral levels, and make their bodies contaminated. The oral polio vaccine campaign is being run under a worldwide conspiracy - except in the Zionist countries. Its total focus is now on South Asian countries - India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The U.S. has already marked this area as an extremely strategic region."

"Have we ever thought why these greedy Jews and Christians are spending millions of dollars on this campaign?

"1) The Pentagon, a U.S. defense institution, provides about $100,000 million [sic] for this campaign every year.
"2) The WHO spends $150,000 million [sic] on this campaign every year.
"3) Rotary International also provides a sizable amount for this campaign. Like thousands of NGOs, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the NGO of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, has alone given $750 million for the vaccination of children in poor countries - more than double the amount that the U.S. government gave to the people affected by the tsunami. This will help the WHO vaccinate 90% of children around the world by 2015. All these organizations are known to work openly for the interest of Zionism.
"4) Institutions like the Center for Diseases [sic], the ICC Control [sic], and the World Bank are also investing huge amounts in such programs.
"5) UNICEF is supervising the polio vaccination campaign in India. It has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this campaign. On the other hand, the UN has continued the ban on the provision of essential drugs to Iraq since 1991. Because of this ban, half a million children have died in that country. As an alternative arrangement to save the children of that country, a pharmaceutical company was established in Sudan, but it was destroyed by a U.S. bombardment, and the UN remained a mute spectator. "

"[…] An analysis of how the polio vaccination is prepared is sufficient in order to understand how the virus is haram [forbidden in Islam], and unpious animals like monkeys, chimpanzees, dogs, mice, and pigs are being injected into our [Muslim] bodies. Experiments were carried out in different stages on 4,000 monkeys imported from India and the Philippines in 1955, at a deserted place near a river in the area of Bluffton, in southern California. After that, polio vaccines were prepared from their kidneys.

"None other than Jonas Edward Salk (1914-1995) was responsible for this achievement. Besides being a prominent bacteriologist, he was a great Jewish spiritual leader who is revered even now by Jewish religious scholars and rabbis. He established the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in the Lazola area of California in 1963. The annual budget of this [institute], one of the biggest biological laboratories of the world, is $120 million, and 400 scientists work there around the clock. For a long time, the U.S. government used the vaccine prepared in this laboratory for their sweeping polio drives."

(h/t Blazing Cat Fur)

French Jews looking to make aliyah

From Religion News Service:

By any standard, David Tibi is a French success story.

The 44-year-old dentist and father of five has a thriving practice and a house in the affluent Paris suburb of Vincennes. His wife is a doctor and he is a leading member of the Jewish community and holds a senior post in its Central Consistory of Paris.

But in early July, the Tibi family will pack their bags and join the thousands of Jews now leaving France. The house has been sold. A colleague will be handling the dental practice. The family is leaving on a one-way ticket to Israel.

“If my children are to live their full Jewish identity, their future is in Israel and not in France,” Tibi said during an interview at his office in northeastern Paris, an area packed with kosher stores and restaurants. “Many Jews feel this way. There’s a massive desire to leave.”

Worldwide, immigration to Israel has stagnated and even declined. But French Jews are bucking the trend. Last year, a record 3,270 French Jews made aliyah — or immigration to Israel — a 63 percent hike from 2012. The Jewish Agency, which promotes aliyah internationally, estimates that figure could spike to 5,000 as early as this year, dramatically changing the face of Israeli immigration as well as France’s own Jewish community, the largest in Western Europe.

...[R]ising anti-Semitism may be the strongest driver, manifest not only through rhetoric but also action. In 2012, a radical Islamist gunned down four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse.

More recently, two of Tibi’s children were taunted on a tram. Tibi filled out immigration papers three weeks ago, making good on a project he had contemplated for years.

“My son is always asking me why there are police in front of his Jewish school, why we need to be searched each time we go to the synagogue,” he said. “We are raising our children to live with this fear.”

What troubles Tibi most is the lack of response on the part of the French.

“Once we had one million French on the streets against anti-Semitism. Now we have three million on Facebook and Twitter who are supporting Dieudonne,” he said, referring to a controversial French comic who is known for his anti-Jewish discourse.

...Tibi, who is president of the Paris-area Jewish community, is watching the departures and listening to the talk. “It’s a snowball effect,” he said, predicting the exodus may reach 8,000 Jews a year.

The fallout is already evident, he added. Students are leaving Jewish schools. The community is searching for new leaders and reconsidering costly construction projects.

Tibi is feeling the loss in other ways. “I was born in France. I did my studies in France. I am extremely sad to leave a country that gave me a lot,” he said. “But sometimes even when you love, you have to leave.”

02/10 Links Pt2: Hamas endorses BDS; Hungary’s Jews to boycott state Holocaust ceremonies

From Ian:

BBC’s Yolande Knell dons her campaigning hat yet again

Let’s take a closer look at Knell’s claim of “returning to land” in Ein Hijleh – also spelt Ein Hajla. According to a paper produced by the Palestinian NGO ARIJ in 2012:
“Deir Hajla is one of the oldest monasteries in both Palestine and the world. It contains mosaic floors dating back to the Medieval Ages, which were later renovated. In the north-east side of the monastery there is located ‘Ein Hajla (Hajla Spring) which, according to popular legend, the Canaanite village of Beit Hajla (meaning the house of hopscotch) was built upon. However, in the Roman era, it was called Hajla (the translation of which refers to the partridge bird) (Al Dabbagh, 1991) which is presently frequent in the region.”
Here’s a clue to the origin of that “Roman era” name:
“The Monastery, known in Arabic as Deir Hajla, seems to preserve the Hebrew name Bet Hoglah, which is mentioned in the biblical description of the lands of the tribe of Benjamin (Joshua18:19).”

