Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Israel's diplomats go on strike (update)

From the Israel Consulate of Philadelphia page:

Due to the work dispute of the Diplomats of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Israel there will be no consular services until further notice except life threatening situations and burials in Israel.

Phone calls will not be answered.
We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Some of the consulate and embassy pages say nothing, some are more terse than this. The best explanation I've seen comes from the embassy in Madrid:

Due to the refusal of the Ministry of Finance of Israel to resolve the labor dispute at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israeli diplomats have renewed their labor measures pressure.

It is rare that the diplomatic service of a country is involved in a labor dispute. Out of our deep commitment to presenting Israel's interests abroad, international prestige and national security of Israel, we Israeli diplomats insist that our reasonable demands are met.

There will be no changes in this website until further notice. Regular updates will resume with a satisfactory resolution of the dispute.

I have not seen this in any news site yet as of this writing.

If I recall correctly, one of the previous strikes by MFA workers occurred during the push by the PLO to have an Arab Palestinian state recognized by many South American countries, and there was effectively no opposition by Israel because of their job action.

IMHO, Israeli diplomats are as important - or more so - than soldiers, and the idea of them going on a general strike is completely unacceptable although slowing down some personal consular services might be OK. The idea that no one is available to present Israel's case in every foreign country if needed is crazy.

(h/t Irene)

UPDATE: TOI did have the story:

Workers at the Foreign Ministry initiated a harsh new round of labor sanctions Tuesday, potentially jeopardizing visits of foreign dignitaries and planned trips abroad by Israeli officials.The strike, which has also temporarily suspended all consular services to Israelis abroad, came after months-long talks with the Finance Ministry broke down earlier in the week.

If no solution is found to the rekindled labor dispute, the strike could endanger the upcoming visits to Israel by British Prime Minister David Cameron and Pope Francis.

Oy.

(h/t Gabriel)

Hezbollah built an airport?

Ya Libnan reports:

Hezbollah built an airport between the areas of Iaat and Wardin outside Lebanon’s Baalbek in addition to warehouses and secret tunnels, a report in Al-Mustaqbal newspaper said Monday.

“Hezbollah has built what looks like an airport in an area between Iaat and Wardin in the Beqaa after having bought the land from a former municipality chief in the area,” the daily quoted a Western security report as saying.

The report added that Hezbollah began a few weeks ago to use new weapons and rockets in its military operations in Syria, such as “Mersad 1” and “Mersad 2” drones.

The source said that Hezbollah has set up warehouses and built secret tunnels under the supervision of Iranian professionals.

The daily also quoted the Western security source as saying that Hezbollah has recently moved advanced rockets and modern weapons to the Syrian region of Yabrud where it has been battling rebels.

Meanwhile, a security source told Al-Mustaqbal that the results of the investigations into the case of the drones flying over the residence of Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea have revealed that these drones have taken off from Hezbollah’s airport

The Lebanese Forces said last month that Iranian-manufactured drones has been circling over Maarab.

Here is the most airport-looking thing I could find on a satellite image near Iaat, but zooming in you can see it has small buildings on the "runway."

It would be hard to hide an airport, and it is hard to know how reliable these "security sources" are.

03/05 Links Pt1: PA Calls Murderer of Children "a brave heroic fighter"; Obama’s Settlements Lie

From Ian:

Without getting personal, Netanyahu hits back at Obama

Publicly savaged by President Barack Obama for his settlement policies on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday opted for a firmly non-personal response in a warmly received address to the AIPAC conference here. He argued extensively for several positions directly at odds with those held by the president, but did so without the direct targeting that Obama had employed in his incendiary Bloomberg conversation published two days earlier.
Obama, in the lengthy interview with Jeffrey Goldberg that was released precisely as Netanyahu was flying in to meet with him, had chosen to assail the prime minister for overseeing “aggressive settlement construction,” indicated that Netanyahu’s positions on the Palestinian conflict were threatening Israel’s wellbeing, and warned that the US would find it increasingly difficult to defend Israel from the international consequences.
Netanyahu, having since joined the president in their latest public dialogue of the deaf at the White House on Monday, opted to tell AIPAC Tuesday morning that he had held “very good meetings” with Obama and other senior American leaders (the only time he named Obama in the speech), insisted that he was ready to conclude “a historic peace” with the Palestinians, and hailed the uniquely “precious alliance” between the United States and Israel.
He also chose to heap praise on Secretary of State John Kerry, who must have been deeply dismayed by the president’s decision to so openly question the policies of a prime minister he has spent months gradually trying to win over, cosset and reassure.

No standing O for Obama

Citing two anonymous high-ranking sources in DC, one Israeli, and one American, the paper maintains that the US State Department is furious with President Barack Obama for his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg on Sunday — a move they say was deliberately done behind Secretary of State John Kerry’s back and threatens to derail peace talks.
“The interview Obama gave, unbeknownst to Kerry, in which he launched a personal attack on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a way that departs from any acceptable formulation, undermines Kerry’s sincere efforts,” an unnamed official told the paper.
The second source stressed that Kerry’s primary concern regarding the interview is that it “damaged Netanyahu’s and the Israeli public’s trust in the US efforts [to broker a peace agreement].”

Obama’s Settlement Construction Lie

According to Obama, “we have seen more aggressive settlement construction over the last couple years than we’ve seen in a very long time.” But in reality, as a simple glance at the annual data published by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics reveals, there has been less settlement construction during Benjamin Netanyahu’s five years as Israeli premier (2009-13) than under any of his recent predecessors.
During those five years, housing starts in the settlements averaged 1,443 a year (all data is from the charts here, here and here plus this news report). That’s less than the 1,702 a year they averaged under Ehud Olmert in 2006-08, who is nevertheless internationally acclaimed as a peacemaker (having made the Palestinians an offer so generous that then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice couldn’t believe she was hearing it). It’s also less than the 1,652 per year they averaged under Ariel Sharon in 2001-05, who is similarly lauded internationally as a peacemaker (for having left Gaza); the fact that even Sharon out-built Netanyahu is particularly remarkable, because his term coincided with the second intifada, when demand for housing in the settlements plummeted. And it’s far less than under Ehud Barak, who is also internationally acclaimed as a peacemaker (for his generous offer at Camp David in 2000): One single year under Barak, 2000, produced more housing starts in the settlements (4,683) than the entire first four years of Netanyahu’s term (4,679).

After I posted my earlier story from an Egyptian newspaper claiming that anyone who ridicules the supposed AIDS cure devised by the Egyptian Army is actually following Protocol 6 of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, I decided to see if any other Arab media has been pushing that classic antisemitic meme in the past few weeks.

Was there even a question?

Ma'an Arabic last month published a lengthy op-ed that went through the entire fake history of the Protocols, except, of course, the author was serious.

An Iraqi paper reported a bizarre story (really, rumor) that a convoy of 60 trucks from Jordan meant to supply al Qaeda terrorists in Syria mysteriously disappeared. However, it mentions that they were supporting the Jewish plot to expand Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates, as the Protocols says.

A Syrian government news site also went through the history of the Protocols and also accused Syrian rebels of adhering to the text.

Palestinian Arab Quds Press also has a lengthy description of the Protocols and the Israeli government is following them to a T.

During the same timeframe, there was not one article disputing the truth of the famous forgery.

Another Iranian arms ship intercepted

Haaretz reports:

Israeli naval forces on Wednesday intercepted an Iranian arms vessel carrying medium-range missiles in the Red Sea, about 930 miles from the Israeli coast. The shipment was headed for the Gaza Strip via Sudan.

Special forces from the Shayetet 13 (Flotilla 13) unit overpowered the cargo vessel named the KLOS C – which is registered in Panama – in the early morning hours. A search aboard the vessel uncovered dozens of 302mm rockets, which are manufactured in Syria and were fired into Israel by Hezbollah during the 2006 Second Lebanon War. The rockets have a range of about 100 kilometers.