If Jews attacked Muslims in Mecca, world media would cover nothing else for a month

Imagine that this week, Jews got angry and hundreds attacked Palestinian Arabs with rocks at the holiest Muslim site in the world. Imagine that this violence came after a handful of Muslims came to pray peacefully at the site, and even though hundreds of Jews attacked police officers, only seven were arrested. Can anyone imagine the endless news stories and media reports which would emanate as a result? The New York Times would have three front-page stories; there would be countless United Nations and European Union condemnations, and CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on site. Media coverage would be non-stop.
But, in reality Arabs attacked Jews repeatedly over the last few days at the Temple Mount, the holiest site for Jews, so it is barely a news story. Palestinian Arab violence against Jews is a regular occurrence, and as the media seemingly expects the Arabs to throw rocks, they don’t afford it much media coverage.

From the archives: Oxfam and the Israeli “gas chambers”

A less well-known episode, but one that reveals much about the evolution of Oxfam’s attitudes towards Israel, occurred in October 1977. Oxfam’s then director-general Brian W. Walker had just returned from a visit to Jordan and Israel. His observations in the West Bank prompted him to write to Judith Hart, the Minister for Overseas Development in James Callaghan’s Labour Government. His letter contained a number of remarkable suggestions, not least of which was that Oxfam would be happy to assist a British minister to “travel incognito” into Israeli occupied territory via Jordan.
By far the most disturbing aspect of Walker’s letter, however, was the allegation that Israeli policies in relation to West Bank water resources amounted to a crime against the Palestinian people that could be compared to the Holocaust.
“The policy being followed by Israel,” Walker declared, “is in no real sense different from the use of the gas chambers by the Nazis – for a ‘living’ death is, in many respects, worse than death itself.”

Stuff from today's Arab media

Islamic Jihad celebrated the return of the body of a terrorist who killed 4 Israelis in a yeshiva in Otniel in 2002. They inflated the number of people he killed from 4 to 6 and claimed they were all "soldiers."

This article says that the infighting in Egypt and Yemen is a dream of the Jews, "God's wrath be upon them.."

Another article tells us that "Jewish insolence has no limits" as it says that the Holocaust is a hoax, Jews collaborated with Hitler, and all the Jews who left Arab countries all did so voluntarily except for the ones who were frightened into leaving by Jewish terror attacks.

A respected columnist in Al Hayat, Jihad el-Khazen, says that as a graduate of American and Arab universities he is an expert on science and history, and that evidence shows that the Jewish and Christian Bibles are myths. The Quran, however, is perfectly correct.

Another article is entitled "Israel is a racist and a fascist society and doomed to extinction." He goes through a list of supposed Zionist crimes (genocide, ethnic cleansing) and is upset that the UN overturned the "Zionism is Racism" resolution.

Perhaps, you think, I am cherry picking. Well, yes and no.

These are some of the most egregious antisemitic and anti-Zionist articles just from today.

However, you will never find anyone disagreeing.

The insanity never ends: Sheikh Qaradawi accused of being a Mossad agent

One of the more interesting (and relatively under-reported) aspects of Egypt's 2013 coup is the insane hate that the new Egyptian leadership has for the previous one and for Islamists in general. Being more liberal is not at all correlated with intelligence.

Of course, the way to insult fellow Arabs remains the same: just accuse them of being Zionist.

The latest example comes from Egypt's Al Bawabh News, an anti-Muslim Brotherhood newspaper. They are accusing Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi - one of the most influential clerics in Sunni Islam, whose weekly Qatar-based TV show reaches tens of millions, and who explicitly supports killing Israeli civilians - of being a Mossad agent!

Qaradawi is originally from Egypt, supports the Muslim Brotherhood and has been very critical of the UAE, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries who do not support the Islamist group.

The logic behind this brilliant analysis is that Qaradawi has not specifically condemned recent reports of Jews visiting the Temple Mount.

It just so happens that Qaradawi's weekly broadcast sermon was cancelled for the past three weeks, and at the last minute this week, indicating that he may be ill. (He only admitted to having a cold.) But the Al Bawabh article goes on from there.

It claims that he has visited Israel three times, that he knows Hebrew, and that he has met with senior rabbis (a few years ago he did greet a delegation of Neturei Karta idiots, and has had to fight rumors that he is pro-Israel ever since.)

The article goes on to claim that Qaradawi was praised by the US Congress (according to some news stories, he has been banned from the US since 1999), it quotes an Egyptian professor who calls him a "prostitute" for the West, that there are photos of him with the Chief Rabbi of Israel (in reality, last year Qaradawi boycotted an interfaith conference when he discovered a liberal Jew would attend,) and that he met with Jews in Gaza.

Here is a graphic from the homepage of this same news site, indicating that the Muslim Brotherhood is in fact Zionist itself:

Liberal, religious, Islamist, reformer, secular - there is always one constant in the Arab world, and that is how much they hate Jews and Israel. In public.