"We have conclusive evidence that there were rockets on board the ship, and we have proof and can say with certainty that Iran is behind this operation," a senior Israel Defense Forces officer said.

The officer said that the rockets originated in Syria, were loaded onto airplanes at the Damascus airport from which they were transported to Iran. There they were boarded onto the cargo ship, which set sail about 10 days ago en route to a port in Sudan.

The IDF tracked the ship, saying it sailed north toward Iraq instead of heading directly toward the African country. The army believes that, in Iraq, the rockets were covered with cement bags in an attempt to disguise the shipment after which the vessel continued to sail toward Sudan.

Times of Israel says the rockets have a range of 200 km, not 100.

IDF video of the background:

IDF video (via Haaretz) of the weapons on the ship:

Iran has not been too friendly towards Hamas in the past year, so it seems likely that this shipment was not meant for Hamas - but for Islamic Jihad. Hamas is regularly criticized for being too peaceful, as both Fatah and more extreme terror groups like to point out that the "Islamic Resistance Movement" isn't doing very much resisting. (None of them pretend that the word "resistance "means anything other than violence.)

An Islamic Jihad rocket towards Ben Gurion Airport or Haifa would be a better recruiting tool than a hundred of their cheesy videos.

There are still some tunnels from Egypt to Gaza that Egypt hasn't found, and Arabic media mentions rumors of terrorists paying Egyptian fishermen to transfer weapons to Gaza boats.

Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain recall ambassadors to Qatar

From Al Arabiya:

In a shock move, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday recalled their envoys to Qatar.

The three countries said the move was taken to "to protect their security and stability," a Saudi Press Agency statement said.

The trio also said that Qatar had not “committed to the principles” of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and said "Qatar has to take the appropriate steps to ensure the security of the GCC states."

They made the decision following what Gulf media described as a "stormy" late Tuesday meeting of foreign ministers from the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council in Riyadh, according to Agence France-Presse.

GCC countries "have exerted massive efforts to contact Qatar on all levels to agree on a unified policy... to ensure non-interference, directly or indirectly, in the internal affairs of any member state," the statement said.

The nations have also asked Qatar, a backer of the Muslim Brotherhood movement that is banned in most Gulf states, "not to support any party aiming to threaten security and stability of any GCC member," it added, citing media campaigns against them in particular.

The statement stressed that despite the commitment of Qatar's emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to these principles during a mini-summit held in Riyadh in November with Kuwait's emir and the Saudi monarch, his country has failed to comply.

Qatar is not only a major benefactor for the Muslim Brotherhood, but it supports Hamas as well.

Another victim of Arab antipathy towards Qatar has been Al Jazeera. Egypt arrested three Al Jazeera employees last December, accusing them of "spreading false news and belonging to a terrorist group."

Egypt and the Gulf countries are treating Muslim Brotherhood style Islamism as an existential threat. This is the biggest story in the Middle East since the "Arab Spring," in fact it is a direct result of that.

When the semblance of unity is patched up again, this will all be blamed on Israel. After all, we learned only a few days ago that a UN report says that internal Arab divisions are primarily because of foreign interference, and the worst perpetrator of that interference is Israel, which has been thwarting Arab unity since before 1948. The only thing Arabs can unify around is, after all, how Israel is to blame for all their problems - including having no unity.

ASA's Lisa Duggan lies again about NYU anti-Israel conference

Liel Leibovitz has an article about the NYU ASA conference story (that I broke) in Tablet:

NYU professor Lisa Duggan—you may remember her as the president of the American Studies Association and a strong voice in support of the organization’s decision last year to boycott Israeli universities—asked that the conference be kept secret.

“PLEASE DO NOT post or circulate the flyer,” read her message. “We are trying to avoid press, protestors and public attention.”

Now, it’s one thing for a student organization like Hillel or private institutions like Jewish museums or high schools to decide that their intellectual horizons exclude those who do not share certain core beliefs. A university, however, does not have that privilege. It is—or should be—open to all ideas, to myriad points of view, to discussion, to dissent.

Because any attempt to seriously study human conduct is likely to stir up emotions and give rise to ideological barricades, our best universities have come up with policies to safeguard that sanctity of academic freedom in their midst. Title I of NYU’s own poignant faculty handbook puts it elegantly when it states that professors “should not introduce into their teaching controversial matter that has no relation to their subject,” and should at all times “exercise appropriate restraint” as well as “show respect for the opinions of others.”

The recent conference’s organizers did none of that. Forgoing any semblance of serious study, viable research, or honest attempts to understand the intricacies of the subject at hand, they turned their classroom into a seminary designed exclusively to cultivate hatred for one particular nation state and fashion this animosity into ruinous political action.

Hence the call to keep things secret: while academic institutions are, of course, never obliged to let members of the public into their hushed sanctuaries—that’s a privilege obtained by paying a hefty tuition—one should be very, very suspicious of any learned person who insists—against the long-standing and proud American tradition of free inquiry, against the common-sensical and democratic expectation that the university see itself as part of the community that supports and sustains it and not as a small and zealous sect apart—on conducting intellectual work under the cover of darkness.

The university should judge whether the organization of a discriminatory conference and the insistence that participants comply, Mafia-style, with a sort of academic Omerta meets its own standards. The rest of us are left with the less subtle and more tragic duty of witnessing the formerly solid tradition of intellectual freedom and debate melt into air.

Lisa Duggan replied in the comments:

The conference was not secret. It was a regular American Studies annual academic conference. These are not public events, they never have been. They are not debate formats either. I created an fb event by invite only, for professors and grad students in the area. Because the issue of Israel Palestine and the ASA's recent boycott vote was controversial, I knew that *this* conference might attract public attention, which we wanted to avoid--as we always do, for our annual conferences. There was no attempt to restrict the range of views of professors and students who wanted to attend. We just didn't want press, polemical blowhards, political organizations etc to disrupt the academic panels. ALL organizations on campus have events which are not "balanced" or open to the public, this is routine. Certainly zionist groups on campus have many such events. Nothing secret going on. We also do have public events, that ARE open to press and public. This just wasn't one of those. The idea that this was a "secret" conference is just ludicrous. A function of the attack culture around the issues. If the conference had been on US empire (with no supporters of empire present, and no press or public invited or wanted), it would have attracted zero attention, and would have been considered ordinary. Because it was ordinary.

First of all, as Liebovitz pointed out, there is a difference between an event sponsored by a student organization and one sponsored by an official university department, American Studies at NYU. Professor Duggan has a reading comprehension problem (Notice also that she chooses not to capitalize "zionist." And that in her invitation, she misspelled "protesters." Professors just can't seem to reach the standards expected of high school students nowadays.)

Secondly, even this paragraph contradicts itself. First she says that it was an invite-only conference, but then she says that there was no attempt to restrict the range of views of those who wanted to attend. Given that the speakers were obviously handpicked to give only one side of the story, is it conceivable that Duggan "invited" anyone who would disagree? But let's give hr a chance to name a single person she "invited" who does not share her crazed anti-Zionism. Just one, Lisa.

Of course, she can't - because she is lying when she says that this was a Facebook invite-only event. It was not a Facebook invitation, it was a Facebook photo-post, which encouraged all readers in her little circle to invite their friends - but not to publicize it to anyone outside that circle.

Here's the screen-shot that shows Duggan is a liar:

Of course, Duggan also doesn't mention that she took the post down as soon as I exposed her duplicity. If it was an invite-only event, that would not have been necessary.

Are there any consequences at a major university when one of their professors tries to hide their activities from critics, and then lies about it?

(h/t David L)

03/04 Links Pt2: First they came for Israel...; UAE airline supported by US bans Israel

From Ian:

Canada recognizes Jewish refugees expelled from Mideast, N. Africa

Canada on early Tuesday formally recognized the experience and status of Jewish refugees expelled from the Middle East and North Africa after Israel's founding.
More specifically, Canada accepted the recommendation of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development that "Canada officially recognize the experience of Jewish refugees who were displaced from states in the Middle East and North Africa after 1948."

In defence of Zionism

A letter to the editor of the Financial Times:
Sir, In response to Ralph Coury (Letters, February 22): there was a reason for the Jewish concept of Zionism that is often totally forgotten in the propaganda discourse that serves as informed discussion today. For almost 2,000 years the Jewish people have been pushed from pillar to post by the inhabitants of those countries they were forced to settle in following their eviction from their homeland in Palestine.
Jews were kept in the status of second- or third-class citizens by their mostly Christian hosts, exploited by them, forced into trades their Christian neighbours thought “un-Christian” and, if too successful, robbed, raped and dispossessed by the kings and queens they were forced to lend money to or work for, or by their neighbours, who were often appalled at the whole idea of Judaism.
To omit this fact in Professor Coury’s response to Zionism is to entirely misrepresent the mentality of those behind it. Certainly it drove those in Europe who, driven by compassion, pushed for a return of a Jewish presence in a homeland of their own, free from such oppression. This required the kind of clandestine behaviour that Prof Coury refers to, but displacement of people in history is nothing new.

Putting Mondoweiss in Context

Mondoweiss defines itself as "a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish direction" and claims, in Orwellian fashion, that its aim is "to publish a diversity of voices to promote dialogue on these important issues," although the only "diversity of views" on the site is the best method of destroying Israel.
According to its website, Mondoweiss has two editors (Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz), two assistant editors, and an editor-at-large. Presumably they are not volunteer workers, and money certainly doesn't grow on trees, even for websites that are updated on a daily basis.
Mondoweiss states that its website "is part of the Center for Economic Research and Social Change," an ambiguously sinister-sounding body in north Chicago. Turning to its website, the Center (CERSC, as it is known) lists five "projects" which it supports. These are publishing the International Socialist Review; holding an annual conference which two years ago was termed "Socialism 2012"; hosting "We Are Many," another website "devoted to publishing radical and activist video and audio media," and funding Haymarket Books, a radical publishing firm.

A video that Israel haters don't want you to see

To the professional Israel-haters, obviously no country is as evil as Israel.

And the worst group of Israelis are Israeli soldiers and security officers, who we are told routinely torture and kill Arabs for fun.

And the worst group of Israeli security officers are those in Hebron, where they ruthlessly and maliciously attack children as policy.

So this video, taken in Hebron of Israeli border police giving food to a couple of kids - and their ecstatic reaction - must never be allowed to be seen, because it contradicts everything that every hater holds dear.

Every anti-Israel NGO in Hebron sees scenes like this daily. I've seen them too. But these NGOs can't raise any money by reporting the situation accurately. The haters can't get gigs speaking at clueless colleges if they don't stereotype Jewish soldiers as evil.

So they don't want you to see this, because it threatens their livelihoods that depend on demonizing Jews.

(h/t Yoel)

UPDATE: I copied the video to YouTube so it would be easier to share.

Bibi's speech to AIPAC (video and full text)

Here is the speech that Binyamin Netanyahu gave at the AIPAC conference this morning.

I bring you greetings from Jerusalem -- (cheers, applause) -- the eternal, undivided capital of Israel and the Jewish people. (Cheers, applause.)

I want to thank all of you for working so tirelessly to strengthen the alliance between Israel and America. American -- American support for Israel and for that alliance is at an all-time high. And I can tell you that there is no country on earth that is more pro-American than Israel. (Applause.)

So I want to thank the leaders of AIPAC, the officers of AIPAC, the 14,000 delegates of AIPAC -- (cheers, applause) -- the members of Congress, the members of the Israeli government -- Tzipi Livni, Limor Livnat, Yuval Steinitz, Deputy Minister Elkin, members of the Knesset -- and our two able ambassadors, the ambassador of Israel to the United States, Ron Dermer -- (applause) -- and the ambassador of the United States to Israel, Dan Shapiro, and our U.N. ambassador, Ron Prosor. Everyone, I want to thank you all for safeguarding and nurturing the most precious alliance in the world, the alliance between Israel and the United States of America. (Cheers, applause.)

My friends, I've -- I've come here to draw a clear line.

You know that I like to draw lines -- (laughter) -- especially red ones. But the line I want to draw today is the line between life and death, between right and wrong, between the blessings of a brilliant future and the curses of a dark past.

I stood very close to that dividing line two weeks ago. I visited an Israeli army field hospital in the Golan Heights. Now, that field hospital wasn't set up for Israelis. It was set up for Syrians. (Applause.) Israelis treated nearly a thousand wounded Syrians -- men, women and a lot of children. They come to our border fence bleeding and desperate. Often they're near death.

And on my visit I met two such Syrians, a shellshocked father and his badly wounded 5-year-old boy. A few days earlier the man's wife and baby daughter were blown to bits by Iranian bombs dropped by Assad's air force. Now the grieving father was holding his little boy in his arms, and Israeli doctors were struggling to save the boy's life.

03/04 Links Pt1: Israel’s Big Mistake; Where have you gone, Daniel Patrick Moynihan

From Ian:

Israel’s Big Mistake

The most striking evidence of this fateful shift in mood and perception would present itself in the early 1990s, when, under the premiership of Yitzhak Rabin, Israel started negotiating with its arch-enemy. Whereas real peace would have to be based on acceptance of the legitimacy of a Jewish state in the Middle East, the Palestinian national movement, represented by the PLO, was based on the opposite doctrine. Had Israel retained its hope for real peace, it should have been steadfast in its refusal of any dialogue with this organization, and waited for it to dissolve (as almost happened). Instead, entering into the most ambitious and futile of peace processes, it picked the PLO as its partner, thereby compromising on the issue of its own legitimacy and helping to create a new political entity based explicitly on anti-Zionism. In exchange for tepid and partial recognition, a small Jewish state in the midst of a huge Arab region agreed to shrink itself still further.
This was the new meaning of “peace,” and, just as one might expect, it led to nothing but violence. The passing of Gaza and most of the West Bank’s populated areas into the hands of Arafat and his murderous kleptocracy did nothing to resolve the problem of the 1948 Arab refugees (on which more below), to prepare the local Arab population for genuine peace, or to mitigate the larger Arab/Muslim refusal to accept a Jewish state. If anything, it achieved the contrary aim; in advancing that aim, the PLO initiated a sustained campaign of terror whose toll in blood would number in the thousands of Israeli civilians.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Fatah Infighting Jeopardizes Kerry's Peace Process

In recent weeks, Abbas has taken a number of measures that reflect his increased fear of Mohamed Dahlan's moves to discredit him and remove him from power. These measures include confiscating large sums of money transferred from the United Arab Emirates to Dahlan loyalists in Gaza.
Once the claim was that Abbas does not represent the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, who are under the control of Hamas. Today it is not incorrect to argue that Abbas does not even represent his own party.

Surprise: Obama Kills the Peace Process

But in contrast to the Israelis, there is no Palestinian peace camp or faction within either Abbas’ Fatah or his Hamas rivals that will push for peace even if it doesn’t grant their maximal demands. The only possible source of pressure on Abbas to do make peace must come from the U.S., Europe and the Arab States. But if President Obama is not willing to hold Abbas accountable for his behavior, then no one will. In the absence of an American determination to hold Abbas’ feet to the fire in spite of the enormous Palestinian constituency that will always oppose even the most generous Israeli offer, the already slim prospects for peace are altogether extinguished.
By attacking Netanyahu and lauding Abbas, the president has accomplished something that no Israeli right-winger could possibly accomplish: kill the peace process. Without American insisting that Abbas change his ways, there is no possible way for him to withstand the far greater pressure he gets from the descendants of the 1948 refugees — who still dream of flooding Israel and turning it into another Arab state — or his Islamist rivals.
Though the president warned Netanyahu that he wouldn’t be able to protect Israel if peace talks falter, his interview with Goldberg guaranteed that this is exactly what will happen. From here on in, everything else he says about the topic is moot. (h/t Norman F)